Richard III

Some of the gems had wedged themselves like imitation eyes into the dead men’s skulls. The fake eyes gazed dully at the bones scattered around.

So you had time as you were dying to look around?

I thought I did, and I often tried to die. But the terrible water always held me back. It wouldn’t let my soul find its way to air but smothered it inside my gasping body. My body wanted so badly to vomit up my spirit that it almost burst.

And didn’t you wake up during this terrible agony?

Oh, no, my dream went on even after I died. In fact, the real nightmare had only just begun. With the help of the grim

ferryman

According to Greek mythology, an old man, Charon, ferries the dead across the river Styx to Hades, the underworld for the good and bad alike. Shakespeare adds a certain Christian flavor here to alter this tradition: the underworld of Clarence’s dream is hellish.

ferryman that poets like to write about, my soul crossed the river into the kingdom of endless night.

The first to greet me there was my great

father-in-law

Clarence abandoned Warwick, who fought for the Lancasters, to join forces with his own brother King Edward IV.

father-in-law , the famous earl of Warwick. He cried aloud, “What terrible punishment can this dark realm devise for the oath-breaker Clarence?” And he vanished. Then a ghost like an angel with its hair spattered in blood wandered by, and shieked,