This scene functions as a pivotal moment of moral reckoning in the play, arriving at the precise point where Richard's crimes reach their most heinous extreme. Tyrrel's opening soliloquy is remarkable for its lyrical tenderness: the murderers weep, the princes are described in images of pastoral innocence—"four red roses on a stalk"—and even the hardened killers are undone by conscience. Shakespeare deliberately uses pastoral and religious imagery (the book of prayers, the "alabaster arms") to heighten the horror through contrast, making the audience feel the weight of what Richard has ordered without staging the act itself.The rhetorical structure of Tyrrel's speech—embedding the killers' reported words within his own narration—creates a layered, almost theatrical quality. The repetition of "Thus, thus" and the halting syntax around "But O! the devil" enact the murderers' psychological breakdown in real time. This technique of reported speech distances the audience from the act while paradoxically intensifying its emotional impact, since the grief of the perpetrators becomes a surrogate for the audience's own moral response.Richard's subsequent soliloquy offers a chilling counterpoint. Where Tyrrel mourns, Richard tallies. His catalogue of accomplished crimes—Clarence's son imprisoned, his daughter demeaned, the princes dead, Anne dispatched—is delivered with the brisk efficiency of...
Act IV, Scene 3
Scene Summary
Tyrrel enters alone and reports that the murder of the two young princes in the Tower has been carried out by his hired killers, Dighton and Forrest. He recounts, in vivid and sorrowful detail, how the murderers themselves wept at the sight of the sleeping boys before smothering them, and how both men were overcome with guilt afterward.
Richard enters and receives confirmation of the deed, arranging to hear the full account later. In a brief soliloquy he tallies his political achievements—the princes dead, Clarence's heirs neutralised, Anne dead—and announces his plan to woo young Elizabeth. Catesby then brings alarming news: the Bishop of Ely has joined Richmond, and Buckingham's rebellion is growing. Richard responds with fierce resolve, calling for swift military action.
"Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, / Which in their summer beauty kiss'd each other." — Tyrrel (quoting Dighton) (4.3)
"The most replenished sweet work of nature, / That from the prime creation e'er she framed." — Tyrrel (quoting Dighton) (4.3)
"Thus both are gone with conscience and remorse; / They could not speak; and so I left them both." — Tyrrel (4.3)
"The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham's bosom, / And Anne my wife hath bid the world good night." — King Richard III (4.3)
"Now, for I know the Breton Richmond aims / At young Elizabeth, my brother's daughter, / And, by that knot, looks proudly o'er the crown, / To her I go, a jolly thriving wooer." — King Richard III (4.3)
"Then fiery expedition be my wing, / Jove's Mercury, and herald for a king!" — King Richard III (4.3)
"Ely with Richmond troubles me more near / Than Buckingham and his rash-levied army." — King Richard III (4.3)
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