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IN one of his earliest plays, Henry VI, Part 2, Shakespeare stages a popular uprising: the Jack Cade rebellion of 1450. Much of the play's criticism, which does not focus on the rebellion's historical background, finds in the play's representation of Cade an affirmation of Shakespeare's anti-populism. By contrast, this paper argues that to make such distinctions, one should first analyze the historical rebellion, for records of the events and lives of the people involved impinge on their later constructions in manuscript, print, and on stage. To discover how these historical actions resonate with or shape Shakespeare's representation of the rebellion, I turn first to the fifteenth century, to locate some of the fissures that allowed the underclass rebellion of Jack Cade to form and gather momentum. From manuscripts of the rebels' grievances, from the contemporary and subsequent chronicles and modern histories of the period, I describe the authoritarian actions that pushed the uprising forward. A recent history of the rebellion by I. M. W. Harvey has strengthened my conviction that a thorough historicist reading of Henry VI, Part 2, should take into account the events of 1450, for there are extant more copies of the grievances than had previously been thought. This paper, a supplement to Harvey's work, focuses on those grievances and extrapolates from them two specific issues: corruption of government and war with France. A brief look at the sixteenth-century publication of the grievances may suggest why Shakespeare did not state them directly in his play. The paper then compares the historical rebellion to its stage representation, concluding that because the play's central issues are related to late Elizabethan warmaking and social change, the various negative readings of that representation should be seriously qualified.
What has come to be known as "Cade's rebellion" was the most sustained movement in a series of uprisings, originating in Kent, during 1450 and 1451. Led by a person of uncertain origin--variously called John Mortimer, John or Jack Cade, John Amend All--the participants of the rebellion assembled at Blackheath and petitioned King Henry VI to address their grievances. When he refused, sending an armed force against them, the participants routed that force, killed its leaders, and, after Henry's withdrawal from the city, eventually entered London and executed...