3844628

Rice University
Status, Sodomy, and the Theater in Marlowe's "Edward II"

Author(s): David Stymeist
Source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 44, No. 2, Tudor and Stuart Drama
(Spring, 2004), pp. 233-253
Published by: Rice University
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3844628
Accessed: 30-11-2019 19:29 UTC
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SEL 44, 2 (Spring 2004): 233-253 233
ISSN 0039-3657
Status, Sodomy, an
in Marlowe's Edward II
DAVID STYMEIST
Stephen Orgel contends "that English Renaissanc

does not appear to have had a morbid fear of male ho
behavior/'1 Similarly, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick argues t
sexual practice during the period did not constitute a
cause of its compatibility with heterosexuality and m
Nevertheless, sodomy could constitute a social thre
modern England when it was combined with issues
transgression.3 The notable trial of Mervin Touchet,
of Castlehaven, reveals a pervasive judicial anxiety ove
bination of open male homoeroticism and the failure
aristocratic ideals. Castlehaven was executed in 1631 on two
counts of sodomy and one of abetting rape.4 He demonst
considerable courage in his scaffold speech by openly d
his guilt; nevertheless, "[the] sight ofthe headsman . . . wi
apprehension of his near approaching end, made him som
to change colour, and shew some signs of trembling pass
his hands shook a little in undoing his bandstrings . . .
taking leave again ofthe lords, the doctors, and his man,
a very short prayer by himself, he pulled down his handk
over his face, and laid his head upon the block; which wa
off at one blow."5 Castlehaven's two servants, Lawrence Fitz-
Patrick and Giles Broadway, were also hanged for their invol
ment in the sodomy charges despite Lord Dorset's promises t
Fitz-Patrick of legal immunity and the fact that both Broadw
and Fitz-Patrick had been coerced and/or bribed into illegal sex
David Stymeist (Ph.D., Queen's University) teaches English literature at

the University of Alberta. He is a specialist in early modern drama, crim
pamphlets, and travel narratives; he has published in journals such as
naissance and Reformation and Mosaic and has work forthcoming in Gen
234 Marlowe's Edward IL
acts by Castlehaven.6 Ca
ous legal irregularities: h
would have prevented hi
the rape charge; impriso
of London for six mont
trial proceedings; his wi
allegiance to him, were
several of his jurors had shown past prejudice against
Castlehaven; and the prosecution liberally expanded the legal
definition of sodomy.7The Crown described Castlehaven's sexual
conduct as a threat to sexual differentiation, morality, domestic
order, and even the nation's health. One attorney argued that
"never poet invented, nor historian writ of any deed so foul" and
described these sexual acts as "of a pestilential nature" by which
"the land is defiled" and "so abominable a sin, which brought
such plagues after it"8 Sodomy was also described as an act of
emasculation, which disrupted gender norms: "the earl used
[Broadway's] body as the body of a woman."9 In this trial, which
built on earlier charges against Lord Hungerford (1540) and the
Earl of Oxford (1580s), the judiciary actively constructed the sod-
omite as a scapegoat, whose execution would cleanse society by
removing the source of "plague."10
Nevertheless, Castlehaven was not brought to trial solely be?
cause of his "aberrant" sexuality but because of a confluence of
political agendas. Building on Alan Bray's observation that sod?
omy was associated with atheism, witchcraft, popery, heresy, and
sedition, Jonathan Goldberg convincingly argues that "sodomy
named sexual acts only in particularly stigmatizing contexts."11
Castlehaven's trial seems to bear this out, for the main impetus
behind the trial was his son's complaint to the king; James
Touchet had just reached his majority and desired to take over
his father's estate before its financial ruin and before his father
convinced James's wife to bear children fathered by household
servants. As Cynthia B. Herrup has noted, it was not solely sexu
crimes that mobilized official forces against the earl, but the per
ception that he was publicly defiling his stewardship of a nobl
household, especially in his invitation of "the disparagement of
his blood in the next generation."12 Castlehaven also threatene
the English caste system with his excessive monetary generosity
toward his male lovers, who were of inferior social standing.13
The prosecutors accused Castlehaven of betraying his obligations
"to God, to his gender, to his status, and to his country."14 Thu
the earl was accused, tried, and executed because of a confluence
of perceived sexual immorality and political and religious radi-
David Stymeist 235
calism. Neither his sodomitical acts, his involvement in his wife's

rape, his purported irreligiosity, his disregard for proper hierar?
chical relationships to his servants, nor his financial impropri-
eties would have been sufficient in themselves to bring a peer to
the executioner's block, but together these actions were enough
ofa social threat to activate the judiciary.15
In Edward II, Christopher Marlowe dramatizes the history of
an English king who, like Castlehaven, is accused of allowing his
homoeroticism to take precedence over his political and social
obligations; in this, the play not only debates the criminality of
sodomy but also indirectly engages in the early modern contro?
versy about the sodomitical theater.16 The early modern commer?
cial theater acquired a disadvantageous association with male
homoeroticism, largely because ofthe practice of cross-dressing.
For example, the author I. G., often identified as John Greene,
attacks the theater as the site where youth is corrupted to sexual
vice: "then begin they to repeate the lascivious acts and speeches
they have heard, and thereby infect their minde with wicked pas?
sions, so that in their secret conclaves they play the Sodomits, or
worse. And these for the most part are the fruits of Playes."17
Similarly, John Rainoldes in Th' Overthrow of Stage-Playes ex?
plicitly associates the theater's transvestism with homoerotic sod?
omy: "[W]hat sparkles of lust to that vice the putting of womens
attire on men may kindle in uncleane affections . . . we shall
perceive that hee, who condemneth the female hoore and male,
and, detesting speciallie the male by terming him a dogge, rejecteth
both their offeringes with these wordes that they both are abomi-
nation to the Lorde thy God, might well controll likewise the meanes
and occasions whereby men are transformed into dogges, the
sooner, to cutt off all incitements to that beastlie filthines, or
rather more then beastlie."18 With its validation of sexual alterity,
theatrical cross-dressing could be seen as threatening to the so?
cial order of early modern England, which was dependent on stable
sexual norms.19 Stephen Greenblatt argues that theatrical trans?
vestism was a natural and unthreatening byproduct of a society
that posited only one proper sex and viewed women as imper-
fectly formed men.20 Nonetheless, the reiteration of sexual differ?
ence and female subservience from court, pulpit, and religious
tract seems to indicate a societal impulse to police gender divi?
sions strictly; Phillip Stubbes insists on sexual normativity for
the successful operation of society: "Our Apparell was given us
as a signe distinctive to discern betwixt sex and sex, & therfore
one to weare the Apparel of another sex is to participate with the
236 Marlowe''s EdwardLL
same, and to adulterate the veritie of his owne kinde."21 Stubbes,

building on Anthony Munday's condemnation ofthe theater as a
dangerously "Camelion" art, argues that theatrical practice not
only induces the "whordom & unclennes" of sodomy, but also
concomitantly encourages political rebellion.22
In this cultural milieu, where the commercial theater was
directly linked to an iniquitous and possibly dangerous alterna-
tive sexuality, it would have been necessary for Marlowe to nego-
tiate carefully the representation of sodomy in his play about
King Edward II.23 Before the advent of new historical approaches,
critics tended to depoliticize the sodomy in Edward II and to in?
terpret Marlowe's presentation of the execution of sodomites as
an indication that he was "naturally attracted towards cruelty
and sadism."24 Although critics now tend to emphasize the politi?
cal aspect of Marlowe's representation of sodomy, they are di-
vided into two distinct and opposed camps. One camp, largely
emerging out of the field of queer studies, argues that Marlowe
was a political subversive who actively critiques the scapegoating
of homosexuals in his plays.25 Gregory W. Bredbeck, for instance,
argues that Piers Gaveston's political use of homoeroticism in
Edward II is both deconstructive and empowering.26 Jonathan
Goldberg similarly argues that it is "imperative, to recognize in
Marlowe a site of political resistance," for his representation of
sodomy "allows for differences?sexual difference, gender differ?
ence?and allows for ways of conceiving sexual and gender con-
struction that cannot be reduced to the normative structure of
male/female relations under the modern regimes of heterose
ality."27 Karen Cunningham contends that Marlowe's represen
tations of execution in Edward II transform "a theater of pai
into a drama of subversion."28 Viviana Comensoli correspond-
ingly views Edward II &s a radical sexual-social critique: "Marlow
deliberate departures from official explanations of the insurre
tion against an anointed king help to locate the dramatization
Edward II's homosexuality as a practice whose punishment
rooted in a form of paranoia, specifically homophobia?that is
fostered and encouraged by a society that is in crisis precisel
because the structures of patriarchy . . . are no longer tenable."
In opposition to this first group of commentators who for
ground Marlowe's cultural iconoclasm and his subversive repre?
sentations of sodomy, a second critical camp contends that
Marlowe's representation of sodomy is inherently and invariably
"contained" by early modern ideology concerning sexual aberra-
tion. Greenblatt identifies the direct, and almost conspiratorial,
co-operation of the Tudor government and the professional the-
David Stymeist 237
ater: "Each branding o

in conception and per
enacted on a scaffold
ened order[?]the tra
thief?were identified
'notable spectacle,' the
naturally to the drama
thus takes its rightfu
of repetitions, embrac
and rote learning."30
monolithic," Greenbla
tempts to challenge t
Barabas's Machiavellianism, Edward's homosexuality, and
Faustus's skepticism?are . . . exposed as unwitting tributes to
that social construction of identity against which they struggle."31
Similarly, Sara Munson Deats argues that Marlowe's radicalism
is ultimately contained by a pervasive disciplinary and admoni?
tory ideology: "the roles that Edward and Isabella ultimately se?
lect?or are constrained to perform?deviate too markedly from
society's authorized subject positions, and so they must be sacri-
ficed as scapegoats of their inflexible culture."32 Dympna Callaghan
furthers this assertion by contending that since male homoerotic
bonds play a central role within patriarchy the sexual alliances
between men in the play support power rather than contest it.33
While Marlowe might temper his representations of male ho?
moeroticism with partial allegiances to disciplinary justice, Ed?
ward II does not provide an entirely demonized version of
alternative sexuality, in which the sodomite is figured as a mon?
strous perversity; rather, the representation of sodomy in the play
is strategically ambivalent. In attempting to reconcile the current
critical controversy, this paper contends that Edward II consti?
tutes a cleft text that simultaneously condemns and defends the
practice of executing sodomites for sexual and social crimes. In
the play, Edward and Gaveston constitute a cultural threat be?
cause they insist that their homoeroticism not be divorced from
their political and social identities. Thus, on one hand, Edward II
figures as a culturally anomalous defense of gender transgres?
sion, which can be linked to wider theatrical concerns with the
decriminalization of alternative sexualities such as cross-dress?
ing; in validating an alternative sexuality the play deconst
the assumption that gender normativity is static and god-or
rather than cultural and changeable. On the other hand, the
is also bound, in order to avoid detrimental financial and le
238 Mariowe's Edward II
consequences associated
fied as aberrant and il
construction of the sod
may be brutally execute
sexual, economic, and c
giance to the legal ficti
activity distances it fro
eroticism; by providing
to concur with popula
condemn sodomy and it
resentational ambivalen
contradictory social dem
primarily, the professi
its cultural connection t
anced against the needs
admonitory and normat
The most obvious site of cultural radicalism in Edward II is
its candid portrayal of alternative sexuality in King Edward's c
nal relationship with his male courtier, Gaveston. What is m
shocking, offensive, and ultimately threatening to the rebelli
earls is the open and lascivious nature of Edward's love for
Gaveston. If Edward had maintained his male lover solely in a
sexual capacity, then the nobles could simply categorize and dis-
miss Gaveston as catamite, whore, or ingle (male prostitute); what
menaces them is Edward's demand that Gaveston be politically
recognized and given official status as royal consort. Marlowe
opens his play with Gaveston explicitly exposing the sexual na?
ture of his relationship with King Edward:
Sweet prince, I come. These, these thy amorous lines

Might have enforced me to have swum from France,
And, like Leander, gasped upon the sand,
So thou wouldst smile and take me in thy arms.34
The political dimension of this sodomitical romance appears in

both Gaveston's ambition to garner power and titles and Edward's
official demand that his homoeroticism be publicly accepted and
consecrated by his nobles. During his second reunion with Ed?
ward, Gaveston openly insults the nobles ofthe court, who refuse
to salute him and recognize his political position:
Base leaden earls that glory in your birth,

Go sit at home and eat your tenants' beef,
David Stymeist 239
And come not here to scoff at Gaveston,

Whose mounting thoughts did never creep so low
As to bestow a look on such as you.
(II.ii.74-8)
Gaveston's insolent abuse of the lords, as well as commoners

and the clergy, stems directly from his desire to be publicly ac?
knowledged and the cognizance that he will never be accepted
because of his status as the king's sodomite, despite acquiring
the titles of Lord Chamberlain, Earl of Cornwall, Lord Governor
ofthe Isle of Man, and Master Secretary. Lancaster questions the
king on why he allows the openly ambitious and scornful Gaveston
into court: "why do you thus incense your peers, / That naturally
would love and honour you / But for that base and obscure
Gaveston?" (I.i.98-100). Politics and the question of sodomy be?
come inseparable in this play and constitute the significant cause
of civil rebellion. The theory and practice ofthe king's two bodies,
as summarized by Ernst H. Kantorowicz,35 might have proved
useful in separating personal desires from political persona and
thus have saved the ruler and his nobles from public shame for
private conduct. However, as Bredbeck observes, Edward and
Gaveston intermingle "the temporal and the politic," creating "a
conscious conflation" of these categories, and establish the causes
of civil conflict.36
Mortimer Senior's speech constitutes a significant rhetorical
defense of the king's sexual deviation. The speech itself relies
largely on classical precedent in its justification of Edward's al?
ternative sexuality:
The mightiest kings have had their minions:

Great Alexander loved Hephestion;
The conquering Hercules for Hylas wept;
And for Patroclus stern Achilles drooped.
And not kings only, but the wisest men:
The Roman Tully loved Octavius,
Grave Socrates, wild Alcibiades.
(I.iv.390-6)
Mortimer's list of great men who engaged in homoerotic relation?

ships serves to legitimize the king's love for Gaveston. Notably,
the examples of Alexander and Hercules indicate that sodomy in
itself does not necessarily cause men to lose their masculinity,
countering the legal and biblical fictions that show men to be
240 Mariowe's Edward II
emasculated by sexual
not link sodomy to co
led meritorious lives
or empire building. H
fictions that alternat
ter it." Furthermore, Mortimer Junior notes that Edward's "wan?
ton humour grieves not me" (I.iv.401); this apparent lack of
concern for the king's homoeroticism tends to decriminalize sod?
omy in the play. While Mortimer Senior's speech has been seen
as unambivalent proof of the play's openness to homoeroticism
and a further indication that sodomy has little to do with the
executions of Edward and Gaveston,37 this speech on sexual per-
missiveness needs to be placed within the larger context of the
play. This speech occurs during a brief and tenuous moment of
reconciliation between Edward and the earls; thus, it is voiced
mainly to temporarily defuse antisodomitical language that cou
disrupt political reconciliation. Mortimer Junior quickly switch
into derisive heteronormative language. He describes how
Edward's murderer would enroll his name in future chronicles
by "purging ofthe realm of such a plague" (I.iv.270). That hom
eroticism needed to be defended in a formal rhetorical manner
indicates its pejorative value within the playhouse commun
for the public audience were not mainly university grad
schooled on a classical discourse favorable to homoeroticism;
rather, the audience's primary schooling included the chu
pulpit and the Tudor scaffold.
Mortimer Senior's exposition on the relative innocuousness
of Edward's alternative sexuality is agonistically counterbalan
In direct opposition to affirmations of male homoeroticism,
Gaveston is represented as actively and maliciously manipulat-
ing the king with his sexuality; Gaveston says that he wants "wan?
ton poets, pleasant wits" in order to "draw the pliant king which
way I please" (I.i.50, 52). Gaveston's exploitation of his sexuality
to further his political and status ambitions constitutes one of
the disruptive forces that lead toward Edward's misgovernance
and the rebellion of his nobles. Gaveston actively fantasizes about
his sexual mastery of Edward and his power to unsettle political
events through his use of theater; he imagines creating a mock-
tragic tableau in which Acteon's desire for "a lovely boy" in "Dian's
shape" leads Acteon to be ripped apart by his own hounds (I.i.60).
This emblematic performance creates a disturbing allegorical
parallel between the classical myth and the play's present. Diana
is a thinly disguised Gaveston who teases Acteon, the double of
David Stymeist 241
the love-struck Edward

down and murdered b
This representation
consort also serves to
here, alternative sexu
designation and sexual hierarchy. Edward participates in
transgendering, for instead of representing the standard of mas?
culinity, as a king is expected to, Marlowe depicts Edward as
demonstrating stereotyped feminine traits. In contrast to his vir-
ile and bellicose father, Longshanks, Edward's nature is "mild
and calm" (I.iv.387). Furthermore, Mortimer Senior recognizes
that Edward so "dotes on Gaveston" (I.iv.388); "doting" here im?
plies a frivolous and inappropriate infatuation. Edward even de?
scribes himself as "frantic for my Gaveston" and "giddy" in his
sorrow (I.iv.312, 313). Moreover, as Alan Shepard has shown,
the earls dismiss Edward "as an effeminate creature content to
wear 'women's favors.'"39 The mere fact that Edward would jeo
ardize his kingship for a carnal affair indicates a substantial i
version of traditional kingly masculinity. As Gaveston can "dra
the pliant king which way I piease," he figures a relationship
which he plays a dominant male role and Edward a submissive
female role. In terms of early modern gender normativity, E
ward has been largely emasculated by entering into this sod
omitical relationship; in fact, it is only after Gaveston's death
that Edward is able to mount a successful military campaign o
revenge.
Nevertheless, Gaveston also becomes effeminized in the play,
complicating the simple inversion of gender roles. When Gaveston
is captured by the earls, they viciously condemn his homosexu?
ality; for instance, Lancaster calls Gaveston a "[m]onster of men"
and compares him to "the Greekish strumpet," emphatically con?
necting his gender transgression?or being a womanish man?to
the destruction of Troy (II.v. 14-5). All the classical precedents
cited in the text can be neatly divided into instances in which the
effects of gender transgression are positive?such as the refer?
ences to Alexander, Leander, and Hercules?or negative?as in
this allusion to the destruction of Troy. Laura Levine argues that
to openly dramatize individuals who were considered effeminized
males, especially empowered effeminized males, directly threat?
ened gender normativity.40 The play, in order to defuse the threat
to gender roles posed by dramatizing homosexuality, at times
accords more with traditional homiletics, which attempted to
entrench sexual norms by depicting alternative sexuality as in-
242 Marlowe's EdwardII
variably producing m
representing the dang
tempts to elide charg
man effeminate."41 A
could not be effaced,
sodomy and real gend
"playing") could serve
While these intimations of the corrosive effect a sodomitical
relationship has on kingship play a part in the antihomoerotic
content in Edward II perhaps the most virulent attack against
sodomy is the inclusion of Old Testament language concerning
its "unnatural" and "base" nature. This seems to contradict
Stephen Guy-Bray, who argues that "[cjertainly the fa
ward and Gaveston are lovers does not appear to both
enemies."42 Yet, there is considerable textual evidence
that their sexual deviance does bother their enemies. Classical
homoerotic precedent called forth by Mortimer Senior is ca
into doubt when Isabella, spurned by her husband, states "n
doted Jove on Ganymede / So much as he on cursed Gavest
(I.iv. 180-1). In this, Isabella argues that Jupiter, as chief pa
arch of the Roman gods, may have dallied with homosexual
but that this expression of alternative sexuality never took p
dence over his heterosexual, military, and political obligatio
The earls compare Gaveston, with obvious and profane sexu
innuendo, to a "night-grown mushroom" (I.iv.284). Yet, the m
convincing proof of antihomoerotic language is that the op
nents of Edward code his conduct with one word: "unnatural."
Isabella describes the civil conflict as the "[u]nnatural wars"
(III.i.86), Warwick calls on the king's "unnatural resolution"
(III.ii.33), and Kent designates Edward as an "[u]nnatural king"
(IV.i.8). Kent also certifies that the basis of Edward's "unnatural"
conduct is his "looseness" (IV.i.7). Here, sodomy is directly at-
tacked, as in Leviticus and Exodus, as well as the trials of the
period, as a crime against procreation and nature. Isabella goes
on to closely link the realm's ruin with Edward's deviant sexuality:
"Edward . . . / Whose looseness hath betrayed thy land to spoil /
And made the channels overflow with blood" (IV.iv.10-2).43
Despite the centrality of sodomy in Gaveston's and Edward's
executions, it is their demand that their homoerotic relationship
be publicly consecrated that activates these antisodomitical ste-
reotypes within the play; while the category of sexual aberration
legitimizes their persecution, it is the threat of class ambition
that mobilizes their enemies. Coupled with the various sexual
David Stymeist 243
slurs directed against

cism of Gaveston's s
epithets used against
stance, Mortimer Jun
Gaveston" and later c
by his sovereign's fa
tently the earls cond
unseemly promotion
argues that the emph
unstated cause of pol
While her analysis of
minion's pathologized
intriguing,44 it over
"base" as connoting
masculine homoeroti
taminate each other
in Gaveston's demise.
to maintain the class status quo enables and releases responses
harshly opposed to sodomy. Breaking with many recent studies,
Mario DiGangi refuses to read Marlowe's Edward as a sodomite;
rather, he argues that the play may censure Edward's favoritism
toward Gaveston (while still providing a positive homoerotics as?
sociated with a tradition of male friendship), but only locates "the
political crime of sodomy in [Mortimer Junior's] transgressive
access to the royal body."45 Neither Gaveston's overreaching nor
Edward's disorderly homoeroticism are sufficient in themselves
to spur rebellion; however, in Edward II, it is the precise combi?
nation of political ambition and sexual alterity that comprise a
sufficient threat to precipitate persecution under the banner of
sexual aberration.
Even with Gaveston's execution at the end of the second act,
the play's engagement with the politics of homoeroticism contin?
ues unabated; in fact, the pattern of status, alternative sexual?
ity, and power is largely reduplicated in the figure of Spencer
Junior. The removal of the king's new sycophantic consort be?
comes the focus of the earls' demands, and Spencer Junior is
described in antihomoerotic terms similar to those applied to
Gaveston; Spencer Junior is compared to syphilitic male genita?
lia that disease the kingship: "a putrifying branch / That deads
the royal vine" (Ill.i. 162-3). Moreover, "wanton Spencer" (IV.iv.50)
is directly condemned for combining status transgression, in be?
ing a "base upstart" (III.li.21), a "pernicious [upstart]" (III.i.165),
with sexual deviancy. Out of his "love," Edward gives titles and
honors that once bel

Lord Chamberlain, to
Furthermore, Edwar
enemies, which para
manded that Gavesto
I do thee" (I.i. 139-40); this public embrace emblematically
physicalizes the king's relationship to Spencer. Finally, Edward
himself conflates his two consorts when he describes how he has
sacrificed himself for a transgressive form of love: "O Gaveston, it
is for thee that I am wronged; / For me, both thou and both th
Spencers died" (V.iii.41-2).
Gaveston's summary execution itself participates in the so?
cial convention of the fitting end; this engagement in moral in?
struction indicates the play's appropriation of traditional
homiletics, for Marlowe joins in the concerted effort of profes?
sional playwrights to have their artistic activity classified as ad-
monitory instruction rather than corrupting sexual influence. In
the early modern period, physical punishment was expected to
precisely fit the crime, for execution rituals were much more than
simply the beheading or hanging of a criminal. Public execution
functioned as the preeminent form of ritual removal of the
criminalized scapegoat; in this ceremonialized murder, every mark
and act upon the physical body had its symbolic value.46 The
early modern historiographer Jean Froissart records the younger
Spencer's execution as one suited for sodomites: "[H]is member
and . . . testicles were first cut off, because he was a heretic and
a sodomite, even, it was said, with the King."47 Thus, Marlowe's
staging of a sodomite's execution could serve as an admonitory
warning to any that might contemplate adopting an alternative
sexuality. Mortimer Junior denies Gaveston's last request before
execution (as well as the king's order) to see Edward; addition?
ally, he demeans Gaveston's status by treating him like a petty
thief: "Away, base groom, robber of kings' renown" (II.v.70). The
manner of Gaveston's death is more of an unceremonious mur?
der than a formal execution, and is named as such by Edward
for Warwick's men "bare [Gaveston] to his death, and in a trench
/ Strake off his head" (IILi. 119-20). While the rebel lords behead
Gaveston, as befits his social rank, they do this in the most igno-
minious way possible. Instead ofa highly constructed public ritual
in which Gaveston would get to refute his crimes before decapi-
tation, he is executed in isolation without ceremony. Holinshed
records that Gaveston was beheaded in a somewhat more cer-
emonial manner on Blacklow Hill in the presence of the E
David Stymeist 245
Warwick and after an

ers.48 Marlowe, by m
fully in the expectatio
historical reading wo
crimes are reduplicat
Also, the image of th
creates a physical site
torture and execution and hints at and parodies the kind of
criminalized sodomitical acts of which he is accused.
The play's ostensible allegiance with traditional homiletics
we see in its treatment of Gaveston's death is repeated in the
portrayal of Edward's execution, as the form his death takes sym-
bolically fits his alleged sodomitical crimes. In the historical record,
Queen Isabella ordered Edward's murderers "to leave no mark
on his body"; they circumvented the letter of her orders by killing
him with a red hot spit thrust up into his bowels.49 In contrast,
the play does not mention the queen's directive and sensational-
izes the sexual aspect of Edward's murder. Marlowe also alters
the historical record with his use of the feather bed and table in
the play. The mattress is placed over Edward's body to smoth
and hold him down as they penetrate him with the hot spit; t
use of the bed not only serves to domesticate the scene of exe
tion but its inversion also furthers the parodic travesty of s
omy in Edward's brutal execution. Moreover, the executioner's
speech is heavily laden with homoerotic innuendo: "So now, m
I about this gear; ne'er was there any / So finely handled as t
king shall be" (V.v.38). Lightborn soothingly invites Edward to
upon the bed, and Edward tellingly offers his last jewel up t
him; here, the offering of his "jewel," a common metaphor f
woman's maidenhead, suggests that Edward's death is a form
sexual initiation. Edward is prepared for his "fitting" end, t
mented for ten days by being chained in the castle's sewer: "T
dungeon where they keep me is the sink / Wherein the filth of a
the castle fails" (V.v.55-6). The scatological site of punishmen
for the sodomite is further fabricated to parody and ridicule
eroticism with the filth and waste ofthe castle's cloaca.50 In s
ing this graphic and grotesque murder that figuratively joins
moeroticism with violent rape, Edward II becomes part of th
wider theater of punishment of early modern England.51 Desp
the secretive manner of Edward's actual execution, Marlowe cre?
ates an admonitory show by reenacting the king's death in front
of an audience. Here, the disciplinary machinery of appropriate
execution creates a fearful warning to the audience on the dan-
gers of sodomy by ob
omitical and then to
While spectacles of
tirely objectified so
ence, Edward's tortu
serve to problematiz
macy of admonitor
Edward's torture and
the "theatre of hell"
demned provide a gl
brought up on John
ments, Edward's cries and struggles could also represent the
sufferings of a wrongly accused martyr. Drawing on the medieval
morality tradition, Marlowe names the executioner Lightborn, an
anglicized form of Lucifer. But is Lightborn God's righteous scourge
or simply Satan's whip? What complicates the execution by tor?
ture is not necessarily its inhumaneness, for an early modern
audience would have fewer reservations about the treatment of
criminality than a modern one, but that Edward occupies a mo
ambiguous subject position in the scenes leading up to his deat
Despite the fact of Edward's sodomy and his "wanton
misgovernance,"54 the portrait ofa king intimidated, threatened,
humiliated, sleep deprived, shorn of his hair, chained in a sewer,
denied the knowledge of when and how his death might occur,
and denied a public execution could be enough to shock a Re?
naissance audience educated to respect the authority ofthe royal
personage and kingship in general.55 Even Lightborn exclaims,
"what eyes can refrain from shedding tears / To see a king in this
most piteous state?" (V.v.49-50). In fact, it is the repetition and
accumulation of the word "pity" in the scenes leading up to
Edward's death that indicates that his torment is not commen-
surate with his crimes. Another executioner, Matrevis, repents
after Edward's murder and wishes "it were undone" and begs to
be released in order to "fly" from his crimes (V.vi.2, 8). Due cer?
emony and decorum is not adhered to in his pre-execution treat?
ment, and the king's death itself begins to function more as a
murderous martyrdom than as an admonitory execution.56
As well, the open fact of Isabella's transgressive adultery and
state treason undercuts the construction of Edward as sole male-
factor, for she is described in the play as "that unnatural queen
false Isabel," who spots Edward's "nuptial bed with infamy" (V.i. 17,
31). From the opening acts Isabella's adultery with Mortimer is
suggested, and throughout the play her sexual transgression
David Stymeist 247
becomes more pronou

"do kiss while they co
spurned by Edward a
Gaveston, Isabella sh
son's safety and a des
ate her from the au
tortured in the castle's sewer, he describes Isabella in inhuman
terms, for her "eyes, being turned to steel, / Will sooner sparkle
fire than shed a tear" (V.i. 104-5). As a foreign and female re-
gent?the "she-wolf of France"?who ruled England by force of
arms between 1326-30 before her own son imprisoned her, Queen
Isabella is a figure who excited extreme animosity in increasingly
nationalistic England. Marlowe, in sexualizing his portrait of
Isabella by joining the qualities of "subtle queen" (III.ii.88) and
"french strumpet" (I.iv. 145), continues to describe how threats of
power and sex combine in persecutory figures; to a degree, she
becomes a nightmarish emblem of adultery and unnatural moth-
erhood, allowing her son to be forcefully taken away by her par-
amour and murdering her husband.
Marlowe's use of source material is demonstrably more am-
bivalent in its treatment of alternative sexuality than that of con?
temporary historiographers. The historiography of the period
seamlessly represents male homoeroticism as sexually aberrant;
the strong political implications of Gaveston's promotion are of?
ten obscured by reducing the story to that of a sexual moral tale.
Holinshed's account moralizes that the king's sexual relation?
ship with Gaveston was a corrupting influence: "[H]aving revoked
againe into England his old mate the said Peers de Gaveston . . .
through whose companie and societie he was suddenlie so cor-
rupted, that he burst out into most heinous vices; for then using
the said Peers as a procurer of his disordred dooings, he began to
have his nobles in no regard, to set nothing by their instructions,
and to take small heed unto the good governement of the com?
monwealth, so that within a while, he gave him[s]elfe to
wantonnes, passing his time in voluptuous pleasure, and riotous
excesse."57 The idea of sodomy as the basis of Edward's misrule
dominates the era; John Taylor's sonnet on Edward II accords
with Holinshed:
Peirce Gaveston to thee my love combind:

My friendship to thee scarce left me a friend,
But made my Queene, Peeres, People, all unkind,
I tortur'd, both in body and in mind,
A red-hot Spit my B
Such misery, no sla
In another treatment
Drayton, in the poem
denial to the slander
king and became "his
argues that by givin
prevalent cultural am
senting homosexualit
ironic pose on Drayt
sodomy that cultural
In opposition to the
poraries, Marlowe com
"Gaveston a baseborn
tus threat of Gavesto
cates the charge of s
univocal condemnation than other historiographers and
problematizes the causes for social disorder in England by show?
ing how the threats of homoeroticism and political ambition com?
bine in the category of sodomy.
In Edward II, Marlowe undermines the early modern practice
of execution for sexual deviance by unveiling governmental jus?
tice as a form of social persecution; nevertheless, the text also
reduplicates the religious and state use ofthe sodomite as a pub?
lic scapegoat to police status and gender normativity. On one
level, the play argues for a theater operating as moral censor, for
it condemns male homoeroticism and its imagined concomitant
effect of effeminization; in this guise, the play's apparent alle?
giance to legal, popular, and religious prejudice against sodomy
functions to partially defuse antitheatrical charges that the the?
ater was in itself a bastion of sodomy and insurgence. On an?
other level, the play recuperates an alternative sexuality, actively
demystifying how sexual acts become criminalized. Rene Girard
argues that "[o]nce understood, the mechanisms [of scapegoating]
can no longer operate; we believe less and less in the culpability
ofthe victims."62 While Girard is partially correct, the text's am?
bivalence should not be regarded as entirely subversive. While
the strategy of representational ambivalence may allow for a cul?
turally anomalous defense of alternative sexualities, this defense
is at the same time embedded within a discourse of persecution:
it is difficult to gauge what an audience would have taken as the
David Stymeist 249
dominant discursive
Marlowe as a sexual d
an "unwitting tribut
rather, the play prag
oppositional ideologic
cultural instability o
the theater's ability
through complex rep
NOTES
1 Stephen Orgel argues that sex had to be pederastic rape for it to

prosecuted [Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespear
England [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996], pp. 58-9).
2 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwiek, Between Men: English Literature and
Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1985), pp. 1-27.
3 By sodomy itself, I mean forms of Renaissance male homoerotici
considered disorderly; sodomy, although referring to a physical act, c
to signify a complex of sexual and social deviances during the period. T
term homosexual only came into use during the nineteenth centur
describes a different set of cultural assumptions from the early mode
pressions "sodomy" and "buggery." Sodomy in Renaissance England
nates a whole series of connections with the class ofthe abject: the unna
the foreign, the contagious, and the unholy. Cf. Alan Bray, Homosexual
Renaissance England (London: Gay Men's Press, 1982), p. 17; Gregory W.
Bredbeck, Sodomy and Interpretation: Marlowe to Milton (Ithaca and London:
Cornell Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 5-23; Jonathan Goldberg, Sodometries: Re?
naissance Texts, Modern Sexualities (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1992),
pp. 1-28.
4 While Castlehaven's trial occurred after production of Edward II had
ended, it remains the most fully documented sodomy trial of a noble during
the period and as such provides a rich repository of judicial fictions about
the combination of power and sodomy. During this period, James I was es?
pecially sensitive to public accusations of sodomy, especially those that might
be used to slander his own court: George Whither was imprisoned twice for
writing poetry offensive to the king; Thomas Scott's polemics against James
forced him to flee the country; and Frances Tennent was hanged for slander -
ing the king in letters (Michael B. Young, King James and the History of
Homosexuality [New York: New York Univ. Press, 2000], pp. 37, 52, 55). Both
the Tudor and Stuart judiciary seldom prosecuted sodomy as it was nearly
impossible to elicit confessions when the law demanded that both parties to
the act be executed.
5 Cobbett's Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High
Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors from the Earliest Period to the
Present Time, ed. T. J. Howell, William Cobbett, and David Jardine, 34 vols.
(London: R. Bagshaw, 1809), 3:417.
6 Cobbett's State Trials, 3:421-2, 413.
7 Cobbett's State Trials,

Disorder: Sex, Law, and th
ford: Oxford Univ. Press,
8 Cobbett's State Trials, 3:408-9, 409, 413, 410.
9 Cobbett's State Trials, p. 413.
10 Herrup, p. 36.
11 Bray, pp. 16-32; Goldberg, p. 19.
12 Herrup, p. 42.
13 Castlehaven allowed one of his favorites, Skipwith, to spend five hun?
dred pounds out of his purse per annum and gave him a single disburse-
ment of one thousand pounds. Also, the earl allowed Amtil (or Ankil) use of
his land to keep horses by which he earned two thousand pounds, and gave
him seven thousand pounds and "a farm of seven hundred pounds per an?
num" (Cobbett's State Trials, pp. 410-1).
14 Herrup, p. 68.
15 This occurred under the aegis of Henry VIII's buggery laws, which
remained in consistent use throughout the early modern period, except dur?
ing Mary I's reign. The text records that "for the detestable and abominable
vice of buggery committed with mankind or beast. . . the offenders . . . shall
suffer such pains of death, and losses and penalties of their goods, chattels,
debts, lands, tenements, and hereditaments, as felons" (The Statutes at Large,
from the First Year ofKing Richard III to the Thirty-First Year ofKing Henry VIII
Inclusive, ed. Danby Pickering, 5 vols. [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,
1763], 4:267).
16 Lawrence Normand argues that Marlowe's play is a direct reference to
James's reputed sodomy ("'What Passions Call You These?': Edward II and
James VI," in Christopher Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, ed.
Darryll Grantley and Peter Roberts [Hants UK: Scolar Press, 1996], pp. 172-
97).
171. G., A Refutation ofthe Apology For Actors (London, 1615; rprt. New
York: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1941), p. 61. Some archaic spelling
conventions have been silently modernized, especially the use ofthe long s,
u's, i's, and v's.
18 John Rainoldes, Th' Overthrow of Stage-Playes, ed. Arthur Freeman
(London, 1599; rprt. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1974), p.
11.
19 Bryan Reynolds contends that the theater was inherently radical be?
cause of its association with alternative sexualities ("The Devil's House, 'or
Worse': Transversal Power and Antitheatrical Discourse in Early Modern
England," Theatre Journal 49, 2 [May 1997]: 142-67, 165).
20 Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of
Social Energy in Renaissance England (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press,
1988), p. 88.
21 Phillip Stubbes's 'Anatomy of Abuses" in England in Shakspere's Youth,
A.D. 1583, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall (London: New Shakspere Society, 1877-
79), p. 73. Responding to the perceived social threat of alternative sexuality,
James I required that the church censure the practice of cross-dressing
from the pulpit. See Jean E. Howard, "Cross-Dressing, the Theater, and Gen?
der Struggle in Early Modern England," in Crossing the Stage: Controversies
David Stymeist 251
on Cross-Dressing, ed. Les

pp. 20-46, 21.
22 Anthony Munday, A Second and Third Blast ofRetraitfrom Plaies and
Theaters, ed. Arthur Freeman (London and New York: Garland Publishing,
1973), p. 113; Stubbes, pp. 73, 144.
23 Edward II was first performed by the ill-fated Pembroke's Men in 1592-
93; this company first formed in the early 1590s and due to the closure of
the theaters during the plague and civil disorder, the troupe went bankrupt
in the summer of 1593, when they were forced to sell their valuable cos-
tumes and scripts (Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage, 1574-1642 [Cam?
bridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1970], pp. 26-30).
24 Michel Poirier, Christopher Marlowe (London: Chatto and Windus,
1951), p. 37.
25 Many of these critics argue that Marlowe's own homoeroticism pro-
vided the impetus for his critique of the criminalization of alternative sexu-
alities. Goldberg contends that, "[l]ike the heroes he created, Marlowe lived
and died in the impossible project?as author, government spy, and homo-
sexual?ofthe marginalized, negativized existence permitted him" ("Sodomy
and Society: The Case of Christopher Marlowe," Southwest Review 69, 4
[Autumn 1984]: 371-8, 377). Proof of Marlowe's "sodomy" stems from the
forced confession of his roommate and fellow playwright Thomas Kyd and
the paid informer Richard Bains (Millar Maclure, Marlowe: The Critical Heri?
tage, 1588-1896 [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979] pp. 32-8).
26 Bredbeck notes that "[t]he perceived threat here is not that [Piers]
Gaveston's homoeroticism subjugates the body politic to the temporal but
that it allows Gaveston to traverse (or more properly, to act uninscribed by)
the artificial division that keeps the two realms separate" (p. 63).
27 Goldberg, pp. 141, 129. Bruce R. Smith situates the negative response
to sodomy in legal statutes and official practice while foregrounding litera?
ture as a repository of a more positive view due to its link to classical tradi?
tion (Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England: A Cultural Poetics [Chicago
and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991], pp. 13-4). Stephen Guy-Bray
contends that the play is a radical narrative that criticizes early modern
attitudes toward homoerotic desire and its politicization ("Homophobia and
the Depoliticizing of Edward II," ESC 17, 2 [June 1991]: 125-33, 131).
28 Karen Cunningham, "Renaissance Execution and Marlovian Elocu-
tion: The Drama of Death," PMLA 105, 2 (March 1990): 209-22, 210.
29 VMana Comensoli, "Homophobia and the Regulation of Desire: A Psy-
choanalytic Reading of Marlowe's Edward II," JHSex 4, 2 (October 1993):
175-200, 180.
30 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespear
(Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 201.
31 Greenblatt, "Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and its Subve
sion," GlyphS (1981): 40-61, 50; Renaissance Self-Fashioning, p. 209.
32 Sara Munson Deats, Sex, Gender, and Desire in the Plays of Christo?
pher Marlowe (Newark: Univ. of Delaware Press; London: Associated Univ.
Presses, 1997), p. 186.
33 Dympna Callaghan, "The Terms of Gender: 'Gay' and 'Feminist' Ed?
ward II," Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture: Emerging Subjects, ed.
252 Marlowe' s Edwa rd II
Valerie Traub, M. Lindsay

Univ. Press, 1996), pp. 275-301.
34 Christopher Marlowe, Edward the Second, ed. Charles R. Forker, Rev-
els Plays (Manchester UK and New York: Manchester Univ. Press, 1994),
I.i.6-9. Subsequent references will be to this edition and will appear paren-
thetically in the text by act, scene, and line number.
35 Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval
Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957).
36 Bredbeck, p. 58. He argues that Edward II effectively describes the
radical movement from "the original conception of homoeroticism as an af-
front to order and the new conception of it as a political tool" (p. 75). In
contrast, Sharon Tyler emphasizes that the king's inappropriate gifts to
Gaveston were more transgressive than Edward's homoeroticism ("Bedfel-
lows Make Strange Politics: Christopher Marlowe's Edward II," in Drama,
Sex, and Politics, ed. James Redmond, Themes in Drama 7 [Cambridge: Cam?
bridge Univ. Press, 1985], pp. 55-68).
37 Fred B. Tromly additionally notes that "the play as a whole does not
present the relationship of Edward and Gaveston as intrinsically sinful" (Play?
ing with Desire: Christopher Marlowe and the Art of Tantalization [Toronto
and Buffalo NY: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1998], p. 130); Guy-Bray, p. 130.
38 Cf. Marlowe, Edward the Second, ed. Forker, p. 145n66. Rick Bowers
has convincingly argued in his response to Christopher Wessman that the
use of the Acteon myth in the play indicates Gaveston's involvement with
performance rather than espionage ("Edward II, 'Actaeonesque History,' Es?
pionage, and Performance," Connotations 9, 3 [1999/2000]: 241-7).
39 Alan Shepard, Marlowe's Soldiers: Rhetorics of Masculinity in the Age
oftheArmada (Aldershot UK and Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2002), p. 92.
40 Laura Levine, "Men in Women's Clothing: Anti-theatricality and
Effeminization from 1579 to 1642," Criticism 28, 2 (Spring 1986): 121-43,
135.
41 Alexander Leighton, A Shorte Treatise against Stage-Playes (London,

1625; rprt. in Critics and Apologists of English Theatre: A Selection ofSeven-
teenth-Century Pamphlets in Fascirnile, ed. Peter Davison [New York: Johnson
Reprint, 1972]), p. 17.
42 Guy-Bray, p. 130. Cf. Orgel, "Nobody's Perfect: Or Why Did the En?
glish Stage Take Boys for Women," SAQ 88, 1 [Winter 1989]: 7-29, 25.
43 W. L. Godshalk connects Edward's homoeroticism with wider chaos
and disorder in society: "the unnatural relationship with Gaveston has led
directly to the anarchy which England experiences under Edward" (T
Marlovian World Picture, Studies in English Literature 93 [The Hague and
Paris: Mouton, 1974], p. 69). Deats characterizes a generation of critics,
such as Douglas Cole, John P. Cutts, and Charles Masington, as generally
promoting the view that the play constitutes a "prudential warning against
the dangers of gender and status transgression" (p. 188).
44Comensoli, p. 190.
45 Mario DiGangi, "Marlowe, Queer Studies, and Renaissance Homoeroti?
cism," in Marlowe, History, and Sexuality: New Critical Essays on Christo?
pher Marlowe, ed. Paul Whitfield White (New York: AMS Press, 1998), pp.
195-212, 209.
David Stymeist 253
46 Cf. Michel Foucault o

Prison, trans. Alan Sheri
J. A. Sharpe ("'Last Dyin
tion in Seventeenth-Cent
public ritual of execution
47 Jean Froissart, Chro
UK: Penguin Books, 1968)
48 Raphael Holinshed, H
Ireland in Six Volumes, e
49 Peter Earle, 'The Plan
of England, ed. Antonia F
96.
50 Cf. Marlowe's innovation of a scatological emphasis in Constance Brown

Kuriyama, Hammer orAnvil: Psychological Patterns in Christopher Marlowe's
Plays (New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1980), p. 194; Comensoli, p.
197.
51 The quarto edition of Edward II fails to give stage directions as to the

use of the spit; critics have assumed that it was omitted from the stage
action. Forker contends that the fact that Lightborn mentions the weapon
during his preparations indicates that there would have been an audience
expectation to see the execution represented, even if partially shielded from
full view by the arras ofthe stage pavilion (p. 306n30).
52 Judith Weil notes that Edward is "a hero whose destruction can evoke
our strong sympathy" [Christopher Marlowe: Merlin's Prophet [Cambridge and
London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977], p. 143).
53 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 46.
54 Holinshed, 2:587.
55 Cf. David Bevington and James Shapiro, "'What Are Kings, When Regi?
ment Is Gone?': The Decay of Ceremony in Edward II," in "A Poet and a Filthy
Play-Maker": New Essays on Christopher Marlowe, ed. Kenneth Friedenreich,
Roma Gill, and Kuriyama (New York: AMS Press, 1988), pp. 263-78.
56 Purvis E. Boyette reads this scene as Marlowe's unambiguous attempt
to present Edward as "the archetypal Victim, a scapegoat for the personal,
cultural and social forces that have repudiated his essential humanity, his
decline into flesh" ("Wanton Humor and Wanton Poets: Homosexuality in
Marlowe's Edward II," Tulane Studies in English 22 [1977]: 33-50, 48).
57 Holinshed, 2:547.
58 John Taylor, "Edward the II, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of
Aquitaine, &c," in All the Works ofJohn Taylor, The Water Poet (London,
1630; rprt. London: Scolar Press, 1973), p. 306.
59 Michael Drayton, The Works of Michael Drayton, ed. J. William Hebel,
5 vols. (Oxford: Published for Shakespeare Head Press by Blackwell Press,
1961), 1:194.
60 Thomas Cartelli, "Queer Edward II: Postmodern Sexualities and the
Early Modern Subject," in Marlowe, History, and Sexuality, pp. 213-22, 217.
61 Harry Levin, The Overreacher: A Study of Christopher Marlowe (Lon?
don: Faber and Faber, 1965), p. 113.
62Rene Girard, The Scapegoat, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Univ. Press, 1986), p. 101.

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Status, Sodomy, and the Theater in Marlowe's "Edward II"

Stephen Orgel contends "that English Renaissanc

David Stymeist (Ph.D., Queen's University) teaches English literature at

calism. Neither his sodomitical acts, his involvement in his wife's

same, and to adulterate the veritie of his owne kinde."21 Stubbes,

ater: "Each branding o

Sweet prince, I come. These, these thy amorous lines

The political dimension of this sodomitical romance appears in

Base leaden earls that glory in your birth,

And come not here to scoff at Gaveston,

Gaveston's insolent abuse of the lords, as well as commoners

The mightiest kings have had their minions:

Mortimer's list of great men who engaged in homoerotic relation?

the love-struck Edward

slurs directed against

honors that once bel

Warwick and after an

becomes more pronou

Peirce Gaveston to thee my love combind:

1 Stephen Orgel argues that sex had to be pederastic rape for it to

7 Cobbett's State Trials,

on Cross-Dressing, ed. Les

Valerie Traub, M. Lindsay

41 Alexander Leighton, A Shorte Treatise against Stage-Playes (London,

46 Cf. Michel Foucault o

50 Cf. Marlowe's innovation of a scatological emphasis in Constance Brown

51 The quarto edition of Edward II fails to give stage directions as to the

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