This lady has plenty to say, but there is no written dialogue given, as she speaks in Welsh. The couple turn up again with Owen Glendower, his son-in-law Mortimer (Lady Percy’s brother), and Mortimer’s wife, Glendower’s daughter, in Act 3, scene 1. 1, II, 3 In faith I’ll break thy little finger Harry. The German artist Johann Ramberg (1763-1840) catches the moment perfectly with Hotspur, armed, whip in hand, waiting for his lively horse, and Lady Percy holding his shoulder and twisting his finger. He banters with her but refuses to say where he is going, only that she will follow him the next day. In faith, I’ll break thy little finger, Harry,Īn if thou wilt not tell me all things true. When he resists, her tone lightens as she tries to tease it out of him:Ĭome, come, you paraquito, answer me She wants to know what’s bothering him, but like many men today who have experienced the horrors of war, and who know of more to come, Percy cannot and will not tell her. Such as we see when men restrain their breath. That beads of sweat have stood upon thy browĪnd in thy face strange motions have appeared Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war,Īnd thus hath so bestirred thee in thy sleep, Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin, /Of prisoners’ ransom, and of soldiers slain,” we recognize the helpless feeling of a woman whose husband is suffering from PTSD. As Lady Percy asks what takes her lord from his bed, why he is musing and melancholy, why he talks in his sleep “of iron wars. Today the speech is not as familiar, but we bring to it a new context. William Dodd, The Beauties of Shakespear, London, 1752 It is a “set” speech of almost 30 lines which was published many times in selections of “Beauties of Shakespeare,” meant to be memorized by school children and by those at home learning good elocution. Jameson remarks that “almost every one knows by heart Lady Percy’s celebrated address to her husband.” The speech occurs in Act 2, scene 3, where her husband has been pacing up and down, reading a disturbing letter from someone who has backed down from joining him, Mortimer, and other rebels against Henry IV. Henri IV by Alexandre Bida watercolor, 19th-century. The French artist, Alexandre Bida (1813-1895), has a better sense of the tension in the scene, placing a physical distance between Hotspur with one foot in the saddle, and Lady Percy who twists around awkwardly to look at him. Artist unkown watercolor with pencil, 19th c. Romantic and Victorian period illustrations of Lady Percy tend to play up this “sprightly, feminine, and fond” aspect of her character, depicting her as a doting wife, seen in these images: The nineteenth-century essayist, Anna Jameson (1794-1860), whose study of Shakespeare’s heroines was widely read, says that Lady Percy “has no real influence” over her husband: “he has no confidence in her.” Jameson compares “Lady Percy’s fond upbraidings, and her half playful, half pouting entreaties,” with Portia’s “matronly dignity and tenderness.” Unlike Portia, however, who wounds herself to prove her trustworthiness, Lady Percy ultimately gives in to her husband’s misogynistic refusal to tell her what is on his mind.
There is also a long tradition relating her to Portia, the wife of Julius Caesar, who similarly confronts her husband to learn what has been so troubling his sleep. It’s interesting that he has Hotspur call her “Kate,” as she seems to reflect something of Shakespeare’s other “Kate,” the headstrong wife in The Taming of the Shrew, which was likely written a few years earlier than Henry IV. Ink on paper, ca.mid-19th to early 20th c Folger ART Box C842 no.5 Nevertheless, Shakespeare created from imagination the sort of woman he thought could match the impetuous character of Hotspur the warrior. She and Lady Mortimer are barely footnotes in Holinshed’s Chronicle, Shakespeare’s major source for the story of Henry IV. Shakespeare created these heroines out of the fragments of history, giving them voices that appeal freshly to us today.Īlthough Lady Percy’s husband Henry Percy or “Hotspur” calls her “Kate,” she was actually Elizabeth, the sister of Edmund Mortimer. Folger ART File I37 no.6īut though the play’s action focuses on the male characters and the build-up to their confrontations on the battlefield, the noblewomen affected by their husbands’ actions stake their own claims to the audience’s attention: feisty Lady Percy gives as good as she gets from her husband, and Lady Mortimer, who was silently cut from performances for hundreds of years, has been revived in modern productions. Inchbald by Rose Emma Drummond, engr, Hopgood, 1819.