One example of animal imagery appears in the first scene of Act II. Mercutio is calling for Romeo, who has ditched him and Benvolio. Because Romeo is silent to his pleas, Mercutio says he will "conjure" Romeo, urging his friend to say one simple word, such as "love" or "dove." Romeo is silent, though, because he wants to avoid Mercutio to catch another glimpse of Juliet. Mercutio then compares Romeo to a little monkey (ape and monkey would have been synonymous in Shakespeare's day and in this case the writer only needed a one-syllable word) who is playing dead:
He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not.
The ape is dead, and I must conjure him.
In the next scene, Juliet, who is trying to be quiet as she goes back and forth between the house and the balcony where she is talking to Romeo, says she wishes she had the voice of a falcon trainer in order to call her bird back to her. She compares Romeo to the falcon or a hawk (tassel-gentle):
Hist, Romeo, hist! O, for a falc’ner’s voice
To lure this tassel-gentle back again!
In Act III, Scene 1, Mercutio refers to a dog sleeping in the street as he accuses Benvolio of being disruptive and a fighter. Mercutio is, of course, being highly ironic as he claims that the peace-loving Benvolio would "quarrel" with a man who woke up his dog:
Thou hast
quarreled with a man for coughing in the street
because he hath wakened thy dog that hath lain
asleep in the sun.
A little later in the same scene, Mercutio uses the classic allusion to Tybalt the cat when he says that he would like to fight Tybalt and take away one of his nine lives:
Good king of cats, nothing but one of your
nine lives, that I mean to make bold withal, and, as
you shall use me hereafter, dry-beat the rest of the
eight.
Mercutio compares Tybalt to the cat of the same name in the medieval fable "Reynard the Fox." In that story, Tybalt is the "Prince of Cats." Mercutio refers to Tybalt as the prince of cats earlier in Act II, Scene 4. Here, Mercutio changes Tybalt's title from prince to king because he is looking to fight.
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