The Second Part of Henry the Fourth: INDUCTION
Introduction INDUCTION INDUCTION ACT I ACT II ACT III ACT IV ACT V About the Play Feedback			Search: All the plays Hamlet Coriolanus Julius Caesar King Lear Macbeth Othello Romeo and Juliet Richard II Richard III Titus Andronicus Antony and Cleopatra Timon of Athens Henry IV Part 1 Henry IV Part 2 Henry the Fifth Henry VI Part 1 Henry VI Part 2 Henry VI Part 3 Henry VIII King John Pericles Troilus and Cressida All's Well... As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Cymbeline A Midsummer... Love's Labour's Lost Measure for Measure The Merry Wives... Much Ado about Nothing The Merchant of Venice Twelfth Night The Taming of... The Tempest The Two Gentlemen... The Winter's Tale    for: INDUCTION Warkworth. Before the castle Enter RUMOUR, painted full of tongues RUMOUR       Open your ears; for which of you will stop 110   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, 115   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, 120   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 125   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 130   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 135   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 140   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, 145   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. Exit Return to top of page ... or ... Go to next scene