Richard III: Antecedents of Clarence’s Dream

Summary

Clarence’s dream, like Richard’s courtship of Anne, is one of the embellishments Shakespeare introduced in giving body and shape to his dramatisation of chronicle material in Richard III. For this dream he had not, as he had for the fact though not the substance of Richard’s fearful dream on the eve of Bosworth, any warrant in his historical sources. It consists of a number of distinguishable elements. First, Richard is Clarence’s dream partner in his delivery from the Tower: this repeats the irony of Richard’s promise to effect it (I, i, 114f), and the kind of delivery he has just despatched the murderers to effect (I, iii, 356). Further, the dream represents Richard (though innocently, in accord with Clarence’s belief in his friend-ship) as responsible for Clarence’s death by drowning-the fate he will suffer before the end of the present scene. Clarence tells how Gloucester (Richard) tempted him ‘to walk/Upon the hatches’ where ‘as we pac’d along’

Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,

Methought that Gloucester . . .

Struck me . . . overboard.

(i, iv, 12f, 16–18)