Romeo and Juliet

Who is to blame for Mercutio's death? Support your assertion with evidence from the text.

Scene III, Act I

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Last updated by jessica t #563028
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I'm going to go with Romeo being to blame here. Although there has been blood spilled between these two families, we are not told of any actual deaths in the recent past. These boys seemed to go at each other without the intent to actually kill one another. Romeo gets in the way and Mercutio is slain. I really do not think Tybalt meant to kill Romeo. 

The ones that were blamed for Mercutio's death was both the capulets and Montague. I know this because Mercutio's last dying word that was repeated multiple time after being injured were, "a plague o' both houses!!"This indicates that he is blaming the feud families for his death, but he is mainly talking about Romeo and Tybalt. what he is trying to say is that, if Romeo had never married Juliet, which is a capulet, but he is a Montague, then Romeo would've never had loved Tybalt, which is the Juliet cousin. This can be seen when Romeo said ,"and so , good capulets, which name I tender as dearly as my own, be satisfied"This shows that he wants to be a family with the rival gang because Juliet is now his wife and she part of the rival .Additionally, because he doesn't want to hurt anyone related to Juliet he also withdraws when Tybalt called him a villain, which was an insult back in a day and it was meant that fight was about to happen.This cause Mercutio's to fight Tybalt because he feels dishonorable for a man to walk away from an insult. Unfortunately, this caused him to get stab by Tybalt. Therefore, even though Tybalt had stab Mercutio if the capulets and Montagues were never enemies, in the beginning, this day wouldn't probably never came, which was why they were blamed for his death.

Source(s)

https://www.reference.com/art-literature/mercutio-blame-his-death-66669c88f5acb1d4