Henry IV Part 2: Metaphors 5 key examples

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.