In the scene where Tybalt confronts Mercutio while looking for Romeo, it seemed like Tybalt was questioning his sexualit
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Romeo + Juliet
pajamawolfie — 9 years ago(July 31, 2016 04:06 PM)
In the scene where Tybalt confronts Mercutio while looking for Romeo, it seemed like Tybalt was questioning his sexuality, which pissed Mercutio off:
TYBALT Mercutio, thou consort'st with Romeo,
MERCUTIO Consort! what, dost thou make us minstrels? an thou make minstrels of us, look to hear nothing but discords: here's my fiddlestick; here's that shall make you dance.
I know the old English "consort" probably just meant "hang around with, associate with" but in this version it sounds like a diss, like Tybalt was calling him a f*ggot, especially given Mercutio's flamboyant behavior and how mad Mercutio got.
Not that I'm in the "Mercutio's gay" camp, I just thought it was an interesting scene interpretation.
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sflowers539 — 9 years ago(August 16, 2016 08:31 AM)
That was the Shakespeare era way of calling someone gay, in English class in high school the teacher explained that to all of us and it was a huge insult back then. I loved that line, for years I would drop it on people at times and it always got huge laughs from the witnesses who recognized it. Now it would probably be a hate crime and result in a hashtag campaign against you, so I am much more hesitant to use it.
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pajamawolfie — 9 years ago(August 16, 2016 12:59 PM)
I went through 3 high school Shakespeare classes and one college course but hadn't heard that interpretation. (Loved me some Bard.) I looked "consort" up again and in Elizabethan times, it refers to an ensemble of instruments, which is why Mercutio starts talking about minstrels. It also meant "someone you frequently associate with" or in specific cases, the wife of a king or queen.
I think in this film, it was an insult to Mercutio's sexual orientation (whatever it is), but it wasn't definitively that in the play. Still there are a lot of "Mercutio was gay for Romeo" theories going around.
Nowadays, if someone got called a "consort", I would think of it as a fancy word for prostitute, unless it was meant in the same way as "cohort" or "partner in crime".
Thanks for the input and you're right that it's probably a good idea to not call people that.
There is no objective reality and that's
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