Taking Love's Labour's Lost seriously

One of Jack Cade’s more utopian demands in King Henry VI, Part II is to dispense with books altogether, arraigning the Lord Say not only for being complicit in the loss of Normandy but also for the corruption of ‘the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school’ whereby books were the new currency issuing forth from his own paper-mill, ‘contrary to the King his crown and dignity’ (4.7.31, 34–5). This is no simple parody of the fall-guy conspirator, however, for there – unexpectedly – is some force in his objections to civility. The act of appointing Justices of the Peace who could try poor men who knew not how to answer so as to claim benefit of clergy (4.7.38–43) has its own cogency, even if it is bundled up with the same mob mentality that also cares not to enquire about personalities when Cinna the Poet in Julius Caesar is in the wrong place and at the wrong time (3.3).