what is cascode
m'Lord,
An historical note:
Cascode comes from the tube days of yore. It's a contraction of "cascade-triode".
Back to the present:
I'll use a FET circuit as an example, but the same principle applies to junction transistors (or vacuum tubes, for that matter).
One of the problems with a standard grounded source circuit is that as the gate voltage increases, the drain voltage decreases. The decreasing drain voltage is fed back to the gate via the reverse transfer capacitance (Crss), thus providing negative feedback, and reducing the gain as frequency increases. This is the "Miller effect". By coupling the output of a grounded source stage to a grounded gate stage, the drain voltage of the 1st (grounded source) stage remains relatively constant, thus reducing the capacitive feedback to the gate, and extending the high frequency response. The 2nd (grounded gate) stage is immune to capacitive feedback, since its gate is grounded. The 1st stage essentially acts as a current source to the 2nd (grounded gate) stage, effectively passing its drain current throught to the load resistor of the 2nd stage.
I hope this helps,
Regards,
Kral