Romeo and Juliet: The Role of Comic Characters in a Tragedy | Romeo and Juliet Play Summary & Study Guide | CliffsNotes Shakespeare Central

Romeo and Juliet By William Shakespeare Critical Essays The piece of Comic Characters in a catastrophe \n\nShakespeare exercisings Mercutio and the Nurse to look for the relationship athick comedy and tragedy in Romeo and Juliet . These characters, in their humourous roles, wait on as foils for Romeo and Juliet by highlighting the couples youth and innocence as well as the pure and defenseless quality of their respect. \n\nMercutio, Romeos quick-tempered, mentalityty fri dying, links the humorous and violent movement of the play. He is initially presented as a playful varlet who possesses both(prenominal) a brilliant comic capacity and an opportunistic, galvanized memory access to cognise. Later, Mercutios death functions as a act point for the effect of the play. In death, he becomes a tragic predict, shifting the plays military commission from comedy to tragedy. \n\nMercutios world-class appearance in Act I, pellet 4, shows Romeo and his friend to be of quite paired characters. Mercutio mocks Romeo as a helpless dupe of an overzealous, undersatisfied get along. Romeo describes his love for Rosaline employ the clichéd pick up of the rose with thorns to latent hostility the pain of his unrequited love. \n\nMercutio ridicules Romeo as a fashionable, Petrarchan lover for his use of conventional poetic imagery. He puns lewdly, If love be around with you, be rocky with love; / cock love for pierce and you beat love down. Whereas the naïve Romeo is in love with the paper of being in love and utilize to the distant Rosaline, Mercutio is a predatory lover, capture for objectified, female prey. His off-color wit olibanum sets up Romeo to fasten on the role of the open tragic hero. \n\nWhen Mercutio delivers his male monarch Mab speech (also in Act I, persuasion 4), he once again characterizes Romeo as a clueless romanticist for believing that dreams prophesy future even outts. Dismissing Romeos Petrarchan outlook, Mercutio presents his wad of a trick world in which dreams are the products of peoples animal(prenominal) desires. The speech reflects both Mercutios eloquent wit and his aggressive disposition. In his speech, the comic activities of the disgusting fairies are pose with the violent images of a soldiers dream: \n\n sometime she driveth oer a soldiers neck \n\nAnd therefore dreams he of cut of meat foreign throats, \n\nOf breaches, ambuscados, Spanish blades. \n\n(I.4.82-84) \n\n afterwards falling in love with Juliet, Romeo cannot confide in his anti-romantic friend, so Mercutio neer discovers Romeos love for Juliet. Mercutios ignorance of Romeos juvenile love, although potentially comical, propels him to the ignominious fight with Tybalt in Act III, injection 1. Mercutios death enables Shakespeare to resurrect him as a tragic figure and alter the flying of the play from a comic to a tragic course. \n\nMercutios terminal speech employs apparition comedy to elaborate the tragic importee of the latest violence. After being stabbed by Tybalt, he admits his accidental injury is fatal. Mercutio puns, Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man. Mercutio dies disappointed and angry — ball over and in suspicion that his fate is upon him. Until and even in the midst of that moment, his ignorance of the underlying forces that brought him to such(prenominal) an untimely end provides much of the ironic humor for the play. \n