![]() Many upright citizens, wearied by what Hamlet called “the law’s delay” or caught in the intricacies of legal red tape, must have bitterly echoed Dick the Butcher’s sentiment through clenched teeth at one time or another. Common people have frequently seen lawyers in their roles as conservative defenders of property and the status quo, as unethical “hired guns” or “mouthpieces” available to the highest bidder, as a professional elite of technical wizards adept at using the law to cheat honest but poor people. As a result, the folk image of lawyers has often been bad. Then as now lawyers were more available to the wealthy and powerful, who could afford to retain them, than to the poor and the weak, and were the very symbols of the inequities and oppression that provoke a revolution. Cade tells his cohorts they were fighting to recover their “ancient freedom” so they would no longer have to “live in slavery to the nobility” (4.7.181-82). The rebellion led by Cade in Henry VI, Part 2 is an uprising by the commons, a popular revolt by lower classes-”infinite numbers” of peasants, “laboring men,” and “handicraftsmen” such as clothiers, butchers, weavers, sawyers, tanners-against the power and luxury of the English upper classes. Dick is suggesting that, in order for their coup to prevail, they must eradicate society of the very defenders of justice who could both stop the revolt he intends to help spur and then remove the power he hopes to grab for Cade.Ĭade’s and Dick’s negative attitude toward lawyers must be understood in the context of a class revolt. ![]() One reading of this strange quote suggests, therefore, that society could not exist in a state of fairness and peace without the protectiveness of both the law and its staunch guardians. They know that they’ll be able to take over an ignorant population with greater ease than one where everyone understands their rights. Cade and Dick are aggressively anti-intellectual they kill anyone who can read and burn all the books and documents they encounter. JACK CADE: I thank you, good people:– there shall be no money all shall eat and drink on my score and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.ĭICK: The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.ĭick is a villainous character-he is a large, threatening murderer, and he is also the right-hand-man of Jack Cade, who is leading a rebellion against King Henry. There shall be in England seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny: the three-hoop’d pot shall have ten hoops and I will make it felony to drink small beer: all the realm shall be in common and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass: and when I am king,– as king I will be,– ![]() JACK CADE: Be brave, then for your captain is brave, and vows reformation. ![]() SMITH : He need not fear the sword for his coat is of proof.ĭICK : But methinks he should stand in fear of fire, being burnt i’ th’ hand for stealing of sheep. JACK CADE: I fear neither sword nor fire. SMITH : A must needs for beggary is valiant.ĭICK : No question of that for I have seen him whipp’d three market-days together. This is where the quote lies, in dialogue: And there still are several possible readings. Well, first of all, the quote is real! It goes, “The first thing we do is, let’s kill all the lawyers.” It’s said by a character called Dick the Butcher in Act IV, Scene II of William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part II, which was (we think) written between 15.Īpproximately four hundred years after Shakespeare’s death, this pithy phrase has become one of his most famous witticisms, appropriated often to disparage the legal profession, or at least acknowledge the ubiquitous caricature of the crooked, overpriced, counselor.īut the context in which Dick utters this phrase is key to understanding its true meaning. Or maybe you suspect it’s one of those misquoted aphorisms, the kind that gets written on a stand-up chalkboard outside a beer hall, like the oft-attributed-to-Ben-Franklin maxim, “beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” Or maybe you’re here because you know a lawyer. Perhaps you clicked on this link because you have heard people cite Shakespeare on the necessity of killing all the lawyers and wonder if it’s a myth.
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