Romeo and Juliet Mercutio
by William Shakespeare

Mercutio, with his quick wit and love of puns, is one of Shakespeare’s most memorable characters, and his entrapment in the tragic fate of the play is one of the most profoundly ironic. Mercutio spends a large portion of the play skewering the ideal of romantic love and mocking each of the characters for what can be seen not only as their main traits but also their main weakness: Romeo’s habit of romanticizing things, Benvolio’s desire to be seen as a peacemaker, Tybalt’s pride. To his very end, Mercutio believes that human beings, not an impersonal force of fate, are responsible for their own actions and ends; yet Mercutio is killed by being bound up in fates much larger than his own.