Induction The Second part of King Henry the Fourth  Shakespeare homepage  |  Henry IV, part 2  | Induction 

 Next scene  Induction 

 Warkworth. Before the castle 

 Enter RUMOUR, painted full of tongues  RUMOUR  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, 

 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 rebel's 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 wrongs. 



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