In my worn script I’d recorded,
“Please remind class: Mercutio is not
a Montague.” I stopped instructing myself
long ago. My ardor is as mute as the lovers’
statues, birdshit-spotted years after the play,
after they’ve been stolen and sold and
stand alone in cloistered courtyards.
I’ve left Mercutio too. He rarely
enters discussion, rests backstage,
Queen Mab safely in her matchbox.
Mercutio confuses them, as does
anyone, like me, who drapes his shadow
over one shoulder of his motley. They
can’t see punning as they expire, don’t know
all hearts cleft with the bow-boy’s shaft
bleed in hidden places. We’ve learned to keep
some jests sheathed, our furies doused,
Mercutio and I. We’ve withdrawn to private places
to reason coldly of our grievances, to find words
to nearly create a richer world. They love
youth—Romeo’s slick heart, Juliet’s white
words to her mother—but witty cynics?
Only from afar. They want fuel for the fire
of sacrifice, not life seeping from old wounds.
*If anyone doesn’t recall Mercutio, he is the funny but also quite dark friend to Romeo who tries to persuade his friend from love-sickness. Mercutio’s highpoint in the play is the “Queen Mab” speech when he describes the tiny fairy’s midwife tormenting lovers as they sleep. When Romeo comes between Mercutio and Tybalt during their fight, Tybalt kills Mercutio. In anger, Romeo kills Tybalt. One of the witticisms Mercutio unleashes as he’s dying is, “If you ask for me tomorrow, you will find me a grave man.”
Filed under: Aesthetics, Culture, Education, Life, Literature, Musings, Poetry, Shakespeare, Teaching, Thoughts, Writing
um well i believe you are wrong with the fact thta romeo killed mercutio ,it was in fact tybalt who killed mercutio and then romeo out of anger and spite killed tybalt for the murder of his best friends.
Um, you’re right. Tybalt killed Mercutio. Having come between Mercutio and Tybalt, Romeo allowed Mercutio to be hurt under his arm and feels partly responsible when his friend dies. He says, Mercutio “hath got his mortal hurt / In my behalf”…but of course he did not kill Mercutio. I revised the footnote to make that clearer. Thanks! —D
I definitely know for a fact that Romeo did NOT kill Mercutio…they were very close, and
he would never do that.
Romeo was a great and HOT person. He did it because he was angry that he had lost one of his best friends.
I know that too. As I tried to clarify in the footnote to this poem, Tybalt kills Mercutio under Romeo’s arm..or so says the play. Romeo DOES seem to feel some responsibility—even though that’s a dumb thing to think—because he came between Mercutio and Tybalt while they were fighting and because he was too submissive when Tybalt challenged him, forcing Mercutio (Romeo thinks) to fight on Romeo’s behalf. Anyway, I don’t think Romeo killed Mercutio. If Romeo thinks so, he’s crazy. Mercutio’s death was one of many tragic accidents in the play. —D
Cool, there is an enormous of skill, carefully knit, perhaps not as complex as first appears but beautifully done, witty cynics often speak from the side of their mouths, only to be heard by the quiet discerning audience, the rabble in the back row want a swordfight, great poem, original thought, never seen that character done before and executed flawlessly,
Thank you. I think of Mercutio as an “actor’s part,” a smaller role actors appreciate more than a lead. He’s always been the most fascinating part to me, and, like many of the roles in this play, he doesn’t seem someone who could age. The older Mercutio is an impossibility to me. —D