"If love be rough with you, then be rough with love."
Mercutio teases Romeo, in Act I Scene IV:
"Romeo! Humours! Madman! Passion! Lover! Appear though in the likeness of a sigh."
This demonstrates how he misunderstands Romeo’s love for the Capulet, Juliet. Mercutio is a generally free and independent character and doesn’t realize how anyone can be so dependant or want a person so much. Mercutio wants to live his life on the spur of the moment. He is not interested in being dependent on anyone.
Mercutio’s character is vital to the main plot in two main reasons. The first is how he convinced Romeo to attend the Capulet’s party, where he met Juliet. Romeo was very reluctant to go at first, as he was still lovelorn over Rosaline who rejected him.
“Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,
Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn”
It is solely because of Mercutio's persuasions that Romeo attends the gathering. And there he meets a woman to tend his broken heart, a woman he describes thus;
“The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.”
The second way in which Mercutio is essential to the plot is his death that sets off the chain of events that leads to Romeo's banishment. To begin with Tybalt ruthlessly murders him, Romeo is then so utterly enraged that he then, in turn, slaughters Tybalt. As a consequence, Romeo is banished from Verona and therefore from seeing Juliet. At the beginning of Act 3, Mercutio is his usual quick-witted self. He is very sharp with his words to Tybalt and purposely annoys him, in a number of ways, for example, purposely mistaking the meanings of words, such as in Act 3, Scene 1 Tybalt begins addressing Mercutio about the relationship between Romeo and Juliet and Romeo;
“Mercutio, thou consort'st with Romeo”
Mercutio simply takes the word to be related to Musicians and starts on a tirade of insults and threats;
“Consort! what, dost thou make us minstrels?
an thou make minstrels of us, look to hear nothing but
discords: here's my fiddlestick; here's that shall
make you dance. 'Zounds, consort!”
Instances like this simply make the argument more and more heated, until Mercutio takes Tybalt's final blow, while Romeo is standing between them actually trying to stop the fight. This illustrates how Romeo may try as he will to end the fighting between the Montagues and the Capulets, but he will always fail.
Mercutio’s death is very significant to the play as when Tybalt kills Mercutio, the attributes of a comedy die with him. From now on, this play becomes a Tragedy. This demonstrates how Mercutio is a strong representation of all that is youthful and light-hearted in this play. Mercutio does not change dramatically in this play. The only difference the reader may witness is at the end of his life when he exclaims;
“A plague on both your houses!"
This is a change from Mercutio’s typical character because Mercutio has never been so serious before. He has never expressed any disagreement of the relationship between the Montagues and the Capulets. Now, he seems to become conscious of the harm the fighting is capable of doing; unfortunately, it was too late for him.
To conclude, Mercutio was a very complex character and his vim and zest make the story line a lot more interesting to read, his light-hearted quips lasted right up to the end;
“They have made worms' meat of me”
He knew that he would be dead from the wound he had received and this was his way of dealing with the pain he suffered. He represents individualism, youth, and liberty!