MOULDY, SHADOW, WART, FEEBLE, and BULLCALF,

recruits.

FANG and SNARE, sheriff's officers.

LADY NORTHUMBERLAND.

LADY PERCY.

MISTRESS QUICKLY, hostess of a tavern in Eastcheap.

DOLL TEARSHEET.

VOL. VI

385

2 C

Lords and Attendants; Porter, Drawers, Beadles, Grooms, etc.
A Dancer, speaker of the epilogue.

SCENE: England.

DURATION OF TIME

Historic Time.-July 21, 1403, to April 9, 1413.

Dramatic Time.-Nine historic days with three extra Falstaffian days and intervals.

THE SECOND PART OF

KING HENRY THE FOURTH

INDUCTION.

Warkworth. Before the castle.

Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues.

Rum. Open your ears; for which of you will stop

The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks?
I, from the orient to the drooping west,
Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold
The acts commenced on this ball of earth :
Upon my tongues continual slanders ride,
The which in every language I pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.
I speak of peace, while covert enmity
Under the smile of safety wounds the world:
And who but Rumour, who but only I,
Make fearful musters and prepared defence,

Ind. Rumour, painted full of tongues. 'Rumour,' thus symbolically arrayed, frequently figured in Court pageants throughout the sixteenth century. The idea

10

was ultimately derived from Vergil's picture of Fama, Aen. iv. 173 f.

2. vent, aperture.

Whiles the big year, swoln with some other grief,
Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war,
And no such matter? Rumour is a pipe
Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures,
And of so easy and so plain a stop

That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant wavering multitude,
Can play upon it. But what need I thus
My well-known body to anatomize

Among my household? Why is Rumour here?
I run before King Harry's victory;

Who in a bloody field by Shrewsbury

Hath beaten down young Hotspur and his troops,
Quenching the flame of bold rebellion

Even with the rebels' blood. But what mean I
To speak so true at first? my office is
To noise abroad that Harry Monmouth fell
Under the wrath of noble Hotspur's sword,
And that the king before the Douglas' rage
Stoop'd his anointed head as low as death.
This have I rumour'd through the peasant towns
Between that royal field of Shrewsbury
And this worm-eaten hold of ragged stone,
Where Hotspur's father, old Northumberland,
Lies crafty-sick: the posts come tiring on,

And not a man of them brings other news

Than they have learn'd of me: from Rumour's tongues

They bring smooth comforts false, worse than true

20

30

[Exit. 40

35. ragged, rugged.

37. crafty-sick. Holinshed says nothing of a real or feigned sickness of Northumberland.

37. tiring on, probably riding hard, without a pause.