Here pitch our tent, even here in Bosworth field.
My Lord of Surrey, why look you so sad?
My heart is ten times lighter than my looks.
My lord of Norfolk.
Here, most gracious liege.
Norfolk, we must have knocks, ha, must we not?
We must both give and take, my loving lord.
Up with my tent! Here will I lie tonight.
But where tomorrow? Well, all’s one for that.
Who hath descried the number of the traitors?
Six or seven thousand is their utmost power.
Why, our battalia trebles that account.
Besides, the King’s name is a tower of strength
Which they upon the adverse faction want.
Up with the tent! Come, noble gentlemen,
Let us survey the vantage of the ground.
Call for some men of sound direction;
Let’s lack no discipline, make no delay,
For, lords, tomorrow is a busy day.
The weary sun hath made a golden set,
And by the bright track of his fiery car
Gives token of a goodly day tomorrow.
Sir William Brandon, you shall bear my standard.
Give me some ink and paper in my tent;
I’ll draw the form and model of our battle,
Limit each leader to his several charge,
And part in just proportion our small power.
My Lord of Oxford, you, Sir William Brandon,
And you, Sir Walter Herbert, stay with me.
The Earl of Pembroke keeps his regiment.—
Good Captain Blunt, bear my goodnight to him,
And by the second hour in the morning
Desire the Earl to see me in my tent.
Yet one thing more, good captain, do for me.
Where is Lord Stanley quartered, do you know?
Unless I have mista’en his colours much,
Which well I am assured I have not done,
His regiment lies half a mile at least
South from the mighty power of the King.
If without peril it be possible,
Sweet Blunt, make some good means to speak with him,
And give him from me this most needful note.
Upon my life, my lord, I’ll undertake it;
And so God give you quiet rest tonight.
Good night, good Captain Blunt.
What is’t o’clock?
It’s supper time, my lord. It’s nine o’clock.
I will not sup tonight. Give me some ink and paper.
What, is my beaver easier than it was?
And all my armour laid into my tent?
It is, my liege, and all things are in readiness.
Good Norfolk, hie thee to thy charge;
Use careful watch; choose trusty sentinels.
I go, my lord.
Stir with the lark tomorrow, gentle Norfolk.
I warrant you, my lord.
Catesby!
My lord?
Send out a pursuivant-at-arms
To Stanley’s regiment. Bid him bring his power
Before sunrising, lest his son George fall
Into the blind cave of eternal night.
My lord?
Saw’st thou the melancholy Lord Northumberland?
Thomas the Earl of Surrey and himself,
Much about cockshut time, from troop to troop
Went through the army, cheering up the soldiers.
So, I am satisfied. Give me a bowl of wine.
I have not that alacrity of spirit
Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have.
Set it down. Is ink and paper ready?
It is, my lord.
Bid my guard watch; leave me.
Ratcliffe, about the mid of night come to my tent
And help to arm me. Leave me, I say.
Fortune and victory sit on thy helm!
All comfort that the dark night can afford
Be to thy person, noble father-in-law.
Tell me, how fares our loving mother?
I, by attorney, bless thee from thy mother,
Who prays continually for Richmond’s good.
So much for that. The silent hours steal on,
And flaky darkness breaks within the east.
In brief, for so the season bids us be,
Prepare thy battle early in the morning,
And put thy fortune to the arbitrement
Of bloody strokes and mortal-staring war.
I, as I may—that which I would I cannot—
With best advantage will deceive the time,
And aid thee in this doubtful shock of arms.
But on thy side I may not be too forward,
Lest, being seen, thy brother, tender George,
Be executed in his father’s sight.
Farewell; the leisure and the fearful time
Cuts off the ceremonious vows of love
And ample interchange of sweet discourse,
Which so-long-sundered friends should dwell upon.
God give us leisure for these rites of love!
Once more, adieu. Be valiant, and speed well.
Good lords, conduct him to his regiment.
I’ll strive with troubled thoughts to take a nap,
Lest leaden slumber peise me down tomorrow
When I should mount with wings of victory.
Once more, good night, kind lords and gentlemen.
Modern readers sometimes ask whether the ghosts are 'real' or psychological projections — and Shakespeare refuses to answer. Both men dream. Both men are visited by the same figures. Richard wakes screaming; Richmond wakes serene. The ghosts are simultaneously the voice of Richard's conscience and theatrical ritual: each one names their murder, delivers their curse, and blesses Richmond in the same formulaic cadence. This liturgical quality is the point. Shakespeare is not writing a ghost story — he is writing a judgment. The repetition of 'despair and die' is not horror-movie suspense; it is the moral accounting that the entire play has been building toward. Every name Richard hears was a name he dismissed in life. Now they are all here, and he cannot dismiss them. The play's genius is that this works whether you believe in literal ghosts or not: the dead are present because Richard has never let them leave.
Think how thou stabbed’st me in my prime of youth
At Tewksbury; despair therefore, and die!
By thee was punched full of deadly holes.
Think on the Tower and me. Despair, and die;
Harry the Sixth bids thee despair and die.
I, that was washed to death with fulsome wine,
Poor Clarence, by thy guile betrayed to death.
Tomorrow in the battle think on me,
And fall thy edgeless sword. Despair, and die!
Rivers that died at Pomfret. Despair and die!
Let fall thy lance. Despair and die!
Will conquer him. Awake, and win the day.
And in a bloody battle end thy days.
Think on Lord Hastings. Despair and die!
Let us be lead within thy bosom, Richard,
And weigh thee down to ruin, shame, and death;
Thy nephews’ souls bid thee despair and die.
That never slept a quiet hour with thee,
Now fills thy sleep with perturbations.
Tomorrow in the battle think on me,
And fall thy edgeless sword. Despair and die!
Richard's waking speech in 5-3-130 is one of the earliest examples in English drama of genuine psychological interiority — a character conducting a real-time examination of his own moral state and finding the evidence overwhelming. He doesn't arrive at a conclusion and report it; he arrives at one conclusion ('No'), immediately reverses it ('Yes, I am'), and then tries to argue himself out of both. The fragmented syntax — short clauses, repeated words, questions answered by questions — captures a mind in genuine distress, not performing distress. Compare this to his brilliant, controlled soliloquies in Act 1: the change is the point. Richard has always talked about himself as a character he was playing. Here, for the first time, he sounds like a person. Scholars often point to this speech as a precursor to Hamlet's introspective mode. Shakespeare will develop this form of interior dialogue much further — but this is one of the moments it begins.
The last was I that felt thy tyranny.
O, in the battle think on Buckingham,
And die in terror of thy guiltiness.
Dream on, dream on of bloody deeds and death.
Fainting, despair; despairing, yield thy breath.
Give me another horse! Bind up my wounds!
Have mercy, Jesu!—Soft! I did but dream.
O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!
The lights burn blue; it is now dead midnight.
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by.
Richard loves Richard, that is, I am I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am.
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why,
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?
Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O, no, alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself.
I am a villain. Yet I lie, I am not.
Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter.
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree;
Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree;
All several sins, all used in each degree,
Throng to the bar, crying all “Guilty, guilty!”
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me,
And if I die no soul will pity me.
And wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself?
Methought the souls of all that I had murdered
Came to my tent, and everyone did threat
Tomorrow’s vengeance on the head of Richard.
My lord!
Zounds! Who’s there?
Ratcliffe, my lord; ’tis I. The early village cock
Hath twice done salutation to the morn;
Your friends are up and buckle on their armour.
O Ratcliffe, I have dreamed a fearful dream!
What think’st thou, will our friends prove all true?
No doubt, my lord.
O Ratcliffe, I fear, I fear!
Nay, good my lord, be not afraid of shadows.
By the apostle Paul, shadows tonight
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard
Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers
Armed in proof and led by shallow Richmond.
’Tis not yet near day. Come, go with me.
Under our tents I’ll play the eavesdropper,
To see if any mean to shrink from me.
Good morrow, Richmond.
Cry mercy, lords and watchful gentlemen,
That you have ta’en a tardy sluggard here.
How have you slept, my lord?
The sweetest sleep and fairest-boding dreams
That ever entered in a drowsy head
Have I since your departure had, my lords.
Methought their souls whose bodies Richard murdered
Came to my tent and cried on victory.
I promise you, my heart is very jocund
In the remembrance of so fair a dream.
How far into the morning is it, lords?
Upon the stroke of four.
Why, then ’tis time to arm and give direction.
His oration to his soldiers.
More than I have said, loving countrymen,
The leisure and enforcement of the time
Forbids to dwell upon. Yet remember this:
God, and our good cause, fight upon our side;
The prayers of holy saints and wronged souls,
Like high-reared bulwarks, stand before our faces.
Richard except, those whom we fight against
Had rather have us win than him they follow.
For what is he they follow? Truly, gentlemen,
A bloody tyrant and a homicide;
One raised in blood, and one in blood established;
One that made means to come by what he hath,
And slaughtered those that were the means to help him;
A base foul stone, made precious by the foil
Of England’s chair, where he is falsely set;
One that hath ever been God’s enemy.
Then, if you fight against God’s enemy,
God will, in justice, ward you as his soldiers;
If you do sweat to put a tyrant down,
You sleep in peace, the tyrant being slain;
If you do fight against your country’s foes,
Your country’s fat shall pay your pains the hire;
If you do fight in safeguard of your wives,
Your wives shall welcome home the conquerors;
If you do free your children from the sword,
Your children’s children quits it in your age.
Then, in the name of God and all these rights,
Advance your standards, draw your willing swords.
For me, the ransom of my bold attempt
Shall be this cold corpse on the earth’s cold face;
But if I thrive, the gain of my attempt
The least of you shall share his part thereof.
What said Northumberland as touching Richmond?
That he was never trained up in arms.
He said the truth. And what said Surrey then?
He smiled, and said, “The better for our purpose.”
He was in the right, and so indeed it is.
Not I, my lord.
Then he disdains to shine, for by the book
He should have braved the east an hour ago.
A black day will it be to somebody.
Ratcliffe!
My lord?
The sun will not be seen today!
The sky doth frown and lour upon our army.
I would these dewy tears were from the ground.
Not shine today? Why, what is that to me
More than to Richmond? For the selfsame heaven
That frowns on me looks sadly upon him.
Arm, arm, my lord. The foe vaunts in the field.
Come, bustle, bustle! Caparison my horse.
Call up Lord Stanley; bid him bring his power.
I will lead forth my soldiers to the plain,
And thus my battle shall be ordered:
My foreward shall be drawn out all in length,
Consisting equally of horse and foot;
Our archers shall be placed in the midst.
John Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Earl of Surrey,
Shall have the leading of this foot and horse.
They thus directed, we will follow
In the main battle, whose puissance on either side
Shall be well winged with our chiefest horse.
This, and Saint George to boot! What think’st thou, Norfolk?
A good direction, warlike sovereign.
For Dickon thy master is bought and sold.”
A thing devised by the enemy.
Go, gentlemen, every man unto his charge.
Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls;
Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.
Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.
March on. Join bravely. Let us to it pell-mell,
If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.
His oration to his army.
What shall I say more than I have inferred?
Remember whom you are to cope withal,
A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways,
A scum of Bretons and base lackey peasants,
Whom their o’er-cloyed country vomits forth
To desperate adventures and assured destruction.
You sleeping safe, they bring to you unrest;
You having lands, and blessed with beauteous wives,
They would restrain the one, distain the other.
And who doth lead them but a paltry fellow,
Long kept in Brittany at our mother’s cost?
A milksop, one that never in his life
Felt so much cold as over-shoes in snow?
Let’s whip these stragglers o’er the seas again,
Lash hence these overweening rags of France,
These famished beggars, weary of their lives,
Who, but for dreaming on this fond exploit,
For want of means, poor rats, had hanged themselves.
If we be conquered, let men conquer us,
And not these bastard Bretons, whom our fathers
Have in their own land beaten, bobbed, and thumped,
And in record left them the heirs of shame.
Shall these enjoy our lands? Lie with our wives,
Ravish our daughters?
My lord, he doth deny to come.
Off with his son George’s head!
My lord, the enemy is past the marsh.
After the battle let George Stanley die.
A thousand hearts are great within my bosom.
Advance our standards! Set upon our foes!
Our ancient word of courage, fair Saint George,
Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons!
Upon them! Victory sits on our helms.
The Reckoning
The entire moral weight of the play is collected in one night. Richard has murdered his way to the crown, and now the dead come back — not as revenge fantasy but as the voice of Richard's own conscience speaking in dramatic form. When he wakes screaming 'Give me another horse!' we see, perhaps for the first time, that he is terrified of himself. Richmond's sleep is peaceful and filled with blessing: the contrast is Shakespeare's verdict. The scene ends not with ghosts but with two speeches to soldiers — Richard's twitchy, xenophobic, blustering; Richmond's calm, righteous, generous — and the audience already knows which man deserves to win.
If this happened today…
The night before a hostile takeover vote: the corporate raider who got there through fraud, intimidation, and a trail of destroyed careers lies awake in his hotel room cycling through names — the CFO he pushed out, the whistleblower who was silenced, the old boss he framed — while his conscience stages a parade. The challenger sleeps soundly, reviewed his pitch deck, said his prayers, and woke refreshed at 4am to call his team. The raider's pre-meeting speech is pure aggression — 'these people are losers, they're foreign, they're weak.' The challenger's is clear-eyed and inclusive. Everyone in the room already knows which speech came from fear.