On September 1, I started reading the complete works of William Shakespeare, aiming to read all the plays and poems within a year. I’m also blogging about my encounter with the Bard, you can see my plot summaries and thoughts on the plays at www.myshakespeareyear.com. (Sorry folks, had to get in a shameless plug!)
Anyway, I’m working my way through the early history plays now, in the middle of "Henry VI, Part II", aka 2 Henry VI. For those not familiar with the Shakespeare canon, the three Henry VI plays and "Richard III" are Shakespeare’s dramatization of the events leading up to and including the Wars of the Roses, the bitter military and political civil war in 15th century England between the House of Lancaster and the House of York. In Act IV, scene 2 of 2 Henry VI, we are introduced to a character that seems "ripped from the headlines". Ladies and gentlemen, meet Jack Cade: demagogue, rabble-rouser, and self-proclaimed contender for high office. More after the jump...
By the time we are introduced to Jack Cade, the events in the world of Henry VI have taken a violent turn. Henry is seen as a weak king, and his Royal Protector and uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, has been murdered. Gloucester’s chief accuser, the Duke of Suffolk, has been killed. The Cardinal of Winchester has gone mad and died of guilt for his role in Gloucester’s murder. Henry’s queen, Margaret, is an ambitious schemer, as is just about everybody else in the royal court. Perhaps the chief schemer and contender for the throne is Richard, Duke of York, but we’ll hear more about him in a bit.
A rebellion has been whipped up in England, headed by Jack Cade, a veteran of past military campaigns who is trying to lay claim to the throne. Cade has surrounded himself with a number of peasants whose ranks include the aptly named Dick the butcher and Smith the weaver. This not-so-merry band of rebels are disgruntled with the way things are going in Henry’s kingdom, they’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it any more! They liken Cade to a clothier who means to "dress the commonwealth". They lament the contempt the upper crust have for working people: "the nobility think it’s scorn to go in leather aprons" and "virtue is not regarded in handicraftmen". In an often quoted line, one of them puts forth their views on tort reform: "The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers," something their leader and hero Cade says he means to do. These folks have no regard for the "elites", and they see it as their duty to, in their modern counterparts’ words, "take their country back!" What exactly they want to do once the country is taken back is anybody’s guess. Sound familiar?
Jack Cade gives a speech that has the feel and form of a stump speech. Put aside the fact that Cade openly advocates socialism ("all things will be in common"), the abolition of money, and strong (as opposed to weak) beer, and you’ve got some interesting parallels with current events. Consider:
• Jack Cade lies about his background, and the true believers don’t care. Cade lays out his claim to the throne at the beginning of his speech by pointing out how he is related to the royal family. "My father was a Mortimer," he says, and Dick the Butcher tells his fellows that Cade’s father was a bricklayer. "My mother was a Plantagenet," Cade offers, and the Butcher remembers her as a midwife. "My wife descended of the Lacys, " Cade says, and the Butcher says, "She was indeed a peddler’s daughter and sold many laces." Those who know Cade is lying don’t really seem to care, the Butcher is one of his most ardent followers. This is very similar to Christine O’Donnell’s claims that she went to graduate school, Rich Iott’s claims about military service, and Rand Paul’s assertion that he’s a "board certified ophthalmologist". Like Jack Cade, supporters of these candidates don’t particularly care about the lies: they’re true believers.
• Jack Cade is for tort reform, even if it’s an extreme form. When the Butcher yells out his famous "kill all the lawyers" line, Cade agrees, and adds a bit of anti-lawyer faux populism that’s worthy of an extreme Ayn Rand acolyte:
Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable
thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should
be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled
o'er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings:
but I say, 'tis the bee's wax; for I did but seal
once to a thing, and I was never mine own man
since.
Aside from the desire to kill alleged enemies – shades of "second amendment remedies" – this has vague echoes of Tea Party and Republican anti-trial lawyer rhetoric, such as Ron Johnson’s anti-lawyer ads in Wisconsin this election cycle. Besides, Jack Cade, much like his successors in the Tea Party and the right wing of the GOP, has no use for legal precedent; as he says a couple of scenes later: "Burn all the records of the realm. My mouth shall be the Parliament of England."
• Jack Cade loves him some anti-French rhetoric. Remember how John Kerry was thought to be unfit for the presidency because "he looks French"? Consider the following: "I tell you that that Lord Saye hath gelded the commonwealth, and, more than that, he can speak French, and therefore is a traitor!" When an enemy of Cade challenges this as "gross and miserable ignorance", Cade doubles down on the Francophobia: "Nay, answer if you can: the Frenchmen are our enemies; go to, then I ask but this – can he that speaks with the tongue of an enemy be a good counselor or no?" The crowd eats this all up: "no, no, and we’ll have his head!" Freedom Fries, anybody?
• Jack Cade and his followers hate eggheads. William F. Buckley, Jr., a conservative and a guy who at least flirted with being a public intellectual, once observed that he’d rather be ruled by the first 100 names in the Boston phone book than the Harvard faculty (it should be noted that Buckley was also famously a Yale man). There’s a not so grand tradition in American public life that reflects a strong distrust of intellectuals and academics – historian Richard Hofstadter won a Pulitzer Prize for a book entitled "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" – and this tradition is sadly stronger than ever. Listen to the speeches of the likes of Sarah Palin and you’ll hear no end of attacks on academia and "elitists". Jack Cade’s followers are scarcely different, if only more violent. There’s an episode in the middle of Cade’s speech in which the Clerk of Chatham is accosted because it is a "monstrous" thing that "he can write and read and take account". After some questioning, Cade orders him to be hanged, "with his pen and inkhorn around his neck." Take that, egghead! And nobody dares ask Jack Cade what he reads!
• Jack Cade’s revolution is an astroturfed one, tapping into popular anger and bankrolled by a shadow puppeteer. Remember Richard, Duke of York from earlier? Richard was the head of the Yorkist faction and strongly wanted to depose King Henry VI, whom he saw as a weak king and, truth be told, not the rightful king of England. York believed that his family was robbed of the throne when Henry IV became king, and that the current King Henry was a false king. With the former royal protector Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester out of the way, Richard has maneuvered his way into getting himself an army. He has also hired Jack Cade to gauge public support for a rebellion, and pose as John Mortimer, a nobleman with a claim to the throne: "This devil shall be my substitute, for that John Mortimer, which now is dead, in face, in gait, in speech, he doth resemble. By this shall I perceive the commons’ mind." Shakespeare doesn’t tell us how York and Jack Cade may have ginned up public anger – we saw in the summer of 2009 how corporate interests and far right rabble rousers manufactured outrage over "government takeover of healthcare", and York and Cade didn’t have Fox News to do their dirty work in getting the word out. It is clear that Cade’s rebellion serves not "the people" but York’s interests. These days, as we’ve seen, the Tea Party is the tool of powerful corporate types and it’s anything but grassroots. Richard, Duke of York, meet David and Charles Koch. I suspect you’ll get on famously.
So what happened to Jack Cade’s rebellion? At first, it worked. Jack Cade didn’t take the throne, but he did declare himself Mayor of London for a short time. Ultimately, though, it all fell apart when a loyalist to King Henry, Lord Clifford, talked the commoners in Cade’s army to give up Cade’s pipe dream. Our present Jack Cades and their masters – the Karl Roves, the Koch brothers, the Dick Armeys – can be beaten, if only we can find our inner Lord Cliffords.