The Complete Plays (93 page)

112.1      
SD
Enter the DEVILS
:
They come to torment the old man's flesh.

113      
sift
: Make trial of, as in Luke 22:31: ‘Satan hath earnestly desired to sift you as wheat' (Bishops' Bible).

Scene 14

10        
surfeit
: A disease of over-eating.

48        
save
: Supplied from B.

71         O
lente… equi
: Oh, run slowly, slowly, horses of the night! Slightly adapted from Ovid,
Amores
I.xiii.40 (which Marlowe translated), where it is a call to prolong the night for love.

81–2  
Mountains… God
: Recalling Hosea 10:8: ‘and they shall say to the mountains, “Cover us,” and to the hills, “Fall on us” ‘, and Revelation 6:16, ‘And said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us, and hide us from the presence of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.” '

86–92  
You stars… heaven
: Faustus asks the stars which predominated at his birth, and whose ‘influence' (astrological power) has determined his fate, to draw him up, like moisture, into a thundercloud, and destroy his body when its lightning erupts, so long as his soul may go on up to heaven. In Renaissance meteorology, lightning was produced by the pressure of exhalations on their enclosing clouds.

92.1   SD
The watch
: The ‘clock' of 6I.2SD.

104      
Pythagoras' metempsychosis
: The doctrine of the transmigration of souls, attributed to Pythagoras (N). Though A's
metem su cossis
suggests a compositor's confusion, it seems also to preserve a learned Greek pronunciation.

120      
I'll burn my books
: A traditional gesture of renouncing magic.

EPILOGUE

2          
Apollo's laurel bough
: An emblem of poetic, and other intellectual, achievement.

9          
Terminat… opus
: ‘The hour ends the day, the author ends his work.' Not apparently part of the foregoing speech, this line, for which no source has been found, and which may be a printer's addition, reads like a motto on the whole play. It occurs also at the end of the manuscript play
Charlemagne
in BL MS Egerton 1994.

EDWARD THE SECOND

The play was probably completed in 1592 and was first performed by Pembroke's Men. Its first printing was in a quarto-size octavo of 1594, which forms the basis of this edition. Later quartos of 1598, 1612 and
1622 (which refers on its title-page to a revival of the play by Queen Anne's Men at the Red Bull) attest its continuing popularity.

Like other Elizabethan history-plays,
Edward the Second
is about the conflict between a king and his nobles, and shows the clear influence of Shakespeare's treatment of the theme in his
Henry VI
plays. But it differs from them in a number of ways: its characters are unconcerned with dynastic issues and show little interest in the larger shape of history; there is no trace of a providential design and no sense of the sanctity of monarchy (all are important issues in Shakespeare's other comparable play,
Richard II). Edward the Second
is a play about power, pure and simple. ‘Essentially,' writes J. B. Altman, ‘the conflict remains one between willful, mean-minded peers determined to preserve their own ancient prerogatives and a willful king jealous of his right to feed his fantasies, at whatever cost to others' (
The Tudor Play of Mind: Rhetorical Inquiry and the Development of Elizabethan Drama
(Berkeley, 1978), pp. 363–4).

With the exception of a few details from the chronicles of Richard Grafton (1569) and John Stow (1580), events are drawn from Holins-hed's
Chronicles
(probably from its second edition, 1587). But they are drastically reshaped. Holinshed's narrative of Edward's twenty-year reign is a long annalistic account cluttered with the detailed circumstances of the conflict with the barons, interwoven with full descriptions of Edward's equally disastrous relations with Scotland, Ireland and France. Marlowe leaves out the complexities and aggregates events together so that the play is dominated by the intense desires and fierce hostilities of its protagonists, especially Gaveston and Mortimer. He personalizes the action. Gaveston's relationship with the king is virtually the only issue between Edward and the barons. Marlowe eroticizes their love much more explicitly than does Holinshed, and extends Gaveston's life to keep him at the centre of contention. The younger Spencer, who had, historically, little connection with Gaveston, becomes first his dependant and later his substitute in the king's affections. Marlowe, and some members of his early audiences, would have known of at least two contemporary kings whose homosexuality supposedly made them susceptible to the influence of favourites (or minions) – Henri III of France, who figures in
The Massacre at Paris
, and James VI of Scotland, the future king of England. Gaveston's sexual behaviour, in the play, matters less than his opportunism and casual cruelty, the exultation he feels when he first arrives and its rapid development into his vengeful humiliation of the bishop of Coventry. Mortimer too is given greater prominence. In the chronicles he scarcely figures until the end of the reign, but here he is present from the first as an antagonist of Gaveston and ally of the queen,
later becoming her lover (as Holinshed only belatedly hints) and sole deviser of the plot to murder the king. Unlike the heroes of Marlowe's other plays, who dominate the action, Edward is thus surrounded by personalities more powerful than himself.

A further consequence of the aggregation of events is a remarkable tightening of the chain of historical causation.
Edward the Second
is Marlowe's best-constructed play. Actions lead directly to their consequences, as when Edward's ill-timed and provocative exaltation of Gaveston goads the barons to switch tactics from legally banishing to kidnapping him (scene 4: this edition preserves the octavo's fluid division into scenes only, rather than adopting the five act divisions favoured by some modern editors). Many of the causal linkages are made to feel like pointedly ironic reversals: Gaveston's murder leads to Edward's one victory in avenging it; his cruelty in exploiting his success provokes Kent's desertion and leads to Mortimer's fatal alliance with Isabella against the king. These reversals complicate the play's characterization: proud Mortimer starts out like Hotspur and ends up a Machiavellian, while Isabella changes from wronged wife to practised hypocrite. Are these inconsistently used stereotypes or subtly ironic modulations? When Isabella sounds formulaic and insincere, she may be meant to – to sound as though she is half-consciously using a false language.

The question is linked to the problem of the play's verbal style. Its language is generally bare and tense. Big speeches are frequently punctured by colloquially plain counterstatements. Single lines are heavy with hidden meaning. Apparently polite formulae are used as insults (compare the taunting heraldic devices in scene 6); Edward's murder is ordered in one ambiguous sentence. The language keeps checking itself, its switches of idiom reflecting the larger reversals of the action.

All these reversals are framed by Edward's own ‘strange exchange' (21.35), his decline from kingship to abjection. Structural and verbal patterns converge in the closing scenes, where Edward's laments are juxtaposed with the callous double-talk of Mortimer and Isabella. Details of the king's torment emphasize the reversal: the shaving in sewer-water is taken from Stow (see note on 23.36.1–SD below) and ‘rhymed' with the treatment of the bishop of Coventry in scene 1; and in the murder itself there surfaces a ghastly fusion of cruelty and sexuality long latent in the play. The idiom remains grimly ironic: one of the horrors of Marlowe's invented murderer Lightborne is that he sounds so menacingly comforting.

Scene
1

7          
France
: Gaveston had been banished to his native Gascony by Edward I.

14        
die
: (i) Swoon, (ii) reach orgasm.

16–17  
What… night
: Since Gaveston enjoys the king's sun-like favour, he has no need for the goodwill of lesser lights, such as the nobles, and least of all for the ‘sparks' (20) of the common people.

22        
Tanti!
: Italian, so much for that!
fawn
: For Q's
fanne.

25        
your worship's service
: To serve your worship.

31        lies: Travellers'tales.

33        
against the Scot
: In Edward I's military campaign against Robert Bruce.

39        
porcupine
: It was believed that porcupines would shoot their quills in self-defence, on the authority of Pliny's
Historia Naturalis
(VIII.xxxv).

54        
masques
: Extravagant court entertainments of Italian origin, sometimes involving the use of lavish costumes and sets, were popular in Tudor and early-Stuart England.

56–71  
And in… lord
: As the speech unfolds, it becomes apparent that Gaveston plans to stage the myth of Diana and Actaeon (N).

57        
sylvan nymphs
: Wood-nymphs.

89        
Mort Dieu!
: God's death! (punning on Mortimer's name).

94        
these knees… stiff
: I.e. too stiff to kneel.

107      
to the proof
: Irrefutably.

110      
Mowbray
: Q's spelling
Mowberie
suggests the name is trisyllabic.

117      
Preach upon poles
: Traitors' heads were placed upon poles and mounted above the gates of city walls as a warning to others.

126      
Wiltshire
: Because the Mortimers had no historical connections with Wiltshire, Roma Gill argues strongly against Q's reading, maintaining that the compositor may well have misread ‘Welshrye', i.e. the people of Wales, the power-base of the family. See ‘Mortimer's Men',
N&Q
, n.s. 27 (1980), p. 159.

127–8  
All Warwickshire… many friends
: Both lines are spoken ironically.

132      
minion
: (i) Favourite, (ii) darling boy (from French
mignon).
The nobles perhaps use the word in the latter sense as a term of homo-phobic contempt.

142      
Thy friend, thy self
: Proverbial (Tilley F696).

149      
high-minded
: Proud, arrogant.

155      
King and Lord of Man
: The lords of the Isle of Man were also
known as kings because of the sovereign rights they possessed.

There may also be a sexual quibbles.

167      
seal
: If this is the Great Seal of the realm, Edward confers near-regal power on Gaveston.

185      
Saving your reverence
: Polite formula, used derisively, with a pun on ‘Sir reverence', a euphemism for faeces, which might well be found in a ‘channel' (= sewer: 187).

197      
Tower… Fleet
: The Tower of London and the debtors' prison.

200      
True, true
: A rueful comment on the aptness of ‘Convey' (= steal: 199)

206      
prison… holiness
: A prison would suit the austere life of a priest (imprisonment was one of the sufferings of the early Christians).

Scene
2

6          
timeless sepulchre
: Early grave.

11        
villain
: Villain, with a pun on ‘villein', serf.

75        
the New Temple
: Home of the Knights Templar, and later part of the Inns of Court.

78        
Lambeth
: Site of the Archbishop of Canterbury's official residence.

Scene
3

The shortness of this scene has led to suspicions of textual corruption. But it further establishes Gaveston's brusque confidence, despite his knowledge of the forces ranged against him.

Scene
4

0.1   
SD
NOBLES: Q is sometimes unspecific about which nobles are required.

1          
form
: Formal articles.

7          
declined from
: Less inclined towards.

8          
sits here
: Edward grants Gaveston the Queen's place next to himself, probably on a throne.

13        
Quam male conveniunt!
: How badly they suit each other! (based on Ovid,
Metamorphoses
II, 846–7: ‘Majesty and love do not suit each other, and do not remain long in one seat').

19        
faced and overpeered
: Insolently outfaced and looked down on (with a pun on ‘peer').

26        
pay them home
: I.e. punish them fully for their treason.

51        
legate to
: Representative of.

54        
Curse
: Excommunicate.

61–2  
discharge… allegiance
: Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth
I in 1570, thus supposedly absolving her subjects of obedience to her.

68        
President of the North
: Cf. John Cowell,
The Interpreter
(1607), ‘President… is used in common law for the king's lieutenant in any province or function, as: President of Wales, of York, of Berwick' (Gill 1967).