Warkworth. Before NORTHUMBERLAND’S Castle. | |
| |
EnterRUMOUR, painted full of tongues | |
| Rum. Open your ears; for which of you will stop | |
| The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks? | 4 |
| 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, | 8 |
| 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: | 12 |
| And who but Rumour, who but only I, | |
| Make fearful musters and prepar’d defence, | |
| Whilst the big year, swoln with some other grief, | |
| Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war, | 16 |
| 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, | 20 |
| 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? | 24 |
| 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 | 28 |
| 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, | 32 |
| 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 the royal field of Shrewsbury | 36 |
| 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 | 40 |
| Than they have learn’d of me: from Rumour’s tongues | |
| They bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs. [Exit. | |
