Mojo, The Bard, & Me

…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.

-Rumour

 

King Henry The Fourth Part II     Induction             Line 39

This line is pretty interesting. It’s the induction, which is sort of an introduction to the play. And the speaker is Rumour, who in this case is a personification of rumor. The stage direction at the very start is ‘Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues.’ This induction (introduction) is the precursor to the line we discussed in the 9/29 post  when Northumberland is finding out about his son’s death. The rumor was that his son Hotspur defeated Hal. The truth is that Hal killed Hotspur. In the forty line Induction Rumour talks about the false rumor of Hotspur beating Hal. Today’s lines are the end of Rumour’s speech. And they ring very true when he says that the smooth comforts of false rumours are worse than true wrongs.

Wait, ‘true wrongs?’ True wrongs? Smooth comforts false, which would be easier understood if stated ‘the smooth comforts of falsehoods,’ makes sense and is easily understood. But ‘true wrongs’ is a little harder. ‘True’ is understandable. But ‘wrongs’? Is he just meaning ‘bad news’ by ‘wrongs’? That seems a bit stretched, but that must be it. Wrongs is just bad stuff. Okay, that works.

Now as a side note, and unrelated to today's Totally Random line, here’s some interesting things I learned this week. I learned that Isaac Asimov, the scientist and incredibly prolific sci-fi writer, wrote a book on Shakespeare. Can you believe it? I was absolutely astounded. I also found that Shakespeare is the only author to have his own Dewey Decimal number. That’s the numbering system used in public libraries. It’s 822.33 in case you’re interested. So the next time you’re in any public library and you feel like browsing the Shakespeare section just go right to the stacks that have the 822’s. There, that’s today’s interesting Shakespeare facts.

These are the Asimov books I have, The Foundation Trilogy. They are classics of the sci-fi genre of which Isaac Asimov is one of the biggies. But I googled the guy after I found his Shakespeare book and it turns out that aside from the fiction and science books, the guy has history books, books on the bible, humor, Sherlock Holmes and you name it, a whole bunch of other stuff. Basically this guy has covered just about every genre, fiction and non-fiction that there is. He's the Gunter Gebel-Williams of authors.