Mercutio

Question 1

If love be rough with you, be rough with love

Answer 1

• speaks in chiasmus to reverse the mindset of Romeo from pessimistic to positive — demonstrates a flagrant disregard towards spiritual ideas surrounding the nature of love, opting instead to embrace its more carnal aspects
• Teasing emphasises strength of relationship — homosocial, fraternal relationship
• plosive lexis

Question 2

By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh

Answer 2

• ​listing​ of Rosaline’s body parts alludes to the popular poetic ‘blazon’ technique​.
• reinforces the impression of Mercutio’s sexual and primitive view of love as he again creates ​sexual imagery​ through his speech.
• phallic imagery

Question 3

They have made worms’ meat of me

Answer 3

• describe death in euphemistic terms
• Treats the situation flippantly and facetiously
• cynics, dark undertone - angers towards fued

Question 4

Why, is not this better now than groaning for love

Answer 4

• During the stichomythia (intellectual equals and closeness of homosocial/fraternal bond) between R + Mercutio in 2.4, where they exchange innuendos, in a crude debased nature, which lacks iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets due to the nature of their dialogue, as they fraternally bond
• Dramatic irony as Mercutio believes Romeo’s melancholy has been cured by the abandonment of spiritual love, but in reality, it is love that has defeated his crestfallen state of mind

Question 5

Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down

Answer 5

Phallic imagery - o Could reference Romeo ‘pricked’ by Cupid’s arrow, or, more likely, is a crude innuendo = lustful and horrid view of love

• flippant about love – much more focussed on sexual aspect, while Romeo appears to be focussed on spiritual aspect of love — suggests that Romeo should destroy love violently in order to overcome his melancholy state of mind
• syntactic parallelism

Question 6

You are a lover. Borrow Cupid’s wings

Answer 6

• subtly mocking Romeo
• allusion
• increasing his self confidence
• short sentences - iambic pentameter

Question 7

Overview

Answer 7

Aptronym - mercurial character

• facetious/ comic / humorous
• genuine, loyal companion to Romeo
• carnal view on love - subverts societal conventions, created by the other characters, regarding the relationship between love and fate.