Jack Cade: An Unpopular Popular Hero

Abstract

Until recently, the way in which Shakespeare represented Jack Cade’s rebellion in Act IV of 2 Henry VI has been taken as one more piece of evidence of his loathing for the ‘populace’, even of his sharing of the Elizabethan ruling class’s obsession with all kinds of disorder and dissension. Indeed, it is precisely the Cade episode that seems to have fuelled the tradition of Shakespeare as ‘an enemy of the people’. However, a few recent critical readings have resumed the issue, reaching diverse conclusions, thereby suggesting that Shakespeare’s representation of the uprising of 1450 is not as univocal as it might seem to be.