Romeo and Juliet
Mercutio
Romeo's best friend
A flamboyant, sharp-tongued kinsman of the Prince, loyal to Romeo and ready to mock anyone who takes love too seriously.
Mercutio is the wit of the Montague circle. He is related to Prince Escalus and belongs to neither feuding house by blood, but he stands firmly beside Romeo. He talks in a rush of jokes and images, most famously the Queen Mab speech on the way to the Capulet ball, in which he describes a tiny fairy who rides through sleeping lovers' minds and gives them their dreams.
He cannot stand moping and treats Romeo's sighing as a kind of illness. He also hates being told to back down. Mercutio believes honor is worth a sword, and he looks at peacemaking as a weakness. His humor and his temper come from the same quickness, and in a city on edge that combination is dangerous.
“A plague o' both your houses! They have made worms' meat of me.”
In the story
Contains spoilers.
Mercutio drags a reluctant Romeo to the Capulet feast and teases him out of his gloom the next morning, delighted to see him "sociable" again. He torments the Nurse in the street. When Tybalt arrives looking for Romeo, Mercutio takes up the challenge himself, furious that Romeo will not fight and calling his peace a "vile submission."
Romeo steps between the two swordsmen, and Tybalt stabs Mercutio under Romeo's arm. Mercutio makes light of the wound, then curses both houses with his last breaths. His death is the turn of the story: it pushes Romeo to kill Tybalt and sets banishment, secrecy and tragedy in motion.
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