Interestingly, Mercutio is one of the few characters, other than Romeo and Juliet themselves, to also appear in The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, the poem by Arthur Brooke that served as Shakespeare’s inspiration for the play. In Brooke’s version, Mercutio is charming but poses no threat to Romeo’s courtship of Juliet — more of a supporting gay best friend, perhaps?. Just wait until we get to Hamlet. Mercutio appears in only four scenes. He has so much impact in each of them that this can be surprising.
Baz Luhrmann's decision to make the iconic Shakespearean character Mercutio both African American and queer is an interesting one. Scholar Anthony Johae discusses the prospect of Mercutio's transgenderness in his essay “Bahktinian Carnivalesque in Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet." Johae explains that past scholars such as Phillipa Hawker have claimed that there is. What most audiences fail to see, however, is how the adaptation attempts to deconstruct and destabilize heteronormative expectations for this particular play. He has changed and shifted many things within the story, creating something remarkably different, and remarkably more queer, than the original tragedy. The film follows the play almost exactly, using the original play as a script in the original iambic pentameter.
Mercutio (/ mɜːrˈkjuːʃioʊ / mur-KEW-shee-oh; [1] Italian: Mercuzio [merˈkuttsjo]) is a fictional character in William Shakespeare 's tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. He is a close friend to Romeo and a blood relative to Prince Escalus and Count Paris. As such, Mercutio is one of the named characters in the play with the ability to mingle around those of both houses. The invitation to. Mercutio is hostile to women. That much is clear. But why?
A detailed description and in-depth analysis of Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. Using this theory, Mercutio is simply participating in a sort of game, and Luhrmann is making a sort of statement. He writes,. In carnivalesque fashion, Juliet has temporarily been elevated to an angel, whereas in her daily life she enjoys no such freedom and is shut away with her nurse under the authoritarian rule of her father.