impatience and the childishness which always lurks in anger, find
perfect expression. To soothe him, Worcester says he shall keep his
prisoners; Hotspur bursts out:
"Nay, I will: that's flat.
He said, he would not ransom Mortimer;
Forbad my tongue to speak of Mortimer;
But I will find him when he lies asleep,
And in his ear I'll holla--'Mortimer!' Nay,
I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak
Nothing but 'Mortimer,' and give it him,
To keep his anger still in motion."
No wonder Lord Worcester reproves him, and his father chides him as "a
wasp-stung and impatient fool," who will only talk and not listen. But
again Hotspur breaks forth, and again his anger paints him to the life:
"Why, look you, I am whipped and scourged with rods,
Nettled and stung with pismires, when I hear
Of this vile politician, Bolingbroke.
In Richard's time,--what do you call the place?--
A plague upon 't--it is in Glostershire;--
'Twas where the madcap duke his uncle kept,--..."
The very ecstasy of impatience and of puerile passionate temper has
never been better rendered.
His soliloquy, too, in the beginning of scene iii, when he reads the
letter which throws the cold light of reason on his enterprise, is
excellent, though it repeats qualities we already knew in Hotspur, and
does not reveal new ones:
'"The purpose you undertake is dangerous';--why,
that's certain: 'tis dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to
drink; but I tell you, my lord fool, out of this nettle
danger, we pluck this flower safety.... What a frosty-spirited
rogue is this!... O, I could divide myself and
go to buffets, for moving such a dish of skimmed milk
with so honourable an action! Hang him! Let him tell
the King: we are prepared. I will set forward to-night."
But the topmost height of self-revealing is reached in the scene with
his wife which immediately follows this. Lady Percy enters, and Hotspur
greets her:
"How now, Kate? I must leave you within these two hours."
|