SOURCE: “Rebellion, Class Consciousness, and Shakespeare's 2 Henry VI,” in Cahiers Elisabethains, No. 33, April, 1988, pp. 13-22.

In the essay below, Hattaway claims that the text of 2 Henry VI favors class rebellion rather than the order of the establishment.

I

Revolution

As we all know, history is made by the questions we ask—or more by those we don’t ask. Our conclusions derive as much from the ideological assumptions that we bring to a problem as from the ‘facts of the case’. This is demonstrated by examining a little noticed line in a well known play, Hamlet. When the prince is handling the first skull thrown up from Ophelia's grave he comments: This might be my Lord Such-a-one … now my Lady Worm's, chopless, and knocked about with a sexton's spade. Here's fine revolution, and we had the trick to see’t (V.1.70-6). Ideology, it emerges, informs even the...