"
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.
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