Jack Straw in English Culture
Whether Straw was a real person, a pseudonym for Tyler, or simply a result of confusion on the part of chroniclers remote from the events they were describing, he went on to become a part of the popular narrative of the revolt. Straw is mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, in the Nun's Priest's Tale, as the leader of a mob targeting foreign workers:
- Certes, he Jakke Straw and his meinee
- Ne made nevere shoutes half so shrille,
- Whan that they wolden any Fleming kille.
Straw was central to an anonymous 1593 play dramatising the events of the Rising, The Life and Death of Jack Straw. In the modern era, the rather confused reporting of events was briefly satirised in Sellar and Yeatman's parody of Whig history, 1066 and All That, stating that the peasants revolted "in several reigns under such memorable leaders as Black Kat, Straw Hat, John Bull and What Tyler?", with objectives including "to find out which of them was the Leader of the Rebellion".
Straw was commemorated in the name of a pub on the edge of Hampstead Heath, London, which closed in the 1990s. The Jack Straw's Castle, reputed to be the highest pub in London, took its name from a story that Straw addressed groups of rebels on the Heath from a hay wagon which became known as "Jack Straw's Castle".
The British politician Jack Straw (born John Whitaker Straw,1946) adopted the name "Jack", allegedly after the rebel leader.
Read more about this topic: Jack Straw (rebel Leader)
Famous quotes containing the words jack, straw, english and/or culture:
“This is the cow with the crumpled horn
That tossed the dog”
—Mother Goose (fl. 17th–18th century. The House That Jack Built (l. 16–17)
“There is no limit to what a man can do so long as he does not care a straw who gets the credit for it.”
—C.E. (Charles Edward)
“In ancient times—’twas no great loss—
They hung the thief upon the cross:
But now, alas!—I say’t with grief—
They hang the cross upon the thief.”
—Anonymous. “On a Nomination to the Legion of Honour,” from Aubrey Stewart’s English Epigrams and Epitaphs (1897)
“Nobody seriously questions the principle that it is the function of mass culture to maintain public morale, and certainly nobody in the mass audience objects to having his morale maintained.”
—Robert Warshow (1917–1955)