However, his speech is ironic because he still believes that Romeo is in love with Rosaline, and he never discovers Romeo's love for Juliet. These rapid, highly energized exchanges between the two friends reflect Romeo's own feelings of anticipation at his forthcoming wedding.
Mercutio, who has little patience for the emotional aspects of romantic pursuit, is delighted that Romeo has gotten over his lovesickness. Mercutio impishly engages in lewd wordplay and is preoccupied with the physical aspects of love. When Benvolio declares a truce in the talk between the two friends, Mercutio turns his verbal rapier on the Nurse, flustering her to distraction. This mischievous repartee contrasts with the darkly ominous threats of Tybalt's challenge to duel Romeo.
As in other parts of the play, vastly contrasting ideas coexist — love and hate; euphoria and despair; good and evil; levity and danger. The news of Tybalt's challenge threatens to embroil Romeo in the violence of the family feud. While Romeo is well-liked in the community and has a peaceable reputation, Tybalt is a proud and vengeful foe.
This is because he cannot stand to see Romeo's honour jeopardised in the face of his enemy. Make haste. He is taunting Tybalt suggesting he is slow to get his sword ready to fight. The fact that Mercutio is telling Tybalt to 'make haste' will only taunt Tybalt further, as he is suggesting Tybalt is a coward. Analysing the evidence Question From reading this extract, what are the similarities between Tybalt and Mercutio? Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk? What wouldst thou have with me?
Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh, Speak but one rhyme and I am satisfied. Mercutio is an anti-romantic character who, like Juliet 's Nurse, regards love as an exclusively physical pursuit. He advocates an adversarial concept of love that contrasts sharply with Romeo's idealized notion of romantic union.
In Act I, Scene 4, when Romeo describes his love for Rosaline using the image of love as a rose with thorns, Mercutio mocks this conventional device by punning bawdily:. If love be rough with you, be rough with love; Prick love for pricking and you beat love down. The Queen Mab speech in Act I, Scene 4, displays Mercutio's eloquence and vivid imagination, while illustrating his cynical side.
Mercutio, unlike Romeo, doesn't believe that dreams can act as portents. Fairies predominate in the dream world Mercutio presents, and dreams are merely the result of the anxieties and desires of those who sleep. Romeo blames fate, or fortune, for what has happened to him.
Mercutio curses the Montagues and Capulets. He seems to see people as the cause of his death, giving no credit to any larger force. Elizabethan society generally believed that a man who was too much in love lost his manliness. The Romeo who sought to avoid confrontation out of concern for his wife is the person Juliet would recognize as her loving Romeo.
The word " effeminate" is applied by the public world of honor upon those things it does not respect. In using the term to describe his present state, Romeo accepts the responsibilities thrust upon him by the social institutions of honor and family duty.
The arrival of the Prince and the angry citizens shifts the focus of the play to a different sort of public sphere. As one who has displayed such traits, Romeo is banished from Verona. Earlier, the Prince acted to repress the hatred of the Montagues and the Capulets in order to preserve public peace; now, still acting to avert outbreaks of violence, the Prince unwittingly acts to thwart the love of Romeo and Juliet.
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