We can best see Romeo's and Mercutio's
different perspectives on love in Act 1, Scene
4, the scene in which both Mercutio and Benvolio try to persuade Romeo to
crash the Capulets' ball. Here we can see that Romeo takes love very
seriously, while Mercutio treats love as a
joke. Even though Romeo's feelings of love are guided by physical
attraction, his love is an emotion rather than just physical desire.
Mercutio we can see, on the other hand, only
sees love as sexual activity.
We see just
how seriously Romeo views love when we learn just how
brokenhearted he has let himself become due to Rosaline's
rejection. In the first scene, we even learn that he has been seen crying each morning
at dawn. In Act 1, Scene 4, Romeo continues to reflect on his heartbroken state by
saying things like, "I am too sore enpierced with [Cupid's] shaft," meaning that he
feels a great deal of pain due to being manipulated by Cupid into falling in love
(I.iv.20). Since Romeo has painful feelings of love, we
know that Romeo believes love is a deep-rooted, genuine
emotion, rather than just a sexual
desire.
Mercutio, on the hand, does not
take love seriously at all. He treats love like a joke, as
we see in his many witticisms, such as, "You are a lover.
Borrow Cupid's wings / And soar with them above a common bound" (18-19). More
importantly, Mercutio's jokes are full of sexual innuendo's
showing us that he really doesn't separate love from sexual
desire. In fact, he merely equates love with sexual desire rather than
seeing it as a greater, deeper sentiment, like Romeo does. One example of Mercutio's
sexual innuendos can be seen in the lines, "If love be rough with you, be rough with
love. / Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down"
(28-29).
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