Richard III
Act V, Scene 2
The camp near Tamworth.
Scene design for Charles Kean's production of Richard III
Richard James Lane, printmaker; 19th century
- Enter Richmond, Oxford, Sir James Blunt, Sir
- Walter Herbert, and others, with Drum and
- Colors.
Richmond
1 - 16- Fellows in arms, and my most loving friends,
- Bruis’d underneath the yoke of tyranny,
- Thus far into the bowels of the land
- Have we march’d on without impediment;
- And here receive we from our father Stanley
- Lines of fair comfort and encouragement.
- The wretched, bloody, and usurping boar,
- That spoil’d your summer fields and fruitful vines,
- Swills your warm blood like wash and makes his trough
- In your embowell’d bosoms—this foul swine
- Is now even in the center of this isle,
- Near to the town of Leicester, as we learn.
- From Tamworth thither is but one day’s march.
- In God’s name cheerly on, courageous friends,
- To reap the harvest of perpetual peace
- By this one bloody trial of sharp war.
Oxford
17 - 18- Every man’s conscience is a thousand men,
- To fight against this guilty homicide.
Herbert
19- I doubt not but his friends will turn to us.
Blunt
20 - 21- He hath no friends but what are friends for fear,
- Which in his dearest need will fly from him.
Richmond
22 - 24- All for our vantage. Then in God’s name march!
- True hope is swift and flies with swallow’s wings,
- Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.
- Exeunt omnes.
Foreign troops of Richmond
Charles Hamilton Smith, Emma Hamilton Smith, 19th century