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Act 4, Scene 1
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Henry VI Part 2, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Ambition
Nobles vs. Commoners
Religion and Politics
Patriotism
Magic
Summary
Analysis
Two men enter carrying staves. They are planning to join a rebellion that has been ongoing for two days. As they go, they lament the pretensions of nobles, who look down on working people, and fantasize about becoming rulers. As drums play, Jack Cade enters with Dick the butcher, Smith the weaver, and others. Everyone carries a stave. Cade addresses the crowd, claiming that he is descended from the Mortimers and Plantagenets. He boasts of his own bravery, and promises that when he takes the throne, bread will be cheap and beer will be strong. Though Dick mutters a running commentary pointing out that Cade is the vagrant son of a bricklayer and a midwife, everyone cheers Cade.
The play represents Cade’s rebellion as a peculiar mixture of aristocratic pretension and populism. The Mortimers are an old aristocratic family related to English royalty by marriage, while the Plantagenets are the overarching royal dynasty to which both the Lancasters (King Henry VI’s family) and the Yorks belong. When Cade claims to be a Mortimer and a Plantagenet, he is claiming a right to power according to aristocratic and monarchic logics. Yet he is also making a populist promise to lower food prices. Moreover, the common crowd cheers him even though at least some of them know his aristocratic pretensions are lies. This complex dynamic indicates that the commoners in the play are ambivalent toward aristocracy, at once respectful and hostile.
Active
Themes
Guards enter, escorting a clerk. Smith accuses the clerk of literacy and making educational materials. Cade questions the clerk, asking whether he can write his name. When the clerk asserts that he can write, the crowd yells that the clerk has “confessed,” and Cade orders him taken away to be hanged.
The play represents Cade’s rebellion as anti-intellectual and anti-education. Since literacy and extensive education were far less common among peasants and working people in the medieval period when the play is set, this representation indicates that violent class resentment is fueling the rebellion.
Active
Themes
A man arrives and warns Cade to flee, as Sir Humphrey Stafford and his brother are leading a force against him. Instead, Cade knights himself and insists they’ll combat the Staffords. The Staffords enter with soldiers. Sir Humphrey Stafford tells the rebelling commoners that King Henry will spare them if they abandon Cade. Cade insists that he’s the true king, claiming that Edmund Mortimer had twin sons, the older of whom, kidnapped at birth by a poor woman, became a bricklayer—and Cade’s father. Though Stafford ridicules Cade’s story, the crowd insists that they believe it.
Stafford’s brother accuses Cade of repeating a story that York gave to him. Cade denies this (and jokingly mutters that he came up with the story himself) but tells Stafford to let King Henry know Cade’s willing to let him have the throne—if Cade can be Protector. Dick adds that they want Lord Saye beheaded for his part in surrendering Maine to the French. Stafford, disgusted, orders his herald to declare all Cade’s rebels traitors condemned to hanging. After Stafford and his men depart, Cade orders those that “love the Commons” to come with him, promising that they’ll kill all the nobles.
Active
Themes
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