Summary: Act II, scene iv
At his family home (Warkworth Castle, in the far north
of England), Hotspur reads a letter that has just arrived from a
nobleman. Hotspur has asked the nobleman for support in the rebellion
that the Percy family is planning against Henry. But the letter
relays a refusal, saying that the Percy plot is not planned out
well enough and that its allies are not strong or reliable enough
to face so great a foe as Henry. Hotspur becomes very angry at the
letter writer and disdains the writer’s cowardice. He is concerned,
however, that the writer will decide to reveal the plot to Henry,
so he decides that he must set out that night to join his allies
and start the rebellion.
Hotspur’s wife, Lady Percy (also called Kate), comes
in to speak to her husband. When Hotspur tells her that he will
be leaving the castle within two hours, she becomes upset. She points
out that for the past two weeks Hotspur has not eaten properly,
slept well, or made love to her. Furthermore, he keeps on breaking
out into a sweat in the middle of the night and crying out, babbling
in his sleep about guns, cannons, prisoners, and soldiers. Lady
Percy thinks that it is time Hotspur explained exactly what he’s
been planning.
Hotspur, however, ignores Lady Percy, instead instructing
his servant to get his horse ready. Enraged, Lady Percy stops pleading and
starts demanding answers. She suspects that Hotspur’s machinations
all have something to do with her brother, Lord Mortimer, and his
claim to the throne. She threatens to break Hotspur’s “little finger”
(a euphemism for his penis) if he does not tell her what is going
on (II.iv.79).
Hotspur abruptly turns on Lady Percy and angrily insults
her, saying that he does not love her and that this is no world
for womanly thoughts or for love. Instead, he declares, there must
be war and fighting. He will not tell her what he is doing because
he believes that women cannot be trusted, and she won’t be able
to reveal what she does not know. He concedes only that he will
send for her, and that she may follow him on horseback the next
day. Though -dissatisfied, Lady Percy cannot get any more information
from her belligerent husband.
Read a translation of
Act II, scene iv →
Analysis
Although this scene seems short and incidental, it is
a telling portrait of gender and domestic life in the Renaissance.
Hotspur’s obsession with strategy and war make him a bad husband;
he appears to think of his wife only as a sideline to his life as
a fighter. Lady Percy reveals the emotional deficiency of the valiant
Hotspur and provides a glimpse of the marital relations of the Elizabethan
era. Neither husband nor wife is shy of alluding to sex, or a lack
thereof. Renaissance women were considered to have a right to sexual
pleasure from their husbands. Lady Percy has her sexual needs in
mind when she complains that Hotspur has “given my treasures and
my rights of thee / To thick-eyed musing and curst melancholy” (II.iv.39–40).
Despite this apparent liberation, Renaissance ideas of
gender fell far short of promoting equal opportunity for men and
women. Hotspur’s refusal to confide in his wife is not unusual,
nor is his belief that women cannot keep a secret. His words to
Lady Percy—“constant you are, / But yet a woman”—demonstrate how
he allows the stereotype that women are gossipmongers to outweigh
his knowledge that Lady Percy herself is of a “constant” nature
(II.iv.99–100). Hotspur’s extreme machismo
often endows him with a disturbingly violent perspective on the
world, as when he bursts out: “This is no world / To play with maumets
[dolls] and to tilt with lips [to kiss]. / We must have bloody noses
and cracked crowns” (II.iv.82–84). In his
thirst for war, Hotspur does not even admit love into his worldview;
he is a knight without chivalry.
