I think Marianne sees only what she wants to see. She is aware of the family finances and is not stupid and yet does not give up Queen Mab until Elinor points out the horse would be a burden on their mother’s pocketbook. I can easily see Marianne ignoring the parts of Mercutio’s speech that do not fit her picture of Willoughby; “Everything he did was right. Everything he said was clever” (11). I think the idea debauchery, greed and lust for power had anything to do with him would be dismissed with contempt. Her opinions are never wrong after all. Should the rest of the speech be a warning to Marianne? I cannot say either way with assurance. So far Willoughby has done nothing outright to proclaim he harbors any of the evils that could turn Marianne’s dreams into a nightmare. Yet I think his behavior could point in that general direction. He has obviously favored Marianne above all others, encouraged her affection and generally skirted decorum in his behavior acting the part of a lover yet leaving the country without publicly declaring his honorable intentions. These could be the actions of a fool in love, merely thoughtless to his fair one’s situation or even to the other extreme, a sly cad who keeps, if she exists, a quasi-romantically themed horse calculated to carry a woman right off her feet. (;D)