Word: mercutio
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...author's second attempt at tragedy, the play is at times literarily self-conscious and structurally too obvious in its symmetrical balance. Every idea has its complement: love vs. hate, day vs. night, patience vs. impetuosity, chastity vs. bawdry, and so on. Every character has its foil: Romeo and Mercutio, Juliet and Roasline, Benvolio and Tybalt, Friar Laurence and the Nurse. If it is not a supreme achievement, it is still a great play; and let us be thankful we have...
...biggest disappointment is the Mercutio of William Smithers, who has proven himself a good actor elsewhere. Here he is a total failure; and much of the blame must fall on director Landau. Not for nothing does Mercutio share five letters with Mercury; but there is nothing mercurial about Smithers' performance. Mercutio is an airy, sparkling, zestful, witty chap; Smithers is none of these. Too bad, for the role is so rich that it bids fair to top that of Romeo himself--wherefore Shakespeare had to kill him off on two counts...
...Mercutio did Shakespeare give the celebrated Queen Mab speech, one of the great virtuoso arias in the language. Smithers delivers this faery monologue in a slow, sloppy, slovenly manner, with no heed to what he is saying, when the speech should be, in Mercutio's own words, "as thin of substance...
...from any magnificence of voice or roll of theatrical thunder, but from a projection of feeling, a rush of psychological light. Moving from Youth through Manhood to Old Age, he plays many parts. Few will complain that he includes a host of warhorses-Hamlet's best soliloquies, Mercutio's Queen Mab speech, an abdicating Richard II, a sleepless Henry IV, a dying Lear and John of Gaunt. A few may wonder why Gielgud includes numerous sonnets and not a single lyric, only to decide that he prefers his Shakespeare, even when most poetic, in a personalized context...
...Mercutio, Thomas Lumbard did well enough, but one felt he might have played his bawdy jokes less like an English professor and more like an old-time burlesque comedian...