Now Shakespeare may have wished to preserve this imagery, and have substituted Rumour for Report for euphony's sake and other causes. Rumour in effect seems to have been the same as the classic Fame. In Sir Clyomen and Sir Clamydes, a piece with which he was probably well acquainted, we meet "Enter Rumour running," and this may have been in his mind when he was writing the Induction to 2 Hen. IV. In his other plays also he personifies both rumour and report, as in
"That pitiful Rumour may report my flight,
To consolate thine ear. Come night, end day;
For with the dark, poor thief, I'll steal away."
All's Well, iii. 2.
He may also have had these lines of Phaer's Virgil in his mind:—
"At night she [Fame] walks, nor slumber sweet doth take nor never sleeps,
By day on houses' tops she sits, and gates or towers she keeps,
On watching-towers she climbs, and cities great she makes aghast,
Both truth and falsehood forth she tells, and lies abroad doth cast."