ABSTRACT
Whereas in III, vii the realization of a deliberately laid plan had carried the action an important step forward, in this scene attention is centred on the after-effects of action, the emotional reactions of the characters, their memories of the past and fears for the future. Like most of the later scenes which show us the party opposing Richard, this scene comes near to being a lament. Richard's calculating will and sense of theatre provided the impetus in the previous scene, but here the characters seem to react to impulses from outside, so that the entries of Brakenbury and Stanley (12, 29) constitute the dramatic turning-point in a scene which began on a neutral level. The situation becomes increasingly black; the pathos of the rhetorically phrased closing lament, which carries with it a note of finality, is widely divergent from the opening conversational exchange of conventional greetings. The Tower, merely mentioned at the outset, becomes the object of an impassioned address at the end. Thus, not only is the setting of the action fixed, but the leit-motif of the Tower is once again sounded.
