SOURCE: "Shakespeare's Poor: 2 Henry VI" in The Politics of Shakespeare, St. Martin's Press, 1993, pp. 55-72.

In the following essay, Cohen probes Shakespeare's rendering of the poor in 2 Henry VL

The examples of Shylock, Othello, Caliban, and, later, Malvolio, al demonstrate the relative ease with which society can contain and control its marginalized individuals. Simply put, it gangs up on them, using the persuasive forces of socially sanctioned violence, scapegoating, and other ideological apparatuses by which the ruling class determines what is politically correct and what is not. Strangers and outsiders have little chance. In the case, however, of class animosities, there are significant differences. The ruling class has to control a collectivity of people which is larger than itself. It must dominate them but use the instruments of domination in less categorical ways than it uses them against easily separated individuals. One of the chief ways in which...