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HENRY THE FOURTH,

SECOND PART.

OBSERVATIONS.

SECOND PART OF KING HENRY IV.] The transactions comprized in this history take up about nine years. The action commences with the account of Hotspur's being defeated and killed [1403;] and closes with the death of King Henry IV. and the coronation of King Henry V. [1412-13.] THEOBALD.

This play was first entered at Stationers' Hall, August 23, 1600. STEEVENS.

The Second Part of King Henry IV. I suppose to have been written in 1598. See An Attempt to ascertain the Order of Shakespeare's Plays, Vol. II. MALONE.

Mr. Upton thinks these two plays improperly called The First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth. The first play ends, he says, with the peaceful settlement of Henry in the kingdom by the defeat of the rebels. This is hardly true; for the rebels are not yet finally suppressed. The second, he tells us, shows Henry the Fifth in the va rious lights of a good-natured rake, till, on his father's death, he assumes a more manly character. This is true; but this representation gives us no idea of a dramatic action. These two plays will appear to every reader, who shall peruse them without ambition of critical discoveries, to be so connected, that the second is merely a sequel to the first t; to be two only because they are too long to be JOHNSON

one.

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INDUCTION.

Warkworth. Before Northumberland's Castle.
MOUR, 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;
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 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 rebels' blood. But what mean I

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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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[Exit.

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