Explanatory Notes for Act 1, Scene 1
From King Henry the Fourth, second part. Ed. K. Deighton. London: Macmillan.
An Induction, or prologue, was not infrequently prefixed to
Explanatory Notes for Act 1, Scene 1
From King Henry the Fourth, second part. Ed. K. Deighton. London: Macmillan.
An Induction, or prologue, was not infrequently prefixed to a
play to inform the audience of such facts as they would not
gather from the play itself, as, for instance, in The Taming of the Shrew. Here it serves merely to link together the two parts
of the play.
Stage Direction.Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues.
Such a presentation of Rumour was not uncommon. Among
others, Farmer refers to Hawes's Pastime of Pleasure, where she
is spoken of as "A goodly lady, envyroned about With tongues of
fire"; to one of Sir Thomas More's Pageants, "Fame, I am
called, mervayle you nothing Thoughe with tonges I am compassed all round"; and to Chaucer's elaborate portrait of her in
The Books of Fame.
1. for which... stop, I say open your ears, for I know that
none of you will wish to stop them.
2. vent, "an opening for air or smoke, an air-hole, flue... - F. fente, 'a cleft, rift, chinke, slit, cranny'; Cotgrave, A participial substantive from the verb fendre, to cleave. - Lat. Findere,
to cleave"... (Skeat, Ety. Dict.). To be distinguished from vent, sale, to vent, to sell, from F. venie, a sale, from Lat. vendere, to
sell; and from vent, to snuff up air, breathe, puff out, from F.
vent, wind, from Lat. ventum, accusative of ventus, wind. In regard to this last, Skeat says, "If we had a large collection of quotations illustrative of the use of vent as a verb, I suspect it
would appear that the connection with the F. vent, wind, was due
solely to a misunderstanding and misuse of the word, and that it
is etymologically due to Vent (1) [ = flue] or Vent (2) [ = sale], or
to confusion of both"...
3. the drooping west, the idea is that of flowers hanging down
their heads as the sun sets. Malone illustrates by Macbeth. iii. 2.
52. 3, "Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, Whiles
night's black agents to their preys do rouse."
4. post-horse, "post originally signified a fixed place, as a military post; then, a fixed place on a line of road where horses are kept for travelling, a stage, or station; thence it was transferred to the person who travelled in this way, using relays of
horses, and finally to any quick traveller" (Eastwood and
Wright, Bible Wordbook, quoted by Skeat, Ety. Dict.): still, continually, ever.
7. The which, see note on i. 1, 164.
10. Under... safety, appearing all the while in such harmless
and pleasant guise.
12. Make... defence, exhibit the alarmed mustering of troops in preparation against attack; the converse of the "covert
enmity" which is preparing to "wound the world"; musters,
from O. F. mostre, for monstre, a pattern, view, sight, display,
from Lat. monstrare, to show.
13. Whiles, the old genitive of while, time, used adverbially:
swoln... grief, in reality pregnant with some other grievance,
cause of anxiety.
15. And no such matter, though in reality nothing of the kind,
nothing to do with war, ails the time.
17. And of... stop, and so easy of management: the stop is the
hole in the pipe on which the finger is placed to stop or to let out the air blown into it. Cp. Haml. iii. 2, 76, "Whose blood and
judgement are so well commingled. That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger To sound what stop she please"; iii. 2. 373,
"govern these ventages with your finger and thumb, give it
breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent
music. Look you, these are the stops."
18. the blunt... heads, the dull-witted monster with innumerable heads; "the many-headed multitude," as they are called in
Cor