A study of Tybalt and Mercutio, from play to movies
Introduction:
Most movie adaptations only focus on the star-crossed lovers and often cut or misunderstand the roles of Tybalt and Mercutio. The goal is to shed another light on these two characters through a study of the text and an analysis of chosen scenes in the movies.
Part 1A
Part I – A royal jester, a mercurial clown: who is Mercutio?
A – The one who talks a lot: five centuries of analysis and interpretations
Mercutio’s weapon of choice is language. He loves to hear himself, he loves puns and jokes. He goes from prose to verse incessantly, showing his volatile and erratic temperament. He also strives on public admiration, and often makes a spectacle of himself to attract attention.
Part 1B
Part I – A royal jester, a mercurial clown: who is Mercutio?
B – The Queen Mab tirade: Mercutio’s bravura
One of the most famous tirades of Romeo and Juliet is said by Mercutio. He launches into the phantasmagorical recital of his dream after Romeo reveals that he had a dream. The Queen Mab speech is riddled with innuendo. But it is not just a long speech made of puns and funny, goofy, Mercutio-esque jokes.
Part 2A
Part 2 - Tybalt, honour and loyalty: the angry Prince of Cats
A – Villain?
Tybalt is skilled with a sword. Indeed, Tybalt’s first appearance in the play is sword in hand. He is the second main character to appear, after Benvolio, and his very first course of action is to insult and seek a fight. The same way Mercutio’s weapon is words, Tybalt’s is his skills with a sword.
Part 2B
Part 2 - Tybalt, honour and loyalty: the angry Prince of Cats
B - Or another victim?
There is something else already in these two lines, the first he speaks: his attention to ranks and social value, his obsession with the system of Verona. The realisation that Tybalt is perhaps not all that he seems to be sheds another light on his behaviour on the streets and towards the Montagues.
Part 3A
Part 3 - A strange rivalry: Tybalt vs Mercutio
A – Through each other’s eyes
Their personalities, beliefs and views of the world end up clashing and the resulting fight is the turning point of the play. Up until the Duel, the play was more axed towards comedy than tragedy, but the fire that Mercutio and Tybalt alight by meeting tips the play towards tragedy. But who are they to each other, really?
Part 3B
Part 3 - A strange rivalry: Tybalt vs Mercutio
B - Death comes for everyone
The Duel is the tipping point of the play. While the prologue says that the feud is ancient and has been reawakened with a new rage, the Prince’s warning speech in act 1 scene 1 implies that the fights had not yet been deadly – nobody has died because of the feud.
The END
Conclusion
References
Tybalt is often misrepresented as the villain of the play, when he is just as much a victim as the rest of Verona’s youth. As for Mercutio, he is most of the time only remembered for his puns and innuendos, even though there is much more to him than just a clown.
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Rather than distinctly male or female, the human brain is much more like the heart, kidneys and lungs – basically the same no matter the sex of the body it's in.
“This collapse is a telltale sign of a problem known as publication bias. Small, early studies which found a significant sex difference were likelier to get published than research finding no male-female brain difference.”
Arthur had dismissed Merlin hours and hours ago, it being the middle of the bloody night and all, so the absolute last thing he could have anticipated upon opening his chamber door was to find the exact same man standing in the hallway. He looked a bit sheepish, and a lot tired.
“Oh. Well, hello, Arthur.”
“Why are you creeping?” Arthur asked. He hadn’t been able to fall asleep yet, instead just rolling around in his sheets like a hound in mud, and so had heard the footsteps approaching his door—and then eerily stopping in front of his door—with astounding clarity. As it was, he was holding a dagger in his hand, having expected something far more sinister to be awaiting him outside.
Not Merlin, who was about as threatening as a wet cat.
“I didn’t even knock,” Merlin said instead of answering.
“I know.”
They continued to stare at each other.
“Well, goodnight,” Merlin said, awkwardly, and turned to leave. Arthur caught his arm.
“Nuh uh. You don’t get to show up in the middle of the night acting all weird and then just—leave.”
Merlin relented immediately, which was surprising. He exhaled, almost folding in on himself as he followed Arthur back into his chambers, and flopped down at the table.
“Came to make sure you were alright, is all,” he mumbled, not looking at Arthur. He was too focused on fidgeting with the hem of his sleepshirt. Arthur realized he’d never really seen Merlin in sleepclothes; whenever they were traveling, he tended to just sleep in variations on his usual theme.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Arthur demanded, perhaps a bit too harshly.
“I don’t know.”
Silence again. Arthur hated this. It was weird.
“Are you alright?” Arthur asked pointedly, intending to do the talking for both of them. “Have you gotten any sleep?”
“I…”
Merlin finally tilted his head upwards to look at him, and the pure weariness in face caught Arthur off guard. The blue eyes he had come to know so well looked distant and uncertain, more akin to those of a soldier after a terrible battle than a royal manservant.
“I keep having this dream,” Merlin said softly, “where something terrible happens to you. Something I could’ve stopped, and yet I fail. Every time.”
Arthur blinked. He didn’t know what to say to that.
(The truth was he did know exactly what to say to that, but he was having trouble convincing himself to actually, you know, say it.)
“I believe that’s called a nightmare, Merlin,” Arthur said dryly, which was not the thing he wanted to say. Merlin scoffed and rolled his eyes.
“Thank you for your infinite wisdom, o great Prince Arthur.”
“I get them too, you arse,” Arthur shot back. “About you.”
Merlin’s expression softened, though there was still something unreadable about it. “I suppose we’re in good company, then,” he said after a moment.
“Indeed.” Arthur was not going to do the uncomfortable silence thing again, so he continued. “Well, I’m going to try to sleep now. You’re welcome to sit there and watch me like some bizarre bird of prey or something, if it will give you peace.”
Merlin gave a tired laugh, and, to Arthur’s surprise, settled further into the chair like he might actually do it. “It might bore me to sleep, sure.”
Arthur snorted. “I should certainly hope watching me sleep is boring, else I might believe you a pervert.”
He crawled back into bed, wrapping the blankets tightly around his shoulders. Even with a fire in the hearth, it was bloody freezing.
“Will you at least offer your guard dog a blanket, your Royal Pratness?”
“I am not moving,” Arthur replied, voice muffled by his pillow. It wasn’t like Merlin didn’t know where the spare blankets were anyhow. In fact— “While you’re over there, grab me an extra. Tonight is bizarrely cold.”
His bed dipped with far more weight than that of an extra blanket, and he rolled over in surprise. Merlin was sitting there, glowering at him, and threw the blanket in his face.
“Hey!” Arthur cried, now muffled by Merlin’s paltry attempt at suffocation. He fought the blanket off and poked his head out of the thick fur, returning Merlin’s look. “Rude.”
Merlin rolled his eyes again, giving a hint of a smile as he moved to stand up. Arthur snagged him by the sleeve, letting his intrusive thoughts win with absolutely no hesitation. He blamed it on the sleepiness.
“You’re already here,” he said, and Merlin’s eyes widened slightly in surprise. “Might as well. It’s nothing we haven’t done while traveling.”
“Those are distinctly separate and unpleasant cots that give me back pain. This is your bed.”
“Which, as you’ve pointed out, is big enough for a herd of small horses.”
Merlin barked out a surprised laugh. “I don’t think I’ve ever said that.”
“You definitely have. Anyways, goodnight,” Arthur announced, rolling back over and away from Merlin. His dignity had finally caught up to him, and he was beyond mortified.
A few moments later, Merlin shocked him by actually sliding under the heap of blankets next to him, giving a soft sigh of contentment that did something to Arthur’s insides. “Good lord. This is like sleeping on a fucking cloud.”
Arthur chuckled. Their backs touched.
“Now you understand why I’m so loath to wake up in the mornings.”
“No, that’s because you’re lazy and annoying and refuse to listen to anything I have to say.”
Arthur reached an arm over to swat Merlin’s shoulder, which just earned him a laugh in response.
“Okay, okay. Night, Arthur.”
Arthur tried to sleep then, he really did. But, like Merlin, he’d been awake in the first place because he kept dreaming about a gory end to Merlin’s life that he was unable to stop. He knew that people knew he cared for Merlin, and it had been used against him more than once. The thought that someone someday might actually succeed scared him to fucking death.
It was with that spike of fear and adrenaline that Arthur made the truly insane decision to roll over so he was facing Merlin again, watching his chest rise and fall in the firelight. Merlin hummed inquisitively.
“The guard dog thing only works if one of us is actually looking at the other,” Arthur murmured in response. Merlin huffed, and then, being the horrible little shit he was, inched backwards until Arthur had no choice but to put one arm around him and spoon him.
“Brat,” he muttered. Merlin huffed again.
“You invited me,” he retorted, voice thick with sleep.
Several moments passed, no longer in the awkward silence Arthur had hated but in something close to peace. He found his eyes could actually slip closed without a spike of panic, spurred onward by the warmth emanating from where Merlin was pressed against him.
“We can’t talk about this come morning,” Merlin whispered.
“No,” Arthur agreed, and was sad to do it. “But perhaps another night.”
“Yes. Another night.”
Arthur smiled, knowing no one would ever see it, and finally drifted off to sleep.
A few things I’ve learned from watching merlin from Arthur’s pov, in no particular order:
1. Arthur is in love with merlin.
2. In Arthur’s eyes merlin really is the oddest, most clumsy little weirdo, and the only reason he keeps this apparently lazy and completely incompetent servant around is because he’s in love with merlin.
3. Arthur never ever thinks twice about situations. “The immortal army that could not be killed suddenly explodes? Lucky me, I guess, let’s move on”, or “I struck this golden dragon as big as a castle and it knocked me out. Merlin said I dealt it a mortal blow and it flew off and is now dead. Sounds reasonable!” or, “this man who lives on a bridge called me Courage and said I needed Strength and Magic to complete my quest, and then later Gwaine and Merlin showed up and saved my life. Wasn’t that a fun time?”
4. Merlin is Arthur’s only true friend.
5. Arthur thinks he’s the smoothest, most valiant, heroic and romantic knight in all the lands, but he’s actually the most heartbroken, lonely, pathetic prince with daddy issues Camelot has ever seen.
@merthurmicrofic {} prompt: Exile {} words: 135 (on the dot *chefs kiss* great number) {} I actually really like this. I don't do short and concise very often but I feel when I do I do it well yk (let me have this) {}
How had it come to this?
Deep down, he supposed he knew. And deep down, perhaps he may have considered this outcome.
Uther sank back in his seat, accepting the fate that would soon befall him.
"You shouldn't have exiled Arthur," Morgana mused, tipping the rest of his wine into a plant. He watched as it shriveled to a dry, blackened wisp. "He always loved you more."
Air refused to reach his lungs as he tried to justify his actions. Pointlessly explain himself despite the facts.
"But...I suppose not more than he loved Merlin," Morgana turned back to him with an amused glint in her eyes. Something lurched inside of Uther's chest and he couldn't tell if it was disgust or his failing heart.
"Don't worry. I will welcome them both back with open arms."
