Mercutio's monologue on Queen Mab in Act 1, Scene 4 is like a section of an orchestra which comes in unexpectedly. It conducts itself. It follows its own rhythm almost obliterating and drowning the other sections of the orchestra. Yet, even in its seeming distortion of the flow of music, it acts like a prelude to a unified whole.
While Mercutio's monologue overshadows the progress of the whole play, the excess of images in his speech foreshadows what is to going to happen to Romeo and Juliet and their feuding families. Thus, Mercutio's monologue on Queen Mab is significant to the overall play. While it appears incongruent with the progression of the play, it is actually in harmony with the overall play. What appears to be an insignificant intrusion, it turns out to be a reservoir of meanings.
Mercutio's speech is an allegory whose overabundance of details conveys hidden meanings. For example: an agate-stone, her hazelnut chariot made by the joiner squirrel, her wagon spokes of spiders' legs, her collars of waterish moonshine, the cover of the wings of grasshoppers, blister plagues, cutting foreign throats, et cetera. These superfluous details say something about Romeo's overflowing emotion as he is passionately in love with Juliet. Also, the concrete images in his speech augur unwanted consequences in Romeo's and Juliet's passionate love.
Furthermore, the dynamism of Mercutio's speech is indicative of the play's movement and how it affects the audience. His speech's intensity engages and perturbs the audience. It holds their attention and heightens their emotion. Mercutio' speech seems to transport him to another realm drawing the spectators to his make-believe world. However, as soon as his speech reaches the threshold, it immediately takes a decrescendo movement. Its intoxicating intensity begins to wane losing his control over the audience in the process. Then finally disengages himself and his audience from the realm of fantasy. This disengagement brings him back to his senses, to reality.
The dynamic pattern of Mercutio's monologue on Queen Mab reflects the pattern of the overall play. Thus, Kent Cartwright declares that the pattern of Mercutio's speech "distinguishes the pattern of Romeo and Juliet as a whole" (Cartwright, 54). Passionately in love with Juliet, Romeo seems euphoric and enters the realm of fantasy. But this fiery passion reaches its summit in tragedy. Believing that Juliet is dead, he kills himself by drinking the poison. And when Juliet wakes up, she sees Romeo dead. She then gets the dagger and stabs herself to death. Then there after, the play's tension diminuendos.
Work Cited
Cartwright, Kent. Shakespearean Tragedy and Its Double. United States of America: The Pennsylvania State University, 1991.
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