Shakespeare found no hint of these external traits in the chronicle. He bodied forth Hotspur's idiosyncrasy with such ardour that everything, down to his outward habit, shaped itself accordantly. Hotspur speaks in impatient ejaculations; he is absent and forgetful out of sheer passionateness. His characteristic impetuousness shows itself in such little traits as his inability to remember the names he wants to cite. When the rebels are portioning out the country between them, he starts up with an oath because he has forgotten his map. When he has something to relate, he is so absorbed in the gist of his matter, and so impatient to get at it, that the intermediate steps escape his memory (i. 3):-- "Why, look you, I am whipp'd and scourg'd with rods, Nettled, and stung with pismires, when I hear Of this vile politician, Bolingbroke. _In Richard's time,--what do ye call the place?--_ _A plague upon--it is in Glostershire:--_ _'T was where the madcap Duke his uncle kept,_ _His uncle York_,--where I first bow'd my knee Unto this king of smiles, this Bolingbroke." When another person speaks to him, he listens for a moment, but presently his thoughts are away on their own affairs; he forgets where he is and what is said to him; and when Lady Percy has finished her long and moving appeal (ii. 3) with the words-- "Some heavy business hath my lord in hand, And I must know it, else he loves me not," all the reply vouchsafed her is:-- "_Hotspur_. What, ho! _Enter Servant._ Is Gilliams with the packet gone? _Serv_. He is, my lord, an hour ago. _Hot_. Hath Butler brought those horses from the sheriff?" &c. Perpetually baulked of an answer, she at last cannot help coming out with this caressing menace, which gives us in one touch the whole relation between the pair of married lovers:-- "In faith, I'll break thy little finger, Harry, An if thou wilt not tell me all things true." And this absence of mind of Percy's is so far from being accidental or momentary that it is the very trait which Prince Henry seizes upon to characterise him (ii. 4):-- "I am not yet of Percy's mind, the Hotspur of the North; he that kills me some six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife,--'Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.' 'O my sweet Harry,' says she, 'how many hast thou killed to-day?' 'Give my roan horse a drench,' says he, and answers, 'Some fourteen,' an hour after; 'a trifle, a trifle.'"