Jack Cade: The Rebel Shakespeare Made Famous
First appears: Act 4, Scene 2
Jack Cade leads the popular rising in Act 4 that sweeps through London. He is set up by York but takes on a life of his own. His programme (burning the Inns of Court, remaking the economy from scratch) is both comic and genuinely menacing.
Dick the Butcher's line 'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers' is always associated with this rebellion, though Cade himself has a broader grievance: literacy, property records, and the legal system as instruments of control over ordinary people.
He is killed by Alexander Iden after his rebellion collapses, dying in a Kent garden while starving. The pathos of his end is real.
Key Scenes
Famous Quotes
“I thank you, good people: there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers and worship me their lord.”
Jack Cade — Act 4, Scene 2
Themes
Other Characters in Henry VI, Part II
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