through forty lines; this is the kind of stuff:
"My father and my uncle and myself
Did give him that same royalty he wears;
And when he was not six and twenty strong,
Sick in the world's regard, wretched and low,
A poor unminded outlaw sneaking home,
My father gave him welcome to the shore; ..."
and so on and on, like Hamlet, he unpacks his heart with words, till
Blount cries:
"Tut, I came not to hear this."
Hotspur admits the reproof, but immediately starts off again:
"Hot. Then to the point.
In short time after he deposed the king;
Soon after that, deprived him of his life,"
and so forth for twenty lines more, till Blount pulls him up again with
the shrewd question:
"Shall I return this answer to the king?"
Hotspur replies:
"Not so, Sir Walter; we'll withdraw awhile.
Go to the king.....
And in the morning early shall mine uncle
Bring him our purposes; and so farewell."
And yet this Hotspur who talks interminably when he would do much better
to keep quiet, assures us a little later that he has not well "the gift
of tongue," and again declares he's glad a messenger has cut him short,
for "I profess not talking."
The truth is the real Hotspur did not talk much, but Shakespeare had the
gift of the gab, if ever a man had, and Hotspur was a mouthpiece. It is
worth noting that though the dramatist usually works himself into a
character gradually, Hotspur is best presented in the earlier scenes:
Shakespeare began the work with the Hotspur of history and tradition
clear in his mind; but as he wrote he grew interested in Hotspur and
identified himself too much with his hero, and so almost spoiled the
portrait. This is well seen in Hotspur's end; Prince Henry has said he'd
crop his budding honours and make a garland for himself out of them, and
this is how the dying Hotspur answers him:
"O Harry, thou hast robbed me of my youth!
I better brook the loss of brittle life
Than those proud titles thou hast won of me;
They wound my thoughts worse than thy sword my flesh:--
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