Disputing Boundaries: Space and Social Boundary in 2 Henry Ⅵ

In Shakespeare's 2 Henry Ⅵ, Shakespeare ends Jack Cade's rebellion by having the Kentish esquire, Alexander Iden, kill the hunger-stricken peasant rebel, Cade, in his private urban garden. The enclosed space of Iden's manor garden, his recurrent assertion of his property rights, and both Cade's as well as Iden's identification of Cade as a trespasser on his private property suggest Shakespeare's deliberate exploration of the contested boundaries between the poor peasant/artisanal class and the richer gentry class in the England of his own day. This paper argues that Cade's defeat in the enclosed urban garden discloses the Elizabethans' fear of the threatened violation/erosion of social boundaries. By depicting the rural enclosure rioters as protesting urban workers, by portraying Cade as an egalitarian protestor, and by letting his frantic mobs execute their social betters, Shakespeare extends his dramatic scope not only to a historical retrospective of Jack Cade's rebellion but also to a more sophisticated consideration of the complex web of class antagonisms between the propertyless laborers and the landed gentry of his time.