... What a frosty-spirited
rogue is this!... O, I could divide myself and
go to buffets, for moving such a dish of skimmed milk
with so honourable an action! Hang him! Let him tell
the King: we are prepared. I will set forward to-night."
But the topmost height of self-revealing is reached in the scene with
his wife which immediately follows this. Lady Percy enters, and Hotspur
greets her:
"How now, Kate? I must leave you within these two hours."
The lady's reply is too long and too poetical. Hotspur interrupts her by
calling the servant and giving him orders. Then Lady Percy questions,
and Hotspur avoids a direct answer, and little by little Shakespeare
works himself into the characters till even Lady Percy lives for us:
"
Lady. Come, come, you paraquito, answer me
Directly unto this question that I ask.
In faith, I'll break thy little finger, Harry,
An if thou wilt not tell me true.
Hot. Away,
Away, you trifler!--Love?--I love thee not,
I care not for thee, Kate; this is no world
To play with mammets and to tilt with lips.
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