The aristocratic joker Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet is a testament to Shakespeare’s ability to create intensely memorable character roles alongside the heroes and protagonists of his plays. Though not as central, obviously, as Romeo or Juliet, Mercutio is a nuanced role, whom some critics suggest provides the very hinge of play’s shift from comedy to tragedy.
It’s often forgotten (in productions such as Baz Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet) that Mercutio is a kinsman of the Prince of Verona. In other words, whilst the Montagues and Capulets are essentially rich merchants with lots of servants, Mercutio is the kind of blueblood that they aspire to ally with (through Juliet’s proposed marriage with Paris, another of the Prince’s kinsmen, for example.)
This offers one way to interpret Mercutio: as a louche aristo who can’t take anything seriously. He jests at Romeo’s love, “Cry but ‘Ay, me!’. Pronounce but ‘love’ and ‘dove’” (Act II, Scene1), and even puns about his own stabwound, “ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.” (III,1) Mercutio jokes about dreaming (I,4), quarrelling (III,1), loving (II,1) and dying (III,1)
It is only as he faces death that Mercutio changes his tone. After a rally of quips, claiming that his “scratch” is not much because it is “not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door”, he suddenly breaks out “A plague o’ both your houses!” Interestingly, he doesn’t just curse Tybalt who stabbed him, but everyone involved in the quarrel – perhaps he feels that his life has been lost in an ignoble squabble between a couple of lesser gentry.
He then turns upon Romeo, who tried to stop the fight, demanding “Why came you between us? I was hurt under your arm.” This almost petulant demand shows the jokey mask slipping as Mercutio realises he is going to die, and it’s a striking contrast between the jesting and the cursing that has come before.
Some critics have identified Mercutio’s death as the point at which Romeo and Juliet slides irrevocably into tragedy. Before this point, they argue, it was essentially a “boy-meets-girl” story, about love opposed by their parents. With this episode, in which girl’s cousin stabs boy’s best friend, causing boy to slaughter him in return, a cycle of deaths begins which will claim both Romeo and Juliet.
It’s also worth noting that Mercutio’s dying curse is instrumental in the unfolding of the tragedy. His vague curse, “A plague on both your houses” nearly comes true: when Friar Lawrence writes to Romeo explaining Juliet’s plan with the sleeping draught, the letter miscarries because of plague in the city. It is this “infection” which stops Romeo from discovering her plan, and leads directly to the lovers’ suicides. Though neither of them see Mercutio’s “plague”, it kills them both.
Jem Bloomfield - Jem Bloomfield was educated at the universities of Oxford and Exeter, and is currently working on a PhD on Webster's revenge tragedy "The ...
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