ABSTRACT
Act 3, scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet (1595) is both formally and dramatically the central scene of the play and one of its most crucial. The henchmen of the Capulets and the Montagues meet sort of by chance in the street, a fi ght ensues, Tybalt kills Mercutio, Romeo kills Tybalt, and from that point on the world of the star-crossed lovers falls apart. In the midst of that tumultu ous scene, there is one brief utterance that is particularly puzzling. The mortally wounded Mercutio hurls a string of insults at Tybalt: ‘Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death! A braggart, a rogue, a villain that fi ghts by the book of arithmetic’.1 Given Tybalt’s character and Mercutio’s awareness of impending death, the seven epithets are both under standable and justifi ed, but why is a sword wound described as a cat scratch? And what paradoxical link does Shakespeare see between the purely mental art of arithmetic and the purely physical art of swordplay? And just what is ‘the book of arithmetic’?
