Act One: Rumour · Henry IV, Part 2

Induction. Rumour, "painted full of tongues," came on stage and told us its work: it had spread through England false news of the battle of Shrewsbury — that Hotspur had killed the Prince, and the King had fallen to the Douglas.

At Warkworth Castle, the old Earl of Northumberland, who had stayed away from Shrewsbury pretending to be sick, received the good false news; then the true news came, piece by piece: his son Hotspur was dead, killed by the Prince; the rebels were broken. Northumberland raged and threw away his crutch: "Let order die! . . . And darkness be the burier of the dead!" But there was hope: the Archbishop of York had raised a new army.

In London, Falstaff — now famous for "killing" Hotspur — was walking with his little page, a boy the Prince had given him, and complaining of his diseases: he had sent his water to the doctor, and the doctor said he might have more diseases than he knew for. "I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men." The Lord Chief Justice stopped him in the street, and rebuked him for the Gad's Hill robbery, and for leading the young Prince astray. Falstaff, deafness conveniently coming and going, bantered his way through it: "You that are old consider not the capacities of us that are young." "Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a decreasing leg? an increasing belly? is not your voice broken? your wind short? your chin double? your wit single?" The Lord Chief Justice told him that he was to go north with the army against the Archbishop. "I would to God my name were not so terrible to the enemy as it is." He tried to borrow a thousand pounds from the Lord Chief Justice. He had none. "I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse: borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable."

At York, the Archbishop and the rebel lords debated whether to fight without Northumberland's forces. They decided to go on: the King's army was divided three ways, against the French, against Glendower, and against them; and the people, the Archbishop said, were sick of their own choice — "the commonwealth is sick of their own choice; their over-greedy love hath surfeited."