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...