Today’s Totally Random
Lines
The fee-simple! O simple!
Mercutio
Romeo and Juliet Act III, Scene i, Line 35
Here’s the deal. First off, a fee-simple is the totality of ownership. A fee-simple title is full, complete, and unencumbered ownership (I had to look it up). Now, Mercutio and Benvolio are talking and drinking. Mercutio has just spent sixteen lines telling Benvolio how moody and quarrelsome he is:
Come, come, thou art as hot as a Jack in thy mood as any in Italy; and as soon moved to be moody, and as soon moody to be moved.
Benvolio responds with a sort of “I know you are, but what am I” line:
An I were
so apt to quarrel as thou art, any man should buy the fee-simple of my life for
an hour and a quarter.
Mercutio then responds with Today’s Line.
The fee-simple!
O simple!
So Today’s Line
is just Mercutio simply (no pun intended) making a pun on Benvolio’s use
of the word simple (in a not so simple line: buy the fee-simple of my
life for an hour and a quarter? What the heck is that?)
Anyway, it’s a pun. Yes, a pun. Now I know that puns have been referred to as the lowest form of humor, but that is a subjective pejorative. Will used puns liberally in his works as, in fact, puns are as old as language itself. Don’t believe me? Well, I dare you to prove me wrong.
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