Richard III: Act 4, Scene 1 – Analysis
Scene Profile – At a Glance
- Location: Outside the Tower of London.
- What Happens: Queen Elizabeth, the Duchess of York and Lady Anne meet on their way to visit the princes and are refused entry by Brakenbury on the new King’s orders. Stanley arrives to take Anne to Westminster to be crowned. Elizabeth sends Dorset to Richmond; Anne recalls her own curse.
- Key Characters: Queen Elizabeth, the Duchess of York, Lady Anne, Clarence’s daughter, Brakenbury, Lord Stanley, the Marquess of Dorset.
- Dramatic Function: The women’s scene between the seizure of the crown and the coronation: the audience learns Richard is king from a gaoler’s slip of the tongue, and Anne discovers she is the woman she cursed.
- Famous Quote:
"And proved the subject of mine own soul’s curse..."
(Lady Anne, Act 4, Scene 1) - Why It Matters: Nobody in the scene has power and everybody sees clearly – the princes are prisoners, Anne is a queen going to her death, and Elizabeth’s advice to Dorset starts the alliance that ends the play.
Scene Summary
The Duchess of York and Queen Elizabeth arrive at the Tower and meet Lady Anne, leading Clarence’s little daughter by the hand. All three have come on the same errand, to greet the two princes, and they agree to go in together. Brakenbury, the Lieutenant, tells them they may not: the King has strictly forbidden it. The King? asks Elizabeth. Brakenbury corrects himself – he meant the Lord Protector – and the slip tells the women what has happened. Elizabeth, the Duchess and Anne each claim the right to see the boys, as mother, grandmother and aunt; Brakenbury is bound by oath and refuses.
Stanley enters. In an hour, he says, he will greet the Duchess as mother and onlooker of two fair queens; Anne must go at once to Westminster to be crowned Richard’s queen. Elizabeth asks for her lace to be cut so that her heart can beat, and turns on her son Dorset: death and destruction dog his heels, his mother’s name is ominous to children, and he must cross the seas and live with Richmond before he adds to the number of the dead and makes her the thrall of Margaret’s curse. Stanley approves the advice and promises letters to his stepson Richmond. The Duchess curses her own womb, which has hatched a cockatrice to the world.
Anne goes unwillingly. She wishes the gold of the crown were red-hot steel to sear her brains, and the anointing oil deadly venom, so that she might die before anyone can say God save the Queen. Elizabeth tells her not to wish herself harm, and Anne explains why she does: when Richard came to her over Henry’s corpse, she cursed whoever would be his wife to be more miserable by his life than she was by her husband’s death – and within a short time her heart grew captive to his honey words, and she became the subject of her own curse. She has never had an hour’s sleep in his bed for his timorous dreams; he hates her for her father Warwick’s sake; he will soon be rid of her. The women part with blessings – Dorset to Richmond, Anne to Richard, Elizabeth to sanctuary, the Duchess to her grave after eighty years of sorrow – and Elizabeth turns back to the Tower to ask its ancient stones to use her babies well.
The King? Who’s That?
The scene tells its news sideways. Nobody announces that Richard has taken the crown; a gaoler says “the King” when he means the Protector, and the correction is the announcement. The women, who have no part in the politics, learn the state of England from a slip of the tongue.
Original
The Lord protect him from that kingly title!
Hath he set bounds between their love and me?
I am their mother, who shall bar me from them?
(Queen Elizabeth, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
The Lord protect him ever being king!
Is he obstructing me from my own children?
I am their mother; who’d deny me access?
Elizabeth’s pun – the Lord protect him from that title – is the last joke she will make for a long time, and it is bitter: the Protector has protected himself into a crown. The three claims that follow, mother, father’s mother, aunt in law and mother in love, are a small chorus of kinship against an oath, and the oath wins. Brakenbury is not a villain; he is a man who has sworn, and the scene lets the audience feel how a decent official’s oath becomes a wall around two children. The princes are never seen again after Act 3; this refusal is the audience’s last contact with them alive, and it is made through a locked door and the word “strictly”. The play’s argument about power is at its quietest here: the crown is already a fact before anyone has said it aloud.
The Subject of Mine Own Soul’s Curse
Stanley’s summons turns Anne into a queen and she receives the news as a death sentence. Her speech about the crown – gold that should be red-hot steel, oil that should be venom – is the play’s most direct picture of what marriage to Richard has been, and it ends in a recognition.
Original
Lo, ere I can repeat this curse again,
Within so small a time, my woman’s heart
Grossly grew captive to his honey words,
And proved the subject of mine own soul’s curse...
(Lady Anne, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Now look at me! Before I’d cursed again,
My woman’s heart, within so little time,
Was captivated by his charming words,
And thus became the victim of my own curse...
Anne remembers Act 1, Scene 2 in detail and quotes her own curse back to the audience, which heard it spoken. The recognition scene is the play’s pattern – Buckingham will do the same on the way to the block – but Anne’s is the saddest, because the curse she fulfilled was aimed at somebody else, and the somebody else turned out to be her. “Grossly grew captive to his honey words” is her own account of how the wooing worked, and it is the play’s too: words, honey, a heart taken prisoner. The rest is domestic detail of a kind the play rarely gives – no hour of sleep, his timorous dreams, his hatred for her father Warwick – and it does two things at once: it tells the audience that Richard’s nights are already troubled, long before the ghosts, and it predicts her own death, which Act 4, Scene 2 arranges within a hundred lines of the coronation. The scene’s contribution to the play’s design of curses is to show one landing on the woman who spoke it.
Go Thou to Richmond
In the middle of the women’s grief, a piece of politics happens almost unnoticed. Elizabeth sends her son Dorset out of the country to Richmond, and Stanley – Richmond’s stepfather – offers letters of introduction. The alliance that wins Bosworth is arranged here, by a widow and a courtier, in a dozen lines.
Original
If thou wilt outstrip death, go cross the seas,
And live with Richmond, from the reach of hell.
Go hie thee, hie thee from this slaughter-house,
Lest thou increase the number of the dead,
And make me die the thrall of Margaret’s curse,
Nor mother, wife, nor England’s counted queen.
(Queen Elizabeth, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
If you want to survive, traverse The Channel,
And live with Richmond, out of reach of hell.
Quick, run away, run from this slaughterhouse,
In case you just become another victim
And make me die like Margaret prophesied,
No longer mother, wife, nor Queen of England.
Elizabeth’s advice is given in the vocabulary of Margaret’s curse – she names it – and the last line quotes the curse’s own terms: neither mother, wife, nor England’s counted queen. She has understood that she is living inside a prophecy and is trying to get one son out of it. Stanley’s endorsement is the first open sign of where his loyalty lies, and the play will make the audience wait until Act 5 to see it act. The Duchess’s parting blessings – to Richmond, to Richard, to sanctuary, to the grave – sort the whole family by destination, and her line about eighty years of sorrow gives the scene its scale: she has seen the entire civil war, and has one more son to lose. Elizabeth’s farewell to the Tower’s stones, asking them to be gentle to her babies, is addressed to the only guardians the boys have left, and it is the last time anyone in the play speaks of them with love.
Language and Technique
- The slip of the tongue: “The King” – “I mean the Lord Protector”: the play delivers its biggest political fact as a correction, so the audience learns it as the powerless do, by accident.
- Pun in grief: “The Lord protect him from that kingly title”: Elizabeth’s play on Protector is bitter wit, the register the play’s women use when they have nothing else.
- Crown as torture: Red-hot steel for gold, venom for holy oil: Anne describes her coronation as an execution, inverting each element of the rite.
- Self-quotation: Anne repeats her own Act 1 curse with “quoth I”, so the audience hears the original words fulfilled in the mouth that spoke them.
- Blessings by destination: The Duchess’s four go-thou lines sort the family – Richmond, Richard, sanctuary, grave – into the play’s four possible endings.
- Address to stones: Elizabeth speaks to the Tower as a nurse and playfellow: the building is personified because no person is left to ask.
Key Quotes from Act 4, Scene 1
Quote 1
QUEEN ELIZABETH: The King? Who’s that?
BRAKENBURY: I mean the Lord Protector.
(Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
QUEEN ELIZABETH: The King? Who’s that?
BRAKENBURY: I meant, the Lord Protector.
Quote Analysis: Two half-lines that carry the coronation. Brakenbury’s correction is the play’s announcement that Richard is king, and it comes from a subordinate covering a mistake. The audience knows more than the women and less than the gaoler, and the gap is the scene’s tension.
O would to God that the inclusive verge
Of golden metal that must round my brow
Were red-hot steel, to sear me to the brains!
(Lady Anne, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I wish to God that that encircling crown
Of gold that I must wear upon my head
Was made of red-hot steel to burn my brains out!
Quote Analysis: Anne’s wish converts the crown into an instrument of torture – a ring of red-hot steel where the gold should be. The image is exact about what queenship under Richard means to her, and it is spoken by a woman who has just been told she must be crowned within the hour.
For never yet one hour in his bed
Did I enjoy the golden dew of sleep,
But with his timorous dreams was still awaked.
(Lady Anne, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
For in his bed, I haven’t had an hour
Where I’ve enjoyed recuperating sleep;
Instead, I lie awake, hearing his nightmares.
Quote Analysis: The play’s only report from inside Richard’s marriage, and its first news of his dreams. “Timorous” – fearful – is the word the ghosts will make true at Bosworth; Anne has been kept awake by them already. Domestic detail becomes prophecy.
Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes
Whom envy hath immured within your walls –
Rough cradle for such little pretty ones!
Rude ragged nurse, old sullen playfellow
For tender princes – use my babies well!
(Queen Elizabeth, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Take pity, ancient stones, upon the children
Locked up within your walls by someone’s envy –
It’s such an awful place for such sweet children!
You are an awful nurse, and wretched playmate
For tender princes – treat my babies well!
Quote Analysis: Elizabeth’s last words to the Tower. The stones are asked to be a cradle, a nurse and a playfellow, and the request is hopeless and precise: the princes have no one else. The scene ends on the word babies, and the next scene opens with the order to kill them.
Key Takeaways
- The crown by slip of the tongue: Richard’s kingship is announced by a gaoler’s correction – the women learn the news as the powerless do.
- Anne cursed herself: She recognises that the curse she laid on Richard’s future wife in Act 1 has landed on her, and predicts her own death.
- Richard already dreams: Anne’s report of his timorous dreams tells the audience his nights are troubled long before the ghosts.
- The alliance begins: Dorset is sent to Richmond with Stanley’s letters – the winning side is assembled by a widow in a dozen lines.
- The last sight of the princes: A locked door, an oath, and a mother asking stones to be gentle: the boys are never spoken of alive again.
Study Questions and Analysis
Why are the women refused entry to the Tower?
Because the princes are now prisoners, and the man who holds them has just become king. Brakenbury says the King has strictly forbidden visits, corrects himself to Lord Protector, and admits he is bound by oath. The correction is the scene’s news: between Act 3, Scene 7, where Richard accepted the crown at Baynard’s Castle, and this scene, he has become King Richard, and the boys lodged in the Tower for their safety are now locked in it. The women, who know none of this, work it out from the gaoler’s mistake.
Right well, dear madam. By your patience,
I may not suffer you to visit them,
The King hath strictly charged the contrary.
(Brakenbury, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
They’re very well, madam. But please forgive me,
I cannot let you visit them inside,
Because the King has strictly said you can’t.
The refusal is also the audience’s farewell to the princes. They are last seen in Act 3, Scene 1, being sent to the Tower; here their mother, grandmother and aunt are turned away from the door; in Act 4, Scene 2 Richard orders their deaths and in Act 4, Scene 3 Tyrrel reports them. Shakespeare keeps the boys offstage from the moment they enter the Tower, and this scene, with its three claims of kinship against one oath, is the only picture of their imprisonment the play gives. Brakenbury is historically the Constable of the Tower who, in Thomas More’s account, refused to kill the princes himself, and who died fighting for Richard at Bosworth; the play makes him neither villain nor rescuer, only a man keeping his word.
What does Anne mean by “the subject of mine own soul’s curse”?
She means that a curse she spoke in Act 1, Scene 2 has been fulfilled on her. Over Henry VI’s coffin, before Richard began to woo her, Anne cursed whoever should become his wife: let her be made more miserable by his life than Anne had been made by her husband’s death. Within the same scene she accepted his ring. Here, summoned to be crowned his queen, she quotes the curse back and recognises herself as its object.
And when thou wed’st, let sorrow haunt thy bed;
And be thy wife – if any be so mad –
More miserable by the life of thee
Than thou hast made me by my dear lord’s death!"
(Lady Anne, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
And when you marry, let your bed be sad;
And make your wife – if anyone’s that crazy –
More miserable by spending time with you
Than you have made me by my husband’s death!’
The recognition is the play’s pattern in miniature. Curses in Richard III are always fulfilled and often on their speakers – Buckingham’s oath in Act 2, Richard’s own oath in Act 4 – and Anne’s is the first to come home. What she adds is the mechanism: her heart grew captive to his honey words, which is as good an account of the wooing scene as any critic has given. William Hazlitt, in Characters of Shakespear’s Plays (1817), argued that Richard should woo Anne less as a lover than as an actor; Anne’s own explanation supports him – it was the words, not the man, and she says so with the words’ effect still on her.
Why does Elizabeth send Dorset to Richmond?
To save his life. Dorset is her son by her first marriage, the Marquess who quarrelled with Hastings in Act 1; his uncle Rivers and his brother Grey have been executed at Pomfret, his half-brothers are locked in the Tower, and Elizabeth reasons that anyone connected to her is marked. Her advice is to cross the seas and live with Richmond, the Lancastrian claimant in exile in Brittany, and Stanley – Richmond’s stepfather – immediately offers letters of introduction.
The exchange is the first open move in the alliance that will beat Richard. Historically Dorset did join Richmond in Brittany, and Stanley’s position as the exile’s stepfather became the hinge of the campaign; the play compresses the decision into a dozen lines of a scene about grief. What Elizabeth says while making it is worth noting: she frames the danger in Margaret’s terms, refusing to die the thrall of Margaret’s curse, neither mother, wife nor counted queen. She knows she is inside a prophecy, and she is trying to move one piece of her family outside it. For an essay on fate and free will, this is a rare case of a character acting against a curse rather than fulfilling it.
What is the dramatic purpose of a scene with only women and no Richard?
It gives the audience the view from below. Acts 1 to 3 have been Richard’s – his plans, his asides, his triumphs – and the coronation happens between scenes; this scene shows what the coronation looks like to the people it damages. Three women and a child come to visit two boys and are turned away; one of them is then taken off to be crowned the tyrant’s queen; the others scatter to exile, sanctuary and the grave. Nothing is decided here that Richard has not already decided, and that is the point.
The scene also prepares the great lament of Act 4, Scene 4, where the same women will sit down together with Margaret and count their dead. E. M. W. Tillyard, in Shakespeare’s History Plays (1944), read the women’s laments as the play’s chorus, the voice of providence commenting on the action; a student can go further and notice that the women are also the play’s intelligence service – they know Richard is king before the court announces it, they know Anne will die, they know where Dorset must go. The scene’s power is that its speakers are right about everything and can do nothing, except send one young man across the sea.
