In the introductory section to Greenblatt's essay, the author uses Thomas Harriot's A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588) as a model to discuss the discourse of subversion in Early Modern England. Through an exploration of the English relations with the Algonquin in the Virginia colony, Greenblatt argues that Harriot's text is a model text to explain a model for the discourse of atheism and the other subversive thought within Early Modern English society. Greenblatt breaks his essay into four sections in which he explores Harriot's text as a model for the discourse of subversion in Early Modern English texts. Greenblatt breaks down Harriot's exploration of subversive thought into three stages: "testing, recording and explaining" (40), and later compares Harriot's model to it's theatrical equivalent in Shakespeare's Henriad cycle.

Greenblatt sets up his argument according to the following parameters: First, he discusses how Harriot explores "the testing upon the bodies and minds of Non-Europeans, or more generally, the non-civilized, of a hypothesis about the origin and nature of European culture and belief" (28). This model of colonizer and colonized allows Greenblatt to explore the power dynamics which were often involved in the discourse of subversion. Secondly, Greenblatt argues that Harriot, in his book, discusses "the recording of alien voices, or more precisely, of alien interpretations" (35). Through a study of Harriot, and his relation to the Algonquin, Greenblatt is able to expose the nature of colonial power, as well as the English concepts of the "other" in his discourse about subversion and hetrodoxical thought. Greenblatt uses Harriot's text as a model for how Shakespeare's work also addresses the question of subversion theatrically. Greenblatt argues that, like Harriot, Shakespeare's plays are "centrally, repeatedly concerned with the production and containment of subversion and disorder" (40).

In section ii, Greenblatt argues that like Harriot's Report, Shakespeare's 1 Henry IV is equally concerned with the question of subversion. Greenblatt explains how, theatrically, Shakespeare's 1 Henry IV fits Harriot's model for "testing, recording, and explaining" ideas of subversion. Theatrically, Greenblatt argues that 1 Henry IV is mainly concerned with Hal's testing of subversive ideas and identity, through a relationship with Falstaff. Through what Greenblatt describes as Hal's "improvisation", Hal is able to explore a subversive role until by the end of the play, Hal rejects a dissolute life of drinking and other pleasures with Falstaff in order to fulfill his proper role as future king.

In section iii, Greenblatt explores how Henry continues to reaffirm seems to reaffirm and to "ratify the established order" (55) while at the same time producing a "carefully plotted official strategy whereby subversive perceptions are at once produced and contained" (56)

In the final section of his essay, Greenblatt turns his attention to an analysis of Henry V, and the ways in which it continues to reaffirm the establishment of order and the containment of subversion which began at the end of 1 Henry IV. Greenblatt argues that "it is not at all clear that Henry V can be successfully performed as subversive" (63).