 A number of critics have found the character of Mercutio to have unacknowledged homoerotic desire for Romeo . Jonathan Goldberg examined the sexuality of Mercutio and Romeo utilising " queer theory " in <unk> the Renaissance , comparing their friendship with sexual love . Mercutio , in friendly conversation , mentions Romeo 's phallus , suggesting traces of homoeroticism . An example is his joking wish " To raise a spirit in his mistress ' circle ... letting it there stand / Till she had laid it and conjured it down . " Romeo 's homoeroticism can also be found in his attitude to Rosaline , a woman who is distant and unavailable and brings no hope of offspring . As Benvolio argues , she is best replaced by someone who will reciprocate . Shakespeare 's procreation sonnets describe another young man who , like Romeo , is having trouble creating offspring and who may be seen as being a homosexual . Goldberg believes that Shakespeare may have used Rosaline as a way to express homosexual problems of procreation in an acceptable way . In this view , when Juliet says " ... that which we call a rose , by any other name would smell as sweet " , she may be raising the question of whether there is any difference between the beauty of a man and the beauty of a woman . 
