ABSTRACT
Christopher Marlowe’s iconoclastic contrast to other Elizabethan dramatists begs a vital question about his attitude to his audience, a problem critics have habitually elided by normalising his texts. The audience’s presumptive sympathy for Edward and censure of Lightborn become bound up with the respective success each has in commanding his theatrical properties. The intricacy of Marlowe’s approach to received ideas and the structures of power is especially evident in the opening and closing movements of Edward II where his compulsion to demystify runs squarely against the expectations aroused by his cultivation of what appear to be morally exemplary set pieces. The subjection of King Edward’s body to what could either be construed as competing or complementary forms of violation thus serves to demystify the sovereign’s claim to exemption from a common humanity and to make common otherwise extraordinary acts of transgression.
