[1] It was this characteristic of Shakespeare's style, at the period we are now considering, that so deeply influenced Goethe and the contemporaries of his youth, Lenz and Klinger (and, in Denmark, Hauch and Bredahl), determining the diction of their tragic dramas. Björnson shows traces of the same influence in his _Maria Stuart_ and _Sigurd Slembe._ [2] Thornbury: _Shakspere's England_, i. 104, _et seq_. [3] _Fresh Allusions to Shakespeare_, p. 372. [4] Thornbury: _Shakspere's England_, i. 227; Nathan Drake, _Shakespeare and His Times_, ii. 131. [5] Jeppe paa Bjerget, a Danish Abou Hassan or Christopher Sly, is the hero of one of Holberg's most admirable comedies. [6] Maurice Morgann: _An Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff,_ p. 150. [7] From a poem by Tegnér on Bellman, the Swedish convivial lyrist. XXIII _HENRY PERCY--THE MASTERY OF THE CHARACTER-DRAWING--HOTSPUR AND ACHILLES_ In contrast to Falstaff, Shakespeare has placed the man whom his ally Douglas expressly calls "the king of honour"--a figure as firmly moulded and as great as the Achilles of the Greeks or Donatello's Italian St. George--"the Hotspur of the North," an English national hero quite as much as the young Prince. The chronicle and the ballad of Douglas and Percy gave Shakespeare no more than the name and the dates of a couple of battles. He seized upon the name Harry Percy, and although its bearer was not historically of the same age as Prince Henry, but as old as his father, the King, he docked him of a score of years, with the poetical design of opposing to the hero of the play a rival who should be his peer, and should at first seem to outshine him. Percy is above everything and every one avid of honour. It is he who would have found it easy to pluck down honour from the moon or drag it up from the depths of the sea. But he is of an open, confiding, simple nature, with nothing of the diplomatist about him. He is hasty and impetuous; his spur is never cold until he is dead. Under the mistaken impression that women cannot keep their counsel, he is reticent towards his wife, in whom he might quite well confide, since she adores him, and calls him "the miracle of men." On the other hand, he suffers himself to be driven by the King's sour suspiciousness into foolhardy rebellion, and he is so simple-minded as to trust to his father and his uncle Worcester, one of whom deserts him in the hour of need, while the other plays a double game with him. Shakespeare has thrown himself so passionately into the creation of this character that he has actually painted for us Hotspur's exterior, giving him a peculiar walk and manner of speech. The warmth of the poet's sympathy has rendered his hero irresistibly attractive, and made him, in his manliness, a pattern for the youth of the whole country. Henry Percy enters (ii. 3) with a letter in his hand, and reads:--