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Simile
Explanation and Analysis—Romeo, Mercutio, and Love:
In Act 1, Scene 4, Romeo and Mercutio use simile and implied metaphor, respectively, to examine the idea of love from different perspectives:
Romeo: Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,
Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.Mercutio: If love be rough with you, be rough with love.
To Romeo, fretting about his unrequited love for Rosaline, love is like a "thorn" that "pricks." His experiences with Rosaline have made him understand that love, though potentially a "tender thing," can also cause severe harm if it goes unrequited, unaddressed, or mutates into resentment.
But Mercutio, who is far more cynical than Romeo, responds with a bit of inventive wordplay to console his friend. Instead of an object like a thorn, he likens love to a "rough," cruel individual—an implied metaphor whose terms are not precisely spelled out—and urges Romeo to "be rough with love" himself. In other words, Mercutio wants Romeo to refrain from taking his obsession with Rosaline too seriously, and he also encourages him to be more sexually adventurous (another meaning of "rough").
That Romeo employs simile to examine love while Mercutio employs an implied metaphor indicates key differences in their temperaments and personalities, as well as the way they tend to use language in the play. Romeo is more guileless and literal than Mercutio; as a result, he often resorts to similes, which are a simpler form of comparison than metaphors. On the other hand, Mercutio is sly and cunning, adept at creating puns and innuendo—making his wordplay far more advanced than Romeo's, and lending him linguistic power.
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