Summary: Act III, scene i
With a flourish of trumpets, the young Prince
Edward, the heir to the throne, rides into London with his retinue.
His uncle Richard is there to greet him, accompanied by several
noblemen, including Richard’s close allies, the lords Buckingham
and Catesby. Richard greets the prince, but the intelligent boy
is suspicious of his uncle and parries Richard’s flattering language
with wordplay as clever as Richard’s own. The prince wants to know
what has happened to his relatives on his mother’s side—Rivers,
Gray, and Dorset. Although he doesn’t tell Prince Edward, Richard
has had Rivers and Gray arrested and imprisoned in the castle of
Pomfret; Dorset is presumably in hiding.
Lord Hastings enters, and announces that Elizabeth and
her younger son, the young duke of York, have taken sanctuary (taking sanctuary
means retreating to within a church or other holy ground, where,
by ancient English tradition, it was blasphemous for enemies to
pursue a fugitive). Buckingham is very irritated to hear this news. He
asks the Lord Cardinal to go to Elizabeth and retrieve young York
from her, and he orders Hastings to accompany the cardinal and forcibly
remove the young prince if Elizabeth refuses to yield him. The cardinal
understandably refuses, but Buckingham gives him a long argument
in which he says that a young child is not self-determining enough
to claim sanctuary. The cardinal gives in, and he and Lord Hastings
go to fetch young York. By the time they return, Richard has told
Prince Edward that he and his brother will stay in the Tower of
London until the young prince’s coronation. Both princes are unwilling
to be shut up in the tower.
After he sends the princes off to the tower,
Richard holds a private conference with Buckingham and Catesby to
discuss how his master plan is unfolding. Buckingham asks Catesby
whether he thinks that Lord Hastings and Lord Stanley can be counted
on to help Richard seize the throne. Although Lord Hastings is an
enemy of Elizabeth and her family, Catesby believes that Hastings’s
loyalty to the dead King Edward IV is so great that he would never
support Richard’s goal of taking the crown from the rightful prince.
Moreover, Catesby believes, Lord Stanley will follow whatever Lord
Hastings does.
Buckingham suggests that Richard hold a council in the
palace on the following day, supposedly to discuss when to crown
young Prince Edward as king. In reality, however, they will scheme
about how Richard can become king himself, and they must determine which
of the noblemen they can count on as allies. There will be “divided
counsels” the following day. First, a secret council will be held
to strategize. Next, there will be a public one, which everyone will
attend, at which those plans will be carried out (III.i.176).
Buckingham and Richard order Catesby to go to Lord Hastings, in
order to sound him out and find out how willing he might be to go along
with Richard’s plans. Richard adds that Catesby should tell Hastings
that Queen Elizabeth’s kinsmen, who are currently imprisoned in
Pomfret Castle, will be executed the next day. This news, he believes,
should please Hastings, who has long been their enemy. After Catesby
leaves, Buckingham asks Richard what they will do if Hastings remains
loyal to Prince Edward. Richard cheerfully answers that they will
chop off Hastings’s head. Buoyed by his plans, Richard promises
Buckingham that, after he becomes king, he will give Buckingham
the title of earl of Hereford.
Read a translation of
Act III, scene i →
Analysis
This scene provides further evidence of Richard’s skill
at manipulation and deception, but it also makes it clear that Richard’s
manipu-lations are transparent to the right kind of person. When
Richard speaks to the intelligent young prince, the boy is clearly
not fooled. When Prince Edward says, “I want more uncles here to
welcome me,” he reveals that he suspects Richard of having acted
against his other uncles—which is in fact the case (III.i.6).
The prince may be referring to Clarence, his actual uncle, whom
Richard has caused to be murdered. Still, since kinship titles are
rather vague in Shakespeare, he probably refers more directly to
Rivers, Gray, and Dorset, although two of them are actually his
mother’s adult sons.
