It is for
the reader to say whether Shakespeare blurred the picture, or bettered
it.
Hotspur's first words to the King in the first act are admirable; they
bring the brusque, passionate soldier vividly before us; but I am sure
Shakespeare had the fact from history or tradition.
"My liege, I did deny no prisoners.
But, I remember, when the fight was done,
When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
Came there a certain lord, neat, trimly dressed,
Fresh as a bridegroom."
Hotspur's picture of this "popinjay" with pouncet-box in hand, and
"perfumed like a milliner," is splendid self-revelation:
"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.
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