Act 3 opens with Benvolio and Mercutio at a public place. Benvolio tells Mercutio that it is a hot day (as Italian afternoons are) and that the Capulets are out on the streets. He tells Mercutio that if they do not go indoors, something tragic is bound to occur. Mercutio’s language and behaviour tell us that Mercutio is ignoring Benvolio and he is looking for a fight. It is not long before Tybalt and his comrades enter. Tybalt informs the Montagues that he wants a word with Romeo, but Mercutio, knowing that Tybalt wants a fight with Romeo, says that he does not know where he is. Instead he challenges Tybalt to a duel, but Tybalt rejects. Just then, Romeo enters.
Tybalt sees Romeo and challenges him to a duel. Romeo says that he cannot fight him, because he has to love him now, since he has married Tybalt’s cousin, Juliet. Although he doesn’t say this, he hints at it in his dialogue. Although Romeo rejects the duel, Mercutio accepts, and they fight. Romeo intervenes because Mercutio is his friend and he does not want him to get hurt. In all the commotion, Tybalt’s sword unwillingly slips under Romeo’s arm and into Mercutio’s side. The Capulets flee upon seeing this. Even Mercutio though is fatally wounded, he retains his sense of humour and says that he is not hurt. His last words are “a plague a’ both your houses”, a prophecy that will be touched upon later.
Romeo vows to avenge Mercutio’s death and runs after Tybalt. They fight and Romeo stabs Tybalt. Tybalt dies and Benvolio tells Romeo to run away, because a member of the public has informed the Prince. When the Prince arrives, he asks Benvolio to truthfully describe what led to this fray. Benvolio does so, but makes it sound like it was all due to Tybalt. The Prince believes him, and instead of sentencing Romeo to death, he banishes him with death being the punishment for returning.
Act 3 Scene 1 is probably the most important section of the entire play, and this fact is confirmed by the location of the scene. It is set exactly in the middle of the play since the play has 5 acts. Since the brawl between the two houses takes place in public, it draws out everyone and we have all the cast of the play on stage. The other times when we have all the cast on stage are first and final scenes. This cleanly divides the play into two parts, with a beginning, a middle, and an end when all the cast reunite on stage. This is important because the first time is after a clash between servants in the two houses, the second is after the fight between Romeo and Tybalt, and the third is after the death of Romeo and Juliet. After the first fight, the Prince warned both the houses that if it happens again, they will have to pay for it with their own blood. This was indeed a prophecy, because when it happens next, Tybalt dies, and Romeo is banished. When they meet again for the final scene, it is Romeo who dies, fulfilling the Prince’s prophecy.
Act 3 Scene 1 begins with Benvolio and Mercutio sitting in the town square (a public place). Benvolio warns Mercutio that the Capulets could be out on the streets and looking for a fight. He tells him that the day is hot, which can be taken both literally and metaphorically, since Italian afternoons are very hot, and tempers have also been flaring in the last few days after the fight between the Montagues and Capulets in Act 1 Scene 1. Benvolio is acting his usual peace-maker self here, because he knows what happened last time and that the Prince warned them that if there is another fight, they will have to pay with their own blood. Benvolio wants to avoid a fight, but Mercutio has other ideas. His words “make it a word and a blow” and “alla stocatta”, which is a term used while duelling, tell the audience that he wants a fight with Tybalt and he does not care about the Prince’s warning. Shakespeare makes this even more apparent because Mercutio’s dialogue has been set out in prose, while all the other characters’ dialogues are set out in poetry, which is seen as a more noble way of speaking.
After rejecting the challenge from Mercutio, Tybalt spots Romeo and challenges him by calling him a villain. Although Romeo hates Tybalt, he has to decline the challenge by telling him that he has to love him now. Although Tybalt does not know this, Romeo is now married to Juliet, who is Tybalt’s cousin and also a Capulet. Therefore Romeo and Tybalt are related and cannot fight each other. Mercutio seizes the opportunity and steps up instead of Romeo to fight Tybalt. Since it was Tybalt who made this challenge, he cannot decline and they fight.
This is one of the parts which are different in the cinematised Baz Luhrmann version of the play from the actual text itself. Luhrmann had to do this because he was modernising the whole play itself, therefore to make it more convincing, he made it that Tybalt started on Romeo even though Romeo rejected. This reinforced the villainous character of Tybalt that Shakespeare wanted the audience to see.
Romeo tries to act as the peace-maker now and intervenes in the fight between Tybalt and Mercutio, because Mercutio is his friend and he does not want him to get injured. As a complete opposite to this, Mercutio gets wounded in a mix-up as Romeo tries to break up the fight. This shows that although Romeo tried to break up the fight, his fatal flaw ensured that something tragic was going to happen. This makes the audience believe that something tragic is bound to happen to Romeo as well since it is his fate.
This leads us onto the one of the most important themes in this play, fate and fortune. The prologue to the play tells us that the outcome Romeo and Juliet’s tragic love affair is written in the stars, and it is their fate that their story will end in tragedy. But the prologue does not tell us how this tragedy comes about, and therefore the audience are made to believe that the path to the tragedy lies in the protagonists’ own hands. There are also other incidences in the play that help direct the outcome of the play towards this tragedy. If Juliet had not made such a show of obedience, Capulet may not have changed the wedding date. If there had been more time, Friar John may have managed to get the message to Romeo in time and he would not have killed himself in Juliet's tomb. If Mercutio hadn't jumped into a fight with Tybalt, he wouldn't have been killed. He may also have survived if Romeo had not stepped between them. In either case, Tybalt and Romeo probably wouldn't have fought, Tybalt wouldn’t have been killed, and Romeo wouldn't have been banished. There are several events that could have ended differently if someone had acted in just a slightly different manner or arrived just a moment earlier/later. The results of all these events can be blamed directly on fate.
In the end, this action packed scene delivers a punch because it is the first instance where we are reminded of the tragedy of the young star-crossed lovers. The banishment of Romeo ensures that Romeo will return to Verona to get Juliet, and by doing this, he will fulfil the Prince’s prophecy of payment by blood. When Mercutio shouts out “a plague a’ both your houses”, the audience is reminded again that all the events in the play will lead to its inevitable conclusion, when the death of Romeo and Juliet will cause grief and misery to both the houses, and where the joint mourning helps to unite both the families, and acts as a fitting conclusion to the play.
