E. Pearlman, University of Colorado, Denver

Here is some familiar dialogue from The First Part of King Henry the Fourth:

Hotsp. Fie vpon this quiet life, I want worke.
 Lady. O my sweet Harry, how many hast thou kill'd to day?
 Hotsp. Giue my Roane horse a drench. Some fourteen, a trifle, a trifle.

In this carefully drawn domestic picture, the Percies, husband and wife, engage in tense but affectionate banter. Kate is all admiration, while Hotspur is unaccountably aloof—less interested in his wife than he is attracted by a favorite horse and by the "worke" of warfare. He is also more than a bit megalomaniacal, airily dismissing a morning's murderous exercise as a mere "trifle."

Although these lines may sound authentic, they are quite obviously a counterfeit, for neither Hotspur nor his lady ever speaks such words in propria persona. In actual fact, what happens is...