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Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 4.2.97: Top | Help
I take it to mean the following:
1) these dandified fellows with their French affectations
of style keep saying "bon" to describe things like whores and
blades. Bon sounds like bone.2) it is pretty common in the renaissance (think of Hamlet)
to associate bones and skulls with the meaninglessness of worldly
things, and with the idea of corruption and decay. So Mercutio also
seems to be saying these Frenchified manners are all signs of an
unhealthy emphasis on pleasure and "good whores" which is the
stuff of the flesh and will all rot away in time.So I'd gloss the line to mean: they go around with their courtly
affectatons pronouncing everything "bon," but beneath all of their
sullied french flesh they're all just bones.Then Romeo appears and Mercutio picks up where he's left off, talking
about French manners ("slop") and the decaying flesh ("O flesh,
flesh, how art thou fishified!").Mercutio, by linking courtly affectation to decay and bones, is playing here with a
set of associations which Hamlet (and characters in other renaissance
plays like _The Revenge's Tragedy_ or _The Duchess of Malfi_) take
very seriously indeed.
Posted by Cloten on April 27, 1997 at 16:28:50
In Reply to "Mercutio's pun in Act II scene iv of R&J" posted by Anonymous on April 27, 1997 at 15:17:25
Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 4.2.97: Top | Help