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The times are wild. Contention, like a horse
Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose
And bears down all before him.
(Act 1, scene 1, lines 12–14)
The Earl of Northumberland addresses these lines to Lord Bardolph in the play’s opening scene. If “the times are wild,” as he says here, it’s because England is in a horrible muddle of various “contention[s].” In addition to the ongoing struggle to quell resistance movements in Wales and Scotland, the kingdom is also wracked by a rebellion that aims to depose the current king. Matters are even more complicated for Northumberland, given his increasingly tenuous relationship with the rebellion. Northumberland pretended to be sick to avoid leading his troops to war resulted in a disastrous loss at the Battle of Shrewsbury. Though dramatized at the end of Henry IV, Part 1, Northumberland will learn the full extent of the damage later in this scene—including the death of his beloved son, Hotspur. In this regard, Northumberland’s image of “contention” as a mad horse anticipates his own breakdown in the face of these “wild” times.
Whose memory is written on the earth
With yet-appearing blood, and the examples
Of every minute’s instance, present now,
Hath put us in these ill-beseeming arms,
Not to break peace or any branch of it,
But to establish here a peace indeed,
Concurring both in name and quality.
(Act 4, scene 1, lines 84–91)
The Archbishop of York speaks these lines to the Earl of Westmoreland, agreeing that the rebels should make peace with the king and hence put an end to the violence of the present moment. Westmoreland echoes the Archbishop when he attempts to convince Mowbray to accept the deal he’s offered: “Construe the times to their necessities, / And you shall say indeed it is the time / And not the King, that doth you injuries” (4.1.109–111). The irony, of course, is that Westmoreland’s words aim to deceive the rebel leaders into surrendering under false pretenses. In this way, he’s actually causing the rebels to misconstrue the times—that is, they are misreading the present situation, which will ultimately lead to their execution. In a moment of tragic irony, the Archbishop reflects on the conditions that make such a horrific misinterpretation possible: “The time misordered doth, in common sense, / Crowd us and crush us to this monstrous form” (4.1.278–79).
O my poor kingdom, sick with civil blows!
When that my care could not withhold thy riots,
What wilt thou do when riot is they care?
O, thou wilt be a wilderness again,
Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants.
(Act 4, scene 3, lines 288–92)
King Henry IV addresses these lines to Prince Harry after waking to find that his son has taken his crown. Believing that Harry took the crown out of a hunger for power, Henry worries for England’s future. Here he envisions the kingdom running riot with war and made “sick with civil blows.” This harrowing version of England will devolve back into a “wilderness” populated by cruel and selfish “wolves.” Henry’s vision is related to several other prophecies he makes about Harry’s future reign. However, because it’s based on a misperception, this prophecy arguably reflects the king’s present confusion more than it portends future doom. As Harry goes on to explain, he took the crown because he believed his father to be dead, and he wished to unburden him of the crown’s cruel weight. Far from demonstrating an irresponsible lust for power, Harry adopted the crown with all due respect for and fear of the responsibility it confers
