Staging Sedition despite Censorship: the Representation of the People on the Shakespearean Stage in 2 Henry VI

Abstract

Due to the lack of archival evidence, circumscribing the phenomenon of stage censorship in Early Modern England is a difficult task. Thanks to The Book of Sir Thomas More, there is proof that the Master of the Revels did censor scenes of popular sedition, and the presence of similar and yet apparently uncensored scenes in other Elizabethan plays is somewhat puzzling, even more so when these scenes of popular rebellion appear ambivalent, which is the case of the Jack Cade rebellion in Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI. The tension that exists in the characterization of Cade between what the script of the play says and what the performance of the dialogue in the scene does on stage shows how Shakespeare succeeded in apparently accommodating the censor’s incentive, while actually showing Cade as a popular hero.

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