“he made me mad,
To see him shine so brisk and smell so sweet,
And talk so like a waiting gentlewoman.”
But immediately afterwards Hotspur's defence of Mortimer shows the poet Shakespeare rather than the rude soldier who hates nothing more than “mincing poetry.” The beginning is fairly good:
“Hot. Revolted Mortimer!
He never did fall off, my sovereign liege,
But by the chance of war: to prove that true,
Needs no more but one tongue for all those wounds,
Those mouthed wounds which valiantly he took,
When on the gentle Severn's sedgy bank.”
This “gentle Severn's sedgy bank” is too poetical for Hotspur; but what shall be said of his description of the river?
“Who then, affrighted with their bloody looks,
Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,
And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank
Blood-stained with these valiant combatants.”
Shakespeare was still too young, too much in love with poetry to confine himself within the nature of Hotspur. But the character of Hotspur was so well known that Shakespeare could not long remain outside it. When the King cuts short the audience with the command to send back the prisoners, we find the passionate Hotspur again:
“And if the devil come and roar for them,
I will not send them.—I will after straight,
And tell him so: for I will ease my heart,
Although it be with hazard of my head.”
The last line strikes a false note; such a reflection throws cold water on the heat of passion, and that is not intended, for though reproved by his father Hotspur storms on:
“Speak of Mortimer!
'Zounds! I will speak of him; and let my soul
Want mercy, if I do not join with him....”
The next long speech of Hotspur is mere poetic slush; he begins: