Despair and die!
Richard III, Act 5, Scene 3
The first time Shakespeare includes ghosts in his works is in Richard III, which is estimated to have been 1592 and 1594.
The ghosts appear towards the end of the play, in Act 5, Scene 3, the night before the final Battle of Bosworth Field. While sleeping in two separate camps, King Richard and his challenger Richmond are visited by eleven ghosts of the people Richard has murdered throughout the play (Prince Edward, Henry VI, Clarence, Rivers, Grey and Vaughan, the two young princes, Hastings, his wife Lady Anne, Buckingham). Each ghost enters, curses Richard, sums up the dastardly way he murdered them, blesses Richmond, and leaves.
Richard wakes with a cry of "Give me another horse”, foreshadowing his final line of the play (“A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse”). He then experiences a 'dark night of the soul', full of self doubt and fear:
RICHARD 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?
The ghosts act as an omen of doom for Richard and victory for Richmond, but they also send Richard into a spiral of self-doubt. He seems to truly recognise for the first time in the play that his villainy will leave him alone and unloved, but that it is too late for him to change. The ghostly parade builds dramatic tension ahead of the final battle and emphasises the tragedy of Richard's fall, his flicker of humanity arriving too little and too late.
Richard (Antony Sher) is visited by the ghosts of his victims as he sleeps. Richard III, 1984, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Directed by Bill Alexander. Photo by Reg Wilson © RSC