Relenting fool, and shallow, changing woman!
Suddenly the Nemesis again interrupts him, and this time is nearer: a puissant navy has actually appeared on the west. And now his equanimity begins at last to be disturbed. His equanimity affected.He storms at Catesby for not starting, forgetting that he has given him no message to take. iv. iv. 444-540.More than this, a little further on Richard changes his mind! Through the rest of the long scene destiny is openly playing with him, giving him just enough hope to keep the sense of despair warm. Messenger follows messenger in hot haste: Richmond is on the seas—Courtenay has risen in Devonshire—the Guildfords are up in Kent.—But Buckingham's army is dispersed—But Yorkshire has risen.—But, a gleam of hope, the Breton navy is dispersed—a triumph, Buckingham is taken.—Then, finally, Richmond has landed! The suspense is telling upon Richard. In this scene he strikes a messenger before he has time to learn that he brings good tidings. v. iii. 2, 5, 8, &c.When we next see him he wears a forced gaiety and scolds his followers into cheerfulness; but with the gaiety go sudden fits of depression:
Here will I lie to-night;
But where to-morrow?
v. iii, from 47.
A little later he becomes nervous, and we have the minute attention to details of the man who feels that his all depends upon one cast; he will not sup, but calls for ink and paper to plan the morrow's fight, he examines carefully as to his beaver and his armour, selects White Surrey to ride, and at last calls for wine and confesses a change in himself:
I have not that alacrity of spirit,
Nor cheer of mind, that I was wont to have.
Climax of Richard's fate: significance of the apparitions.
Then comes night, and with it the full tide of Nemesis. By the device of the apparitions the long accumulation of crimes in Richard's rise are made to have each its due representation in his fall. It matters not that they are only apparitions. v. iii, from 118.Nemesis itself is the ghost of sin: its sting lies not in the physical force of the blow, but in the close connection between a sin and its retribution. So Richard's victims rise from the dead only to secure that the weight of each several crime shall lie heavy on his soul in the morrow's doom. This point moreover must not be missed—that the climax of his fate comes to Richard in his sleep. Significance of Richard's sleep.The supreme conception of resistance to Deity is reached when God is opposed by God's greatest gift, the freedom of the will. God, so it is reasoned, is omnipotent, but God has made man omnipotent in setting no bounds to his will; and God's omnipotence to punish may be met by man's omnipotence to endure. Such is the ancient conception of Prometheus, and such are the reasonings Milton has imagined for his Satan: to whom, though heaven be lost,