Mercutio's importance to the plot and theme - Romeo and Juliet

This is an essay I wrote for Romeo and Juliet, I really suck at writing essays. Would really appreciate it if someone can look at it.

Mercutio is not only important to the plot of the play, but also the as theme of haste leads to tragedy as well. Mercutio serves as a foil to people who are supposed to be wise such as Friar Lawrence and Romeo because he is considered to be a fool in the beginning of the book, but in reality he is the wisest. Mercutio is cynical about love, as opposed to Romeo's view on live of being something beautiful and romantic. Mercutio is always uses witty bunter, wordplay and puns to tease people, and for the use of comic relief. Mercutio is hot headed and hasty, his actions would lead to many tragedies throughout the play.

Mercutio views love as something imaginary and he often make sexual jokes about love. His famous Queen Mab speech: "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, who wooes, even now the frozen bosom of the north, and, being anger'd, puffs away from thence, turning his face to the dew-dropping south." (Act 1, Scene 4, lines 97 - 103) In this scene, Mercutio argues that love is a dream and dreams are nothing, therefore love is nothing. This is the complete opposite of Romeo's view on love, which is supposed to be real and passionate. Mercutio attempts to cheer Romeo up because of his melancholy by using crude humour. "And, to sink in it, should you burden love; too great oppression for a tender thing." Mercutio is suggesting that if Romeo blames the burden of love, he will only sink into love even more.

Mercutio uses witty puns and wordplay to tease people; he was teasing Tybalt to get him angrier. "Tybalt you rat - catcher." Mercutio kept on using puns using Tybalt's name to provoke him, which will lead to conflict. During the scene where Mercutio harasses the nurse, he reveals what Romeo was like before he was melancholy with love. He gives the audience something to laugh about after many serious scenes. Shakespeare also uses Mercutio as a link between the characters in the play and the audiences watching the play. When Mercutio is telling Romeo that he is foolish, he is almost telling the audience that this play is foolish and it is never going to happen. Mercutio is a pun of the word mercutial, which means unpredictably changeable, this is a clue that Mercutio is very hasty and he does not think of his actions.

Mercutio and Tybalt fought because Mercutio was provoking Tybalt. When he died, it was more tragic because he was relative with the Prince and not part of the feuding families, and an innocent person died, this was also the climax of the play. When Mercutio died, he said "Help me into some house, Benvolio, or I shall faint. A plague o' both your houses!" Mercutio think he is cursing Tybalt and Romeo, little did he know he is also cursing Romeo and Juliet because they were married. He makes the first half of the play seems like a comedy because of his witty jokes. And when he disappears from the play, it turns into tragedy, because the humorous person is gone and people are dieing. Romeo felt responsible for his friend's death. Devastated, he killed Tybalt for revenge, causing the Prince to banish him. Juliet was suicidal when she found out Romeo was banished and she was willing to do anything. Friar Lawrence, who is usually a calm person had to be hasty has well to think of a plan to help the two lovers. He came up with a plan to fake Juliet's death, because everything was moving too fast, the Friar's plan failed to reach Romeo in time. Romeo decided that he couldn't live without Juliet; he bought a poison to plan and kill himself. When Juliet woke up and found Romeo dead, she took his knife and killed herself for she couldn't live without Romeo.

Mercutio is arguably the most important character in the play, He makes the plot more interesting because his view of love, his use of witty jokes and how his hastiness shape the plot.

In general your essay sounds good but the last paragraph is too short. In a normal-length essay a paragraph is four to six sentences long.

So you have to add more sentences to that paragraph. Furthmore, your last paragraph is not a solid conclusion.

Any suggestions on what I can put?

This sentence has a mistake, but I don't know how to fix it... not only the plot, but also the theme... you should take this sentence away fromt he start of the essay, because it is hard to understand before explaining the plot or theme.

I think you do NOT suck at writing essays; you obviously have a strong "way with words," but you might not know what a good essay should look like.

In your writing, when you want it to be powerful, use 3 steps:
Say it.
Explain it.
Sa it again.

That means that you are not writing a bunch of things; you are writing ONE thing using several paragraphs to explain it.

SO, write a new first paragraph in which you grab the reader's attention with a witty opening line and then explain your main point. Rather than just telling all about hot-headed Mercutio in the opening para, you should tell about HIM and the PLAY together. Tell about the play a little, so that it is clear why his role is important. Write a concluding sentence for the first paragraph that explains the meaning of the whole essay.

After the intro, use the body paragraphs to support the assertion you made in the intro. You seem to have done this well. You just need to make a clear assertion in the intro -- an assertion that explains the play and his role in it.

Kevin is right, you need to focus a bit more on a single key idea (your thesis). You might refine your essay, for instance, to look at how Mercutio is essentially the personification of the comedic spirit of the play. Because Romeo and Juliet was the first tragedy written by a man who had only written comedies up until that point, the play reads much like a romantic comedy for the first few acts, if you ignore the preamble that warns you it will be a tragedy (which helps explain why the preamble is there, btw.) Mercutio's name refers to the idea of something changeable, and it is death that marks the turning point of the play, the point at which it moves out of comedic territory into tragedy. Something along those lines might be enough to unify what you already have without requiring too much revision.