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Warkworth. Before Northumberland's 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 prepar'd defence;
Whilst the big year, swol'n 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 houshold? 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

wrongs.

[Exit

SECOND PART OF

KING HENRY IV.

SCENE 1.-The same.

ACT I.

The Porter before the gate; Enter Lord BARDOLPH.

Bardolph.

WHO keeps the gate here, ho?-Where is the earl?

Port. What shall I say you are?

Bard. Tell thou the earl,

That the lord Bardolph doth attend him here.

Port. His lordship is walk'd forth into the orchard; Please it your honour, knock but at the gate, And he himself will answer.

Enter Northumberland.

Bard. Here comes the earl.

- North. What news, lord Bardolph? every minute now Should be the father of some stratagem: 1

The times are wild; contention, like a horse
Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose,
And bears down all before him.

Bard. Noble earl,

I bring you certain news from Shrewbury.
North. Good, an heaven will!

Bard. As good as heart can wish :-
The king is almost wounded to the death;
And, in the fortune of my lord your son,

Prince Harry slain outright; and both the Blunts
Kill'd by the hand of Douglas: young prince John,
And Westmoreland, and Stafford, fled the field;
And Harry Monmouth's brawn, the hulk sir John,
Is prisoner to your son: O, such a day,
So fought, so follow'd, and so fairly won,
Came not, till now, to dignify the times,
Since Cæsar's fortunes!

[1] Stratagem racans here some important or dreadful event. MASON.

North. How is this deriv'd?

Saw you the field? came you from Shrewsbury?

Bar. I spake with one, my lord, that came from thence; A gentleman well bred, and of good name,

That freely render'd me these news for true.

North. Here comes my servant, Travers, whom I sent On Tuesday last to listen after news.

Bard. My lord, I over-rode him on the way; And he is furnish'd with no certainties,

More than he haply may retail from me.

Enter TRAVERS.

North. Now, Travers, what good tidings come with you?
Tra. My lord, sir John Umfrevile turn'd me back
With joyful tidings; and, being better hors'd,
Outrode me. After him, came, spurring hard,
A gentleman almost forspent with speed,

That stopp'd by me to breathe his bloodied horse :
He ask'd the way to Chester; and of him
I did demand, what news from Shrewsbury.
He told me, that rebellion had bad luck,
And that young Harry Percy's spur was cold:
With that, he gave his able horse the head,
And, bending forward, struck his armed heels?
Against the panting sides of his poor jade
Up to the rowel-head; and, starting so,
He seem'd in running to devour the way,
Staying no longer question.

North. Ha!—

Again.

Said he, young Harry Percy's spur was cold?
Of Hotspur, coldspur? that rebellion
Had met ill luck!

Bard. My lord, I'll tell you what ;-
If my young lord your son have not the day,
Upon mine honour, for a silken point4

I'll give my barony: never talk of it.

North. Why should the gentleman, that rode by Trav

ers,

Give then such instances of loss?

Bard. Who, he?

He was some hilding fellow, that had stol'n

The horse he rode on; and, upon my life,

[2] ! thick that I have observed in old prints the rowel of those times to have been only a single spike JOHN' ON.

[3] So in Job xxxix. “H swalloweth the ground in fierceness and rage.” [4] A point is a string tagged, or lace.

JOHNSON,

Spoke at a venture. Look, here comes more news.
Enter MORTON.

North. Yea, this man's brow, like to a title-leaf,
Foretells the nature of a tragic volume :5

So looks the strond, whereon the imperious flood
Hath left a witness'd usurpation.--

Say, Morton, didst thou come from Shrewsbury?
Mort. I ran from Shrewsbury, my noble lord;
Where hateful death put on his ugliest mask,
To fright our party.

North. How doth my son, and brother?
Thou tremblest; and the whiteness in thy cheek
Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand.
Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,
Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night,

And would have told him, half his Troy was burn'd:
But Priam found the fire, ere he his tongue,
And I my Percy's death, ere thou report'st it.

This thou wouldst say—Your son did thus, and thus ;
Your brother, thus; so fought the noble Douglas;
Stopping my greedy ear with their bold deeds:
But in the end, to stop mine ear indeed,
Thou hast a sigh to blow away this praise,
Ending with-brother, son, and all are dead.
Mort. Douglas is living, and your brother, yet :)
But, for my lord your son,-

North. Why, he is dead.

See, what a ready tongue suspicion hath!

He, that but fears the thing he would not know,

Hath, by instinct, knowledge from others' eyes,

That what he fear'd is chanced. Yet speak, Morton; Tell thou thy earl, his divination lies ;

And I will take it as a sweet disgrace,

And make thee rich for doing me such wrong.

Mort. You are too great to be by me gainsaid:

Your spirit is too true,your fears too certain.

North. Yet, for all this, say not that Percy's dead.

I see a strange confession in thine eye :

Thou shak'st thy head; and hold'st it fear,6 or sin,
To speak a truth. If he be slain, say so :

The tongue offends not, that reports his death:

(5) It may not be amiss to observe, that, in the time of our poet, the title" page to an elegy, as well as every intermediate leaf, was totally black. STE (6) Fear for danger. WARB.

24 VOL. IV.

And he doth sin, that doth belie the dead;
Not he, which says the dead is not alive.
Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news
Hath but a losing office; and his tongue
Sounds ever after as a sullen bell,
Remember'd knolling a departing friend."

Bard. I cannot think, my lord, your son is dead.
Mort. I am sorry, I should force you to believe
That, which I would to heaven I had not seen :
But these mine eyes saw him in bloody state,
Rend'ring faint quittance, wearied and out-breath'd,
To Harry Monmouth; whose swift wrath beat down
The never-daunted Percy to the earth,

From whence with life he never more sprung up.
In few, his death (whose spirit lent a fire
Even to the dullest peasant in his camp,)
Being bruited once, took fire and heat away
From the best temper'd courage in his troops :
For from his metal was his party steel'd ;
Which once in him abated, all the rest
Turn'd on themselves, like dull and heavy lead.
And as the thing that's heavy in itself,
Upon enforcement, flies with greatest speed;
So did our men, heavy in Hotspur's loss,

Lend to this weight such lightness with their fear,
That arrows fled not swifter toward their aim,
Than did our soldiers, aiming at their safety,
Fly from the field: Then was that noble Worcester
Too soon ta'en prisoner: and that furious Scot,
The bloody Douglas, whose well-labouring sword
Had three times slain the appearance of the king,
'Gan vail his stomach, 'and did grace the shame
Of those that turn'd their backs; and, in his flight,
Stumbling in fear, was took. The sum of all
Is, that the king hath won; and hath sent out
A speedy power, to encounter you, my lord,
Under the conduct of young Lancaster,

And Westmoreland: This is the news at full.

(7) The bell, anciently was rung before expiration, and thence was called the passing bell, i. e. the bell that solicited prayers for the soul passing into another world.

STEEV.

(8) By faint quittance is meant a faint return of blows. STEEV. (9) Abated is not put here for the general idea of diminished, nor for the notion of blunted, as applied to a single edge. Abated means reduced to a lower temper, or, as the workmen call it, let down. JOHNS.

(1) Began to fall his courage, to let his spirits sink under his fortune.

JOHNS

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