Word: hotspurs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Henry IV, Part I is the richest of Shakespeare's chronicle plays, partly for the fire and dash of its impetuous Hotspur, pre-eminently for the titanic verve of its waddling Falstaff. Between the two of them - the one filled with chivalric ideals of honor, the other cynically dismissing honor as mere "air" - stand all manner of men, and of human ambitions and failings and faiths. About equally between them, at the center of the play, stands a youthful Prince Hal, who must grow from being a thoughtless playboy and Falstaff's roistering playfellow into Hotspur...
...actors, and his performances in 20th-century American works have been unbeatable. But he is as yet vocally unequipped to cope with the demands of Shakespearean language. This is not surprising in view of the fact that his only previous experience with the Bard was a brief go at Hotspur last summer in Canada. Good classical diction is not achieved overnight, and some never master it after a lifetime...
There is in the pages of Henry IV another incarnation of disorderly glory as eminently actable as Falstaff himself: Harry Hotspur, who is both the noble avatar of chivalry gone out-of-date, and a very young man full of appealing foibles. In this role Thomas Weisbuch is properly brisk and explosive, but even from Row D his words are often hard to understand; worse, he lacks both the charm of boyish buoyancy that should make Hotspur irresistible, and the trumpet-tongued grandeur requisite to his mounting "esperance...
...Hotspur lies dead, however, at the end of the play, and the coming repudiation of Falstaff is announced near the beginning. Shakespeare's theme, one of his favorites, is the defeat of high disorder and glorious idiosyncrasy by a comparatively hum-drum and rather chilly practicality, in the person of Henry, Prince of Wales. In Part II of Henry IV Shakespeare shows us that Hotspur's colleagues are merely anarchic self-seekers and that Falstaff and his friends have a sizeable streak of moral rottenness; in Henry V the now-eponymous hero reconciles (with some disturbing overtones) personal grandeur with...
...girls know so little about racing yet. We are thankful that the very famous 'Hotspur' has agreed to come and tell us his secrets." A few days ago these frightfully polite words, rich with Britain's broadest bazaar-opening vowels, issued from blonde Dair Marr, 17, as she introduced Ewr Curling, the Daily Telegraph's horse expert, to 30 of the finest blooded fillies in London. Dair & Co. had cause to hear a betting and breeding lecture. As students at the Cygnets House, the most exclusive finishing school in England, they must learn to "talk politics...