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STANFORD LIBRARY

INDUCTION.

Warkworth. Before Northumberland's Castle.

Enter Rumour, painted full of Tongues.3

RUM. Open your ears; For which of

you will stop The vent of hearing, when loud Rumour speaks?

2 Enter Rumour,] This speech of Rumour is not inelegant or unpoetical, but it is wholly useless, since we are told nothing which the first scene does not clearly and naturally discover. The only end of such prologues is to inform the audience of some facts previous to the action, of which they can have no knowledge from the persons of the drama. JOHNSON.

3-Rumour, painted full of Tongues.] This the author probably drew from Holinshed's Description of a Pageant, exhibited in the court of Henry VIII. with uncommon cost and magnificence: "Then entered a person called Report, apparelled in crimson sattin, full of toongs, or chronicles." Vol. III. p. 805. This however might be the common way of representing this personage in masques, which were frequent in his own times. T. WARTON.

Stephen Hawes, in his Pastime of Pleasure, had long ago exhibited her (Rumour) in the same manner:

"A goodly lady, envyroned about
"With tongues of fire.-

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And so had Sir Thomas More, in one of his Pageants: "Fame I am called, mervayle you nothing

"Thoughe with tonges I am compassed all rounde." Not to mention her elaborate portrait by Chaucer, in The Booke of Fame; and by John Higgins, one of the assistants in The Mirror for Magistrates, in his Legend of King Albanacte.

FARMER.

I, from the orient to the drooping west, 4
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;

5

In a masque presented on St. Stephen's night, 1614, by Thomas Campion, Rumour comes on in a skin-coat full of winged tongues. Rumour is likewise a character in Sir Clyomon, Knight of the Golden Shield, &c. 1599.

So also, in The whole magnificent Entertainment given to King James, and the Queen his Wife, &c. &c. 15th March, 1603, by Thomas Decker, 4to. 1604: "Directly under her in a cart by herselfe, Fame stood upright: a woman in a watchet roabe, thickly set with open eyes and tongues, a payre of large golden winges at her backe, a trumpet in her hand, a mantle of sundry cullours traversing her body: all these ensignes displaying but the propertie of her swiftnesse and aptnesse to disperse Rumoure." STEEVENS.

- painted full of Tongues.] This direction, which is only to be found in the first edition in quarto of 1600, explains a passage in what follows, otherwise obscure. POPE.

the drooping west,] A passage in Macbeth will best explain the force of this epithet:

"Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
"And night's black agents to their preys do rouse.'

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MALONE.

• Rumour is a pipe-] Here the poet imagines himself describing Rumour, and forgets that Rumour is the speaker.

JOHNSON.

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,7

6

SO easy and so plain a stop,] The stops are the holes in a flute or pipe. So, in Hamlet: "Govern these ventages with your finger and thumb:-Look you, these are the stops." Again: "You would seem to know my stops." STEEVENS.

7 And this worm-eaten hold of ragged stone,] The old copies read-worm-eaten hole. MALONE.

Northumberland had retired and fortified himself in his castle, a place of strength in those times, though the building might be impaired by its antiquity; and, therefore, I believe our poet

wrote:

THEOBALD.

And this worm-eaten hold of ragged stone. Theobald is certainly right. So, in The Wars of Cyrus, &c. 1594:

"Besieg'd his fortress with his men at arms,

"Where only I and that Libanio stay'd

"By whom I live. For when the hold was lost," &c.

Again, in King Henry VI. P. III:

"She is hard by with twenty thousand men,

"And therefore fortify your hold, my lord." STEEvens.

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.

ACT I. SCENE I.

The same.

The Porter before the Gate; Enter Lord
BARDOLPH.

BARD. Who keeps the gate here, ho?-Where is the earl?

PORT. What shall I say you are?

Tell thou the earl,

BARD.
That the lord Bardolph doth attend him here.

PORT. His lordship is walk'd forth into the or

chard;

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 mi

nute now

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