Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1998 14:52:40 -0600
From: Cyprus <sadecamus-AT-sprintmail.com>
Subject: Mab


[interesting exchange about the supporting characters in Romeo and Juliet]

B wrote:

The nurse, as Mercutio points outs, is a bawd, hardly one to offer a
corrective to young love.  Mercutio, in his Mab speech, can only offer
despair and dandyism.


A wrote:

Don't go relying on Mercutio's point of view, or his utterances in that
scene.  Who knows why Mercutio calls her a bawd, particularly when he's
never seen her before, and when she can be costumed to look anything but.
It's part of his character to place highly sexualized readings on many of
the ideas and incidents he encounters.  Despair?  Bosh.  The speech could
be performed as a fancy, joking and charming and slyly erotic.  That whole
John McEnery caterwauling bit from Zeffirelli never has sold me, nor did
Perrineau's yelping in Luhrmann.

B wrote:

Why should I not rely on Mercutio's point of view regarding the nurse?
What else does one call a woman who reduces the mystery of sacramental love
to puerile jokes about sex and advises Juliet to forswear herself and
commit bigamy, in effect counseling her to whore herself?  Methinks 'bawd'
might be a bit too charitable.  I prefer 'O most wicked fiend' myself, and
Juliet does, too.

Yes, despair.  Or if the term rankles you, try 'cynicism'.  Surely,
Mercutio's advice to Romeo regarding love, namely to "prick love for the
pricking" is the height of cynicism.  If one presumes that Mercutio is
punning on 'prick' (and this is a safe presumption, given Mercutio's
notorious potty mouth), then this  advice can be translated into the
contemporary vernacular as "fuck love for the fucking."  Mercutio does not
buy Romeo's Petrarchan poppycock that we must grant Love dominion over us.
No, we must instead beat Love down and use it only as a rhetorical ploy in
the service of sexual conquest.  Mercutio's conception of Love here is
similar to Machiavelli's conception of virtue.  And like Machiavelli,
Mercutio can only envision a world of banal self-interest in which no one
can see past his own nose.  For now that Love has been violently knocked
off its pedestal, there is nothing else for man to aim for except for the
fulfillment of ignoble self-interest.  The Queen Mab speech does not depict
a world of nobility or even a world where nobility is possible.  Instead,
the world of Mab is ugly where even the trappings of what once could be
regarded as truly noble are only masks of rank hypocrisy.  The parson cares
not for the souls of his flock, only for the prospect of another sinecure,
and the Ladies crave oral sex ("Which oft the angry Mab with blisters
plagues/Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are").  Now, Mercutio
may well be laughing at this foolish, banal, mean, selfish world, but
that's all he can do.  He can't change it for the better even if he tried
for on his view there is no such thing as a 'better'. This world can hardly
produce anything that would be recognised as good cheer.  No, it is a world
that could very well lead to despair.  That is certainly the only thing it
has to offer.




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