Bona Terra, Mala Gens: Borders and Boundaries in Henry VI Part II

Focusing on the character of Jack Cade in Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part II, this paper will interrogate inter- and intra-national boundaries in early modern England, with special attention paid to their temporal as well as geographical construction. In this play, Jack Cade is a Kentishman, discovered by the Duke of York while in disguise as an Irishman during the Irish wars. He is also described by York as akin to a ’wild Morisco’, simultaneously referencing the traditional English Morris dance, as well as forcibly converted Muslims in Spain. Cade is therefore associated with Kent, Ireland, Spain, and ’Merry Old England’, spaces which often overlap and conflict with one another in the early modern period, both politically and in the cultural imagination of Shakespeare’s audience. This paper will argue that Cade’s mixture of origins, and his death as a homeless exile on a dunghill, encourages the audience to think about the connection between a land and its people, and specifically to question the ways in which certain classes are privileged in their connection to this land.