“Here Pitch our tent, Even here in Bosworth Field”: Meanwhile, Back at the Tetralogy…

Abstract

This book began by differentiating between the radically different Richards of Sir Thomas More and William Shakespeare. It concludes with a look at act 5, where the Richard that Shakespeare brings on stage has little resemblance. Again we confront radically different Richards, this time within Shakespeare’s tragedy—the thoroughly diabolical Richard of the first four acts and the introspective, conscience-stricken Richard of act 5. Indeed, the Richard of act 5 seems to have wandered on stage from some other play—3 Henry VI, for example. He is so strikingly out of place that his sudden and inexplicable acquisition of human emotions in 5.3 has been deemed the root cause of a geological fault between the play’s rising action and its denouement.