A plague o’ both your houses!
They have made worms’ meat of me.
– William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 1. The fatally injured Mercutio curses both Montague and Capulet families for his senseless death. Even as he is dying, he is able to apply his cynical wit to expose the pointlessness of the bloody quarrel between the two houses. In the second line he uses a dramatic metaphor to compare himself to a meal for worms. He becomes the first casualty of the feud, which marks a turning point in a play that witnesses a great deal further violence and death. There is irony here in that Mercutio doesn’t belong to either of the feuding house. He therefore had no reason to become involved in the fight, except for his own hot-headedness.