SOURCE: “‘More Than History Can Pattern’: The Jack Cade Rebellion in Shakespeare's Henry VI, 2,” in Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Vol. 22, No. 3, Fall, 1992, pp. 451-78.

[In the essay below, Pugliatti maintains that Shakespeare's representation of the Cade rebellion in Henry VI “manifests a double perspective”—at once radical and conservative—which demonstrates the dramatist's multivalent vision of history.]

I. THE AUTHOR IN THE TEXT

Until recently, the way in which Shakespeare represented Jack Cade's rebellion in act 4 of Henry VI, 2 has been taken as unmistakable evidence of the dramatist's loathing for the “populace,” even of his sharing the obsession of the Elizabethan ruling class with all kinds of disorder and dissension. Indeed, it is precisely the Cade episode that seems to have contributed arguments to the tradition of Shakespeare as “an enemy of the people.”

A few recent critical writings have resumed the issue, reaching diverse conclusions, and thereby suggesting that the representation of the uprising of 1450 is not as univocal as it might seem to be.

Stephen Greenblatt is interested in the ways in which different genres, responding to different historical pressures, represent the victory of the high over the low. The problem being, in these cases, to shield the victor's dignity from the danger of being tainted by the enemy's base condition, Greenblatt focuses on the killing of Cade by a small property owner, Alexander Iden (an event which, incidentally, is historical) and concludes that with Shakespeare's solution (which he terms “simple, effective and, in its way, elegant”), “the aristocrat has given way to the man of property, and heroic commemoration has been absorbed into a new genre, the history play.”¹ In other words, while he does not question the low status of the rebel, Greenblatt concludes that the “new genre” implies an abasement in the victor's social status.

Phyllis Rackin examines a series of characters in the first tetralogy whom she sees as “subverters of history.” Mainly women or lower-class persons, Joan of Arc, Queen Margaret, Jack Cade, Eleanor Cobham and her associates, Simpcox and his wife, and even the duke of York, “all share the Machiavellian attributes of treachery and selfish, amoral ambition that define them as demonic Others.”² Rackin argues that, unlike the invented commoners in the second tetralogy, who are allowed to step out of their boundaries, these never “transcend the conventions of comic representation that … mark their separation from the serious historical world of their betters.”³ She also remarks that although the theatrical energy of these characters is dangerous, it is finally contained and neutralized. Rackin's conclusion on the Cade scenes, therefore, is that however “potentially subversive, they seem finally designed to justify oppression.”⁴

Michael Hattaway argues that “in this play, unlike Part 1, the commons do come to stand for values that are worth taking seriously.” In particular, “the Cade rebellion … stands not as ‘comic relief’ but as a vision both of the limits of government and of the consequences of aristocratic factionalism.”⁵

A different view is expressed by Annabel Patterson, who deals explicitly with the issue of the author's political stance. In her book Shakespeare and the Popular Voice, she questions the common opinion that Shakespeare's attitude to the ordinary working people “ranged from tolerant amusement to contempt,”⁶ and deploys arguments to redeem the dramatist from the old charge of antipopulism. Examining the Cade episode—apparently one of the most convincing arguments for that charge—Patterson argues for the existence, in Shakespeare's time, of a cultural tradition of popular protest and for Shakespeare's consciousness of that tradition, and concludes that Cade is far from being part of it. Cade, she affirms, is “an impostor aristocrat, a traitor to his class.” Therefore, she adds, “little is proved … by demonstrating how inconsistent is Cade in his recapitulation of the ancient tropes of levelling.”⁷

The revival of interest in the Cade scenes⁸ and the divergent reactions that it has produced raise two questions: Why has it been assumed to be a crucial test case? And how can the same piece of dramatic representation be taken to support almost opposed theses?

Certainly, the importance that we attribute to the Cade episode comes from the fact that in it, perhaps more than in any other locus of the canon, Shakespeare seems to take sides on a political issue of enormous relevance, namely, that real nightmare of the Tudor political establishment that was rebellion. The episode, therefore, seems to offer elements for our reconstruction of some kind of extratextual “reality.” Whether we call this reality “Shakespeare” or whether we stress “the political context,” the Cade scenes seem able to provide answers to a legitimate interest in Shakespeare's way of thinking on matters of vital importance.⁹

However, the fact that the episode has lent arguments to the conservative and the radical perspectives alike, and that it has been used to show in its author both a populist and an antipopulist attitude, may either mean that we tend to use the episode in order to support some kind of preconceived picture rather than to interpret it, or that—more or less objectively—it manifests a double perspective.¹⁰ This last is the point that I should like to make.

The issue of multiperspectivism can be generalized to what seems to me to be the constant attitude in Shakespeare's enactment of history.¹¹ It is my opinion, in fact, that Shakespeare's main interest is to raise historical and political problems and to provide instruments for their interpretation rather than impose a one-sided evaluation of them. The dramatist's tools are used to enact broad historical constructions, the exposition of possible causes, the clash of diverse viewpoints, and a variety of evaluations which are characteristically critical (as opposed to ideological) in that they provide instruments for a multipilicity of interpretations. By affirming this, I am not saying that the histories reveal an ambiguous attitude; rather, I argue for ambivalence, or better still, polyvalence in the way problems are dealt with. Often, in fact, the “truths” or the opinions that these texts seem to present are doubted, questioned, or challenged by the appearance of a different and sometimes contrary “truth” or opinion. The apparent uncertainty in perspective allows our apprehension of the irreducible complexity and many-sidedness of things historical and of the political issues that they raise. Therefore, our grasp on the extratextual “reality” of the author's political opinions that the Cade scenes seem to promise is illusory; and here as elsewhere in the canon—but more significantly in the English history plays—our questions about Shakespeare's political stance are either doomed to remain unanswered or likely to produce ideological replies. Indeed, the disappointment that we experience in our search for “the author” or for a univocal and clear political perspective illustrates, in the last analysis, Shakespeare's main contribution to the progress of contemporary historical exegesis. For by perceiving that in relating the facts of history it is possible to make a multiplicity of choices as well as to amend those that have been made, Shakespeare was deeply changing the kind of relationship to tradition entertained by contemporary chroniclers; by viewing history as, to some extent, a set of retrospective possibilities, he was inaugurating a perspective proper to a more mature form of historiography, one conscious that the past, apparently crystallized in unchanging documents and monuments, may prove unstable and multiform.

A second point is that Shakespeare's critical and historiographical attitude is mainly revealed by the way in which he modifies his source material. In other words, as Gary Taylor has observed, “Resemblances to the chronicles establish Shakespeare's use of them; but, as always, his departures from his sources most illuminate his intentions.”¹²

II. THE POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF SOURCE MANIPULATION

The title of this article refers to my view that every alteration of historical sources, whether in content, emphasis, or mode of presentation, constitutes a “more,” an added significance that provides a critical perspective on the historical events.¹³ In other words, whenever the dramatist decides to free himself from the constraints of his historical sources, either adding or subtracting or in any way modifying the chronicle tradition, he attempts to interpret the facts of history independently from that tradition. All modifications, in short, constitute glosses on the margins of previous readings of historical facts and are therefore to be read as a critical commentary that often implies political evaluations.

In many instances, the critical comment is used to foreground contradictions and discrepancies or to highlight a conflict of interests. The gardeners in Richard II, the soldiers in Henry V, or the gentlemen in Henry VIII, for instance, are elements whose appearance produces a clash of diverse perspectives. Challenging the official truth, they introduce conflicting viewpoints that come from the margins of untold history.

These are unhistorical elements, or elements that belong to invisible history: invented characters who may have existed but whose existence and opinions no history book has recorded. Generally speaking, they introduce their group's problems and viewpoint, somehow disturbing the prevailing perspective of visible history. What they stage, however, are non-events, in that they are not attributed the dignity of historical events in any history book.¹⁴

By the term “counterevent,” one may instead refer to a historical event that appears conspicuously altered in its dramatic rendering although it is still attributed the dignity and weight of history. The Cade episode belongs to this category. Shakespeare's account of the Kentish rebellion of 1450, in fact, resulted from the conflation of two different historical rebellions and perhaps also from suggestions coming from later or even contemporary events.¹⁵

My aim in this article is to read the alterations of historical sources that Shakespeare carried out in the Cade episode in the light of the way in which the source material is treated, and modified, in the whole play.

Shakespeare's manipulation of the sources, as far as the Cade episode is concerned, seems to speak loudly against the rebels, their attitude, and the motivations of their revolt, and strongly for its repression and for the restoration of the king's order. Indeed, the Cade scenes are a stumbling block to the critic who would argue for the dramatist's sympathy, or even neutral attitude, for the poor and the oppressed. And the episode has almost invariably been read as a specimen of the dramatist's sharing the nobility's preoccupations with the upsetting of social order, especially because it has been isolated and therefore decontextualized by wiping out the events that precede and follow it.

I believe that not only should we read the Cade episode as coming after the events that lead up to it and as preceding those that follow (admittedly, causality in a play is expressed mainly through sequentiality), but also that we should consider the way in which the source material is altered in the whole play, bearing in mind the light that the text casts on all of the historical events narrated and on the political problems that those events illustrate. Let us see, therefore, what the main modifications are and to what end they seem to have been designed.

Henry VI, 2, although nearer to the sources than Henry VI, 1, presents alterations that, however slight, are remarkably coherent and significant, since they all seem to point to the same general effect: the abasement, degradation, and “disfiguring” of political issues and of the spheres, both high and low, where these are treated.¹⁶ It seems to me that the play suggests a levelling to the lowest plane of those who intrigue at court for their own advancement and profit and of those who rebel out of material need and hunger. Seen in this light, the “disfiguring” of the rebels is a consequence of the monstrosity of the power that rules them and that—as the play, much more strongly than the sources, suggests—has seduced them into rebelling.

In the play, the duke of York is depicted as much more Machiavellian than the sources suggest. He is presented as plotting the ruin of “good Duke Humphrey” of Gloucester, and as finally agreeing to his murder. Queen Margaret's ambition to rule her husband and to govern the country is seasoned with the unhistorical charge of her being an adulteress; equally unhistorical is Cardinal Beaufort's complicity in Gloucester's murder; his “blaspheming God and cursing man on earth” (3.3.371) on his deathbed, too, is the playwright's invention. Suffolk is accused of more and harsher acts of “devilish policy” in the words of the lieutenant who arrests him (4.1.70-102) than he is in the chronicle. Moreover, in act 5 the play gives prominence to the role of crookback Richard, thus hinting at the fact that the sequel to the story is even grimmer and darker. It should also be noted that in the play Cade's rebellion is much more York's responsibility than it is in the sources, where it is said to have been inspired by York's friends and supporters. In Shakespeare, therefore, Cade is much more an instrument of the duke's ambition (York in fact calls Cade “a minister of my intent”; 3.1.355). This obviously makes the Kentish rebellion much less a popular revolt and more an instrument of the power that it apparently contrasts. Finally, the initial episode of the play reveals a world where the experience of political rout (illustrated in the loss of Maine and Anjou) is dominant; accordingly, the final episode confirms a model of discomfiture and political disorder by presenting the victory of the rebel York, and therefore the triumph of disloyalty and treason.

As far as the people in power are concerned, then, the play presents an image of mock-kingship ruled by an ambitious, ruthless, and adulterous woman; it presents a villain who wants to be king and who, to further his ambitions to the throne, seduces the commoners to provoke a “popular” rising and finally inflicts upon the nation the wounds of civil war; it brings to the foreground an ignorant noblewoman who wants to be queen and who pursues her aim with the help of black magic; it assigns a prominent role to corrupt priests who are in league with sorcerers and charlatans; it presents a contentious and ruthless clergyman who plots for power, does not hesitate to instigate murder, and is finally unable to repent even on his deathbed.

These alterations of the historical sources do not appear to be due to mere dramatic exigencies; on the contrary, they seem to be designed in order to construct the image of an inept kingship that has yielded up its rule to an utterly corrupt, treacherous, and seditious nobility, entirely forgetful of the public weal of the nation.

What I should like to argue is that it was the abasement and disfiguring of the high sphere that determined a parallel and reflected process of degradation in the low sphere.¹⁷ Let us see in some detail how a “more” is added to the historical sources in order to construct the general frame that has been described.

III. HALL'S “SEDE OF VAINGLORY” VS. SHAKESPEARE'S “CANKER OF AMBITIOUS THOUGHTS”

Generally speaking, Hall's account of the events represented in Henry VI, 2 is hardly traced back to what English Renaissance historiographers termed “second causes,” causes that would explain, if not the historical reasons, at least the personal motivations for action. The mechanism that sets human activities in motion and determines human destinies is often described by the chronicler as an impersonal and incontrollable force very similar to destiny or chance, if not to divine providence.¹⁸ However, lack of wisdom and foresight together with thirst for power and the machinations of one's enemies also play a part in Hall's account of the tragic destiny of such persons as Suffolk and Gloucester. Suffolk is described as “beyng in high favor with the kyng, and in no lesse grace with quene Margaret” and as expecting a concrete furtherance because he was “somewhat infected with the sede of vainglory” for arranging the marriage between Henry and Margaret.¹⁹ He is also reported to have lawfully contrived to get what he thought was his due for his efforts in France by pronouncing a speech in the House of Commons and to have received, as a result of this speech and supported by the Commons, what is presented as his right recompense, namely, the title of duke.

After this dispassionate account of facts, we read one of the sentences that may have suggested to the dramatist Suffolk's adulterous relationship with the queen and his many treacherous plots. In the same sentence, Hall blames Suffolk's thirst for power, but solely because it procured his ruin: “This Marques thus gotten up, into fortunes trone, not content with his degree, by the meanes of the Quene, was shortely erected to the estate and degree of a Duke, and ruled the Kyng at his pleasure.” Therefore, what Suffolk's exemplum teaches is merely “what securities is in worldly glory,” for the duke “within foure yeres after, was in the same place [i.e., in Parliament], by the commons of the realm, accused of many treasons, mispricions and offences … and in conclusion, beyng exiled the realme, he was taken upon the sea, and made shorter by the hedde.”²⁰

After this, Hall dispenses to the readers his somewhat amoral moral of the story. Suffolk would have had a better chance if he had remembered the advice of the popyngay, namely: “When thou thynkest thy self in courte moste surest, then is it high time to get thee home to rest.” Later on, Suffolk is said to have been believed by the Commons to be the chief procurer of Duke Humphrey's death, “the most swallower up and consumer of the kynges treasure”—although his having procured Gloucester's death is related as a simple suspicion.²¹ However, much unlike Shakespeare, the author of the chronicle neither commits himself with a guilty verdict nor shows a judging attitude toward the duke.

What Shakespeare sees in Margaret as destructive ambition is described by Hall as courage and as political virtue. Here is how the chronicler describes Henry's newly wedded queen on her first apparition: “This woman excelled all other, as well in beautie and favor, as in wit and pollicie, and was of stomack and corage, more like to a man, then a woman.”²² Margaret's “manly” character (obviously high praise, coming from a man) is emphasized in more than one passage. Her qualities, as described by Hall, are tainted only by fickleness, while the fact that she dispossessed her husband is presented as more or less necessitated by Henry's incapacity:

The Quene his wife, was a woman of greate witte, and yet of no greater witte, then of haute stomacke, desirous of glory, and covetous of honour, and of reason, pollycie, counsaill, and other giftes and talentes of nature belongyng to a man, full and flowyng: of witte and wilinesse she lacked nothyng, nor of diligence, studie, and businesse, she was not unexperte: but yet she had one poynt of a very woman: for often tyme, when she was vehement and fully bente in a matter, she was sodainly like a wethercocke mutable and turnyng. … This manly woman, this coragious quene, ceased not to prosecute furthwith, her invented imaginacion and prepensed purpose. … And although she joyned her husbande with her in name, for a countenance, yet she did all, she saied all, and she bare the whole swynge, as the strong oxe doth when he is yoked in the plough with a pore silly asse.²³

Shakespeare unhistorically abases the queen's motives to a mean (one might think, “womanly”) desire to humiliate Eleanor Cobham (see 1.3.138-40), whereas Margaret and Eleanor Cobham probably never met. Even worse, Shakespeare makes the queen the instigator of Gloucester's murder. Margaret is the first to suggest that the duke should be suppressed:

Believe me, lords, were none more wise than I,
And yet herein I judge mine own wit good,
This Gloucester should be quickly rid the world,
To rid us from the fear we have of him.

(3.1.231-34)

On this point, Hall simply suggests that the queen contrived to deprive the duke of his protectorship and that she did not stop his enemies when they devised the forging of false accusations to ruin him:

She excluded the duke of Gloucester, from all rule and governaunce, not prohibityng suche as she knewe to be his mortal enemies, to invent and imagyne, causes and griefes against hym, of the whiche, diverse writers affirme, the Marques of Suffolke, and the duke of Buckyngham to be the chiefe, not unprocured by the Cardinal of Winchester, and the Archbishop of Yorke.²⁴

As for Margaret's adulterous relationship with Suffolk, there is no hint of it in Hall. All we know from the chronicle is that Suffolk was “in high favor with the kyng, and in no lesse grace with quene Margaret,” that he, “not content with his degree, by the meanes of the Quene, was shortely erected to the estate and degree of a Duke,” and that he was “the Quenes dearlynge” and her “chefe frende & counsailer.”²⁵

Cardinal Beaufort is described by Hall neither as a holy man nor as exempt from ambition. Moreover, unlike Holinshed's portrait of Wolsey, Hall's portrait of Winchester shows a man unlearned and of a mean nature, “more noble of bloodd, then notable in learning, haut in stomacke, and hygh in countenaunce, ryche above measure of all men, & to fewe liberal, disdaynfull to his kynne and dreadfull to his lovers, preferrynge money before friendshippe, many thinges beginning, and nothing perfourmyng. His covetous insaciable, and hope of long lyfe, made hym bothe to forget God, hys Prince and hym selfe, in his latter daies.”²⁶ Nevertheless, however negatively the man is judged by Hall, he is never connected with the plotting of Gloucester's death that Shakespeare unequivocally attributes to him. In the play, Winchester dies in despair because of his sin instead of repenting of it, and shows no sign of redemption. Warwick's comment after his death seals his many wrongs: “So bad a death argues a monstrous life” (3.3.30).

York's character and his actions are notably altered by Shakespeare. In the first place, the duke's aspirations to the throne are somewhat ennobled in the source by what is presented as not entirely personal motivations: “Rychard duke of Yorke …, perceivyng the Kyng to be a ruler not Ruling, & the whole burden of the Realme, to depend in the ordinaunces of the Quene and the duke of Suffolke, began secretly to allure to his frendes of the nobilitie, and privatly declared to them, hys title and right to the Crowne.” Hall describes York as a man of “gentle behaviour” and mentions the popular favor that the duke acquired for subduing the “rude and savage” Irish nation. Moreover—and what is more interesting for our present purpose—Hall ascribes the actions to further his claims to the throne and to stir Cade's rebellion more to his friends and followers than to him.²⁷

That Shakespeare's York is the perfect Machiavellian villain and the worthy father of crookback Richard is obvious throughout the whole play. Not unlike his son Richard in Richard III, York is allowed a privileged channel of communication with the audience. In two lengthy monologues and two asides (1.1.215-60, 3.1.331-83, 3.1.87-92, 5.1.23-31), he is allowed to speak his mind freely and to uncover his machinations. Consequently, from the start no noble motive can be ascribed to him. Moreover, Shakespeare grants him the final victory, cutting the action abruptly after the battle of St. Albans, thus constructing a political model where the forces of evil eventually triumph.

Dame Eleanor Cobham, too, is given a chance to speak her ambitious mind “privately,” after having openly, and unsuccessfully, tempted her honest, unwavering husband with the lure of the crown. Shakespeare gives prominence to her character, thus strengthening the paradigm of ambition that pervades the play. He makes her a miniature Lady Macbeth, although less resolute and “manly” than her more famous sibling. Unlike Lady Macbeth, Eleanor is prompted by her jealousy for Margaret as well as by personal ambition; she is ignorant and superstitious, given to sorcery, dreams, and prophecies; like her, although with less determination, she contrives to put up a “manly” attitude in order to make up for what she considers her husband's “womanly” nature:

Follow I must; I cannot go before,
While Gloucester bears this base and humble mind.
Were I a man, a duke, and next of blood,
I would remove these tedious stumbling-blocks
And smooth my way upon their headless necks;
And, being a woman, I will not be slack
To play my part in Fortune's pageant.

(1.2.61-67)

Shakespeare also uses Eleanor's treason to show the corruption of the clergy and of the nobility. One of Eleanor's associates, the priest Hume, is given a chance in a monologue (1.2.87-97) to reveal that he is being paid both by the duchess and by Suffolk and the cardinal, who by undoing her, hope to destroy Gloucester.²⁸

IV. ACT I, SCENE 1: THE DRAMATIC VESTURE OF DISLOYALTY AND TREASON

The masterly organization of the play's first scene makes clear that personal ambition is the engine that sets in motion the whole political action and that treason is its only weapon. In the opening segment of the scene, all the relevant characters of the play except Dame Eleanor are present: the king, Duke Humphrey, Salisbury, Warwick, Beaufort, York, Somerset, and Buckingham have gathered to welcome Queen Margaret, whom Suffolk has wedded by proxy and escorted to England from France.

The first parties to exit are the king, the queen, and Suffolk (on l. 73). Gloucester then speaks his mind to the nobles and reveals his grief for the loss of Maine and Anjou decreed in the articles that have been signed to make the marriage possible. When Gloucester exits, having left behind him his prophecy that “France will be lost ere long” (l. 145), the cardinal of Winchester reveals his fears at the favor that Gloucester has acquired with the common people. Buckingham then suggests that the duke be divested of the protectorship, a suggestion that the cardinal promptly makes his own: “This weighty business will not brook delay; / I’ll to the Duke of Suffolk presently” (ll. 169-70).

Immediately after Winchester's exit, it is left to Buckingham and Somerset to express briefly their hatred for the “haughty” prelate and their fear that he might become protector on Gloucester's displacement. When these two leave the stage (l. 178), Salisbury displays his fears at “the pride of Suffolk and the Cardinal, / With Somerset's and Buckingham's ambition” (ll. 202-3) and suggests that he, his son, and York join Duke Humphrey while his actions “do tend the profit of the land” (l. 205). York openly agrees, but half-reveals his secret mind in a brief aside (l. 208). Finally, after Salisbury and Warwick leave the stage, he is left alone, the last link in the disquieting chain of treasons, to utter his first monologue. He then reveals that his agreement with Salisbury and Warwick and his appreciation of Gloucester are feigned and that he will profit from the situation only to further his ambition to take the throne:

A day will come when York shall claim his own;
And therefore I will take the Nevils' parts
And make a show of love to proud Duke Humphrey,
And when I spy advantage, claim the crown,
For that’s the golden mark I seek to hit.

(ll. 240-44)

What is left to be revealed, as far as the courtly plots are concerned, is shown in the two scenes that follow. Scene 2 presents Eleanor Cobham's ambition and her plans against Henry and Margaret, while scene 3 reveals the treacherous confederacy between Margaret and Suffolk. Shakespeare makes their plot known to the audience by deftly displacing and manipulating an episode that he found in Hall but that in the chronicle is not connected with any political issue. When Peter, the armorer's man, presents to the queen and Suffolk a petition against his master “for saying / that the Duke of York was rightful heir to the crown” (1.3.25-26), Margaret is encouraged to speak her mind to Suffolk:

Beside the haught Protector, have we Beaufort
The imperious churchman; Somerset, Buckingham,
And grumbling York; and not the least of these
But can do more in England than the King

(1.3.68-71)

and adds her hatred for “that proud dame, the Lord Protector's wife” (l. 76).²⁹ The kind of league that Suffolk suggests to her excludes all the others, even the king:

Although we fancy not the Cardinal,
Yet must we join with him and with the lords
Till we have brought Duke Humphrey in disgrace.
As for the Duke of York, this late complaint
Will make but little for his benefit:
So, one by one, we’ll weed them all at last,
And you yourself shall steer the happy helm.

(1.3.94-100)

Here we may sense that Suffolk is making even Margaret his tool, especially if we remember his lines at the end of Henry VI, 1:

Thus Suffolk hath prevail’d; and thus he goes,
As did the youthful Paris once to Greece,
With hope to find the like event in love,
But prosper better than the Trojan did.
Margaret shall now be queen, and rule the king;
But I will rule both her, the king and realm.

(5.7.103-8)

By this time, the audience is conscious of the fact that no one is safe at court, that loyalty has been banished, that ambition holds sway, that the last thought of the people in power is the common weal, that the king is excluded from all important actions and decisions, and that a civil war grounded on the meanest of personal motivations is bound to follow.

V. THE HEALTHY PART OF THE NATION

However, there is still a healthy part of the nation, very evidently presented as such and toward whom the sympathies of the audience are clearly oriented. This is unequivocally embodied by Duke Humphrey and by the common people who love him (the Nevils are presented as acting in good faith, although they support York's claim). Henry is more on the side of this party than on that of the ambitious nobility, but he is too weak and too easily deceived ever to allow the sane and wise to prevail.

The love of the common people for Gloucester and the epithet of “good Duke Humphrey” are reported by Hall.³⁰ Indeed, the chronicle is explicit, although not diffuse, in describing the duke as noble and disinterested as well as an experienced politician, and in attributing his ruin to the envy of his enemies. In the play, Gloucester's righteousness is made clear in his opposition to his wife's ambitious plans, and is recognized even by his enemies (see York's tribute in 2.2.72-73). But most of all we are made to recognize from his own speeches the honest man whose only care is for the good of his country. (After all, one of the ways in which we perceive truth in drama is that in it noble speeches may only come from noble characters.) Shakespeare gathers these hints and turns them into a relevant and conspicuous political issue, establishing a sharp contrast between a healthy party and the diseased side of those wielding power. In similar fashion, the play also shows on the one hand the honest and virtuous among the common people (those that follow Gloucester) and, on the other, the “idle rascals” (those that follow Cade).³¹

Moreover, in political terms, the play seems to affirm that there are popular claims that are considered acceptable and well grounded, although there are of course others that are not. In particular, while the use of popular revolt to further the people's claims is condemned, the practice of petition is considered legitimate.³²

However, the play seems to go further than that, suggesting that even certain acts of rebellion are justified. The possibility of an uprising by Gloucester's followers after his death, in fact, produces fear only in those that plot his murder, while their actual rebellion is seen as an acceptable form of protest by Salisbury and Warwick and by the king, since it is prompted by anger at the perpetration of a hideous crime.

The commoners are mentioned very early in the play, and it is clear from the start that they are treated in two different and opposed ways: with fear and scorn in the words of the ambitious nobles, and with sympathy in the words of Gloucester. The first to mention the common people in connection with the love they bear to Gloucester, and therefore as a menace to the nobles' privileges and power, is the cardinal:

What though the common people favour him,
Calling him “Humphrey, the good Duke of Gloucester,”
Clapping their hands, and crying with loud voice
“Jesu maintain your royal Excellence!”
With “God preserve the good Duke Humphrey!”
I fear me, lords, for all this flattering gloss,
He will be found a dangerous Protector.

(1.1.157-63)

The cardinal cynically suggests that popular favor is to be manipulated for one's own ends: it is one of the ingredients of power and a powerful tool for its maintenance and furtherance, and therefore potentially dangerous when it is held by the enemy.³³

The commoners are mentioned with scorn and hatred by the Duchess of Gloucester when, after she is found guilty of high treason, she is inflicted the humiliation of being led through the streets of London, and of being made an object of ridicule and contempt by the crowd. The epithets that she uses here show her haughty mind: to be followed by “the giddy multitude,” looked at with “their hateful looks,” scorned by “a rabble,” laughed at by “the envious people” and by “every idle rascal,” constitutes the most cruel punishment that could be devised for her (2.4.21, 23, 32, 35, 47).

Margaret's perspective is by no means less cynical than the cardinal's. Her cue is, again, the favor that Gloucester has won with the commoners. The power conferred by popular favor and the nightmare of popular rebellion are here clearly evoked by the queen:

By flattery hath he won the commons' hearts,
And when he please to make commotion,
’Tis to be feared they all will follow him.

(3.1.28-30)

Suffolk's mind is not different; his fear of popular rebellion equals that of the others. This is how he speaks of the commoners in connection with Gloucester, suggesting that he be murdered rather than risk a regular trial that might provoke the popular protest:

The King will labour still to save his life;
The commons haply rise to save his life;
And yet we have but trivial argument,
More than mistrust, that shows him worthy death.

(3.1.239-42)

York not only shares the manipulative view about the populace, he also practices their manipulation, provoking popular commotion in the hope that this will help him to get the crown. In the long monologue that he pronounces in 3.1.331-83, he reveals his having “seduced” Jack Cade “to make commotion as full well he can” (l. 358) and shows his political deftness when he plans to observe the humor of the common people and study their possible reactions before proclaiming his purpose: “By this I shall perceive the commons' mind, / How they affect the house and claim of York” (ll. 374-75).

Gloucester's attitude is obviously different, and it is toward his honest perspective that the audience's appreciation is directed. The word commonweal, unknown to the others, is pronounced by the duke in connection with the discredit that is cast on him by Eleanor's treason. To Margaret, who hurls at him his wife's shame, Gloucester replies with the assurance of a clean conscience:

Madam, for myself, to heaven I do appeal,
How I have lov’d the king and commonweal.

(2.1.182-83)

The word contrasts the common good of the nation that is Gloucester's pursuit with the private ambition that had prompted his wife's demeanor. Gloucester again reveals sympathy for the poor (“the needy commons”) when he pleads his honesty and good faith in answer to York's accusation of having “stay’d the soldiers' pay”:

No; many a pound of mine own proper store,
Because I would not tax the needy commons,
Have I dispursed to the garrisons,
And never ask’d for restitution.

(3.1.115-18)

However, the “needy commons” are not only evoked in the nightmares and pleadings of the people in power, although their frequent mention by itself makes them a relevant social background to political demeanor and misdemeanor. They also appear on the stage, in a number of capacities and roles, and are presented in a variety of perspectives.

In 1.3, they first appear in the role of petitioners (one of them is the Armourer's man, Peter, whose petition is against his master “for saying / that the Duke of York was rightful heir to the crown”; ll. 25-26). Their petitions are meant to be delivered to Gloucester, and it is understood that they expect that the lord protector will answer their supplications in the affirmative. But the men mistake Suffolk for Gloucester and are compelled to deliver their petitions to him. Here is the first petition, in which most clearly the righting of an evident wrong is requested:

Mine is, and ’t please your Grace, against John Goodman, my Lord Cardinal's man, for keeping my house, and lands, and wife, and all, from me.

(1.3.16-18)

Suffolk reacts scornfully, and becomes furious when he reads the second petition, one that accuses him:

Thy wife too! that’s some wrong indeed. What’s yours? What’s here? [Reads] “Against the Duke of Suffolk, for enclosing the commons of Long Melford.” How now, sir knave!

(1.3.19-22)

The only petition to receive Suffolk's and Margaret's attention is Peter's, because it furthers their aim to get rid of York by proving him guilty of high treason. The others are dismissed by the queen, who tears them in the face of the petitioners:

And as for you, that love to be protected
Under the wings of our Protector's grace,
Begin your suits anew, and sue to him.

(1.3.37-39)

Peter and Horner, his master, are brought before the king in 1.3.177-220. The dynamics of the scene seem to speak in favor of the weaker, although the dispute is formally even. Peter is given one turn to make his accusation, to which Horner replies with a turn, double in length, defending himself. The verdict is pronounced by Gloucester: on a day appointed, they will prove the truth of their assertions in single combat. After this, each of the contenders is given one more speech. Horner accepts the verdict, while Peter asks to be spared the trial for, he says, “I cannot fight” (l. 213) and “I shall never be able to fight a blow” (ll. 215-16), thus admitting to being the weaker both physically and morally.

When the combat takes place, Peter and Horner are accompanied by their neighbors, who encourage them by drinking to their victory—other commoners, this time enacting a coarse but genuine demonstration of friendship. Horner, who is drunk, boasts an easy victory, while Peter is certain that he will be overcome. But Horner, in his presumption, has drunk too many cups of sack, so that Peter wins the combat, slaying his master, who, before dying, confesses: “Hold, Peter, hold! I confess, I confess treason (2.3.91).³⁴

Indeed, among the commoners there are also liars and impostors. Saunder Simpcox, in the words of Gloucester “the lying’st knave / In Christendom” (2.1.124-25), takes advantage of the king's good faith by telling him that St. Alban has restored his sight after a lifelong blindness. He and his wife are whipped for their fraud. However, to the account in his source Shakespeare adds one line that informs us as to the motive of the fraud and therefore mitigates the blame; Simpcox's wife states plainly the reason of their deception: “Alas! sir, we did it for pure need” (l. 150).

Others among the commoners are treated less favorably: the practices of witches, sorcerers, and necromancers are of course considered as socially dangerous. (Incidentally, their dangerousness is indicated, somewhat indirectly, by the fact that everyone fears their predictions and that these in the end prove to be true.) In fact, the text shows no sympathy for Margery Jourdain, Southwell, Bolingbroke, and Hume, who end up executed (the witch will, of course, be burned, the others strangled).

It is, again, two commoners who perpetrate the crime of Gloucester's murder. They are shown after they have done the deed, and one of them, unlike those who had commissioned the murder, shows pity and remorse: “O, that it were to do! What have we done? / Didst ever hear a man so penitent?” (3.2.3-4; italics mine). Not unlike the sorcerers, these have been bribed and corrupted by those in power. We may presume, therefore, that, like Simpcox and his wife, they acted “for pure need.”

The episode that shows that popular risings are acceptable when they are prompted by a just cause is that of the commoners' revolt following Gloucester's murder (3.2). A rebellion, whatever its cause, is invariably considered a troublesome event to be kept in check and eventually suffocated. In this case, however, it is made clear that no one is thinking of taking up arms against the rebellious citizens; instead, it is held that satisfactory explanations for Gloucester's death must be provided so that the crowd may be appeased.

Undoubtedly, the revolt is rendered justifiable only because its popular character is blurred: what has urged the commons, in fact, is rage against the traitorous murder of a nobleman and the defense of a “pious” king who is unable to protect himself and the country against the plots of a corrupt nobility. All the same, however, the rebellious citizens are presented as infinitely healthier and morally superior to the nobles whom they accuse. Moreover, their action is lent dignity by the attitude of Warwick and Salisbury, who try to appease them by inquiring about the murder, and by what is presented as their “sensible” request that the traitor Suffolk be either executed or exiled. Finally, their rebellion is given weight and formal sanction by the king's decision to banish Suffolk.

Thus, when it comes to Suffolk's elimination (4.1), the shipmen who carry it out are presented as executioners and avengers rather than as murderers. The fact that before sentencing Suffolk to death the ship's captain throws at him the long catalogue of his acts of “devilish policy” (ll. 70-102) makes us perceive Suffolk's suppression as an act of popular justice.

It is only at this stage of the play, when good and evil have been clearly distributed, that Jack Cade makes his appearance.

VI. ENTER JACK CADE

The elaborate compositional process that the Cade episode underwent shows the exceptional importance that Shakespeare attributed to its representation. The various stages may be reconstructed with some confidence.

It is clear that Shakespeare was not satisfied with Hall's account of the episode. He may have consulted other accounts and found that they offered a similar treatment. He must then have abandoned his main source and the historical event proper and turned to more than one different book and to other events, searching for elements that might help his representational purpose. There he met with a different, though similar, story in a different time: that of the peasants' revolt under Jack Straw in 1381. The most abject acts that Cade and his followers perform in Shakespeare's play come from the accounts that Grafton, Holinshed, and perhaps the anonymous play The Life and Death of Jack Straw give of that event. In these reports, which he took pains to examine, Shakespeare read of the rebels' hatred for learning and books and of their sending clerks and lawyers to death; he came across accounts of the destruction of the Savoy and of the Inner Temple and of the burning of all written records; and finally he found the motivations of the uprising and the wording of the rebels' communist dream.

We may imagine the dramatist taking notes of these elements or marking the margins of his books to underline those references which seemed to suit his purpose, and establishing, while reading, parallels not only between the 1381 revolt and the uprising of 1450 but perhaps also between these two and other, more recent, disorders: the 1517 uprising on the part of xenophobic apprentices that he had just represented or that he was soon to represent in the three folios of The Book of Sir Thomas More attributed to his hand; and perhaps other disorders, nearer in time, such as the Hackett rebellion in July 1591 or the June 1592 feltmakers' revolt before the Marshalsea prison in Southwark.³⁵

While he read these accounts, we may speculate, a rich network of intertextual associations and a dialogue of diverse voices started to take form in his mind. One text reacted on the other so that one event explained, and was explained by, the other. The 1381 revolt was therefore assumed as a critical comment on other similar situations. Finally, the conflation of two different but similar episodes made it possible to transcend the contingent: thus, Cade's rebellion acquired the status of an exemplum, establishing a model where before there was a bare, isolated event. What a modern theorist of historiography would call a “restricted generalization” was instinctively adopted so that rebellion was awarded the status of a general political issue. The issue was, in turn, perfectly understandable to Shakespeare's audience, since the evaluation of the problem of popular risings had not significantly changed since 1381.³⁶

Once these associations were mentally established, the next problem was how to render the episode. Shakespeare decided on the comic convention. However, the kind of laughter that came to his mind was not the liberating and festive laughter of the carnival tradition; it was the grim, bitter, moralistic laughter that comes from the grotesque, a laughter that reveals some kind of conflict and that proclaims some kind of disease.

However, it would be incorrect to say that what is reproduced in Henry VI, 2 is the 1381 Kentish rebellion under Jack Straw and Wat Tyler. While, in fact, the basic events of the Cade rebellion are kept, there is much that is new to both traditions. In particular, Shakespeare both embittered and rendered ludicrous the source material as far as both revolts are concerned, representing the rebels as a bunch of laughable, although violent, individuals.

The motives for the 1381 uprising, which seem to be taken seriously both by Grafton and by Holinshed and which in the chronicles are narrated not without sympathy, are devalued and rendered irrational and inconsequential in the play. Cade's communist dream and the kind of reforms that he promises are debased to little more than wild revelling:

cade: There shall be in
England seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny; the three-hoop’d pot
shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small beer. All the
realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass. And
when I am king, as king I will be,—
all: God save your Majesty!
cade: I thank you, good people—there
shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score, and I will apparel
them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers, and worship me
their lord.

(4.2.62-72)³⁷

That the enterprise and its leader are not taken seriously even by the rebels is made clear on Cade's first appearance, in Dick the Butcher and Smith the Weaver's side-play, which cuts down to size Cade's boasting of nobility and his claims to the throne (4.2.31-60).

The burning of the men of law's houses, the destruction of the Savoy and of the Inner Temple and of all the official records that the sources relate as perpetrated by the Kentish rebels in 1381, are attributed in the play to Cade and his followers. Cade's incongruous utopia involves the project of making a tabula rasa of all cultural records, to which Shakespeare adds the intent to “kill all the lawyers” (4.2.73), showing the arraignment and killing of the clerk of Chartham. Historical (1381) and nonhistorical materials are here mingled, with the addition of ludicrous motivations and with a stress on the rebels' loathing of writing and of books and the consequent indiscriminate killing of those who “can write and read and cast accompt” (4.2.81-82), to say nothing of those who can speak foreign tongues. The clerk of Chartham confesses that he can write his name and is therefore found guilty. Cade's verdict is, “Away with him, I say: hang him with his pen and ink-horn about his neck” (4.2.103-4). However, there is no pathos about the poor man's death, for the scene verges on sheer farce. Similarly, the killing of Sir Humphrey Stafford and of his brother are denied the dignity of tragedy (Sir Humphrey “can speak French; and therefore he is a traitor”; ll. 159-60); no ideality is lent to the burning down of the Savoy and of the Inner Temple and the destruction of all written records; this last action is made the object of derision even by John Holland and Smith the Weaver, who produce a few aside comments to the suggestion that, after the destruction, all the laws of England come out of Cade's mouth:

holland: [Aside.] Mass, ’twill be sore law then; for he was thrust
in the mouth with a spear, and ’tis not whole yet.
weaver: [Aside.] Nay, John, it will be stinking law; for his breath stinks
with eating toasted cheese.
cade: I have thought upon it; it
shall be so. Away! burn all the records of the realm; my mouth shall be the
parliament of England.
holland: [Aside.] Then we are like to have biting statutes, unless his teeth
be pull’d out.

(4.7.7-16)

The general effect of these distorting and debasing strategies is a complete devaluation of the seriousness of the rebels' enterprise, perhaps also a drastic reduction of their dangerousness. However, it is for these rebels and for their mock-rebellion that the king has run away and that the whole commonwealth is in danger of collapsing. Admittedly, the nobility could neither be laughed at nor despised explicitly: the laughter at and contempt of it are in fact less direct and open than the derision aimed at the party of the rebels.

However, even allowing for the uncertainties that come from the text's corrupted transmission, there are still a few more subterranean stylistic devices that contribute to the construction of a levelling strategy: there are moments when Cade is allowed to speak verse, thereby acting on the same level as the nobility (4.2), and moments when the emissaries of the runaway king are in some way lowered to the level of the rebels—moments, for instance, when to speak verse is by no means more dignified or more sensible than to speak prose, and is certainly more incongruous. One of these is when Lord Say is brought to the presence of Cade, who accuses him of a series of cultural crimes: “Thou hast most traiterously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school” (4.7.30-32); “Thou hast caused printing to be us’d” (ll. 33-34); “Thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun, and a verb, and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear” (ll. 36-39).³⁸

Say's answer to these absurd accusations is no less absurd, and is obviously such that it condemns him: unaware of the kind of crimes of which he is being accused, he starts his defense with a Latin sentence referring to Kent as “bona terra, mala gens” (4.7.54), which causes Cade's obvious reaction: “Away with him! away with him! He speaks Latin” (l. 55); to which, in a last desperate effort to save his life, Say answers by quoting Caesar's Commentaries and is thereupon beheaded.

VII. THE SOURCE OF DISORDER

I began my argument by affirming that the Cade scenes may be viewed in a double perspective. It is time, therefore, to answer one last question: As it stands, what did the Cade episode communicate to the various sectors of the playhouse? Could the author expect that the same piece of theater be taken as supporting the interests of all the components of the variegated audience that he was addressing? It is possible to give an affirmative answer, since the critical reception of the episode still suits the purposes of differently thinking critical readers. It remains, however, to see how.

Generally speaking, the satirical and the grotesque modes require full agreement between sender and receiver as to the object in which the deformity resides. Therefore, the strategy that allows a discrepancy to arise, a double perspective to be perceived, and different messages to be sent to different targets can only consist in the blurring to a certain extent of the object in which the disease is denounced, or at least in the suggestion that one monstrosity generates the other and is responsible for it. As I have tried to show, this is precisely what the first three acts of the play suggest.

True, Cade and his followers are grotesque and almost subhuman, but the power that produced them and whose instrument they are is by no means the comparatively dignified power of the chronicles; it is the debased, degraded, and sickly power that the play depicts. True, Cade's followers are a fickle and ignorant mass; but has not the audience been acquainted throughout the first three acts of the play (as it will be in the fifth) with the false alliances of turncoat nobles, their acts of treason, and their crimes? True, the rebellion is a mock rebellion; but is not the power that takes it seriously and deploys an army to combat it so much more a mock power for that? True, the rebels' expectations are depicted as basely materialistic and incongruous; but what noble ideals has the audience reaped from the speeches and acts of the nobility? The deformity of the rebels, then, holds up a mirror to the corruption of the party in power. The political lesson is there for those who want to see it.³⁹

My point about the possibility of a divided or double reception could be better defended if records of a theatrical success of Henry VI, 2 had survived as they have of Part 1. In the absence of witnesses, to make assumptions about the kind of reception that the play may have had by its first audience is mere conjecture. However, the very textual history of the play (one of the thorniest in the canon), the three bad quarto editions through which it went, the probable memorial reconstruction, the names of the actors Bevis and Holland which are still attached to two of its characters, its careless and hasty transmission, and the many Folio variants, probably due to the censor's action, may in the last analysis testify to the frequent use of the text in the theater.

If this line of reasoning is correct, then we have one more element to argue that the play may have reached the various sectors of the playhouse with diverse messages. One part of the audience must indeed have felt that the representation of the Cade rebellion supported the interests of those who repressed the frequent brawls that broke out outside theaters and prisons; another part, more intensely aware of social contradictions, may have registered with satisfaction the many perversions of authority, and perceived the Cade episode and the events that lead up to it as a dramatic presentation of those contradictions. Henry VI, 2 might then be one more case to support what Jonathan Dollimore has shown, namely, that “despite all the propaganda to the contrary, it was quite possible for people to see that disorder was often generated from the top down rather than from the bottom up.”⁴⁰

Notes

1. Greenblatt, “Murdering Peasants,” in idem, ed., Representing the English Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 24, 25.

2. Rackin, Stages of History (London: Routledge, 1990), 75.

3. Ibid., 221.

4. Ibid., 219.

5. Hattaway, Introduction to The Second Part of King Henry VI (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 20.

6. Patterson, Shakespeare and the Popular Voice (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 1.

7. Ibid., 49. Patterson traces the tradition of an aristocratic, conservative Shakespeare that she sees as a critical commonplace back to Coleridge. See her discussion of this issue in the Foreword of the same book.

8. In the same session of the Fifth World Shakespeare Congress in Tokyo (August 1991) where a shorter version of this paper was read, Philippe Laroque read a paper entitled “The Jack Cade Scenes Reconsidered: Popular Rebellion, Utopia or Carnival?”

9. The other Shakespearean locus in which an equally explicit stance of political conservatism seems to be expressed is Ulysses's speech on “degree” in Troilus and Cressida, 1.3.75-137. However, the situation is different in the two passages, especially from the point of view of the authority from which the opinion comes. While, in fact, the Troilus speech, however authoritative in tone and persuasive in its rhetorical organization, can be viewed as one of the possible axiological positions in a virtual debate, a position which is attributed to one of the characters, the Cade scenes impose themselves by the truth-value of sheer representation. As such, they more strongly imply the arranger's (if not the author's) standpoint, and therefore a less mediated attempt at shaping the audience's reactions. Paradoxically, the evaluations imposed by representation, although more indirectly expressed, may work more strongly than those suggested by explicit declaration.

10. The distinction between use and interpretation of texts is developed by Umberto Eco in “Intentio lectoris,” Differentia 2 (1988): 147-68.

11. For Hattaway, “the variety of styles found throughout the sequence contributes to the analysis and need not be taken as evidence of multiple authorship or revision, but rather of perspectivism, a dramatic cross-examination from differing points of view, embodied in different dramatic styles of the issues raised and events enacted on the stage” (Introduction to The Second Part of King Henry VI, 1).

12. Taylor, Introduction to Henry V (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 31.

13. The expression in my title is taken from The Winter's Tale:

    hermoine. You, my lord,
    best know
    (Who least would seem to do so) my past life
    Hath been as continent, as chaste, as true,
    As I am now unhappy; which is more
    Than history can pattern, though devis’d
    And play’d to take spectators.

    (3.2.32-37)

    All Shakespearean quotations are taken from the Arden edition of his plays.

14. It seems to me that the background characters and marginal events that appear in Shakespeare's history plays may be considered as sparse elements in that “social history” whose absence in Renaissance England Arthur Ferguson regrets in his Clio Unbound (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979). If not from research, these elements came to the dramatist from observation and might therefore be considered as witnessing forms of contemporary social reality.

15. By “historical” I mean elements and events that had been recorded as true in written statements recognized as history books.

16. The main source of Henry VI, 2 is Hall's chronicle. Probable sources are Holinshed, Grafton, Foxe, and the anonymous play The Life and Death of Jack Straw.

17. However, as we shall see, not all the commoners share the “base” qualities of Cade and his followers. The issue of the degradation of the high sphere in the histories is developed, although in a different perspective, by Rackin, Stages of History.

18. See, for instance, the following passage from Hall, where the seed of all discord is seen in God's displeasure with Henry's marriage: “But moste of all it should seme, that God with this matrimony was not content. For after this spousage the kynges frendes fell from hym, bothe in Englande and in Fraunce, the Lordes of his realme, fell in division emongest themselfes, the commons rebelled against their sovereigne Lorde, and naturall Prince, feldes were foughten, many thousandes slain, and finally, the kyng deposed, and his sonne slaine, and this Quene sent home again, with as muche misery and sorowe, as she was received with pompe and triumphe.” Here and elsewhere in this article source quotations are as recorded in Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, vol. 3 (London: Routledge, 1960). The passage quoted above is on p. 103.

    As regards the issue of first and second causes, Hattaway remarks that “this play and the group of plays to which it belongs do not propose simply that God had led England through the troubled times of dissension between Lancastrian and Yorkist dynasties to fulfil her destiny with the enthronement of Henry Tudor as Henry VII. If there is a grand design it is only dimly glimpsed, for the emphasis of Shakespeare, if not always of his characters, rests firmly upon efficient and not final causes” (Introduction to The Second Part of King Henry VI, 1).

19. Quoted in Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, 104.

20. Ibid., 104, 105.

21. Ibid., 105, 111. That Gloucester's death was procured by his enemies is recorded by Hall as popular conviction. Hall says that “all indifferent persons well knewe, that he died of no natural death but of some violent force: some judged him to be strangled: some affirme, that a hotte spitte was put in at his foundement: other write, that he was stiffeled or smoldered betwene twoo fetherbeddes” (ibid., 107). Moreover, Gloucester is said by Hall to have been granted a trial where he could defend himself and plead his innocence, while in Shakespeare he is suppressed before the day appointed for his trial.

22. Ibid., 102.

23. Ibid., 105, 106.

24. Ibid., 106-7.

25. Ibid., 104, 112.

26. Ibid., 109.

27. Ibid., 108, 113.

28. Hall does not immediately connect the discovery of Eleanor's plot to Gloucester's loss of the protectorship. Equally absent in Hall is the part of the cardinal and York in the plot; Shakespeare ranks these two among the inspirers of Gloucester's murder (see 3.1.223-81 and 323-25). Hall only says that Suffolk was suspected of having some responsibility in the duke's murder.

29. Margaret's hatred for Eleanor Cobham is unhistorical. The discovery of Eleanor's treason and her condemnation, in fact, are reported by Hall as having taken place before Margaret's arrival in England in 1445.

30. See also Foxe: “Of manners he seemed meeke and gentle, loving the commonwealth, a supporter of the poore commons, of wit and wisdome discreet and studious, well affected to religion, and a frend to veritie, and no les enemy to pride and ambition, especially in hauty prelates, which was his undoing in this present evil world: And, which is seldome and rare in such princes of the calling, he was both learned himselfe: and no lesse given to study, as also a singular favourer and patron to them which were studious and learned” (John Foxe, Actes and Monuments of Martyrs, 1583; Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, 127).

31. However, Cade's followers are in the end redeemed, even though their rehabilitation implies giving up the claims for which they had revolted. In any case, what is relevant to our study is that they abandon Cade not only because they are a fickle mass or because they are promised safety or even because the name of Henry V has been pronounced, but also because they are made to believe, through the words of Old Clifford, that they have been manipulated and “misled” by Cade and because they are made the object of a different kind of manipulation, namely the lure of a safer conquest, at the king's side, in France. Immediately after they have forsaken Cade, they are seen in an entirely different light. They are no longer the cruel, though grotesque, slaughterers formerly portrayed, but only common, sensible men, whose dangerousness has been removed once the corrupting influence of Cade is eradicated. However impaired by aristocratic interests their redemption and capitulation may essentially be, its dramatic effect is that even a conformist audience now perceives them with sympathy.

32. See 1.3.1-36, where the blame falls clearly on the use that Suffolk and Margaret make of the petitions.

33. Cade seems to be no less cynical in exploiting his followers when, assuming an attitude of aristocratic scorn, he calls them “base peasants” (4.8.21).

34. The episode is puzzling. Gloucester had ordered the combat between Peter and Horner because Peter's accusation “breeds suspicion” in York (1.3.206). However, York's treason does not follow from Horner's confession. All that is proven by Peter's victory is, in Henry's words, “the truth and innocence of this poor fellow” (2.3.100).

35. See Patterson's discussion of the possible connection of the Cade episode with contemporary popular risings and the evidence that she produces for it in Shakespeare and the Popular Voice, chap. 2.

36. Restricted generalizations in historical narratives are assertions similar to general laws in that they are more general than simple descriptions; however, they are limited or restricted because, as explanations, they are not valid for all times and places, but depend on certain conditions (temporal, social, geographical, cultural, etc.). These generalizations are, therefore, corrections to the concept of uniqueness in history in that they serve to connect certain classes of events to certain contexts and circumstances. See C. B. Joynt and Nicholas Rescher, “The Problem of Uniqueness in History,” History and Theory 1 (1961): 150-62.

37. In the account of both of Shakespeare's probable sources, the rebels' claim to equality is justified in Christian terms: “At this time there were a certaine of such kinde of people as is aforesayde, that beganne to stirre in England and namely in Kent, and sayde they were in great servitude and bondage: But sayd they, in the beginning of the worlde, there were no bond men: neyther ought there to be any nowe, except it were such a one as had committed treason agaynst his Lorde, as Lucifer did to God. But sayde they we can have no suche battayle, for we are neyther Angelles nor spirites, but men framed and formed to the similitude of our Lordes, and therefore sayde they, why should we then be so kept under lyke beastes and slaves?” (R. Grafton, A Chronicle at Large, 1569; Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, 128-29).

    We encounter the same attitude in Holinshed when he relates the arguments with which John Bull inflamed the spirits of the poor people: “‘When Adam delv’d and Eve span, / Who was then a gentleman?’ and so continuing his sermon, went about to proove by the words of that proverbe, that from the beginning, all men by nature were created alike, and that bondage or servitude came in by injust oppression of naughtie men. For if God would have had anie bondmen from the beginning, he would have appointed who should be bond & who free” (R. Holinshed, The Third Volume of Chronicles, 1587 ed.; Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, 133).

    Much less favorable to the rebels is the account that, by the middle of the eighteenth century, David Hume would give of the same rising, thereby showing that the obsession with sedition is by no means exclusively Elizabethan and Jacobean: “One John Ball, also, a seditious preacher, who affected low popularity, went about the country and inculcated on his audience the principles of the first origin of mankind from one common stock, their equal right to liberty and to all the goods of nature, the tyranny of artificial distinctions, and the abuses which had arisen from the degradation of the more considerable part of the species, and the aggrandizement of a few insolent rulers. These doctrines, so agreeable to the populace, and so conformable to the ideas of primitive equality which are engraven in the hearts of all men, were greedily received by the multitude, and scattered the sparks of the sedition which the present tax raised into a conflagration” (The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Abdication of James the Second, 1688 [1754-1761; reprint Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Co., 1858], 2:283).

38. Shortly after reporting the outcome of the battle of St. Albans, Hall launches on the praise of the newly discovered technique of printing: “In which season, the craft of Prynting was first invented in the citie of Mens in Germanie, to the great furtheraunce of all persons, desiryng knowledge or thyrsting for litterature” (quoted in Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, 125).

39. A substantial objection to my reading may come from Greenblatt's theoretically impeccable and widely influential argument about “self-undermining authority” and his claim that the logic that governs subversiveness in certain texts is inspired by the power whose ends it furthers. Seen in this perspective, the abasement of the party in power in Henry VI, 2 should be read as institutionally functional to its maintenance because it is “contained by the power that it would appear to threaten” (Stephen Greenblatt, “Invisible Bullets,” in Shakespearean Negotiations [Oxford: Clarendon, 1988], 30). My defense of a different perspective is theoretically naive, for I may only evoke the aftertaste that a particular text leaves behind it. When this, as I believe is the case with Henry VI, 2, is unequivocally the defacement of authority, should we think that the author has missed the point, that he has, so to speak, gone beyond the “right measure” of subversion? And, more generally, how much can be risked, as concerns authority and power, without at the same time risking the possibility of containment?

40. J. Dollimore, Radical Tragedy (New York and London: Harvester, 1989; first published 1984), xxiv.