Summary: Act III, scene ii
Very early in the morning, a messenger knocks at the door
of Lord Hastings, sent by Hastings’s friend Lord Stanley. The messenger
tells Hastings that Stanley has learned about the “divided counsels”
that Richard plans to hold this day (III.i.176).
The previous night, the messenger says, Stanley had a nightmare
in which a boar attacked and killed him. The boar is Richard’s heraldic
symbol, and according to the messenger, Stanley is afraid for his
safety and that of Hastings. He urges Hastings to take to horseback
and flee with him before the sun rises, heading away from Richard
and toward safety.
Hastings dismisses Stanley’s fears and tells the messenger
to assure Stanley that there is nothing to fear. Catesby arrives
at Hastings’s house. He has been sent by Richard to discover Hastings’s feelings
about Richard’s scheme to rise to power. But when Catesby brings
up the idea that Richard should take the crown instead of Prince
Edward, Hastings recoils in horror. Seeing that Hastings will not
change his mind, Catesby seems to drop the issue.
Stanley arrives, complaining of his forebodings, but
Hastings cheerfully reassures him of their safety. Finally, Hastings
goes off to the council meeting along with Buckingham. Ironically,
Hastings is celebrating the news that Elizabeth’s kinsmen will be
executed, thinking that he and his friend Stanley are safe in the
favor of Richard and Buckingham. Hastings is blissfully unaware
of Richard’s plan to decapitate him should Hastings refuse to join
Richard’s side.
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Act III, scene ii →
Summary: Act III, scene iii
Guarded by the armed Sir Richard Ratcliffe, the queen’s
kinsmen Rivers and Gray, along with their friend Sir Thomas Vaughan,
enter their prison at Pomfret Castle. Rivers laments their impending
execution. He tells Ratcliffe that they are being killed for nothing
but their loyalty, and that their killers will eventually pay for
their crimes. Gray, remembering Margaret’s curse, says that it has
finally descended upon them, and that the fate that awaits them
is their punishment for their original complicity in the Yorkists’
murder of Henry VI and his son. Rivers reminds Gray that Margaret
also cursed Richard and his allies. He prays for God to remember
these curses but to forgive the one Margaret pronounced against
Elizabeth herself, and her two young sons, the princes. The three
embrace and prepare for their deaths.
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Summary: Act III, scene iv
At Richard’s Council session in the Tower of
London, the suspicious Hastings asks the councilors about the cause
of their meeting. He says that the meeting’s purpose is supposed
to be to discuss the date on which Prince Edward should be crowned king,
and Derby affirms that this is indeed the purpose of the meeting.
Richard arrives, smiling and pleasant, and asks the Bishop of Ely
to send for a bowl of strawberries. But Buckingham takes Richard
aside to tell him what Catesby has learned—that Hastings is loyal
to the young princes and is unlikely to go along with Richard’s
plans to seize power.
When Richard re-enters the council room, he has changed
his tune entirely. Pretending to be enraged, he displays his arm—which, as
everyone knows, has been deformed since his birth—and says that
Queen Elizabeth, conspiring with Hastings’s mistress Shore, must
have cast a spell on him to cause its withering. When Hastings hesitates
before accepting this speculation as fact, Richard promptly accuses
Hastings of treachery, orders his execution, and tells his men that
he will not eat until he has been presented with Hastings’s head.
Left alone with his executioners, the stunned Hastings slowly realizes
that Stanley was right all along. Richard is a manipulative, power-hungry
traitor, and Hastings has been dangerously overconfident. Realizing
that nothing can now save England from Richard’s rapacious desire
for power, he too cries out despairingly that Margaret’s curse has
finally struck home.
