SOURCE: Krims, Marvin B. “Hotspur's Antifeminine Prejudice in Shakespeare's 1 Henry IV.” Literature and Psychology 4, nos. 1-2 (1994): 118-32.

In the following essay, Krims offers a psychoanalytic interpretation of Hotspur, examining his extreme intolerance for so-called feminine principles and traits—including inconstancy, submissiveness, and compassion—in others and in himself.

In creating the Hotspur of 1 Henry IV, Shakespeare retained the impetuous and courageous quality of the historic Sir Henry Percy.¹ However, the “phallocentric” attitudes the fictive Hotspur displays are entirely of the author's creation.² Although these phallocentric attitudes may in part reflect the cultural bias of Early Modern England and perhaps Shakespeare's own bias, it is the purpose of this paper to show that Hotspur's words also reveal the unconscious conflicts underlying his phallocentricity. By disclosing these unconscious structures in the subtext, Shakespeare undermines Hotspur's phallocentricity even as he represents it on the surface of the text.

Hotspur reveals his...