On April 8, 1605, Queen Anne gave birth to a daughter, Mary, who, as David M. Bergeron remarks, "had the distinction of being the first royal child born in England since Jane Seymour gave birth to the child who became Edward VI."²⁶ The baptism took place on May 5, after "much scurrying about and perusing of historical records in order to recall how a royal child should be baptized."²⁷ The archival record becomes the authority as to how a custom, long forgotten, should be observed. In 2 Henry VI, examples abound of attempts to research the archives. Reacting to Margaret of Anjou, the Duke of Gloucester observes: "I never read but England's kings have had / Large sums of gold and dowries with their wives" (I.i. 128-29). Salisbury, hearing of the account of the Duke of York's claim to the English throne, recalls what he has read:

This Edmund [Mortimer], in the reign of Bolingbroke,
As I have read, laid claim unto the crown;
And, but for Owen Glendower, had been king,
Who kept him in captivity till he died.

(II.ii.39-42)

Reading the written record of past events challenges or authorizes present ones. Both of these examples underscore Shakespeare's preoccupation with reading and writing.

Shakespeare conflated Jack Cade's Rebellion of 1450 with the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.²⁸ He did so, I submit, because he found in the Peasants' Revolt an examination of the power of writing. He read into Cade's rebellion the aspirations of the peasants. Shakespeare's return to the past, in dramatizing the reign of Henry VI, is twofold: events that took place around 1450, and those events that took place in 1381. As Bullough notes, "Perhaps in writing 2 Henry VI in 1591 Shakespeare wished to suggest a parallel between Henry VI' s reign and Richard II's."²⁹ In the pre-history of 2 Henry VI, the political and judicial institutions of the state have collapsed, first with the deposition of Richard II and the enthronement of Bolingbroke. The success of Henry V's reign and the accomplishments of his expansionist policy that culminated with the conquest of France have, of course, masked the illegitimacy of his claim to the throne. Both Henry IV and Henry V have generated successful records that have almost erased the initial act of usurpation. By the time we reach 2 Henry VI, Bolingbroke's usurpation seems like ancient history indeed. Situated somewhere between the old-order monarchy of Richard II and the topsy-turvy criminal world of Richard III, the world of 2 Henry VI represents a transitional period that struggles to maintain authority and legitimacy. A power vacuum obviously emerges. Shakespeare depicts a society that feels the need to purge the archives of the realm and reexamine the events surrounding both the Revolt of 1381 and the deposition of Richard II in 1399/1400.

Edward Hall portrays a Jack Cade who differs from Shakespeare's in significant ways:

A certayn yongman of a goodely stature, and pregnaunt wit, was entised to take upon him the name of John Mortymer, all though his name were Jack Cade, and not for a small policie, thinking that by that surname, the lyne and lynage of the assistent house of the erle of Marche, which were no small number, should be to hym both adherent, and favorable. This capitayn not onely suborned by techers, but also enforced by pryvye scholemasters, assembled together a great company of talle personages.³⁰

Hall describes Cade as "subtill," "covetous," "sober in communication, wyse in disputying, arrogant in hart, and styfe in his opinion" (pp.114-15). Although he finds followers in "divers idle and vacabonde persons" and in "a multitude of evil rude and rustical persones" (p. 114), Edward Hall's Jack Cade seems the very antithesis of Shakespeare's. Jack Cade of Hall's Chronicle was suborned by teachers and "enforced by pryvye scholemasters." Shakespeare's Cade, of course, feels nothing but contempt for teachers and schoolmasters.³¹ Apparently, Shakespeare did not find Hall's explanation satisfactory, although he accepted his conclusion that Cade was manipulated by the Duke of York (Bullough, p. 113).³²

The two historic uprisings followed similar courses, although the Peasants' Revolt took an anti-literate stance and Jack Cade's did not.³³ "The Peasants' Revolt was topical in the year 1590/1591 when the Lord Mayor was John Allot, A Fishmonger like the heroic Walworth who slew Wat Tyler."³⁴ Shakespeare was, however, less interested in historical accuracy than in the question of literacy. The peasants had sought to kill all the lawyers: "This sentiment so excited the rustics that they went to further extremes and declared that all court rolls and old moniments should be burnt so that once the memory of ancient customs had been wiped out their lords would be unable to vindicate their rights over them."³⁵ At Lambeth Palace, the writer of the Anonimalle Chronicle tells us, the rebels "destroyed a great number of the archbishop's goods and burnt all the register books and chancery remembrancers' rolls they found there"; and "set fire to and burnt the fine manor of the Savoy," the palace of John of Gaunt.³⁶ They also captured the Sheriff of Kent, William Septvans, who "was forced to surrender all his muniments, including judicial records and financial rolls. Wat Tyler burned them publicly."³⁷ The rebels attempted but failed to enter the king's treasury at Westminster (Fryde, p. 21). When Richard II issued a pardon and commanded someone to read it to the commons, the rebels did not take it seriously; rather, according to the Anonimalle Chronicle, they returned to London and "had it cried around the city that all lawyers, all the men of the Chancery and the Exchequer and everyone who could write a writ or a letter should be beheaded, wherever they could be found" (reprinted in Dobson, 160). The rebels of 1381 wanted to destroy all records of the kingdom in attempts to restructure English society. By destroying the records, they hoped also to destroy the collective memory upon which the social, political, and economic structure of the country rested.

Unlike the historical Jack Cade, both the peasants of 1381 and Shakespeare's Jack Cade realize that texts, whose production, dissemination, and preservation they cannot control, govern their lives. These texts, generated by the powerful, constitute the basis for oppression. Shakespeare seems well aware of this. The illiterate must submit written petitions if they want wrongs to be redressed. Ironically, one man, mistaking Suffolk for the duke of Gloucester, submits his petition to the wrong person. Suffolk reads the petition against himself: "Against the Duke of Suffolk, for enclosing the commons of Melford" (I.iii.30-32). Queen Margaret, for example, on hearing the various petitioners, misunderstands what they are saying. Peter Thump complains against his master Thomas Horner "for saying that the Duke of York was rightful heir to the crown" (I.iii.26-27). He also adds that his master called the King "usurer," but Queen Margaret corrects him, "an usurper." In this way, they are all dragged into the question of legitimacy (I.iii.). In a display of power, Margaret "tear[s] the supplication" (stage direction, I.iii.41-42), as she orders the petitioner to "begin your suits anew" (41). With this one gesture, Margaret demonstrates the power to control the production and dissemination of records. Gloucester finally sentences Horner and Thump to settle their dispute in combat. Manipulated by others, Horner gets drunk, and Thump kills him (II.iii.). Similarly, the witch Margaret Jourdain is sentenced to burn at the stake in Smithfield; the Duchess, to exile. In the episode involving Saunder Simpcox and St. Albans' miracle, the authorities again trick the illiterate and expose their ignorance.

In Act IV, Jack Cade leads a revolution to combat literacy and the tyranny that it represents. Jack Cade's program does not, in its intent, differ from Margaret's gesture of tearing up a petition and the destruction of records that occurred in 1381.³⁸ Cade proposes a return to a pre-literate stage:³⁹

Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? That parchment, being scribbled o'er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings; but I say, 'tis the bee's wax: for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man.

(IV.ii.76-81)

Cade condemns the slaughter of innocent lambs to make parchment and the use of bee's wax as a seal. He considers these as abuses of nature. Similarly, as Dick the Butcher points out in an aside, the authorities use even the human skin as a parchment to be written upon, referring to the practice of branding the hands of thieves with the letter "T": "But methinks he should stand in fear of fire, being burnt i'th' hand for stealing of sheep" (IV.ii.61-62).

Cade presides over two trials, that of the clerk and that of Lord Say, which reveal his ideas about the true source of the problems that England faces. The clerk is accused of being able "to write and read, and cast accompt" (IV.ii.83-84); of "setting boys' copies," i.e., teaching schoolchildren to write; and of carrying "a book in his pocket with red letters in't." When he confesses that he was so "well brought up" that he can write his name, Cade does not hesitate: "Hang him with his pen and ink-horn about his neck" (IV.ii. 106-107). Lord Say is similarly accused of "corrupting" the kingdom:

Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school: and whereas before, our forefathers had no other books but the score and tally, thou hast caused printing to be used, and contrary to the king, his crown and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill.

(IV.vii.34-39)

Grammar school, printing, paper-mill—all of these become instruments of tyranny. They also underscore the gulf between the privileged literate and the underprivileged illiterate. Cade does not trust those who talk "of a noun and a verb, and such abhominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear" (IV.vii.42-43); furthermore, he recognizes that the aristocrats' ability to read and write has caused too much injustice:

Thou hast appointed justices of peace, to call poor men before them about matters they were not able to answer. Moreover, thou hast put them in prison, and because they could not read thou hast hanged them, when, indeed, only for that cause they have been most worthy to live.

(IV.vii.43-48)

The illiterate outsiders cannot understand, let alone decipher, the codes of the record keepers. The two-track system of justice discriminates against them: because they cannot read, they cannot claim "benefit of clergy" and escape capital punishment. Literacy represents injustice; illiteracy, righteousness and justice.

Cade envisions a revolutionary state in which food and drink exist for all, where everything becomes communal property (IV.ii.67-68). He will abolish money, and everyone will be apparelled "in one livery" to erase the markers of class and status. But all of this can be accomplished only if he eliminates the common enemy, namely writing: "Away, burn all the records of the realm: my mouth shall be the parliament of England" (IV.vii. 14-16). The archives of the state and all writings in the realm constitute a record of customs, traditions, privileges, and titles of property and nobility; hence, they perpetuate injustices.

Cade wants to replace writing with orality, literacy with illiteracy—something that does not depend upon or generate written records. For the fictional genealogy to stick, he must destroy the written records because these lie beyond his control. He claims to be the son of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March; his mother to be a Plantagenet, the daughter of the Duke of Clarence; and his wife to be descended of the "Lacies." Word of mouth sanctions his newly-invented genealogy, as he fashions an identify for himself. He claims that his mother had twins:

The elder of them, being put to nurse,
Was by a beggar-woman stol'n away,
And, ignorant of his birth and parentage,
Became a bricklayer when he came of age:
His son am I; deny it, if you can.

(IV.ii. 138-43)

Ironically, he speaks in the blank verse of the oppressors, departing from the prose style characteristic of his class in Shakespeare's plays. He admits in an aside that he has invented this story himself; in a sense, he has invented this identity. After knighting himself Sir John Mortimer, Jack Cade decrees that "henceforward it shall be treason for any that calls me other than Lord Mortimer" (IV.vi.5-6). Immediately, his followers execute a soldier for calling him by his old name.

His self-fashioning depends on orality, a less stable and permanent means than that of his enemies, whose self-fashioned identities depend upon production and control of written records. Though short-lived, Cade's program accomplishes its desired intentions. He verbally authorizes the plundering of the nobility's houses and properties. He provides his followers with what they do not have or can never have: equal rights, food and drink, fancy clothing.

Jack Cade had envisioned a return to a simpler pastoral age replacing the urban landscape with pastures: "in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass" (IV.ii.68-69). Instead, abandoned by his followers, he ends up hungry and desperate in Alexander Iden's garden in Kent: "On a brick wall have I climbed into this garden, to see if I can eat grass or pick a sallet [salad] another while" (IV.x.6-7). Here he is killed, and from here he will be taken to the king as a prize. What he does not understand is that those who can read and write, even if temporarily divided by a civil war, also control the means of food production and distribution. His stomach, if not his mind, remains at their mercy.

Cade's social and political consciousness astounds. Annabel Patterson argues that "Cade fails every test for the proper popular spokesman" because the Duke of York manipulates him and because he is "also an impostor aristocrat, a traitor to his class, hawking his false claims to the name of Mortimer by way of romantic fiction, the tale of a noble child stolen from its cradle by a beggarwoman, and now returned to claim its inheritance" (p. 49). Patterson forgets to mention, however, that no one within the play is fooled by Cade's claims; rather, the followers seem very much aware that Cade mocks the very fictions that the aristocracy has perpetuated. What may have started out at the instigation of York gains a life of its own. Cade realizes that while the aristocrats try to destroy one another to reconstitute the center of power, he isolates writing as the number one culprit; for no matter who gains power, they preside over the system contained in the records and all writings of the kingdom. Hence, when the King issues another text—now an amnesty to those who surrender—Cade tells his followers that they are being deceived: "I thought ye would never have given out these arms till you had recovered your ancient freedom: but you are all recreants and dastards, and delight to live in slavery to the nobility" (IV.viii.25-29). In his concerted effort to destroy literacy, this illiterate man presents an astute, though desperate, attempt to affirm his own dignity and to gain rights that the system denies him.

Notes

¹ Jean de Léry, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, Otherwise Called America, trans. Janet Whatley (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1990), 134-35. Léry was part of a French expedition in 1555 to colonize the Bay of Guanabara, the site of present-day Rio de Janeiro. For an account of the early French settlements, see Leslie Bethell, ed., Colonial Brazil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 1-39. Léry published his account in 1578. For a fascinating discussion of the passage cited from Léry, see Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History, trans. Tom Conley (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 209-243. The 1973 Brazilian motion picture, directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos, entitled Como Era Gostoso o Meu Francês (How Tasty Was my Frenchman) dramatizes the experience of the fictional French protagonist Jean, who is not unlike Jean de Léry. For a discussion of this motion picture, see Geraldo U. de Sousa, "Theatrics and Politics of Culture in Sixteenth-Century Brazil," Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 8 (1994): 89-102

² Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History, trans. Tom Conley (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 215.

³ Certeau, p. 215.

⁴ Thomas, "Literacy in Early Modern England," in The Written Word: Literacy in Transition, ed. Gerd Baumann (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 98.

⁵ Thomas, p. 97. Thomas takes Ong, David Cressy, Jack Goody, and others to task.

⁶ Thomas, p. 105.

⁷ Harvey J. Graff, The Legacies of Literacy: Continuities and Contradictions in Western Culture and Society (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1991), 153.

⁸ Cited in Harvey, p. 153.

⁹ Thomas, p. 102.

¹⁰ Thomas, p. 106.

¹¹ Thomas, p. 121.

¹² Thomas, p. 116.

¹³ My thesis echoes James Clifford's statement from another context. Clifford introduces a self-reflective notion of ethnography that sees "culture as composed of seriously contested codes and representations" [Intro, to Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. James Clifford and George E. Marcus (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1986), 2.

¹⁴ Annabel Paterson, Shakespeare and the Popular Voice (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 10.

¹⁵ Geoffrey Bullough, ed., Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare HI (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 99.

¹⁶ Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: Chicago University Press 1978), 280.

¹⁷ See Bullough, III, p. 102.

¹⁸ Bullough, III, p. 103.

¹⁹ Bullough, III, p. 102.

²⁰ I.i.9-14. All quotations are from the Signet edition of Henry VI Parts I, II, and HI, gen ed. Sylvan Barnet (New York: Penguin, 1989). Part II was edited by Arthur Freeman.

²¹ Bullough, III, p. 101.

²² In Witchcraft and Religion: The Politics of Popular Belief (Oxford, U.K.; New York: Basil Blackwell, 1984), Christina Larner points out that a similar attempt was made against King James VI of Scotland. During the trials for treason by sorcery that took place in Scotland from November 1590 to May 1591, "it was alleged that over 300 witches had gathered at various times to perform treason against the king. They were supposed to have raised storms while the King and his bride were at sea, to have attempted to effect his death by melting his effigy in wax, to have indulged in hitherto unheard of obscene rituals in the Kirk of North Berwick in the physical presence of their master, the Devil" (p. 9). We recall that King James went to Denmark to fetch his bride in the fall of 1589 and returned to Scotland in the spring of 1590.

²³ Cited by Thomas, p. 106.

²⁴ Thomas, p. 107.

²⁵ Thomas, p. 107.

²⁶ David M. Bergeron, Royal Family, Royal Lovers: King James of England and Scotland (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1991), 78.

²⁷ Bergeron, Royal Family, Royal Lovers, p. 79. An example from the 19th century illustrates how archives can be searched to resuscitate a tradition or ceremony. After Dom Pedro, Crown Prince of Portugal, proclaimed Brazil's independence in 1822 and was proclaimed Emperor, Brazilians searched the archives to duplicate, in the New World, the coronation ceremonies used by the Portuguese kings. Particularly elaborate was the order of precedence used in the Portuguese court, which was carefully searched and adopted for the coronation of the first Emperor of Brazil. The archives were also searched for the state funeral of President Kennedy, which was carefully modelled on the funeral of President Lincoln.

²⁸ The most thorough study of Jack Cade's rebellion is I. M. W. Harvey, Jack Cade's Rebellion of 1450 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).

²⁹ Bullough, III, p. 91.

³⁰ Bullough, III, pp. 113-14.

³¹ In The Ardent Queen: Margaret of Anjou and the Lancastrian Heritage (London: Peter Davies, 1976), Jock Haswell describes the historic Cade: "He was an Irishman, a one-time soldier in France and, according to some, an outlaw. He called himself John Mortimer, thereby trying to associated [sic] himself with the family of Richard Duke of York, whose mother's name had been Anne Mortimer. He collected a large, wellorganized and well-disciplined force of men from the county of Kent, established a military camp on Blackheath and issued a manifesto. He protested against taxation and corruption and lawlessness in high places" (p. 81). See also "Jack Cade" in Philippe Erlanger, Margaret of Anjou Queen of England (London: Elek Books, 1970), 119-25.

³² Bullough writes: "For the Jack Cade scenes [Shakespeare] seems to have combined elements from Hall's account of this rising with elements from Holinshed's, or Grafton's, description of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, which Hall did not give" (Vol. III, pp. 90-91).

³³ See Bullough, p. 91. Annabel Patterson argues that "there was a cultural tradition of popular protest, a tradition in the sense of something handed down from the past, cultural in the sense that what was transmitted were symbolic forms and signifying practices, a history from below encoded in names and occasions, a memorial vocabulary and even a formal rhetoric" (p. 38).

³⁴ Bullough, p. 91. A Pageant was staged in honor of John Allot, as David M. Bergeron, English Civic Pageantry 1558-1641 (London: Edward Arnold Publishers; Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1971), explains: "to honour John Allot, Fishmonger, his company selected to devise the entertainment Thomas Nelson, about whom little is known other than that he was a printer and a ballad writer. The show survives in a printed text known simply as The Device of the Pageant" (p. 132). He adds, "The pageant-dramatist chooses the Jack Straw-Wat Tyler rebellion, part of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, a subject treated also in the play The Life and Death of Jack Straw (printed in 1593) and later referred to in Munday's 1616 show, Chrysanaleia" (pp. 133-34).

³⁵ R. B. Dobson reprints many of the contemporary documents on the revolt in The Peasants' Revolt of 1381, 2nd ed (London: Macmillan Press, 1983), p. 133.

³⁶ Reprinted in Dobson, pp. 155-56. This is probably the most famous account of the Revolt.

³⁷ E. B. Fryde, The Great Revolt of 1381 (London: Historical Association, 1981), 17. Fryde tells us that the destruction of John of Gaunt's papers had a tangible effect: "For years afterwards the administration of John of Gaunt's estates was seriously hampered by the burning of his principal archive at the Savoy" (p. 21).

³⁸ For a discussion of these and other similar uprisings, see Frederick Engles, The Peasant War in Germany (1926; rpt New York: International Publishers, 1976); Peter Blickle, The Revolution of 1525: The German Peasants' War from a New Perspective, trans. Thomas A. Brady, Jr. and H. C. Erik Midelford (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981).

³⁹ Patterson writes, "a return to origins, then, was integral to the popular conception of how to protest, as well as providing theoretical grounds for the 'demands', for the transformation of local and individual grievances into a political program" (p. 41). She adds that the "peasant ideology" consisted of "its Edenic egalitarianism, its archaism, its claim that the world has grown worse through greed, its psychological awareness of poverty as humiliation, and its declaration that force is justified by 'extremitie'" (p. 46).

Source: "The Peasants' Revolt and the Writing of History in 2 Henry VI," in Reading and Writing in Shakespeare, edited by David M. Bergeron, University of Delaware Press, 1996, pp. 178-93.