This Month's Richard III Feature >>

Political satire is not confined to Hal and his fellows. Indeed, one of the most amusing characters in Henry IV, Part I, is that of Hotspur. Consider, for example, Hotspur's inability to simply shut up following his interview with Henry IV. Vexed at Henry's demands for his prisoner, Hotspur vows, "By God, he shall not have a Scot of them." As one of his fellow conspirators observe, Hotspur's continued raving leads us to question, "Art thou to break into this woman's mood,/Tying thine ear to no tongue but thine own!" Here Hotspur's mercurial character threatens rational plotting as his fellow conspirators find that they cannot get a word in edgewise. A similarly humorous depiction of Hotspur occurs in the passage in which he vies with Glendower over the potential division of the kingdom:

See how this river comes me cranking in, And cuts me from the best of all my land A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out. I'll have the current in this place damn'd up; And here the smug and sliver Trent shall run In a new channel, fair and evenly: It shall not wind with such a deep indent, To rob me of so rich a bottom here.