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More than Prince of Cats. Oh, he’s the courageous captain of compliments. He fights as you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, and proportion. He rests his minim rests—one, two, and the third in your bosom. The very butcher of a silk button, a duelist, a duelist, a gentleman of the very first house of the first and second cause. Ah, the immortal passado, the punto reverso, the hai!. . . .
The pox of such antic, lisping, affecting fantasmines, these new tuners of accents! “By Jesu, a very good blade! A very tall man! A very good whore!” Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsire, that we should be thus afflicted with these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these “pardon me’s,” who stand so much on the new form, that they cannot sit at ease on the old bench? Oh, their bones, their bones!
In Act 2, Scene 4, Mercutio tells Benvolio what he thinks about Tybalt. Laced with jokes and insults (including pointing out at the start that Tybalt shares his name with the “Prince of Cats,” a figure from Medieval folklore), it is nonetheless a probing analysis of Tybalt that shows that Mercutio knows a great deal about the man who will eventually kill him. He acknowledges Tybalt’s discipline and skills as a sword fighter, but then immediately goes on to say that he finds him and his passionate style—in fencing as well as in how he speaks and behaves—affected and insufferable. You can read more about this speech and its connection to contemporary debates about sword fighting in Quotes by Theme: The Connection Between Passion and Violence (the third quote).
now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature, for this drivelling love is like a great natural that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole
In Act 2, Scene 4, the cynical Mercutio offers more advice to his love-obsessed friend Romeo. To Mercutio, love is really nothing more than a desire for sex. True to his style, he punctuates his comments here with sexual references and puns. Read more about this quote in Quotes by Theme: The Complex Relationship Between Love and Sex (the second quote) and in Quotes by Character: Mercutio (the fourth quote).
