Many comedic elements occur throughout play, and through these hilarious events, it is clear that even in a tragedy the tale can be amusing. Humor adds a livelier mood to the drama when Mercutio, Romeo's witty friend, teases Romeo as a helpless victim of an overzealous, unsatisfied love. Shakespeare’s purpose of creating comedy is to relieve the audience from the tension and drama embedded in the love story. Over the course of the work, humorous characters provide comic relief; for example, Mercutio mocks, “If love be rough with you, be rough with love; / Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down. / Give me a case to put my visage in: / A visor for a visor! what care I / What curious eye doth quote deformities?” (1.4). As Romeo mopes …show more content…
Shakespeare contrasts comedy and tragedy by depicting the differences in how Mercutio sees romance. Without the silliness of Mercutio, the play would always have a melancholic ambiance. Through Shakespeare’s theatrical storyline some of the characters provide wit; for instance, Mercutio describes Queen Mab: “She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes / In shape no bigger than an agate-stone / On the fore-finger of an alderman, / Drawn with a team of little atomies / …An in this state she gallops night by night / Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love” (1.4). This discourse of an imaginative fairy showcases Mercutio’s fantasy and spirited personality. His comical manner endows a period of respite from Romeo’s love crisis. Thru this break from the commotion, the audience can enjoy Mercutio’s mirthful whim. Romeo believes that dreams are true and one can foresee their future within their dreams. Mercutio is a skeptic who believes that dreams are just one’s fantasy brought by desire and the dream fairy, Queen Mab. His speech and comparisons between love and hate, violence and desire are so ridiculous that finally Romeo pleads for him to stop scorning the disposition of dreams. When the spectators imagine Queen Mab “drawn with a team of little atomies” it gives them a rest from the apprehension the tragedy portrays. This scene can be interpreted as a funny reverie that can make the viewers laugh and smile. Furthermore, Mercutio states that Queen Mab makes people “dream of love”, which creates a jubilant mood. While Romeo is depressed that Rosaline will not return his love, Mercutio illustrates the hopeful picture of dreaming about love and affection. In the narrative Mercutio presents merriment that incorporates the importance of comedy in a
In “The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare, two very young people fall in love but cannot be with each other because of the feud in between their families. The feud ends when Romeo and Juliet both kill themselves because of heartbreak over the other. The minor characters Mercutio, Tybalt, and Friar Lawrence serve as foils to Romeo, to help support the theme of patience.
Throughout the speech, he frequently adds a sort of flare to the way he speaks; for example, he uses over ten lines(in the text)to simply describe the size of Queen Mab. The manner in which he speaks is loud, confident, and stylish; therefore, he attracts attention. He also manages to subtly mock Romeo when speaking about how those who are in love dream of love; this is to add a comedic flare, even though that is what he is. Mercutio’s entertainer like personality is due to the fact that he is amusing. In this tragic and serious play, he is the obnoxious character that breaks the seriousness for a while with a witty remark.It also explains why he is the dramatic foil to Romeo. This goes along with his flamboyant attitude. Nevertheless, he is also vulgar at times, which adds to his loud personality. Now, brown represents Earth and reliability, and Mercutio, in his own way, represents
When suddenly Baz Luhrmann nineteen minutes into his work presents a drag Mercutio dressed scandalously in a ridiculous white wig and wearing red lipstick to top it all off, it seems he has no regard for the original Romeo and Juliet. In his portrayal of a character as crucial as Mercutio, Luhrmann crosses the fine line between the individual possessing eloquence and profuse wit Shakespeare creates, and a downright maniac. Before entering the Capulets’ mansion Mercutio’s acclaimed Queen Mab Speech in Act One, Scene Four, displays the aforementioned eloquence and vivid imagination of the character. Specifically, Mercutio claims, “Oh, then I see you’ve been with Queen Mab/...True, I talk of dreams,/Which are the children of an idle brain,/Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,”(I iv 53, 97-99). Anyone with a rational mind does not expect Mercutio to deliver his lines about dreams being merely the result of the anxieties and desires of those who sleep while holding ecstasy and jumping agitatedly. Luhrmann offers an insane Mercutio in his take on Romeo and Juliet and all it achieves is a massacre of the brilliance of the dialogue. The unconventional director stages the exchange to end with Romeo accepting a psychoactive drug inducing him in a euphoric state, then shattering any proceeding potential romantic mood.
To understand the shift in genres, there must be recognition of Mercutio as a comic character. Mercutio is Shakespeare's prominent comical character in Romeo and Juliet. He is not bound by the events around him, as he often rambles on a topic that is completely irrelevant to the situation in which he finds himself. Mercutio is a free character who is independent of the world around him. His existence is entirely comical in his play with language. For Mercutio, speech is ...
In addition, Mercutio’s death turns the atmosphere of the play. From now on, Romeo and Juliet becomes a tragedy. It is a success that Shakespeare adds this fantastic role to Romeo and
The second being through the actions. of characters and by their behaviour and the third by the incidents of the play. I will be there. Shakespeare uses characters like Mercutio and the Nurse to bring out the comical element of the play, and each character does this in a different way of doing things. & nbsp; One of Shakespeare's tools used to evoke humour is the mockery that is aimed at a particular character. Some of the funniest moments are when one character is sarcastic to another.
In the play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, Mercutio, a friend of Romeo plays a deep role within the play. Many characters in Romeo and Juliet can represent the masculine or feminine spaces. The masculine space is chaotic and more towards the sexual and material side of the play, which have more of a tragic potential. While the feminine space is peaceful, more romantic and spiritual in giving a better chance for the comic potential. Mercutio represents the masculine space while Romeo prefers the peacefulness of the feminine space. Mercutio tells Romeo to be rough with love, he tries to keep him within the masculine space after the ball, and he fools with the Juliet’s nurse because of his actions he pushes Romeo towards tragedy.
In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the views of love held by the character Romeo contrast sharply with the views of Mercutio. Romeo's character seems to suffer from a type of manic depression. He is in love with his sadness, quickly enraptured and easily crushed again on a passionate roller coaster of emotion. Mercutio, by contrast is much more practical and level headed. His perceptions are clear and quick, characterized by precise thought and careful evaluation. Romeo, true to his character begins his appearance in the play by wallowing in his depression over Rosaline who does not return his love:
“Love is made by two people, in different kinds of solitude” – Louis Aragon. Shakespeare presents a variety of feelings in Romeo and Juliet to appearance, emotions and relationships shared through Romeo and other characters. Romeo and Juliet depict a romantic relationship between “a pair of star-cross’d lovers” (prologue). Romeo also is committed to Mercutio with the familial love overriding the friendship bond. Unrequited love is seen through Romeo expressing his emotions on the unavailable relationship of himself and Rosaline.
At the time Mercutio makes his famous "Queen Mab" speech in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, he and Romeo, together with a group of their friends and kinsmen, are on the way to a party given by their family's arch-enemy, Lord Capulet. Their plan is to crash the party so that Romeo may have the opportunity to see his current love, Rosaline, whom they know has been invited to the Capulet's masque that evening.
In the tremendous play of ‘Romeo & Juliet’, Shakespeare’s ways engages the audience straight away. The astounding methods he uses hooks the audience into the play and allows them to read on, wondering what will happen. The tragic love story of Romeo & Juliet, as mentioned in the prologue, sets a variety of themes throughout Act 1 Scene 5. Many of the recognisable themes are: youth and age, revenge, forbidden love, fate, action and hate. The main idea of the play is a feud that had been going on between two families, The ‘Montagues and Capulets’, the son of the Montagues and the daughter of the Capulets fall in love and the story tells us how tragic, death, happiness and revenge find them throughout the play.
As life proceeds its slow waltz, and humans live their lives, meeting countless other people in the same predicament of nearing an unavoidable end. In this cycle of monotony and conversation there can be people found that are different. Those who are never bothered by the burdens of death and monotony, and hurry through life to greet death as a lost friend they had encountered many times on their sprees of invincibility. From the handful of people who resemble these characteristics, one can be found in the William Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet. In which the zany character to be found is Mercutio, who is of neither Montague nor Capulet but falls to the hands of Capulet in the defense of Romeo of Montague in a fight of a childish altercation. In which even at his fall in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare still displays his distinct characteristics that greatly define him such as: humor and impulsiveness.
Scene 4 Act 1:Romeo, Benvolio, Mercutio, and other members of the Montague house go to the Capulet feast. They are all wearing masks to hide their identity. They talk it over and decide to stay for one dance. Because Romeo is still in love with Rosaline, Mercutio teases him about being a hopeless lover. Mercutio then starts a long tale about how fairies deliver dreams to humans as they sleep.
In William Shakespeare’s play “Romeo and Juliet,” Mercutio is introduced as Romeo (the main character) and Benvolio’s (Romeo’s cousin and friend) good friend and relative of the Prince. Mercutio is a very beloved friend to Romeo, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t unkind or disrespectful. He is also very dramatic and perverted, yet somehow laid back and relaxed at the same time. He is very interesting in the way that he can seem kind, but be an awful person and friend at the same time. If Mercutio weren’t as dramatic or such an attention-seeker, he wouldn’t have died and eventually caused Tybalt, Paris, Romeo, and Juliet’s deaths and the sadness that followed each death.
The links between Shakespearean “comedies” are rather tenuous. There always seems to be some sort of problem which arises, threatening the lives or the happiness of the central characters. Usually, these central characters are one or more romantically inclined couples who are a little unfamiliar with the ways of the world. Many mishaps occur, plans go awry, and in the end a solution is formed to cope with the characters’ problems. However, this solution tends to bring up different problems for the characters to deal with after the curtain closes. These “comedic” solutions also tend not to end with too many people disemboweled, a trend that is seen in another grouping of Shakespearean works: the tragedies.