INDUCTION. ▪ Enter Rumour, 2 painted full of tongues. PEN your ears; for which of you will stop The vent of hearing, when loud Rumour speaks? I, from the orient to the drooping weft, Enter Rumour.] This fpeech of Rumour is not inelegant or unpoetical, but is wholly useless, fince we are told nothing which the firft fcene does not clearly and naturally discover. The only end of fuch prologues is to inform the audience of fome facts previous to the action, of which they can have no knowledge from the perfons of the drama. JOHNSON. Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues.] This the author probably drew from Holinfhed's Defcription of a Pageant, exhibited in the court of Henry VIII. with uncommon coft and magnifi cence. "Then entered a perfon called Report, apparalled "In crimson fattin, full of toongs, or chronicles," Vol. 3. p. 805. This however might be the common way of reprefenting this perfonage in mafques, which were frequent in his own times. WARTON. Stephen Hawes, in his Paftime of Pleasure, had long ago exhibited her (Rumour) in the fame manner; "A goodly lady, envyroned about With tongues of fyre.". And fo had Sir Thomas Moore, in one of his Pageants, "Fame I am called, mervayle you nothing Thoughe with tonges I am compaffed all arounde." Not to mention her elaborate portrait by Chaucer, in The Booke of Fame; and by John Higgins, one of the affiftants in The Mirror for Magiftrates, in his Legend of King Albanacte. FARMER. In a mafque prefented on St. Stephen's night, 1614, by Thomas Campion, Rumour comes on in a fkin-coat full of winged tongues. STEEVENS. painted full of tongues.] This direction, which is only to be found in the first edition in quarto of 1600, explains a paffage in what follows, otherwife obfcure. POPE. Falstaff, Poins, Bardolph, Pistol, Peto, and Page. Shallow and Silence, country juftices. Davy, fervant to Shallow. Phang and Snare, two ferjeants. Mouldy, 5 THE SECOND PART HENRY IV. ACT I. SCENE I. Northumberland's castle. Enter lord Bardolph; the Porter at the door. BARDOLPH. HO keeps the gate here, ho? Where is the earl? WH Port. What fhall I fay you are? Bard. Tell thou the earl, That the lord Bardolph doth attend him here. 5 The Second Part of Henry IV.] The tranfactions comprized in this history take up about nine years. The action commences with the account of Hotspur's being defeated and killed; and clofes with the death of king Henry IV. and the coronation of king Henry V. THEOBALD. Mr. Upton thinks these two plays improperly called The Firft and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth. The first play ends, he fays, with the peaceful fettlement of Henry in the kingdom by the defeat of the rebels. This is hardly true; for the rebels are not yet finally fuppreffed. The fecond, he tells us, fhews Henry the Fifth in the various lights of a good-natured rake, till, on his father's death, he affumes a more manly character. This is true; but this reprefentation gives us no idea of a dramatic action. Thefe two plays will appear to every reader, who shall peruse them without ambition of critical discoveries, to be fo connected, that the fecond is merely a fequel to the firft; to be two only because they are too long to be one. JOHNSON. VOL. V. A a Port. |