by G. Jack Urso
Dedicated to John Velie (1936-2015),
Albany (N.Y.) High School English teacher and drama coach who directed me in
two productions of Romeo and Juliet in 1980 and instilled the love of
Shakespeare and theater into several generations of young people, including
myself. Also dedicated to Judith Finch, English professor at Houghton College’s
Buffalo Suburban Campus, for whom I first researched and wrote about this play
in 1984, most of which comprises the essay below.
____________________________________________________________
The
Shakespearean monologue has long been a focal point in English literature for
the exploration of classic existential themes, such as mortality in Hamlet’s
meditation on the passing of the court jester Yorick, or the fine line between dreams
and reality as explored by Mercutio in his Queen Mab soliloquy in Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene IV.
There are five aspects of this
scene that contribute to its enduring theatrical appeal:
- The Setting
- The Theme — Dreams/Illusions vs. Reality
- The Comic Element
- The Character of Mercutio
- The Queen Mab Soliloquy
The Setting
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| Globe Theater Floorplan. |
The setting of
Act I, Scene IV is not only on the streets of Verona, Italy at night, but it is
also in the Globe Theater in London, England. It is important to establish a
link between both these settings because Shakespeare capitalizes upon the
existence of both to draw the audience into the action of the play. The
intimacy between Romeo and Juliet is mirrored in the intimacy between the
performers and the audience.
The scene begins
with Romeo, Benvolio, Mercutio, and several torchbearers going through the
streets of Verona on their way to a masque being held by the Capulets. Their
goal for the evening is to crash the party, eat, and stay around long enough for
one dance. Despite the fact that Rosaline, Romeo’s oft-forgotten first love in
the play, will be at the party, Romeo shows great reluctance in joining his
friends; his unrequited love for Rosaline bogs him down (Act I, Scene IV, ll.
19-22) and prompts his friends to try to encourage him and get him in a festive
mood. It is at this point that we begin to see Shakespeare manipulate the dual
settings of the play, both that of Verona and the Globe Theater itself.
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| Diagram of the Globe Theater stage. |
Blurring the
line between reality and illusion further, this type of street scene was a very
common type of gathering for Shakespeare’s audience. They are not in a city in
some foreign land; in fact, the action in the play could be right there in
London. At this point, the audience ceases to be a random group of spectators and
becomes part of the scene, transformed into maskers and torchbearers themselves.
At this point in
the play, a comedic element, albeit with some dramatic undercurrents, has been
established. For this reason, the audience, naturally drawn to Mercutio’s humor
and Benvolio’s good-nature, finds Romeo’s love-sickness a bore as well. They
are spending what few pence they have for an evening’s entertainment and they
want action, adventure, and romance — not Romeo’s adolescent whining. The
result is that when Mercutio challenges Romeo and launches into his Queen Mab soliloquy
he speaks not only for himself and Romeo’s companions, but for the audience as
well.
Romeo is
alternatively morose or rash, and as a result Shakespeare creates a subtle
antagonism between the audience and Romeo that is exploited here as well as in
other scenes. The effect is that at the end of the play when Romeo and Juliet take
their own lives we feel complicit with the action that led to this conclusion.
Very clever Mr. Shakespeare, very
clever indeed . . .
Dreams/Illusions vs. Reality
As the
architecture of the Globe Theater draws the audience into the action of the
play, blurring the lines between observer and participant, Shakespeare sets the
audience up the explore the concepts of reality versus or dreams and the
illusions we create to sustain our own private “realities.”
Romeo: I
dreamt a dream tonight.
Mercutio: And
so did I.
Romeo: WelI,
what was yours?
Mercutio: That
dreamers often lie.
Romeo: In
bed asleep, while they do dream things true.
Mercutio: 0,
then I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
Act I, Scene IV, ll. 52-57 (Shakespeare 18)
In line 56,
Romeo suggests that while dreamers dream, they are able to forecast future
events, or at the very least, that dreams have an element of truth that reality
lacks. Mercutio responds, refuting the validity of dreams in the Queen Mab soliloquy.
The Queen Mab
speech ranks as one of Shakespeare’s great soliloquies. Via a conscious
manipulation of the audience, the theater, and the play itself, what takes
place on the stage, if well-acted and directed, becomes a sum greater than its
parts. To read the soliloquy on paper, one marvels at Shakespeare’s mastery of
language, meter, and myth. In the Globe Theater, with the main stage thrust
right into the audience, one becomes part of the action.
It is a common
human experience to be in love to the point it overwhelms our ability to enjoy
life, so when Mercutio launches into his soliloquy he is not only speaking to
Romeo, but to ourselves as well — an effect amplified by having the stage at the
Globe Theater bring the action right out into the audience, and, as a
consequence, draw the audience right into the action.
Beginning with
line 55, Mercutio uses the various mythological imagery related to Queen Mab, a
Celtic fairy, to draw the allusion for Romeo that love is as intangible as the
dreams spun by a fairy. Faeries are part of the Green World, the realm in which
nature-based Celtic spirit-beings, such as fairies and wood nymphs, exist. It
is there, with such insubstantial beings, that love exists, argues Mercutio in
this soliloquy.
Mercutio: She
is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the forefinger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Over men’s noses as they lie asleep;
Act I, Scene IV, ll. 58-62 (Shakespeare 19)
Romeo interrupts
Mercutio at line 100 (“Peace, peace,
Mercutio, peace! Thou talkst of nothing”), abruptly breaking the imagery and
power of the soliloquy. In a way, this only serves to prove Mercutio’s point
that love is indeed an illusion, and as easily broken as waking from a dream
(MacArthur 40).
Yet, while from
one perspective Mercutio’s point is proven, on another level it could be argued
that just the opposite occurs. Once the spell is broken, the audience is able
to see that dreams and illusions are indeed powerful tools, for they recognize
that they themselves were drawn into the world created by Shakespeare. For a
moment, they are no longer watching a play but are part of the play — bystanders
on a street in Verona. If we can be so drawn into this illusion, the play, then
perhaps there is something to this “love” thing after all, despite what
Mercutio says.
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| 1959 Pocket Books edition. |
The audience,
based on their experience with the play, accepts the validity of dreams as a
source of premonition (Romeo: “In bed
asleep, while they do dream things true,” Act I, Scene IV, l. 56).
Shakespeare, by having Mercutio create a wild fantasy to argue against the
validity of dreams, and drawing the audience into the play’s illusion,
reinforces the truth of dreams. This is through an experiential path that could
only have been taken by a playwright conscious of the structure of the theater
and the importance of having the audience interact with the play to reinforce
concepts integral to the scene, reaffirming the participation of fate in the
lives of Romeo and Juliet and the reality of the love they share.
The Comic Element
The comedy in
Act I, Scene IV largely centers around Mercutio’s and Benvolio’s attempt to break Romeo out of his downcast
mood concerning both his doting on Rosaline and the dark foreboding of his
dream. Most of the dialogue takes place between Romeo and Mercutio, who serves
as a foil to Romeo, and mocks Romeo’s Petrarchan love for Rosaline.
Mercutio: Tut!
Dun’s the mouse, the constable’s own word!
If thou art Dun, we’ll draw thee from the mire
Of this sir-reverence love, wherein thou
stickest
Up to the ears.
Act I, Scene IV, ll. 40-43 (Shakespeare 18)
Mercutio insults
Romeo’s Petrarchan love and compares his efforts to cheer him up to an English
winter game called “Dun in the Mire” in which players try to draw a log from a
pool of mud (Partridge 865).
Not much to do back then
apparently.
Mercutio belittles
Romeo’s lovelorn infatuation, much in the way an older brother may tease a
younger sibling to warn him away from an eventual heartbreak. Mercutio’s words
betray him though, for his taunts are sprung from experience and therefore one
suspects there must be a Rosaline in his past as well.
FranklIn Dickey
suggests in his book, Not Wisely But Too
Well: Shakespeare’s Love Tragedies,
that Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy
built on a comedy (66). The comedy serves as a tool by which a more believable
stream of events is created. Shakespeare realizes that humor pervades our
everyday lives, sometimes, even in our darkest hours and by mixing elements of
comedy and drama to present to the audience a more “realistic” scene, he further
obscures the line between reality and illusion.
Romeo and Juliet is a comedy for two
acts — very close to half the acting time on stage. By establishing a strong
comedic backbone to the play, the audience is lured into the eventual tragedy. Indeed,
“love” was traditionally presented in an amusing manner on the Elizabethan
stage and Shakespeare, at least in the first two acts, maintains that literary
facade (Dickey 66). Certainly, the theatergoer in Shakespeare’s day would have
expected any treatment of love on stage to conform to the norm. Not to address
those expectations would have resulted in the play being less “believable” to
the audience of that time. Shakespeare is able to draw the audience into the
action of the play because he uses their expectations, rather than dismissing
them.
The Character of Mercutio
Romeo best sums up the character of
Mercutio in Act II, Scene IV, when he describes his friend to the Nurse:
Romeo: A gentleman, nurse, that loves to hear himselftalk and will speak more in a minute than he willstand to in a month.
Act II, Scene IV, ll. 144-146 (Shakespeare
25)
Understanding
the character of Mercutio is important to understanding Act I, Scene IV. His
very name, taken from the Roman god Mercury, describes the alacrity of his wit
and his role as a messenger – warning Romeo and audience alike of the dangers
of impetuous love and unchecked passion, though that message comes at the cost
of Mercutio’s own life.
Mercutio is both
cynical and satirical. He claims to disdain both poetic form and fashion (Act
II, Scene IV, ll. 29-36, 37-46), yet
his character is the very essence of poetry. The Queen Mab soliloquy is a
passionate fantasy woven into one of the great monologues of literature.
Mercutio embodies the spirit of comedy and when he dies in Act III the laughter
vanishes from the play.
Mercutio is, in
many respects, a foreign element in the play. He is neither Capulet nor Montague.
He is not as young as Romeo or Juliet, nor as old as their parents. He is a separate
entity that should remain unaffected by the action of the play but instead
becomes its first victim.
In Act I, Scene IV,
we see Benvolio’s concern motivated by his deep love for Romeo. When Romeo and Benvolio
exchange words in disagreement it is because of their respective love for one another;
however, when Mercutio exchanges words with Romeo it is more of a philosophical
disagreement, though not necessarily lacking in affection. In Act I, Scene IV,
as well as Act II, Scene IV, we see Mercutio react almost violently to the idea
that Romeo is enraptured by some Petrarchan ideal of love. One wonders if it is
the philosophical difference that angers Mercutio more specifically than Romeo’s
lovesickness over Rosaline.
Harley
Granville-Barker asserts in Prefaces to
Shakespeare, Volume II, that Mercutio is a man of contradictions, pretending
not to hold to any philosophy, though his arguments with Romeo are often philosophical
in nature (337-338). The Queen Mab soliloquy creates a dichotomy by reinforcing
the power of dreams through the literary power of the verse, while ostensibly
being Mercutio’s attempt to discredit the dreamer.
In the end, the
lasting impression Mercutio leaves is that of the jester who, perhaps more than
Romeo, was “fortune’s fool” (Romeo: “O, I am fortune’s fool!” Act III, Scene I, l. 137).
Unlike the
predestined role Romeo and Juliet play, Mercutio was a wild card, a die cast into
the events of the tragedy and fallen victim as much as to his own impetuous nature
as to Tybalt’s sword or Romeo’s well-meaning but eventually misguided
interference.
The Queen Mab Soliloquy
It has been
argued that the Queen Mab soliloquy was not included in the original draft of
the play and that it was added at a later date only to enlarge Mercutio’s role (Thomas
73). If true, this suggests that the monologue was added to provide some depth
to the part only after the play had already been completed and, perhaps,
performed.
This position is
not without some textual support.
Scene’s III and V in Act I both take place in the Capulet’s house, so
one could skip Scene IV and there would still be a seamless transition in the
action of the play. Nevertheless, the questions of love, dreams, illusion,
reality, and fate, are best addressed at this very point in the play, right before
Romeo and Juliet meet.
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| Queen Mab Soliloquy-1623 Folio. |
Marjorie Garber
in Dream in Shakespeare writes, “The
Queen Mab speech itself is the play’s single most complex and important
statement on dream” (65). Without the Queen Mab speech, this scene goes nowhere
and serves little function in itself, except to show a mob of drunken young men
on their way to crash a party. A philosophical discourse between Romeo and
Mercutio on the nature of dreams versus reality would have been a real
“show-stopper” in the sense that such an extended discussion would have stolen much of the energy and momentum
the play has been building up to this point.
The soliloquy
not only sums up the intricate relationship between the characters, dreams, and
fate, but does so in the one of the most dramatically challenging and
poetically beautiful passages ever written in the English language. If Shakespeare
did not include the Queen Mab passage in his original version of Romeo and Juliet, he must have added it
later because he realized that a vital piece of the play was missing.
The soliloquy
starts off with a lengthy description of Queen Mab and her chariot. Mercutio
combines elements of English folklore in creating his fantasy. This Queen Mab
would be right at home in the Athenian woods of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Mercutio, in high poetic form, describes
the sylvan qualities of the queen and her chariot beginning with line 63:
Mercutio: Her wagon spokes made of long spinners’ legs,The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
Her traces, of the smallest spider web;
Her collars, of the moonshine’s wat’ry beams;
Her whip, of cricket’s bone; the lash, of film;
Her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazelnut,
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.
Act I, Scene IV, ll. 63-73 (Shakespeare 19)
Mercutio now
breaks away from the insults he was throwing at Romeo and begins to ridicule
our young lover by making light of the very thing he wishes to discuss, dreams.
Mercutio refers to Queen Mab as “the fairies’ midwife,” meaning that what she
assists in bringing to life dreams. Mercutio’s choice of words draws the
audience into his dream-like world and he, for all practical purposes, takes on
the role of Queen Mab to the audience. First, he plants the dreams into the audiences’
mind, then, like a midwife, he brings those dreams to life.
Next, Queen Mab
hurtles across the slumbering land, implanting dreams into the heads of
different people (lines 74-78). Mercutio is challenging Romeo’s claim that
dreamer’s “dream things true” (Act I,
Scene IV); however, the unintended result of this fanciful imagery is that he
establishes that dreams may indeed foretell the future, though based on the
character of the dreamer:
Mercutio: And
in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream
of love;
O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on
curtsies straight;
O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on
fees;
O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses
dream,
Act II, Scene IV, ll. 74-78 (Shakespeare 40)
Mercutio seeks
to minimize the prophetic power of dreams by showing they are limited by the
nature of the dreamers themselves. This is also Mercutio’s way of warning his
good friend Romeo that our fates our based on our natures. As Mercutio’s
impetuous tendencies will be his undoing, Romeo’s brooding, morose nature will
be his own downfall.
The soliloquy continues until Romeo,
unable to bear anymore of Mercutio’s increasingly mad ravings, interrupts him,
and breaks the spell abruptly, waking Mercutio from his dream.
Romeo: Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!
Thou talkst of nothing.
Act I, Scene IV, ll. 100-101 (Shakespeare
20)
By calling the
Queen Mab soliloquy “nothing” Romeo has been manipulated by Mercutio to a place
he wanted Romeo all along. Mercutio began the scene by belittling Romeo’s
dreams, treating them as if they were “nothing.” Now, by reversing roles with
Romeo, Mercutio shows Romeo that his dreams indeed amount to nothing by reflecting
them back to the forlorn young lover in a dramatic, if exaggerated, manner in
the soliloquy.
Like the
ephemeral world of Queen Mab — which exists only in our dreams — the reality of
the play, into which both the performer and observer are drawn, is an illusion
made real by the willing suspension of disbelief by those involved, like love,
suggests Mercutio.
Mercutio: True,
I talk of dreams;
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;
Which is as thin of substance as the air,
And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
Even now the frozen bosom of the North
And, being angered, puffs away from thence,
Turning his side to the dew-dropping South.
Act
I, Scene IV, ll. 100-109 (Shakespeare 20)
Here, Mercutio
feels he has made his masterstroke. In an effort to show Romeo the futility of
putting too much stock into the validity of dreams or dreamers, he
inadvertently proves the reverse. The actor, using the layout of the Theater as
a lure, has drawn the audience into the action of the play — the illusion. In
doing so, Mercutio fails to allay Romeo’s sense of foreboding, which came to
him in his dream.
Romeo: . . . for my mind misgives
Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars,
Shall bitterly begin this fearful date
With this night’s revels and expire the term
of a despised life, closed in my breast,
By some vile forfeit of untimely death
But he that hath the steerage of my course
Direct my sail! On lusty gentlemen!
Act I, Scene IV, ll. 112-119 (Shakespeare
20)
Thus, onward Romeo goes to meet the
fate that came to him in a dream.
Works Cited
Dickey, Franklin M. Not Wisely But Too Well: Shakespeare's Love
Tragedies. San Marino, California: The Huntington Library,
1966. Print.
Garber, Marjorie B. Dream in Shakespeare. New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 1974. Print.
Granville-Barker, Harley. Prefaces to Shakespeare, Volume II.
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1951. Print.
MacArthur, Herbert. “Romeo’s Loquacious Friend.” Shakespeare
Quarterly 10 (1959): 35-44. Print.
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. Eds. Virginia A. LaMar and
Louis B. Wright. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1959. Print.
“The Old Globe Theater History.” William Shakespeare: The
Complete Works. William Shakespeare Info, 2007. Web. 11 Nov.
2011. < http://www.william-shakespeare.info/
william-shakespeare-globe-Theater
.htm>.
Thomas, Sidney. “The Queen Mab Speech in Romeo and Juliet.”
Shakespeare Survey 25 (1972): 72-80. Print.
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