Within Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare presents how honour is a big driving force within the play and how many character have this inherently engrained within the due to societal norms. This pervasive force within this play leads many characters to deny the truth which eventually leads them to succumb to their demise.
Shakespeare presents how honour perhaps can consume characters and how taints their judgement and perspective; this is specifically done through the portrayal of toxic masculinity within the extract . When Mercutio is killed, he falls into a blind rage saying 'A plague on both your houses' . The noun plague is know to represent terrifying all consuming illnesses that spread, this could represent the amount rage and fury Mercutio feels through being killed within this moment. It also reveals how his anger is lead by the pre defined ideas of honour and the idealisms of toxic masculinity.
Furthermore it could also represent his rage of emotions when being defeated by Tybalt ; ultimately revealing that at this point in the play, honour has consumed him and his is not able to face the truth of his death, so by using the negative and almost gruesome connotations of plague, he almost uses it as a barrier to protect his pride one last time before he dies.
In addition, it could allude to how men of the time where not allowed to express their emotions that where not deemed as masculine, so by Mercutio spitefully saying 'plague ', perhaps it could be him trying to encapsulate his overwhelming amount of emotions and express how he feels in a way that is acceptable to society, in one last attempt of trying to have a 'honourable death'
'once seeming sweet, convert to bitterest gall'
'A plague on both your houses'
'I was hurt under your arm'
'Why the devil did you come between us?'
'brave Mercutio's dead!'
'purple fountains issuing from your veins'
'If you not be mine, then hang beg starve die in the streets'