And audiences can't help but love Mercutio. Well, all right, so maybe that's not entirely true ... I have met people who didn't particularly like the guy, or who even (gasp! shock! horror!) couldn't stand that foul-mouthed little pervert. Even I think he can be somewhat overrated, and I overrate him every chance I get. But that's beside the point. The point is not that he is liked, but that he lives, that for all his flaws -- and I won't deny him them, his short temper, his sharp tongue, his uncontrollable need to tease and taunt, even going so far as to provoke the proud king of cats (to a scratch from which he shan't soon recover), and the same tragic flaw so many characters share here, of wit too quick and steps too rash, of heedless youth and reckless passion -- Mercutio has still endeared himself to generations. He has been called many a name by many a critic: a wry cynic, a fantastic visionary, a wise teacher and a flighty lunatic, a dreamer, a liar, a jester, a fighter, a wanton, a poet, all possible extremes from every side of drama, all only facets of a forever-beguiling character. It can never be so simple as to take one name and discard all others, to say that he is this or that, both or neither. In a world like this, how could anything be so simple? It can never be so easy as to bring it down to a name, a word, especially not in a character who can make language a game with words as pawns, who defies everything static, even in his given name, by suggesting a son of mercury, forever fluid, shifting, changing.

Part of it is in interpretation. In pure prose, it's what's inbetween the lines that matters -- dialogue is punctuated with subtle gestures, voices paint each word with meaning, little looks carry a deeper intent and emotion makes itself clear with each extra turn of phrase. The narrarator can lay out motive in all the elaborate trappings of language, giving the why to what is done and said, and as a way to the way, giving us the how. In a written play, there are no such luxuries, or if there are, they must be inferred -- we hear what is said from line to line, see what is done in the occasional stage direction, but if the ever-revealing why or how is not given outright, it is solely up to the reader's imagination. And so we must decide -- is this line said sincerely? Sarcastically? With an amused smirk or a bitter laugh -- with a purposeful glare or a shy glance -- at the verge of tears or in shellshocked calm? Without altering a word of Shakespeare's text, these changes can give it a whole new meaning -- these hows can become all-important to the why -- and tone alone can define a character.

There is a danger to interpretation. It is easy to read the play, and say, this is a bitter man who has no faith in love or dreams, who jokes but whose jokes are all dark and profane and at the expense of others, who is obsessed with sex, revels in violence, goes out cursing friend and foe alike. You could say that -- and critics have -- but then you read it again.

With Mercutio, you always have to read it again. Like the punchline to a particularly clever joke, you have to think on it before it hits you. If you were to accept words only have one true meaning, all the play's puns would fall flat. If we were to accept Mercutio is only what he is on the surface, he would not have survived so long, lived to capture the hearts of readers, scholars, actors and audiences long after his on-stage death. Every time you read Mercutio his lines take on a new meaning, from the amusing to the ominous, cultural, purposeful, and more-often-than-not, sexual. His lines are littered with obscure references, complicated wordplay, and shady innuendo. When you ask yourself if he's truly being serious, if he's saying what you think he's saying, or even saying what he thinks he's saying, if you consider what other interpretations a line may have, your own becomes less final, you're ready to give in to the game, make links between once unrelated ideas like the double meaning of a pun, ready to see sheer possibility.

Mercutio is a man of possibility, an amiable, intelligent, energetic youth who should have had his whole life before him, with a past never quite explained, a future stolen away too soon, letting the audience indulge in that great game of 'what if?' Ready to shift moods at a heartbeat, calling love a tender thing one moment and a mire the next, joking even to the death, laughing and cursing in the same last breath, taking up new roles in an instant, Mercutio shows such depth and complexity of character that centuries after he's still a man to talk about, and if only he had done a little more, lived a little longer, maybe, maybe, maybe we'd have a different story on our hands.

Wordplay and puns represent endless possibility -- that even meaning is not set in a stone, and a twist in language can cause a shift in thinking. Mercutio is a master of puns in a play full of puns, where words and names are all-important except for in that instant where we can cheat them, marrying meanings in one clever twist, transcending expectations and showing something new hiding underneath the surface. By handling words with remarkable ease and freedom, Mercutio shows himself to be unfazed by the clash of names, Montagues and Capulets made into friends and enemies on their own merits, their own meanings, high ideals of honor and romance only mere words to be manipulated to nothing loftier than an entertaining jest.

Indeed, comedy itself is a game of possibility, where miracles can and do happen, in the most unlikely and amusing of ways, and Mercutio is the play's comic spirit. He is not ruled by language, he is not ruled by conventions, he is not ruled as Tybalt is by the love of war, as Romeo is by the love of love. He calls everything into question, ridiculing that "sir-reverence love" as only lust mistermed, mocking those "cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft," and satirizing "such antic, lisping, affecting fantasticoes" who fight "as you sing pricksong," without any improvisation or originality. He shows us just how silly this game of love and war is, and brings the whole senseless tragedy into sharp relief.

In short -- ain't this Mercutio just too cute for words?

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