After the defeat of the rebel lords led by Hotspur has been confirmed, Hotspur’s father, the Earl of Northumberland, deliberates on his next move. His first instinct is to rush to battle, but Lady Percy, his daughter-in-law and Hotspur’s widow, criticizes Northumberland harshly and uses a metaphor that compares Hotspur to a “glass” or mirror:
He was indeed the glass
Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.
He had no legs that practiced not his gait;
And speaking thick, which nature made his blemish,
Became the accents of the valiant;
For those that could speak low and tardily
Would turn their own perfection to abuse
To seem like him. So that in speech, in gait,
In diet, in affections of delight,
In military rules, humors of blood,
He was the mark and glass, copy and book,
That fashioned others.
Mourning her husband, she praises him hyperbolically. In comparing him in a metaphor to a mirror, Lady Percy suggests that all of the young noblemen in England have “mirrored” him in their appearance and behavior. She claims that they “did dress themselves” as if they were Hotspur, they “practiced” his “gait” or way of walking, and have even copied his mode of speech, a “thick” tone which was in him a merely accidental “blemish” of nature. In virtually all regards, then, from “speech” and “gait” to “diet” and “affections,” Hotspur has been the “mark and glass, copy and book,” which others have modeled themselves upon. Lady Percy’s metaphor, then, suggests that Hotspur has been widely recognized as a paragon of virtue and fashion.
In a comic scene, a drunk Falstaff enjoys a rowdy dinner in Eastcheap, a low-class neighborhood in the play, with Mistress Quickly, the hostess of a tavern to whom he owes a good deal of money, and Doll Tearsheet, a prostitute. Teasing Falstaff, Doll alludes to a series of figures from Greek mythology and medieval history:
Ah, you sweet little rogue, you. Alas, poor ape,
how thou sweat’st! Come, let me wipe thy face.
Come on, you whoreson chops. Ah, rogue, i’ faith, I love thee. Thou art as valorous as Hector of Troy,
worth five of Agamemnon, and ten times better
than the Nine Worthies. Ah, villain!
Here, Doll mixes insult with praise, first insulting him for being sweaty but then affectionately wiping the sweat off of his face. Teasingly, she claims that Falstaff is not only “as valorous as Hector of Troy” but also “worth five of Agamemnon” and even “ten times better / than the Nine Worthies.” Here, she alludes first to Hector, the greatest soldier in the Trojan army in Homer’s Iliad. Next, she compares Falstaff to Agamemnon, a king who, in the Iliad, leads the Greek army in the siege of Troy. Finally, she alludes to the “Nine Worthies,” or nine men from history and legend who were understood in medieval England to exemplify the virtues of “Chivalry,” including Alexander the Great and King Arthur. Doll’s praise exemplifies verbal irony; in hyperbolically comparing him to these famous and worthy men, she ironically emphasizes Falstaff’s cowardly and self-serving nature.
