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Shakespeare Quarterly
Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? Now art thou so-
ciable, now art thou Romeo: now art thou what thou art, by art as well as
by nature. (II. iv. 86-88)2
Recognizing the implicit rivalry between these characters, Henry Hallam de-
scribed the way he thought Shakespeare faced an evident dramatic problem:
"It seems to have been necessary to keep down the other characters that
they might not overpower the principal one; and though we can by no means
agree with Dryden, that if Shakespeare had not killed Mercutio, Mercutio
would have killed him, there might have been some danger of his killing Romeo.
His brilliant vivacity shows the softness of the other a little to a disadvan-
tage."3
It has thus been tempting to understand Mercutio's death as a consequence
of the exceptional vitality of his character rather than by reference to his
actual function in the play. Dryden's well-known remarks, to which Hallam
referred, have contributed much to this attitude. What Dryden actually
wrote was: "Shakespeare showed the best of his skill in his Mercutio; and he
1 The appeal of Mercutio's part shows itself in arrangements to alternate the parts of Romeo
and Mercutio between actors and sometimes in the appropriation of some of Mercutio's lines by
Romeo. Margaret Webster, after describing the strong appeal of the part of Juliet to actresses,
maintains that Romeo's part is less attractive: "An actor does not feel the same yearning for
Romeo; he usually spends days of troubled debate as to whether Mercutio is not the showier part,
filled as it is with wit and poetry, with the zest of life and the tragic, wasteful irony of death"
(Shakespeare Without Tears, rev. ed. [Cleveland and New York, 1955], p. 149).
2William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, The New Cambridge Shakespeare, ed. John Dover
Wilson and George Ian Duthie (Cambridge, Eng., i969), p. 44. All references to the play are
to this edition, unless otherwise noted.
8 Henry Hallam, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 5th ed., i855; cited in Romeo and
luliet, New Variorum Edition, ed. Horace Howard Furness (Philadelphia, i878), p. I59n.
said himself that he was forced to kill him in the third act, to prevent being
killed by him. But, for my part, I cannot find he was so dangerous a person:
I see nothing in him but what was so exceeding harmless that he might have
lived to the end of the play, and died in his bed, without offence to any man."4
Dryden's story of Shakespeare's alleged remark implies that Mercutio's death
results from an arbitrary act of a desperate dramatist and is designed to keep
Mercutio from running away with the play. It is apparent also that Dryden
himself considered this means of dismissing Mercutio unnecessary and even
undesirable. But the comment seeks to explain the dramatic fact by reference
to the convenience of the dramatist rather than in terms of its function or
justification within the play as a whole. It even tends to discourage inquiry
into the latter kind of explanation, since it assumes the arbitrariness of the
death of Mercutio.
It may well be this assumption which moved Dr. Johnson to give his spirited
reply to Dryden, insisting that Mercutio's death is an appropriately treated and
properly presented dramatic action. "Mercutio's wit, gaiety and courage, will
always procure him friends that wish him a longer life; but his death is not
precipitated, he has lived out the time allotted him in the construction of the
play; nor do I doubt the ability of Shakespeare to have continued his existence,
though some of his sallies are perhaps out of the reach of Dryden; whose
genius was not very fertile of merriment, nor ductile to humour, but acute,
argumentative, comprehensive, and sublime."5 Dr. Johnson certainly credited
Shakespeare with greater dramatic inventiveness than did Dryden, and he
believed that in dramatizing Mercutio's death Shakespeare fulfilled a dra-
matic purpose related to the structure of the play. Yet even he contemplated
a possible continuation of Mercutio's dramatic existence. His focus of attention
is on Mercutio's role while alive, not on the reasons for his death or the effect
his death has on the events or characters of the play.6 Dr. Johnson implied
that once Mercutio's contribution to the play has been completed nothing
prevents his being killed. He did not treat the possibility that the manner of his
death may be an essential part of Mercutio's function. For him, Mercutio's
death seemed simply the means by which Shakespeare managed to terminate
the role and to dismiss a character no longer needed and for whom no
more stage time could be spared. But a character rendered superfluous by
the progress of the action need not be carried off the stage a corpse-he can
be disposed of much more discreetly. Juliet's Nurse and Friar John drop
silently out of this play when their dramatic functions have been completed,
4"Defence of the Epilogue [to the Second Part of Granada]: Or an Essay on the Dramatic
Poetry of the Last Age," Of Dramatic Poesy and Other Critical Essays, ed. George Watson
(London, i962), I, i8o.
5 The Plays of William Shakespeare, ed. Samuel Johnson (New York, I968; repr. of I765 ed.),
VIII, I25.
8 This emphasis is understandably characteristic of most studies of Mercutio; the brilliance of
his life has tended to obscure the significance of his death. Cf. Herbert McArthur, "Romeo's
Loquacious Friend," SQ, X (I959), 35-44; Norman N. Holland, "Shakespeare's Mercutio and
Ours," Michigan Quarterly Review, V (i966), iI5-23. Richard Hosley, however, has succinctly
observed that Mercutio's death "is the keystone of the plot's structure" (Romeo and Juliet, The
Yale Shakespeare, rev., ed. Richard Hosley [New Haven, I954], p. I71); cf. Romeo and Juliet,
New Penguin Shakespeare, ed. T. J. B. Spencer (Harmondsworth, Eng., I967), pp. 29-30, and
Nicholas Brooke, Shakespeare's Early Tragedies (London, i968), pp. 82-83, for treatment of the
crucial effect of Mercutio's death.
Casca loses his distinctive dramatic personality in Julius Caesar, and the
Fool vanishes from King Lear. A dramatist who feared the rivalry of a
secondary character toward his hero would hardly risk intensifying the
rivalry by giving the former one of the most brilliant dying scenes at the
very moment designed to remove him from the competition.
Dr. Johnson did not define the place allotted to Mercutio in the construc-
tion of the play, but his suggestion that Mercutio's death be viewed in terms
of the play's structure has considerable merit. As the first death represented
in the play, it sharply divides the events.7 Mercutio's death affects the
action critically and thoroughly alters the tone of the play. In the midst of
the story of romantic love which has occupied the stage, and in spite of the
general atmsophere of danger and the predictions of doom, this actual death
comes as a shock. It introduces the crucial fact, irrevocable and damaging,
that shifts the play into the tragic mode. Before this, despite the various ten-
sions (including those established by the Prologues and the imagery), the
events and the hopes of several characters are directed toward the reconcilia-
tion of the feuding households in love and toward the possible happiness
of the lovers. After it, the play moves toward death and the final reconcil-
iation, in grief, of the heirless families. Such happiness as the lovers enjoy
after this event and its immediate consequences is but a private moment
stolen from an increasingly hostile world. The hopes of recovering their situa-
tion and restoring their union are desperate and prove ultimately vain. The
consequences attendant upon Mercutio's death directly dominate the third
act and reverberate throughout the play. Mercutio's death leads directly to
Tybalt's death at Romeo's hands, which in turn becomes the cause of Romeo's
banishment, and this, through an intricate chain of contingencies, leads to the
final catastrophe. Mercutio's death is thus a primary motivating force for
major subsequent events. Furthermore, in the circumstances which lead to it
and in the details of the way it is dramatized there appears a pattern which
also governs the primary subject of the play, the tragedy of the lovers.
It seems certain that Shakespeare articulated the events of the fatal scene
(III. i) in his own way, for the known sources treat the fight between Romeo
and Tybalt without any reference to Mercutio. Indeed, in Arthur Brooke's
poem, The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562), generally
regarded as Shakespeare's principal source, Mercutio is not even named as
present at the fatal scene, and though he may be supposed to belong to the
group of Romeo's unnamed companions who arrive at the scene of the brawl,
these take no explicit part in the action.8 In Brooke's poem, Romeus is walking
with his friends in another part of the city when he is informed of a violent
battle raging between numerous Capilets and Montagewes. At the scene,
Romeus denounces the fighting and calls on his friends to help him part the
combatants, but his pacific efforts are fruitless. Instead of bringing peace, he
becomes the object of an unprovoked and treacherous attack by Tibalt, who
attempts to run him through. Rather than draw his sword at this outrage,
7 The effect of this will be missed if, as sometimes happens in productions, actual deaths are
represented in the opening Fight Scene. Mercutio's is the first actual death represented in the text.
8 See Arthur Brooke, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, ed. Geoffrey Bullough
(London and New York, 1957), I, 269-363.
Romeus assures Tibalt of his own peaceful intentions and appeals to him to
join in an attempt to restore peace. Tibalt replies with a challenge and a
blow which would have killed Romeus had he not defended himself. Roused
to action by this flagrant provocation, the now wrathful Romeus wounds
Tibalt fatally. Romeus is sentenced to banishment as a result of the witnesses'
testimony that "the fight begonne was by Tybalt" (1. I044), a sentence
predictably regarded as too lenient by the Capilets and as unjustly severe by
the Montagewes.
The events as narrated by William Painter in "The goodly Hystory of the
true and constante Love between Rhomeo and Julietta" (1567) are essenti-
ally the same as in Brooke's version of the story.9 Thibault attacks an unarmed
Rhomeo (whose life is saved only by the mailed vest he is wearing), rejects
his appeal for peace, and attacks a second time with such intensity that Rho-
meo is forced to defend himself. The judgment of banishment is given at
Rhomeo's trial on the grounds that he was acting in his own defense.
Shakespeare altered the story by bringing Mercutio into the conflict and
by building up to the principal fight between Tybalt and Romeo in a quite
different way, with effects that are far more dramatic than Brooke's or
Painter's. He preserved Romeo's peaceful response to Tybalt's provocations,
but he made this response the motive for Mercutio's intervention in the quarrel.
Mercutio thus becomes the catalytic agent in the situation culminating in Romeo's
killing of Tybalt. Shakespeare prepared for Mercutio's actions by char-
acterizing him as aggressive and by revealing his preoccupations. Among
the latter, quarreling and swordsmanship have a prominent place. In the
Queen Mab speech (I. iv) Mercutio characterizes the soldier at greater length
than he does any of the other figures in his catalogue of dreamers. Later, it is
he who instantly apprehends the significance of the letter Tybalt has sent to
Romeo's house; it is, he says, in particularly vigorous language, "a challenge,
on my life" (II. iv. 8). Unlike Benvolio, however, he seems to doubt Romeo's
ability to answer it to his satisfaction:
9 William Painter, The Palace of Pleasure, Novel 24, ed. Joseph Jacobs (New York, i966;
repr. of i890 ed.), III, 80-I24.
10 For possible contemporary reasons for Mercutio's attitudes see Adolph L. Soens, "Tybalt's
Spanish Fencing in Romeo and Juliet," SQ, XX (i969), I2I-27.
At that point he even begins to look forward to seeing Romeo fight Tybalt,
now that it appears the former has recovered from his absurd lovesickness.
In Shakespeare's version of the events there is no general brawl such as
is found in the source narratives. Instead the scene opens quietly with a
conversation between Benvolio and Mercutio. They are accompanied by
their men, but the latter have no speaking roles. When Benvolio suggests
that they withdraw from the public place, on the grounds-well justified as
subsequent events show-that any meeting with the Capulets will result
in a fight, Mercutio responds with an ironical accusation of Benvolio as a
great quarreler. Mercutio expands this idea, much as he expanded the Queen
Mab speech, by an amusing and satirical catalogue of instances, in this case
occasions of Benvolio's supposed quarreling. Benvolio turns these remarks
back at Mercutio, however, with the observation:
An I were so apt to quarrel as thou art, any man should buy the fee-
simple of my life for an hour and a quarter. (III. i. 30-32)
Benvolio shows, beneath the surface of this banter, an awareness of the real
danger in quarreling, just as he sensed the likelihood of a brawl. While
Mercutio is rejecting the implied warning in his customary witty manner,
Tybalt enters, accompanied by several companions.
The stage is now divided between two mutually antagonistic groups. Tybalt
moves first, taking the initiative with the close support of his companions,
and confronts Mercutio and Benvolio. Tybalt evidently wants information
about Romeo, who has not replied to his letter of challenge. Although speaking
to an enemy with whom he fought earlier (Benvolio) and to Mercutio, whose
association with Romeo he obviously despises, Tybalt is at least formally
polite. His words, "Gentlemen, good-den: a word with one of you" (III. i. 37),
are not necessarily hostile, though they may be somewhat peremptory. It is
Mercutio who speaks insolently, introducing direct hostility into the verbal
exchange: "And but one word with one of us? Couple it with something;
make it a word and a blow" (III. i. 39). In his response, Tybalt is formally
precise, as was suggested earlier by Mercutio's satiric description of his fencing:
"You shall find me apt enough to that, sir, and you will give me occasion"
(III. i. 40-4I ). Mercutio shows his contempt for such precision in his impulsive
reply: "Could you not take some occasion without giving?" (III.i.43).
In the verbal sparring which follows, Mercutio continues to be more hostile
than Tybalt. Mercutio is the one who actually makes a move toward his sword
with the words, "Here's my fiddlestick; here's that shall make you dance.
Zounds ... ." (III. i. 47-48). The relationship between the somewhat bantering
words, the oblique tone, and the threatening gesture is complex and perhaps
capable of different interpretations by actors and readers, but there can be
no doubt of the essential point, that Mercutio is deliberately baiting Tybalt.
Benvolio repeats his warning about being in the public haunt of men, but
Mercutio again rejects it, this time defiantly:
Phrased as a reply to Benvolio's remark, these lines are even more an indica-
tion of belligerent and willful opposition to Tybalt. Mercutio seems bent on
giving Tybalt the necessary "occasion" to fight.
Into this already strained situation Romeo enters. The established tensions
shift upon his arrival. Tybalt ignores Mercutio's provocations in order to take
up a quarrel that has prior claim on his attention. But as he turns from Mercutio
his language is very surprising: "Well, peace be with you, sir; here comes my
man" (III. i. 55). This parting speech, from the man who earlier declared his
abhorrence of the word "peace" (I. i. 69-70), provides a remarkable contrast to
the provocative language of Mercutio, and it separates Tybalt from any willful
involvement in a quarrel with him. In response, Mercutio transfers to Romeo
his own interest in fighting Tybalt. A vicarious satisfaction of his antagonism to
Tybalt seems an acceptable substitute for a personal challenge. He puts strong
and witty emphasis in his reply on what (he believes) Romeo will do, playing on
Tybalt's expression, "Here comes my man."
Mercutio is anxious for Romeo to take up the challenge to Tybalt where he left
it, and he is virtually promising that Romeo will fight him.
Tybalt's insults to Romeo are met with restraint and even an offer of love.
Tybalt is nonplused; Mercutio is outraged. Shakespeare's technique was to
polarize the conflicting social and ethical values in this situation as he exploited
the tensions between the code of honor and the ethics of Christianity. As Curtis
B. Watson describes the scene: "Romeo turns the other cheek like a Christian
pacifist when Tybalt first insults him, both because the Prince has forbidden
private feuds and because Tybalt is a kinsman of Juliet (III. i. 69-75). Mer-
cutio, on the other hand is the very embodiment of the Renaissance man of
honor. He calls his friend's meek acceptance of Tybalt's slander a 'calm, dis-
honorable, vile submission!' (III. i. 76)."l1 However, Watson apparently has
given Mercutio's judgment the priority, rather than Romeo's actual words and
actions, for Romeo does not offer "meek acceptance." He denies that he is a
villain, ignores the demeaning word "boy," and denies having done Tybalt any
injuries. Further, in response to Tybalt's ironical reference to the "love" (i.e.,
hatred)'2 he bears Romeo, the latter offers a genuine love, concluding with the
statement that he values the Capulets' name as his own. His speeches are
magnanimous in content and dignified in tone. His attitude is neither "vile
submission," as Mercutio calls it, nor "meek acceptance," as Watson describes
it.
Mercutio now acts betrayed, outraged, and bitter. He is not angry merely
because Romeo has lost honor but because Tybalt goes unchallenged, since,
as he puts it, " 'Alla stoccata' carries it away" (III. i. 73). To prevent this
he intervenes with his own challenge: "Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk?"
11 Curtis Brown Watson, Shakespeare and the Renaissance Concept of Honor (Princeton, 1g60),
P. 356.
12 Q2 reads "loue"; Qi reads "hate."
action. Some provocations do not actually result in violent action, though they
tend toward it. Tybalt's address to Mercutio excites the latter, but it does not
result in a fight, though perhaps only because the encounter is cut short. Tybalt's
insults to Romeo likewise fail to result in the intended clash. Yet the same
insults prove an unbearable provocation to Mercutio, and so they result in a
fight Tybalt did not intend. The provocations are thus capable of eliciting
violence beyond the control and the intentions of those who originate them.
The third element of the pattern is the passionate response to the provoca-
tion. Usually there is a sudden and impulsive decision, closely followed by
crucial actions. These decisions and actions are made without care or thought
for the consequences-though sometimes in defiance of expected consequences-
and without reflection or judgment. In the scene described above, Mercutio's
sudden challenge to Tybalt as "rat-catcher" and the drawing of his sword
represent virtually simultaneous decision and action. The tension of the
scene is exploited in this rapid movement; one can observe Mercutio's mental
and emotional determination, the verbal challenge, and then the physical
action in almost the same instant.
Fourth, a tragic consequence follows the passionate action. Tybalt gives
Mercutio a fatal wound and escapes unhurt. This result of his challenge elicits
great bitterness from Mercutio, who evidently envisaged nothing but his own
victory. A little later Romeo conceives of several possible outcomes of his chal-
lenge to Tybalt, all of them of tragic import: "Either thou or I, or both, must go
with him [Mercutiol" (III. i. 128). In this play it quite often seems that the
tragic outcome could have been avoided, just as Romeo cannot at first believe
that Mercutio's wound is so serious as to cause death. If the Friar's letter had
been delivered, or if Romeo had arrived at the tomb only a few moments later,
or if Tybalt had not returned to the place where he stabbed Mercutio, or if any
of numerous other events had happened only a little differently, the tragic
outcome might have been avoided. But the tragic consequences occur, and
they speak for themselves.
Finally, the pattern concludes in a blurring of the sense of personal re-
sponsibility for the events by a shift of dramatic attention to the impersonal
elements of the situation in which the tragic consequences occurred. There is an
almost circular movement back to the first element of the pattern. The play
moves from an ominous or threatening situation through the decisions of
individuals to the limiting contexts in which their decisions and actions took
place. This is sometimes dramatized in terms of an individual's blindness to
his own role in bringing about disaster. Mercutio complains about the rival
houses, but not his own rashness. And other characters in this play have a
strong tendency to view the tragic results of a sequence of events and to ignore
the process by which those results came about. It is a kind of selective attention
operating to emphasize the general and external causes of the events and to
minimize the individual and personal responsibilities of the characters.
The pattern of the events leading to Mercutio's death is repeated immediately
in the same scene in the actions resulting in Tybalt's death. Romeo is acting
against the background of family enmity and violent conflict, and in the shadow
of Mercutio's death. Tybalt's killing of Mercutio constitutes an overwhelming
provocation. Romeo makes a sudden and passionate decision, determining on
After this tragic issue of Juliet's decisions and actions, the ascription of the events
to more remote causes must be made by others. It is the Prince who makes such
a pronouncement after hearing how the deaths of the lovers came about:
The many stages of the action and the decisions of individuals are seen here only
as "means" to the tragic end. Shakespeare is directing attention away from the
sequence of actions and coincidences to the tragic end itself, ascribed to the
operation of a vast, external power, and the sense of personal responsibility
fades out against this background.
The pattern occurs again in Romeo's actions leading to his own death. Un-
aware of Friar Lawrence's desperate plan, Romeo hears the news of Juliet's death
which provokes his sudden and grim decision to die with her. It is a personal
and desperate decision, made in defiance of the stars (V. i. 24) though
ironically in fulfillment of the star-crossed destiny the prologue to Act I de-
scribes. His too precipitate death follows this passionate decision quite rapidly.
The pattern is completed when, after his discovery of Romeo's death, Friar
Lawrence relates the tragic event to vast and general forces in telling Juliet:
Once more the dramatist made the personal responsibility of an individual fade
into the background of powerful and impersonal forces.
The actions of Friar Lawrence are also closely related to this pattern. He
is acutely aware of the risks in the situation in Verona and in his plan to
reconcile the houses through Romeo and Juliet's marriage. Those risks take
definite form in the subsequent arrangements for the marriage of Juliet to
Paris. But it is Juliet's threat to kill herself (IV.i.52-65; V. iii. 234-42) which
becomes the provocation that forces Friar Lawrence into devising his extreme
plan involving her counterfeit death. The failure of the plan brings about the
tragic deaths of both lovers, and Friar Lawrence is left to face these conse-
quences. Unlike the other characters, however, he exhibits a sense of personal re-
sponsibility for what has happened; yet in his narration of the events which
led to the catastrophe he refers to Romeo's death as "this work of heaven"
(V. iii. 26i) and points out that Juliet killed herself after he had been
frightened from the tomb. And he expresses his sense of responsibility only
in the conditional mode, submitting himself to others' judgments:
if aught in this
Miscarried by my fault, let my old life
Be sacrificed, some hour before his time,
Unto the rigour of severest law.
(V. iii. 266-69)
To this the Prince immediately replies, "We still have known thee for a holy
man" (V. iii. 270). Thus even Friar Lawrence's feeling of personal responsi-
bility is left unresolved against the tragic events themselves and the background
of fatalistic powers that have brought about the tragic catastrophe.
This structural pattern in Romeo and Juliet manifests the unique quality of
the play, for the tragedy contains a powerful emphasis upon external destiny
operating in the lives of the characters and an equally powerful depiction of
characters making realistic and crucial decisions that are morally significant
and responsible. Each emphasis seems essential: the first, if found alone, would
make the characters seem merely puppets, while an exclusive emphasis on the
second would lead to a heavily moral and judicial conclusion. Shakespeare
balanced one motif against the other in attempting the creation of drama that
is both vital and tragic. In some respects it is an uneasy and unstable combina-
tion, one Shakespeare did not use in his other tragedies, for it is a pattern
more of dramatic organization and attention than an exploration of cause and
effect in human affairs leading to tragedy. This problem of causation is
implicit in such elements of the drama as Mercutio's dying curse on the two
houses, since careful examination of his actions reveals that he is much more to
blame for his death than is the feud. Nevertheless, the impression of the drama-
tic moment is that Mercutio is the unfortunate victim of forces outside his
control. This is typical of the play-though the characters are seen acting
passionately and often wrongly, they are not held up by the dramatist for
censure. The final impression of the tragedy is that those who have suffered
death have been the victims of vast and powerful forces which have
operated for their destruction as well as for peace in Verona.
The basic pattern is strongly established in this play, with its elements
of threatening situation, provocation, passionate decision and action, tragic
consequences, and ascription of the tragedy to impersonal forces of destiny.
The death of Mercutio constitutes the first dramatic statement of the pattern
which is subsequently repeated and developed as a major element of the tragedy.
Mercutio's death is more than "Exit Mercutio" writ large; it introduces the
forces and the pattern of dramatic action that lead to the tragedy of the lovers.