Tuesday, June 5, 2018

What are three subjects Mercutio and Romeo make puns about in scene 4, lines 44€“70 of Romeo and Juliet?

In act
1, scene 4,andengage in a long exchange with numerous puns, sometimes playing off the others
preceding line. Some of the puns that Romeo makes:

Give me
a torch: I am not for this ambling;

Being but heavy, I will bear the
light.

Here, he uses heavy to mean low-spirited, and
contrasts it with light, referring to weight but also to the brightness of the
torch.

Not I, believe me: you have dancing shoes


With nimble soles: I have a soul of lead

So stakes me to the ground
I cannot move.

After Mercutio tells him he must dance at
the party, he continues the heavyfor his mood, now saying that his soul is made of lead;
this use of "soul" is aon the sole of Mercutios dancing shoes.


Mercutio quips about a way to move:

You are a
lover; borrow Cupid's wings,

And soar with them above a common
bound.

Romeo replies with another pun, on
"soar," meaning to fly high; he says he is sore from love, as Cupid has shot him
with his arrow.

I am too sore enpierced with his
shaft

To soar with his light feathers . . . .


href="http://shakespeare.mit.edu/romeo_juliet/romeo_juliet.1.4.html">http://shakespeare.mit.edu/romeo_juliet/romeo_juliet.1.4....

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