In the opening lines of the play, the recently crowned King Henry IV personifies the nation of England as a female figure who has been victimized by civil war. Speaking in court in front of a small group of assembled nobles including Lord John of Lancaster and the Earl of Westmoreland, the King vows to put an end to the violence that has marked the kingdom in recent years, using personification in the process:
No more the thirsty entrance of this soil
Shall daub her lips with her own children’s blood.
No more shall trenching war channel her fields,
Nor bruise her flow’rets with the armèd hoofs
Of hostile paces.
In his declaration of peace, the King personifies England as a woman whose children are the subjects of the kingdom. He notes that, as a result of the recent war, her lips have been smeared with “her own children’s blood,” a visceral visual image that emphasizes the senseless violence of the civil war. Further, he vows that “trenching war” will never again “channel her fields, Nor bruise her flow’rets.” Here, he reflects upon the ways in which war marks the physical landscape of the nation, imagining England as a woman whose body has been painfully wounded by the battles that have taken place upon it. At this point in the play, the King hopes that his nation will overcome the past violence in which he played a pivotal role.
