In the opening act of the play, the figure of Rumor uses a metaphor to describe the nature of “rumors” or gossip:
Rumor 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 wav’ring multitude,
Can play upon it.
In a metaphor, Rumor compares “rumor” or gossip to a “pipe” that is “blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures.” In other words, people spread rumors because they are jealous of others and make wild guesses about them, with little concern for truth. Rumor expands upon his metaphor, noting that the pipe is so “easy” to play that “the blunt monster with uncounted heads” can play it. Here, Rumor uses a metaphor within his broader metaphor, characterizing the general population of England, or the “still-discordant wav’ring multitude,” as a colossal but stupid monster with many heads.
Rumor’s description of the King’s subjects is deeply critical. For Rumor, the English masses are foolish and easily influenced by rumors that spread throughout the Kingdom. His language here is anti-democratic: in imagining the population as a monster whose many heads fight with each other, he implies that a monarch is necessary to ensure that the nation moves in a single direction.
In a short comic scene at the beginning of the play, Falstaff, who has falsely proclaimed himself a hero for his brave exploits in the Battle of Shrewsbury, has been assigned a young Page to work as his assistant. Despite his bold claims of heroism, Falstaff has run out of money, and he asks the Page to count all of his remaining coins so that he can purchase some medicine. When the Page reveals that Falstaff has little money remaining, the elderly knight uses a metaphor that compares debt to a physical illness or disease:
I can get no remedy against this consumption
of the purse. Borrowing only lingers and lingers
it out, but the disease is incurable.
First, echoing medical language, he describes the “consumption” of his purse, which he imagines as ill insofar as it holds no money. He further develops this metaphor, noting that he can temporarily resolve his symptoms by “Borrowing,” but ultimately, borrowing money cannot cure his disease; it merely prolongs it. The disease that is his personal debt, then, “lingers and lingers” despite his attempts to borrow money, because ultimately debt, like consumption (tuberculosis) at the time, is “incurable.” Through this metaphor, Falstaff reflects upon the nature of debt. Many who owe money attempt to borrow more, at interest, but ultimately this is not a permanent solution, and many end up owing more money than they did originally.
In a meeting of the rebel lords, Lord Bardolph, Sir Hastings, and the Archbishop of York discuss the defeat of Hotspur, their ally, by the King's troops at the Battle of Shrewsbury. Bardolph suggests that Hotspur was defeated as a result of his rashness and lack of planning. Using a lengthy and layered metaphor, Bardolph states:
When we mean to build,
We first survey the plot, then draw the model,
And when we see the figure of the house,
Then must we rate the cost of the erection,
Which if we find outweighs ability,
What do we then but draw anew the model
In fewer offices, or at least desist
To build at all? Much more in this great work,
Which is almost to pluck a kingdom down
And set another up, should we survey
The plot of situation and the model,
Consent upon a sure foundation,
Question surveyors, know our own estate.
A builder, he states, does not simply begin building a house on any land he wants to, but rather, must “first survey the plot, then draw the model.” Later, the builder “must rate the cost” of the construction, adjusting the design of the house in response to the client’s finances. Here, he uses the construction of a house as a metaphor for military preparation. The rebels, he suggests, must not repeat Hotspur’s mistake, but rather should plan carefully, first examining “the plot of situation and the model” before double-checking other information.
In a brief scene, Prince Harry and his companion Poins argue about the Prince’s response to bad news regarding the health of his father, King Henry IV. In the course of their argument, the young Prince uses a metaphor that compares Poins’s thinking to a wide and well-trodden road. After Poins accuses Harry of not caring for his father, evidenced by his lack of tears, Harry responds:
PRINCE
What wouldst thou think of me if I should
weep?POINS
I would think thee a most princely hypocrite.PRINCE
It would be every man’s thought, and thou art
a blessed fellow to think as every man thinks. Never a man’s thought in the world keeps the roadway better than thine. Every man would think me an hypocrite indeed.
First, Harry notes a fallacy in Poins’s reasoning. Because Harry has not been crying, Poins assumes that he doesn’t care about his father. And yet, as Harry states, if he were to cry, Poins would merely interpret that as hypocrisy. There seems to be no right answer for Harry, as both crying and not crying will be taken as evidence of his heartlessness. After Poins admits that he would accuse the Prince of hypocrisy if he were to cry, Harry notes that many other people would think as Poins does. In fact, he states that Poins is “blessed” to “think as every man thinks." Further, in a metaphor, he states that when Poins thinks, he “keeps the roadway” closely. In other words, much as one person might follow a path that many others have taken, so too are Poins’s thoughts and beliefs aligned to those of the general opinion.
After the defeat of the rebel lords led by Hotspur has been confirmed, Hotspur’s father, the Earl of Northumberland, deliberates on his next move. His first instinct is to rush to battle, but Lady Percy, his daughter-in-law and Hotspur’s widow, criticizes Northumberland harshly and uses a metaphor that compares Hotspur to a “glass” or mirror:
He was indeed the glass
Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.
He had no legs that practiced not his gait;
And speaking thick, which nature made his blemish,
Became the accents of the valiant;
For those that could speak low and tardily
Would turn their own perfection to abuse
To seem like him. So that in speech, in gait,
In diet, in affections of delight,
In military rules, humors of blood,
He was the mark and glass, copy and book,
That fashioned others.
Mourning her husband, she praises him hyperbolically. In comparing him in a metaphor to a mirror, Lady Percy suggests that all of the young noblemen in England have “mirrored” him in their appearance and behavior. She claims that they “did dress themselves” as if they were Hotspur, they “practiced” his “gait” or way of walking, and have even copied his mode of speech, a “thick” tone which was in him a merely accidental “blemish” of nature. In virtually all regards, then, from “speech” and “gait” to “diet” and “affections,” Hotspur has been the “mark and glass, copy and book,” which others have modeled themselves upon. Lady Percy’s metaphor, then, suggests that Hotspur has been widely recognized as a paragon of virtue and fashion.
