SOURCE: Porter, Joseph A. “Friendship and Love.” In Shakespeare's Mercutio: His History and Drama, pp. 145-63. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.

In the essay below, Porter states that in both criticism and in production, Mercutio's claims for the worth of friendship are not given adequate attention. Porter goes on to assess the historical context of the love versus friendship debate as it existed in Shakespeare's England, and notes the ways in which the subversive nature of Christopher Marlowe's homosexuality is addressed by Shakespeare through the character of Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet.

The Historical Moment

Mercutio takes shape in Shakespeare's mind as a product of, and response to, a distinctive array of social forces determining the received entities of friendship and love. Some of Shakespeare's address to these matters is recognized in commentary on the scrutiny of social, particularly verbal, determinants on the emotion of love...