Themes of Romeo and Juliet

        Mercutio begins to mock Tybalt. “Consort! What, dost thou make us minstrels?” Mercutio uses this form of abuse towards Tybalt, insulting him, mocking him, just for the fun of it, but the audience understands that there is a lot of tension behind each and every word uttered, building up to a climax. Tension is added by the introduction of another character. The stage direction of Romeo entering the scene makes the present scene dramatic, interesting and very exciting whilst tense, as the audience know that Tybalt is looking for Romeo. Even though Tybalt is the type of person that always picks a fight and gets aggravated very quickly, when Romeo arrives on the scene, he says to Benvolio and Mercutio ‘ peace be with you, here comes my man...’. This gets Mercutio angry as well.  Romeo has just come back from his calm, happy, peaceful wedding to a place where chaos is about to break out. This is called dramatic irony.

        In the previous scene, Romeo has just married Juliet, so now he is related to Tybalt. He keeps this in mind as Tybalt says ‘...the love I bear thee can afford No better term than this: though art a villain...’ In Shakespeare’s day, the audience would have been shocked because the word ’villain’ was an extreme insult; villains were dirty, poor, low-class people who lived in slums, not people like Romeo who was actually wealthy and high-class person. ‘...the reason that I have to love thee... thou know’st me not...’ This would have shocked everybody because they would have been expecting Romeo to fight back but instead, Romeo is just walking away, trying to stop the fight before it even has a chance to start. Tybalt thinks that by walking away, Romeo is making fun of him so he carries on taunting Romeo, calling him ‘... boy’, etc but Romeo won’t fight back, instead, he says things that don’t make sense to Tybalt and everyone else that are there, ‘... good Capulet, which name I tender, as dearly as my own, be satisfied’ This is a way of saying that he has feelings for the Capulets now that he is married to one so he doesn’t want to fight. Mercutio & Tybalt wouldn’t understand this so they would both be very confused at this point.

        Mercutio would be furious that Tybalt was getting away, saying such bad things to Romeo, and in result, Romeo wasn’t even answering Tybalt back, so Mercutio says, ‘O calm, dishonourable, vile .... Will you walk?’ Mercutio is saying to Romeo that why is he dishonouring his name by saying such bad things and then he is turning to Tybalt so he can fight. This is building up tension again because we, the audience, know that Mercutio has a very quick temper so we know that a fight is about to break out, especially because of Tybalt’s answer. Romeo reminds them that the prince had forbidden fighting in public but Mercutio and Tybalt carry on talk-fighting and just as they draw their swords, Romeo steps between them and says ‘hold Tybalt, good Mercutio’; Romeo is trying to be the peace-keeper now. What Romeo doesn’t know is that Tybalt has just stabbed Mercutio very deeply. Mercutio starts joking around, even though he knows that he is dying. He even says ‘...Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man...’ To his friends and people around him, it would sound like a joke, grave meaning serious but because we know that he was actually hurt quite badly, we would understand the double meaning to the sentence; saying grave as in dead. Tybalt runs away as Mercutio says, ‘I am hurt. A plague o’ both your houses!’ The last part, a plague on both your houses would really have shocked the audience because in the time that the play was set, the plague was a terrible disease, a curse to say it to someone. He doesn’t only say it once, he says it 3 times to emphasise the fact that all the fighting going on between the two houses (Capulet’s and Montague’s) is just as bad as the plague, in fact, it is worse.

        Benvolio returns, making it official that Romeo is dead. Up until now, Romeo been quite calm, making sure he doesn’t say anything that will start a fight. Now though, he just lets go and he doesn’t care what he does, he just wants to kill Tybalt. We can see that the death has affected him a great deal because when he finds Tybalt, he says ‘either thou, or I or both must go with him...’ this meaning that he is willing to take Tybalt’s life and/or risk his own life to avenge Mercutio’s death.