Brakenbury is the Lieutenant of the Tower, a minor official caught in the machinery of Richard’s rise to power. He appears first as the guard escorting Clarence to imprisonment, speaking briefly but with courtesy to both Clarence and Gloucester. His role is largely functional—he exists to move the plot forward by transporting prisoners and maintaining order—yet he embodies a quiet tragedy of his own. Unlike the scheming noblemen around him, Brakenbury is bound by oath and duty, trapped between his loyalty to the crown and his awareness of the injustice unfolding before him. When he finally confronts his greatest test, denying Queen Elizabeth access to her young sons in the Tower, he does so with visible reluctance, apologizing repeatedly and explaining that he is merely following orders. His famous line—“I am bound by oath, and therefore pardon me”—captures the helplessness of the functionary who sees wrong but has no power to stop it.
Brakenbury represents the ordinary man caught in extraordinary evil. He is not complicit in Richard’s murders the way Buckingham is, nor does he possess the moral agency of Richmond. Instead, he is a subordinate, following the chain of command even as that chain leads toward atrocity. His refusal to let Queen Elizabeth visit her sons is not cruelty but obedience; the cruelty belongs to the system that gave him such an order. This makes him a figure of pathos rather than villainy. He does not volunteer for his role; he inherits it. The brief exchanges with Clarence and later with the grieving queen suggest a man of basic human decency wrestling with an impossible position. His apologies are sincere, but sincerity offers no relief to either the prisoners or their families.
By the end of the play, Brakenbury has vanished from the action, presumably still performing his duty as keeper of the Tower—a man whose name survives only as a minor obstacle overcome by history. Yet his presence in the early scenes serves an important function: he is the silent witness to the machinery of Richard’s power, the one who obeys without questioning, the one who lets things happen because he has no official authority to stop them. In this way, Shakespeare uses Brakenbury to explore the tragedy not only of the victims but of those who, through circumstance and duty, become the unwitting instruments of tyranny.
