sophistry of the thinker poetically expressed, and not one word from the
hot, high-couraged soldier. Indeed, in the last four lines from the
bookish "we read" to the end, we have the gentle poet in love with
desperate extremities. The passage must be compared with Othello's--
"Here is my journey's end, here is my butt,
And very sea-mark of my utmost sail."
But at length when Worcester adds fear to danger Hotspur half finds
himself:
"Hot, You strain too far.
I rather of his absence make this use:--
It lends a lustre, and more great opinion,
A larger dare to our great enterprise,
Than if the earl were here; for men must think,
If we, without his help can make a head
To push against the kingdom; with his help
We shall o'erturn it topsy-turvy down.--
Yet all goes well, yet all our joints are whole."
And this is all. The scene is designed, the situation constructed to
show us Hotspur's courage: here, if anywhere, the hot blood should
surprise us and make of danger the springboard of leaping hardihood. But
this is the best Shakespeare can reach--this fainting, palefaced "Yet
all goes well, yet all our joints are whole." The inadequacy, the
feebleness of the whole thing is astounding. Milton had not the courage
of the soldier, but he had more than this: he found better words for his
Satan after defeat than Shakespeare found for Hotspur before the battle:
"What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield,
And what is else not to be overcome;
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me."
When Shakespeare has to render Hotspur's impatience he does it superbly,
when he has to render Hotspur's courage he fails lamentably.
In the third scene of this fourth act we have another striking instance
of Shakespeare's shortcoming. Sir Walter Blount meets the rebels "with
gracious offers from the King," whereupon Hotspur abuses the King
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