Romeo & Juliet (II) (2013)

Christian Cooke: Mercutio

Photos 

Quotes 

• Mercutio : Gentle Romeo, we must see you dance.

  Romeo : Not I, Mercutio. You have the dancing shoes and dancing feet to fill them. My soul is made of lead. It sticks me to the ground and cannot move.

  Mercutio : You are a lover. Borrow cupid's wings and fly!

• Mercutio : Alas poor Romeo! He is already dead.

  Benvolio : Why? Who and what is Tybalt that he should be so sure of it?

  Mercutio : More than prince of cats, I can tell you now. He fights like a music-player, all precision and keeps his time and distance, perfectly played, with one and two and three and in your chest. He's a gentleman and a duelist and none can fight him and live to tell the tale.

• Mercutio : Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk this way?

  [draws his sword] 

  Tybalt : What would you want with me?

  Mercutio : Good king of cats, just one of your nine lives.

• Romeo : I dreamed a dream last night.

  Mercutio : And so did I.

  Romeo : Well, what was yours?

  Mercutio : That dreamers often lie.

  Romeo : In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.

  Mercutio : O, then, I see Queen Mab has been with you. She is the fairies' midwife and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone on the fore-finger of an alderman and drawn with a team of little atomies athwart men's noses as they lie asleep. Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut. And in this state she gallops night by night through lovers' brains and then they dream of love. O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight. O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees. O'er ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream.

  Romeo : Peace, peace, Mercutio! Enough. You talk of nothing.

  Mercutio : True. I talk of dreams - which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy, which is as thin of substance as the air and more inconstant than the wind.

• Romeo : Come. Let us brave our fears and steer our course - whatever it may prove.

  Mercutio : On, lusty gentlemen!

• Romeo : Have courage, man. The wound cannot be much.

  Mercutio : No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough,'twill serve. Ask for me to-morrow, you shall find me a grave man. I am peppered. I warrant for this world. What devil came you between us? He stabbed me under your arm.

  Romeo : I thought all for the best.

  Mercutio : The best intentions pave the way to Hell. Down with the Montagues and Capulets whose angry wars have stolen all my days. A plague on both your houses.