The troublesome raigne and lamentable death of Edward the second, king of England: with the tragicall fall of proud Mortimer is pretty much Christopher Marlowe’s last play and his second history.
Synopsis
Like all of Marlowe’s plays, the first surviving print has neither a list of characters nor a division into acts.
[Scene 1]
Piers Gaveston, the favourite of the heir to the English throne, once sent into exile by the king, has returned to England. The new king Edward II has summoned him to join him. He now has no use for the poor soldiers who seek employment at Gaveston. He wants to please the king with pleasures. Against the will of the lords, especially the two Mortimers, Edward wants to take in his favourite. They threaten the king with an open revolt. Edward showers Gaveston with favours. He also allows him to take revenge on the Bishop of Coventry, who was once instrumental in Gaveston’s exile. Gaveston has him thrown into prison.
[Scene 2]
Some lords, including the Mortimers, discuss what to do now. The Archbishop of Canterbury sends a messenger to the Pope to report the arrest of the Bishop of Coventry. Queen Isabella wants to join the lords because the king prefers Gaveston to her. Mortimer advises her to stay. If necessary, he wants to use force against Edward, even if this is against the queen’s wishes. First, the lords decide to retreat to Lambeth.
[Scene 3]
Gaveston knows of the lords' intention.
[Scene 4]
The lords and the archbishop sign the deed of banishment for Gaveston. Being outnumbered, they succeed in having Gaveston and the Earl of Kent, the king’s brother, arrested. Even at the risk of being deposed, Edward initially refuses to sign the deed. He is even prepared to give up a large part of his kingdom if Gaveston is allowed to remain. The lords do not want to agree to this and the king signs. But he vows to fight against the power of the Pope and the lords. Emotionally, he takes leave of Gaveston, whom he makes governor of Ireland. Edward accuses his wife of consorting too closely with Mortimer, and therefore of having launched Gaveston’s banishment. Isabella claims her innocence, but the king stands by his favourite. After her husband has left, she laments her fate. She hopes to ease her suffering by trying to lift the banishment against Gaveston, as Edward has requested. The lords do not want to comply with her wish. Only when, in a secret conversation, she gives Mortimer three reasons for bringing Gaveston back, is he willing to do so. He also persuades the other lords, making it clear to them that Gaveston has sufficient means in Ireland to overthrow the lords. In London, on the other hand, it would be easy for him to become the victim of an assassination attempt. As soon as Edward learns from Isabella that the lords will allow Gaveston to return, he not only takes the queen back into favour, but gives each of his nobles an important task. Mortimer the Elder was made commander of the troops fighting the Scots. Before he leaves, he asks his nephew not to oppose the king because he loves Gaveston. Mortimer explains that it is not affection per se that sets him against Gaveston and the king, but irresponsibility on Edward’s part towards his kingdom, as he devotes all his attention to the upstart.
[Scene 5]
Edward’s niece is also delighted about Gaveston’s return. She thinks the king has summoned her to court to marry her off to his favourite.
[Scene 6]
Gaveston, eagerly awaited by Edward, returns from exile. Immediately, another quarrel breaks out with the lords. Mortimer wounds Gaveston, whereupon the king banishes him. The lords are determined to use force of arms against the king. A messenger reports the capture of Mortimer the Elder. His nephew wants the king to pay the ransom. However, the king only allows him to collect the money himself in the country. Mortimer accuses Edward of having neglected his duties as king so much that he now openly opposes him. Edward even banishes his own brother because he is against Gaveston. The latter has actually prevailed upon the king to marry Edward’s niece.
[Scene 7]
Edward’s brother joins the lords. They want to storm the castle where the king is staying with Gaveston.
[Scene 8]
Edward and Gaveston decide to flee separately from the lords. Isabella must stay behind. She tells Mortimer where he can find Gaveston and where the king wants to go. She wants to try one last time to win back his love. If she does not succeed, she plans to go to France with her son Prince Edward.
[Scene 9]
Gaveston is captured by the Lords. Edward has the Earl of Arundel ask them for a final meeting with him. After a lengthy debate, Pembroke decides, against Warwick’s opposition, to join Arundel in taking Gaveston to the king the next morning.
[Scene 10]
Despite Pembroke’s assurances that he will return Gaveston to the lords after the meeting with Edward, Warwick kidnaps Gaveston.
[Scene 11]
Edward waits impatiently for word from the lords. His loyal followers advise him to oppose the rebels with all his might. Spencer the Elder comes to his aid with a force when Isabella brings news that her brother, the French king, has occupied Normandy. Edward, however, thinks only of Gaveston and so sends the queen and his son to France to negotiate with the king. Arundel reports that Warwick has beheaded Gaveston. Edward swears revenge, in which he is supported by the Spencers. A messenger from the lords, makes the king a peace offer, on the condition that he separates from Spencer and finally cares for his kingdom again. Edward declines.
[Scene 12]
Edward wins the battle against the lords and his brother, whom he has captured. Levune is to take a lot of gold and the news of Edward’s victory to France to ensure that Isabella cannot turn the nobility there against her husband.
[Scene 13]
Kent has managed to escape from the Tower. He wants to go to France to inform the nobility about Edward’s weaknesses. Mortimer, who has also managed to escape, joins him.
[Scene 14]
In Paris, Isabella and her son are unable to persuade the French king or the nobles to support them. She only regains her courage when Mortimer and Kent stand by her.
[Scene 15]
In London, a letter from Levune reaches Edward. He reports that the queen, her son, Mortimer and Kent, supported by Sir John of Hainault, are trying to mobilise against Edward from Flanders.
[Scene 16]
Together with her son and her supporters, Isabella has landed in England. Their troops are now moving against the king.
[Scene 17]
Edward has lost the battle against his wife’s troops. Kent fears for his brother’s life. He believes Mortimer is trying to kill the king and is supported in his lust for power by Isabella. Spencer the Elder was captured, but his son and the king escaped.
[Scene 18]
Edward finds shelter in a monastery. A farmer, however, betrays him to Isabella’s men. The King is taken to Kenilworth.
Scene 19]
Edward is urged to abdicate. He knows that he should do it not for his son but for Mortimer, even if the lords assure him otherwise. After a prolonged struggle with himself, Edward sends his crown to Parliament.
[Scene 20]
Mortimer demands from Isabella the early investiture of her son and guardianship of him. She is willing to do anything. Mortimer hears rumours that Kent wants to free his brother. Isabella fears that imprisoning her husband will not provide lasting security. She wants him dead but wants no part in it, and continues to pretend affection for her husband to the servants and her brother-in-law. Mortimer gets into a dispute with Kent over the guardianship of Edward’s son.
[Scene 21]
Kent fails to free his brother.
[Scene 22]
Mortimer sends the assassin Lightborn with a misleading message to Edward’s guards, Matrevis and Gurney. When his body is found, Mortimer can blame them because they misunderstood his order. In the meantime, the prince has been crowned king. When his uncle is brought before him, Mortimer – despite Edward III’s opposition – sentences him to death.
[Scene 23]
Lightborn kills Edward. As Mortimer has ordered, the guards then kill Lightborn.
[Scene 24]
Isabella tells Mortimer that Edward III has learned of his father’s murder and vows revenge. Gurney has given him Mortimer’s letter. The king has him beheaded and sends his mother to the Tower.
Text
The play consists of 1,722 sentences with a total of 21,106 words and a vocabulary of 3,142 words.1 1 word Marlowe used for the first time in a new meaning, 1 word he used in a hitherto unknown grammatical construction and 1 word occurs in this meaning only in Marlowe.
Origin
Edward II was not performed by the Admiral’s Men, but by the Pembroke’s Men. Henslowe does not mention the work in his notes, which does not necessarily mean that the play was written for the Pembroke’s Men in the first place.
The title page of the first surviving print tells us that the play was performed several times in London. It was not really suitable for touring, as it requires sixteen actors after all, which is why late 1591 early 1592 can be assumed as the time of writing, which would also be supported by the new kind of enthusiasm among Elizabethan playwrights for the history of the English Middle Ages that began in the early 1590s. 3 This had a patriotic background after the victory over the Armada and in a climate of awakening English national consciousness, against which, however, it seems a little sardonic that Marlowe wrote a play about Edward II, of all people. This monarch was already considered one of the worst rulers in England at the time.4 Moreover, Marlowe stayed in the Netherlands in 1591/92,5 which suggests an earlier date. In the play one finds a verbatim quotation from George Peele’s Descensus Astraeae, written on the occasion of the inauguration of a London Lord Mayor on 8 November 1591. However, it is unknown whether Marlowe borrowed from Peele or Peele borrowed from Marlowe.6 It is the same with other works, such as Shakespeare’s last two parts of Henry VI, Peele’s Edward I as well as the dramas The Troublesome Reign of King John, Soliman and Perseda and Arden of Faversham. However, here too the exact date of composition is uncertain, or covers such a narrow space that 1591 can be assumed as the year of writing, but 1592 cannot be ruled out.7 Josie Slaughter Shumake, on the other hand, specified the date of origin by pointing to two passages that suggest the use of the second edition of John Stow’s Annales. If this is true, the play could not have been written before May 1592.8 Most of the clues that mark Edward II as Marlowe’s last drama are to be found in the work itself. Despite the corrupted state of some of the other plays, it is clear that the structure of this one is the most advanced compared to the others. For the first time, the places of action are not somewhere abroad, but in the author’s homeland. In contrast to the Shakespearean histories, where history is defined as a course of events predetermined by fate to liberate England from its enemies, Edward II shows that the past, like the present, is determined by the ability of those in power. 9 Although, as always with Marlowe, the individual is in the centre of attention, the author now looks at him in a completely different way than in his first great drama.
"Tamburlaine’s chief emotions are related to vast human potentiality, with only a final moment of regret that all is not possible, while in Edward II, all the emphasis falls on the pathos and horror of predicaments in which man is inextricably caught."10
The entry in the Stationers' Register was made on 16 July 1593.
vjto Julij | |
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William Jones | Entred for his copie vnder th[e h]andes of Master Richard Judson and the Wardens/ A booke. Intituled The troublesom Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, king of England, with the tragicall fall of proud Mortymer……………………………..vjd w. |
Although there is evidence for the existence of a print from 1593,11 the oldest surviving print dates from the following year. The publisher was William Jones and the printer probably Robert Robinson. According to the folding, it is an octavo, but the size and shape correspond to the quarto, which is why the print is referred to as such. In the 20th century, only two copies of it existed. One was owned by the Landesbibliothek Kassel, where it could no longer be found after the Second World War. The other is still in the collection of the Zentralbibliothek in Zurich. Further editions were published in 1598, 1612 and 1622. 12
Sources
In 1587, the second edition of Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland came on the market. Although Ralph Holinshed was not the only author and had already died in the early 1580s, this edition was also published under his name. It contained several improvements and became a bestseller. Many literary figures of the Elizabethan period used it as a source, including Marlowe for Edward II.13 Holinshed’s Chronicles were a symptom of the rise of English nationalism during the Tudor period. Besides the famous sense of fair play and formality, the work also promoted stoic virtues, constancy, self-control and frugality, which the Mortimer in particular advocates in the drama.14 In Thomas Chruchyard’s poem The Two Mortimers, probably found in the 1578 edition of A Mirror for Magistrates found, he is the main culprit for the murder of Edward II15 Furthermore, Marlowe relied on Robert Fabyan’s The New Chronicles of England and Francewhich first appeared in 1515, and John Stow’s Annales, or a Generale Chronicle of England from Brute until the present yeare of Christ 1580.16 Whether Marlowe also used the medieval chronicles such as Thomas Walsingsham’s Historia Anglicana or Geoffrey le Baker’s Vita et Mors Edwardi Secundus is not proven. Since both works were contained in Matthew Parker’s library, which Corpus Christi College later inherited, it had long been assumed. It has since been established that Parker’s books did not arrive in Cambridge until 1593 and that Marlowe therefore did not have access to them.17 Much more likely than the use of the Latin sources is the use of John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments of 1570, which contains a brief but informative account of the reign of Edward II.18 Also obvious is the use of Richard Grafton’sChronicle at large and meere History of the affayres of Englande (1569).19
Themes
The world in which Marlowe places his Edward II is an Elizabethan, not a medieval one,20 which is why the play deals with themes that were largely unknown in the time of the plot but very topical in the time of its writing.
Favouritism
"[…] the extraordinary polarisation of Edward’s favour, and the evil policies to which it led, had obvious parallels in the atmosphere of suspicion and favour at the court of Queen Elizabeth in her later years. Marlowe’s play Edward II, […] has captured the essential atmosphere of the regime perhaps better than any historian as since been able to do."21
Marlowe may have used Jean Boucher’s pamphlet Histoire tragique et memorable de Pierre de Gaverston for both The Massacre at Paris and Edward II.22 Boas was the first to recognise in principle a precursor to Edward II in The Massacre at Paris.23 In addition to the similarities in characters and language he cites, both works have one more thing in common. Not only in Edward II is the king’s relationship to his nobles an underlying theme.24 Both plays deal with a subject matter that was very contemporary at the time. In the autumn of 1583, Francis Walsingham felt compelled to point out to James VI of Scotland, the prospective heir to the English crown, the disadvantages of lordly favouritism, citing Edward II as an example.25 The Scottish king remained unimpressed throughout his life. Protectionism began with Esmé Stewart, Seigneur D’Aubigny (1542-1583), a relative from the French branch of James VI. (On the English side, it was suspected that Stewart, together with the Duke of Guise Mary Stuart, the Vatican and the help of the English College would persuade James VI to support a Catholic invasion of England via Scotland. There is a suggestion that Richard Baines was therefore sent as a spy to the English College. 26]) D’Aubigny’s power became so great that in 1582 the Scottish nobility invited the king to Ruthven Castle, where he was held for ten months and forced to banish D’Aubigny, who died soon afterwards in France.27 James Stuart, Earl of Arran was another favourite who succeeded in temporarily disrupting Anglo-Scottish relations. The king had to send him into exile in 1586.28 He was followed by George Gordon, Earl of Huntley (1562-1636), who had good contacts in Spain and, despite involvement in several conspiracies, his influence lasted until Charles I’s accession. Alexander Lindsay, Lord Spynie (~1563-1607) accompanied James VI on his bridal journey, which he had partly financed. In 1592 he was charged with treason. Although there was no conviction, Lindsay lost the king’s patronage. After he also became King of England as James I, the favouritism became even more bizarre. The page Robert Carr was neither a great mind nor possessed any special talents, but owed a meteoric rise to his good looks. James I arranged a profitable marriage with Frances Howard29 and made him Earl of Somerset. Carr’s power went so far that in 1610 he persuaded the king to dissolve parliament, which had sharply attacked him. Five years later he fell from grace and was replaced by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (1592-1628). Although his diplomatic skills left much to be desired, he made a stellar career that continued under Charles I. Villiers did not become truly famous until two centuries later, when Alexandre Dumas immortalised him inThe Three Musketeers.
As with Henri III at the French court, most of James I’s favourites did not come from the higher nobility. This reflection of current events is visible in the transformation of Gaveston. Historically, he came from a noble family in Gascony that was loyal to the English crown. In Marlowe, he is a commoner with sexual charms and a sense of aesthetics.30 Whether Henri III or James VI actually had intimate relationships with their courtiers and whether these influenced policy is secondary. The fact is that towards the end of the 16th century, two rulers of countries in the immediate vicinity of England gave the impression of following the will of their favourites in their decisions. Edward II, Gaveston and Spencer may have been long dead, but the difficulties of royal favouritism were explosively topical,31 as Marlowe pointed out. Ralph Berry proved how topical these analogies are when he compared Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson to Edward II and Gaveston in 2007.32
Ireland
During the reign of Elizabeth I, England created a problem for itself that it has not been able to overcome to this day: Ireland. Although Henry II had already landed on the Emerald Isle in 1169 and incorporated it into his empire, the Anglo-Normans adapted to Irish conditions rather than vice versa. London was aware of this situation but reacted to it only half-heartedly and, at the latest since the beginning of the Hundred Years' War and the Wars of the Roses, the attention of the English kings was focused elsewhere. They still held the title of Lord of Ireland, but the Crown’s influence shrank to a few square kilometres around Dublin, the so-called Pale. It was Henry VIII who first took up the problem. In 1541, the English and Irish parliaments decided that the King of England was also King of Ireland.
"What was decided in 1541 was therefore that those Gaelic elements of the Irish population who previously had been designated 'Irish enemies' [or those living outside of the English Pale] were being provided with the opportunity to become subjects to the crown."33
Even if the Irish had all taken advantage of this opportunity, there was no clear attitude on the English side towards the new subjects. Whether Ireland with its inhabitants had become part of England or the island was to be regarded as an English colony populated by "Irish others" remained questionable. Language, culture, ecology, social structures and, more recently, religion were indeed so different in Ireland that England feared it might be infected by this otherness. 34
"It was the Irish 'wilderness' that bounded the English garden, Irish 'barbarity' that defined English civility, Irish papistry and ’superstition' that warranted English religion; it was Irish 'lawlessness' that demonstrated the superiority of English law, and Irish 'wandering' that defined the settled and centred nature of English society."35
Although the Irish question became central to English politics from the 1590s at the latest, it was never explicitly addressed in contemporary drama. Numerous references and analogies especially in Shakespeare’s histories, however, revealed Ireland’s standing with the English, which was best expressed in The Comedy of Errors when Dromio, comparing the kitchen maid to a globe, answers the question in which part of her body Ireland would lie: "Marry, sir, in her buttocks. I found it out by the bogs."36
Already in John Derricke’s Image of Ireland (1581), a common source of information about the neighbouring island among the Elizabethans, an explicit connection was made between Irish savagery and anality. This connection was also visually underlined by a widely used woodcut depicting an Irish feast in which two men defecate in front of the diners. 37
In Edward II, Gaveston becomes the embodiment of Ireland, unseen offstage and yet a threat.38 For the king and his minions, Ireland is the haven of salvation; for the English barons, it is a hotbed of conspiracy.39 Contemporary audiences viewed it as such. In fact, the Irish were cooperating with France and Spain against England, who could be stabbed in the back by a joint "Catholic invasion". The English Empire lived in fear of being taken from behind. 40 Ireland was able to sodomise England, bearing in mind that the term 'sodomite' in early modern England, was to be applied to anyone who posed a threat to the general idea of gender, class, religion or race.41 This is precisely the danger that the Court sees coming from Gaveston. It is not the sexual relationship between him and Edward II that frightens them, but the penetration of the political body that the king represents. The minion, with his otherness, endangers England in the play, as Ireland did with Marlowe’s England.
"[…] Ireland threatens the imaginary impermeability of England and the purity of English national identity – a threat that was profoundly resonant with the contemporary political climate of the late sixteenth century in England."42
E. K. Atwood gives a very detailed account of Ireland as an imaginary space and the associated dangers that must be eliminated for England’s survival as a nation.43
Regicide
In the past, when a monarch became a danger to his own country, the divine right protected him from his subjects, even if they were justifiably angry. By the middle of the 16th century at the latest, doubts arose about this inviolability of the ruler.
"The anxious uncertainty surrounding the issue of deposition finds its way into the English history plays of the early 1590s. In the anonymous Woodstock, in Marlowe’s Edward II, and in Shakespeare’s Richard II, it is never resolved:"44
Although in Tudor England the principle still applied that even the tyrannical ruler was to be obeyed because he had been imposed on the people as a punishment from God, during Mary I’s reign the Protestant exiles questioned this maxim. In 1556, John Ponet, in A Short Treatise of Political Power, considered the removal of a bad ruler to be justified, citing Edward II and Richard II among numerous other historical examples. Towards the end of the 16th century, it became apparent how dangerous this criticism of kingship by God’s grace really was. During the French Wars of Religion, the Huguenots were already calling for the overthrow of any sovereign who acted contrary to divine right or the good of his country. When, after the assassination of Henri III, France’s crown fell to Henri de Navarre, Huguenot writings were suddenly again about hereditary monarchy, the sanctity of the king and the inviolability of the sovereign. The Catholics saw things differently. Using the arguments that the Huguenots had once put forward against the Catholic kings, they, above all Jean Boucher, justified the deposition or murder of a Huguenot ruler. Elizabeth I faced precisely this dilemma. If it was legitimate for the Protestants to push their Catholic cousin from the throne, why would the Catholics not want to do the same with her?45 Later, the issues surrounding Mary Stuart became even more complex. There were similarities between her and Edward II. Scotland’s queen, like Marlowe’s title character, was thrust from the throne, defenceless against her enemies, and Elizabeth I would have liked a hired assassin to relieve her of the decision of what to do with her.46 If the rulers could not find a solution to these conflicts, how could the people? What was loyalty for one subject could quite naturally be treason for another,47 for the Catholics saw themselves permanently threatened by Protestants and the Protestants feared an international conspiracy of the Catholics. Queens began to be executed and rulers removed. In the Middle Ages, Edward II could still feel like an exception because of his deposition and assassination, but from the 16th century onwards it was almost part of everyday life. In 1625, three years after the last printing of Edward II, a king ascended the throne in England whose behaviour was reminiscent of Marlowe’s title character and who in the end also shared his fate.
"Edward is, like Charles I, a very silly king to rest so much on the privileges of his position, losing the affection of his people thereby, and doing nothing practical in the political or military field to justify the exaggerated awe he expects."48
Reception
Contemporary reception is difficult to ascertain, as allusions to Edward II may concern the drama or historical events.49
Joseph Hall, in Virgidemiarum of 1597, could also refer to the king’s fall in Edward II, in addition to mentioning Tamburlaine.
"One higher pitch’d doth set his soaring thought On crowned kings that Fortune hath low brought: Or some vpreared, high-aspiring swaine As it might be the Turkish Tamberlaine."50
Apart from the performances in London mentioned on the title page of the 1594 printing, nothing is known about performances of the play in the Elizabethan era. During this period, the fate of Edward II was repeatedly treated by another author. Michael Drayton’s first historical poem The Legend of Piers Gaveston appeared in 1594. His Mortimeriados of 1596 dealt with the relationship between Isabella and Mortimer. In England’s Heroicall Epistles (1597), Drayton again addressed this relationship and in Barons Warres (1603) it was equally significant.51
Under James I, the Queen’s Men performed the drama at the Red Bull between 1604 and 1606, and again in 1617.52 This was accompanied by a general interest in Edward II among the men of letters. Richard Niccols added a biography of the king to the Mirror for Magistrates of 1610. Francis Hubert’s The Deplorable Life and Death of Edward the Second was published in 1628 without the author’s consent. A revised version was published the following year, in which the author himself stated that he had already begun the work under Elizabeth I, but that it had only really matured under her successor. Elizabeth Cary’s (1585-1639) The History of the Life, Reign, and Death of Edward II was not printed until 1680, but was probably written in the late 1620s53 and invites one to compare Edward II and James I. In 1621, Henry Yelverton compared George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham to Hugh Spenser, Edward II’s most notorious favourite, before the House of Lords, causing a scandal that occupied England for several weeks.54 A year later, Marlowe’s drama went to press again. The title page of this last quarto refers to the previous performances at the Red Bull.55 After that – as over all Marlowe’s dramas – the veil of oblivion fell.
In 1744, Robert Dodsley reissued the drama in the anthology Select Collection of Old Plays. This was the first publication of a work by Marlowe since the last edition of the Epylion Hero and Leander of 1637.56 Charles Lamb, while preferring Shakespeare’s Richard II in the comparison, praised the death scene of Edward II. Lamb thus initiated the rediscovery of the play in 1808. Academic analyses of the drama initially revolved mainly around the question of whether it was a history or a tragedy.57 In the process, Marlowe’s play was mostly overshadowed by Shakespeare’s Richard II and the three parts of Henry VI. These works were written around the time that Edward II was probably written and also deal with the depositions of legitimate kings. Therefore, they are often associated with Marlowe’s drama, without agreement as to which playwright influenced the other to what extent, or served as a model. 58
The first performance since the 17th century was a production by William Poel on 10 August 1903 at Oxford’s New Theatre with Harley Granville-Barker in the title role.59 This prompted George Bernard Shaw in a letter to the actor to make known his opinion of the play and the author in general:
"There IS nothing in it – no possibility of success; and the infernal tradition that Marlowe was a great dramatic poet instead of a XVI century Henley throws all the blame of his wretched half-achievement on the actor. Marlowe had words & turn for their music, but nothing to say – a barren amateur with great air."60
As early as 1905 there was another production in Stratford-upon-Avon with Frank Benson in the title role.61
Edward II did not make the leap to the continent until the 20th century. Karel Hilar staged the play in Prague in 1922 and Karl-Heinz Martin presented his own adaptation with Ernst Deutsch as Edward II and Heinrich George as Mortimer at the Berliner Schauspieltheater on 2 November 1923. The venture was not a great success.62 On 19 March 1924, Bert Brecht’s Das Leben Eduards des Zweiten von England premiered at the Kammerspiele in Munich. In Brecht’s adaptation, Edward II became a play about class society and the abuse of power by the state.63 Roger Planchon took a similar approach to Edward II in 1954 in the French translation by Arthur Adamov. Planchon created a version in which, like Brecht, he tried to express his political ideas. The play was shown for the first time in 1954 at the Théatre de la Comédie in Lyon. In the following years, it was performed repeatedly in various French theatres. For this, Planchon revised his first version twice more, sharpening the Marxist tendencies. (Marlowe 1994b)
Homosexuality
Edward II is a drama about seduction, but not in the sexual sense. Marlowe’s language aims at suggestion, persuasion, influence and manipulation.
"Over and over we are shown people in the process of deliberating or deciding, of wavering, and of having their minds changed, their attitudes toward an event or person influenced, or their perceptions, conclusions, and judgments swayed. Again and again the close and insidious connection between hearing speech and thinking, doing, or performing is not only reiterated but enacted."64
Fascinating analyses such as the article by Debra Belt just cited are rare occurrences in the flood of reflections on an aspect of the play that is not discussed at all in Marlowe. Admittedly, none of his works was more affected in its performance practice as well as interpretation by the social changes of the second half of the 20th century than Edward II. What should have been an enrichment became a burden in the last decades and led to an unjustified "[…] construction of Marlowe as a pioneer of gay liberation"65.
After 1903, there were repeated productions of the play in England, probably the best known of which was staged by the Marlowe Society in Cambridge in 1958. Directed by Toby Robertson, Derek Jacobi played the title role.66 Ten years later, censorship was abolished in England, making possible things that had previously been unthinkable, such as an Edward kissing Gaveston. Until then, the drama had also been defined mainly by the relationship between these two characters, but the intensity of their affection could now be hinted at. In 1969, Toby Robertson’s production at the Edinburgh Festival was a great success, thanks largely to the leading actor Ian McKellen, who was also playing Shakespeare’s Richard II. The BBC made a studio recording of this production and when it was broadcast in 1970, for the first time in British television history, two men kissed.67
As early as 1946, it had been written that the assassination of Edward II by Lightborn takes place with a red-hot poker and is a parody of the homosexual act.68 Since the early 1990s, this interpretation of the scene has been used as the basis for the reading of the entire drama.69
"[…] almost all of these readings have been rooted in anxieties about and insistences upon homosexual identity politics. This is only further illustrated by the fact that Edward II’s suggestively sodomitical death has spilled the majority of critical ink, […]. While reading Edward II through this lens is certainly provocative and even offers "producible interpretations," […] it need not be the only way to read or stage the play. In short, contemporary critics have been blinded by the red-hot spit."70
Blinded as they were, they used their interpretation of the scene as a pars pro toto for Marlowe’s biography and mythography gained new momentum. Based on the view that began in the late 19th century that drama characters were merely the manifestation of Marlowe’s ego, the sexual level brought Edward II into focus. While Faustus is supposed to inform about Marlowe’s faith, Edward II is supposed to inform about his sexual life.
"Critics have continues to cast Marlowe as the political and religious (or anti-religious) radical of Elizabethan theatre, although more recently his sexuality has made him a kind of icon for gay writers and artists; Oscar Wilde has been appropriated in a similar fashion."71
Although the playwright draws attention to the political implications of the king’s sexual preferences,72 the preference itself is not thematised and is not the trigger for the nobility’s resistance.73 Nevertheless, Marlowe is associated with Freudian fetishism,74 declared to be an Oedipal precursor of Nietzsche75 or praised for having already recognised the protest character in homosexuality with Edward II, as it was described over three hundred years later in the work of Alfred Adler.76 Even if it is conceded that any statements about Marlowe’s sexual views and practices can only be conjecture, there is still no shying away from suggesting, "[…] that Marlowe anticipated Freud with the symptomatological insight of a Dostoevsky and the symbological flair of a Sophocles and gave us in his Edward II a definitive portrait of anal rebellion."77 For some critics, the drama is Marlowe’s confession of homosexuality.78 Of course, the opposite view is also held79 while others immediately conclude that the author had a psycho-sexual disorder!80 None of the critics seemed to care that the Elizabethans defined Homosexuality in a completely different way, that the terms and phrases of the time are used in a completely different context today, and that there was no such thing as a clearly homosexual minority urging the expression of their desires in late 16th century England.81
"But the many who have written of the apparently openly 'homosexual' nature of the play have not grasped its irony or that the intense emotion, the passionate language and the embraces we see between these two men have ready parallels in Elizabethan England in the daily conventions of friendship without being signs of a sodomitical relationship."82
What makes the relationship between Edward II and Gaveston interesting in this respect are the divergences from the Elizabethan ideal of friendship that Marlowe made. It was assumed that high lords who were in such a friendly relationship with their immediate client were all noblemen. While mutual support was an important part of friendship, the subordinate never asked for a reward.83 Gaveston, as is permanently pointed out in the drama, is of low birth and he very much expects to be rewarded by the king. Now, once again, the ambivalence typical of Elizabethan drama comes to the fore.84 On the one hand, Marlowe could be giving his audience a clue as to what the real connection between Edward II and his favourite is. Here, someone has achieved a social position to which he is not entitled by nature and in which he elevates himself above those who are actually above him. Homosexuality as the Elizabethans understood it was both a sin against nature and against society. Gaveston upset the social structure and perhaps he succeeded in doing so by disturbing the natural one. On the other hand, Marlowe may have had socially critical intentions. For the much-sung ideal had long since given way to a reality in which persons of rank, such as Lord Burghley, took men into their confidence who were below them in social rank.85
In 2004, The Queen’s Company played Edward II exclusively with women. Time Out New York could think of no better advertisement for it than: "Christopher Marlowe’s scandalous 1593 tragedy about a king and his male lover is given yet another twist of the wrist by the all-female Queen’s Company, performing in Samurai style."86 This tragedy, which is strictly speaking a history, had not caused a scandal. Scandalous plays met a fate in Elizabethan England like The Isles of Dogs by Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson. The performance was banned, Jonson and two actors were jailed, Nashe fled London, the Swan Theatre was no longer licensed and to this day no one knows why it all happened, because the text was destroyed. It was not Marlowe or the Elizabethans who had a problem with Edward II, we have had one for a long time. Because our society is still reluctant to accept homosexuality, this drama is viewed controversially, even though the intimate relationship between Edward II and Gaveston is not the subject of the play at all.87
Setting
David Bintley choreographed Ballet Edward II for Stuttgart in 1995. This was a commissioned work composed by John McCabe. 88
Movie
A studio recording of the production with Ian McKellen from the Edinburgh Festival was shown on television in 1970.
Derek Jarman’s film Edward II was released in 1991.
Audio
In the series Vivat Rex 1, BBC Radio 4 released a radio play version with John Hurt and Richard Burton in 1977.
- Ule (1979)↩︎
- Knutson (2005)↩︎
- Marlowe (1994a)↩︎
- Berdan (1924)↩︎
- Wernham (1976)↩︎
- Sampley (1935)↩︎
- Marlowe (1994b)↩︎
- Thomas and Tydeman (1994)↩︎
- Ribner (1955); Bevington (2008)↩︎
- Waith (1964), 76↩︎
- Brooke (1909)↩︎
- Marlowe (1994b)↩︎
- Marlowe (1994a)↩︎
- Brown (2002)↩︎
- Marlowe (1994b)↩︎
- Godman (1993)↩︎
- Page (1977)↩︎
- Thomas and Tydeman (1994)↩︎
- Marlowe (1994b)↩︎
- Kay (1997); Burnett (1998); Archer (1999); Knowels (2001)↩︎
- Fryde (1979), 7↩︎
- Bakeless (1970)↩︎
- Boas (1940)↩︎
- Ribner (1955)↩︎
- Marlowe (1994a)↩︎
- Kendall (2003)↩︎
- Normand (1996)↩︎
- Berdan (1924)↩︎
- Bray (1990)↩︎
- Marlowe (1994a)↩︎
- Perry (2000)↩︎
- Berry (2007)↩︎
- Canny (2001), 161↩︎
- Bianco (2007)↩︎
- Neill (1994), 3↩︎
- The Commedy of Errors. III,2,105f↩︎
- Hadfield (1997)↩︎
- Bianco (2007)↩︎
- Burnett (1998)↩︎
- Harris (1998)↩︎
- DiGangi (1998)↩︎
- Bianco (2007)↩︎
- Atwood (2013) ↩︎
- Thurn (1990), 116↩︎
- Knowels (2001)↩︎
- Godman (1996)↩︎
- Cunningham (2002)↩︎
- Edwards (1979), 61↩︎
- Wiggins (1999)↩︎
- Hall (1602), 6↩︎
- Lewalski (1993)↩︎
- Marlowe (1981)↩︎
- Lewalski (1993)↩︎
- Perry (2003)↩︎
- Marlowe (1994a)↩︎
- Marlowe (1981)↩︎
- Marlowe (1994b) offers a good summary of this debate including references to literature.↩︎
- Dametz (1903/04); Alexander (02.04.1964); J. R. Brown (1964); Steane (1964); Brooks (1968); Sanders (1968); Charney (1994)↩︎
- Speaight (1954)↩︎
- Shaw (1972), 361↩︎
- Stewart (2006)↩︎
- Rühle (1988)↩︎
- Willis (1998)↩︎
- Belt (1991), 139↩︎
- Wilson (2000), 132↩︎
- Fuller (2009)↩︎
- Potter (2000); Fuller (2009)↩︎
- Empson (19.10.1946)↩︎
- Thurn (1990); Bredbeck (1991); Goldberg (1999); Summers (1994); Stymeist (2004); Surgal (2004)↩︎
- Atwood (2013), 50↩︎
- Simkin (2001), 246↩︎
- Pati (1994)↩︎
- Giantvalley (1981); Raman (1997)↩︎
- Thurn (1990)↩︎
- Engle (2008)↩︎
- Brachfeld (1928)↩︎
- Surgal (2004), 165↩︎
- Cunningham (1990); Bredbeck (1991); Comensoli (1993); Cartelli (2003); DiGangi (1998); Goldberg (1999); Hopkins (2003)↩︎
- Mills (1934); Brodwin (1964); Greenblatt (1980); Callaghan (2003); Deats (1997); Lawrence (2000); Cardullo (2009); Atwood (2013)↩︎
- Kuriyama (1980)↩︎
- Bray (1995)↩︎
- Bray (1990), 9↩︎
- Bray (1990)↩︎
- Patterson (1991)↩︎
- Bray (1990)↩︎
- Allocco (2013), 152↩︎
- Baker (2015)↩︎
- Fuller (2009)↩︎