But there is a third means, more powerful than either recognition or prophecy, which Shakespeare has employed to make his Nemesis Actions emphatic. The danger of an effect becoming tame by repetition he has met by giving to each train of nemesis a flash of irony at some point of its course. In the case of Lady Anne we have already seen how the exact channel Nemesis chooses by which to descend upon her is the attempt she made to avert it. She had bitterly cursed her husband's murderer:
iv. i. 75.
And be thy wife—if any be so mad—
As miserable by the life of thee
As thou hast made me by my dear lord's death!
In spite of this she had yielded to Richard's mysterious power, and so, as she feels, proved the subject of her own heart's curse. Again, it was noticed in the preceding study how the Queen, less hard than the rest in that wicked court, or perhaps softened by the spectacle of her dying husband, essayed to reverse, when too late, what had been done against Clarence; ii. i. 134.Gloster skilfully turned this compunction of conscience into a ground of suspicion on which he traded to bring all the Queen's friends to the block, and thus a moment's relenting was made into a means of destruction. i. iv. 187, 199, 200, 206.In Clarence's struggle for life, as one after another the threads of hope snap, as the appeal to law is met by the King's command, the appeal to heavenly law by the reminder of his own sin, i. iv. 232.he comes to rest for his last and surest hope upon his powerful brother Gloster—and the very murderers catch the irony of the scene:
Clar. If you be hired for meed, go back again,
And I will send you to my brother Gloster,
Who shall reward you better for my life
Than Edward will for tidings of my death.