Summary: Act I, scene iv
Inside the Tower of London, the imprisoned Clarence tells
Brackenbury, the lieutenant of the tower, about the strange dream
he had the night before. Clarence says he dreamed that he was outside
of the tower and about to set sail for France, along with his brother,
Richard. But as they walked along the deck of the ship, Richard
stumbled, and when Clarence tried to help him, Richard accidentally pushed
him into the ocean. Clarence saw all the treasures of the deep laid
out before him, as his drowning was prolonged for a very long time.
He struggled to give up the ghost, but had to feel the terrible pain
of drowning over and over again. Clarence then dreamed that he visited
the underworld, where he saw the ghosts of those for whose deaths
he had been partly responsible in the recent overthrow of the monarchy.
In particular, Clarence dreamed that he saw the ghost of Prince
Edward—the son of Henry VI and first husband of Lady Anne—whom Clarence
himself had helped to kill. Prince Edward cried out aloud, cursing
Clarence, and the Furies seized Clarence to drag him down to hell.
Clarence then woke from the dream, trembling and terrified.
Brackenbury commiserates with Clarence, and Clarence,
who has a foreboding of evil, asks him to stay with him while he
sleeps. Brackenbury agrees, and Clarence falls asleep.
Suddenly, Richard’s hired murderers enter unannounced.
They rudely hand Brackenbury the warrant that Richard gave them—a legal
document that orders Brackenbury to leave them alone with Clarence,
no questions asked. Brackenbury leaves quickly.
Left alone with the sleeping Clarence, the two murderers
debate how best to kill him. Both suffer some pangs of conscience,
but the memory of the reward Richard offers them overcomes their
qualms. Eventually they decide to beat him with their swords and
then to drown him in the keg of wine in the next room. But Clarence
suddenly wakes and pleads with them for his life. The murderers
waver in their resolve, and Clarence finally asks them to go to
his brother Richard, who, Clarence thinks, will reward them for
sparing his life. One of the murderers hesitates, but, the other,
after revealing to the unbelieving Clarence that it is Richard who
has sent them to kill him, stabs Clarence, and puts his body in
the keg. The murderers flee the scene before anyone comes to investigate.
O Lord! Methought what pain it was to
drown. . . .
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Analysis
Clarence’s description of his dream is notable for both
its striking language and its portentous foreshadowing. Clarence
is unaware that Richard is behind his imprisonment, but he nonetheless
dreams that his brother causes his death. His vivid description
of the terror of drowning is also memorable: “O Lord! Methought
what pain it was to drown / What dreadful noise of waters in my
ears, / What sights of ugly death within mine eyes!” (I.iv.21–23).
The evocative phrases Shakespeare uses, such as the descriptions
of the strange treasures Clarence sees and the “[t]en thousand men
that fishes gnawed upon” (I.iv.25), juxtapose
earthly wealth and human mortality—a frequent concern of Renaissance
writers. Some of the images used here, such as that of the dead
men’s skulls at the bottom of the sea into whose eye sockets reflecting
gems have fallen, are similar to images that Shakespeare uses in
his later play The Tempest. In that play, a fairy
sings to a young prince whose father is believed to have drowned
at sea, describing the way his father’s bones have turned into coral
and his eyes to pearls.
Clarence’s dream is also an eerie foreshadowing of his
actual drowning later in the scene. Moreover, it foreshadows the
nightmare Richard himself experiences just before battle in Act
V, scene v. Like the appearance of Margaret’s curses in Act I, scene
iii, the use of a foreshadowing dream here indicates the predominance
of the supernatural in Richard III. While the play
is technically classified as a history play, in many respects it
more closely resembles Shakespearean tragedy, given its villainous
central character, Richard, and the crucial role played by supernatural
occurrences such as curses, ghosts, prophecies, and dreams.
