Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!

Mercutio died this week. And Tybalt, too, but it was Mercutio that left a palpable silence in the classroom.

“Why is he talking so much?” one student asks as Mercutio dies. He doesn’t understand why Mercutio would take the time to be sarcastic, “No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but ’tis enough…,” or make a pun, “Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.”

“Well, what do we know about Mercutio?” I ask.

“He’s a talker,” the class responds, but they say it with sorrow, because they won’t get to hear him give a wonderful Queen Mab speech, or a terribly saucy taunt after the masquerade.

Before his death, when we’d open our books and I’d see Mercutio had lines I’d say, “Uh oh. Sorry guys, Mercutio’s in this scene,” and we’d all snicker with anticipation because we knew he was going to say something ridiculous and hilarious, and most of all, something highly inappropriate.

“He’s like your cousin Jake,” one of my students say, and the class heartily approves. Last semester, they read my “Dodging Skittles and Other Fears,” story and it was Jake that was their favorite character. It’s Jake they want so badly to meet. “This story is true, Mrs. Feyen, right? Jake’s real? So he could come visit?”

“Yes, Jake is real,” I tell them, but that’s all I can say because while I wrote the truth, I can’t tell them the rest of the story.

So we look at Mercutio.

“Remember what I said about what Shakespeare does with characters like the Nurse and Mercutio?”

“He develops characters with what they say but they don’t necessarily advance the plot.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Who cares about the story if you don’t like the characters?”

And they like Mercutio. His death is a surprise to them. Even if they didn’t know it, they were relying on him for comic relief. They know what happens to Romeo and Juliet and now Mercutio is gone and they have to go through the rest of the story without him. It’s not like my story. When things got too sad or too painful, Jake swooped in and did something hilarious or ridiculous and we could keep going. But in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare takes Mercutio away and expects his readers to make their way to the end by themselves.

I don’t know what to say to make my students feel better, so I walk them slowly through the text because when I was in graduate school and totally overwhelmed by a story, Greg Wolfe would tell us we are to give the story a close reading. It’s painful, even excruciating to linger in the sadness or fear of a story. You’re not going to come away with a tidy resolution after closely reading a text, but I do believe you’ll see beauty that you’ll take with you into the world (along with the sadness and fear). Perhaps you’ll change the world with the beauty you gathered.

So we turn to the text.

“Underline, ‘a plague a’both houses!’ every time you see it,” I tell the students. “How many times does Mercutio say it?”

“Three times.”

We discuss the significance of three. They name the Holy Trinity, the three colors that all the other colors from, the fact that in order to form a shape, we need three lines; two cannot do the job.

I tell my class that this was a deliberate decision on Shakespeare’s part to have Mercutio say, ‘a plague a’both houses!’ three times. (I don’t know for sure, but it had to be, right Greg?) I tell them three represents wholeness, entirety, something unbreakable.

“How is this different from Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech? What’s he say about dreams?”

“That they’re worthless. That Romeo shouldn’t waste time on them.”

“Thou talk’s of nothing,” Romeo says after Mercutio’s invented Queen Mab character.

“True, I talk of dreams,” Mercutio says. Now forget about Rosaline, put on your mask, and let’s crash a party.

Why waste time creating something that isn’t real?

“So he says dreams are nothing, but as he’s dying he’s cursing both houses. In his agony and anger he wishes for the Capulet’s and Montague’s demise. I wonder, could a curse be a little like a dream?”

“Yes,” they say and I think they’re afraid to admit it.

“And do Mercutio’s words come true?”

“Yes,” they say because they know what’s coming.

There’s a fine line between curses and dreams, love and hate, belief and unbelief, don’t you think? I’m thinking of the father of the sick child telling Jesus, “I believe, help thou my unbelief.” And Jesus helps him believe.

“I think Mercutio believes in dreams,” I tell them. “I don’t think he meant to curse the Capulets and the Montagues, but I think he was devastated that he had to say goodbye to his friends and to a life he loves.”

And there is more death coming. More tragedy. More opportunity to look closely for beauty, gather it up, and take it with us so we can change the world.

As for Jake, he’s in no shape to meet my students. One day though, I hope that I can tell him that he was a hero to a bunch of lovely thirteen and fourteen year olds. No matter what comes of him, I made him a character people wanted to spend time with, no advancements in the plot where necessary when he came on the scene.

Just like Mercutio.