What Shakespeare said

James Aucoin (BDN letter, Sept. 26-27) is right to correct columnist Maureen Dowd for quoting Shakespeare out of context in order to stir up hostility against lawyers. As Aucoin points out, it is not Shakespeare, but Dick the Butcher, in “Henry the Sixth, part two,” who says, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

But Aucoin’s argument that Dick the Butcher is a bad guy, as so an unreliable source, also needs to be tested against its dramatic context. Dick is not “one member of a very large crude crew of murderers.” A participant in Jack Cade’s peasant uprising, Dick is an irate commoner fed up with arrogant, corrupt, irresponsible nobility. Dick’s violent sentiments may offend us, but they nonetheless tap into an old, deep vein of popular suspicion of literacy, which is usually associated with clergy, lawyers and nobility.

Dick’s complaint against Lord Say, a good guy, is that he has appointed justices who have jailed and hanged men “because they could not read.” That is, the illiterate could neither answer the charges against them nor escape hanging and pleading benefit of clergy. Dick’s execution of Lord Say, an otherwise judicious man, parodies the arbitrary nature of state justice.

These leveling sentiments anticipated Shakespeare by a few centuries, and they’ve survived his age, too. One is tempted to say some things never change. Many of the powerful still act corruptly and irresponsibly, many professionals happily abet them, and common folk grow tired of them all. Richard Brucher Orono