ABSTRACT
In Edward II Marlowe focuses on politicians who range from emotionally expressive to unfeeling in a kingdom in which social ambition rather than homoerotic desire leads to tragedy. The dramatist presents masculinity and femininity as elastic gender categories that those seeking political power metamorphose into multiple forms and shapes. Intertextual allusions to Homer, Virgil, and Ovid accentuate how the classical, literary tradition informs various gender personae that are performative in Marlowe’s history play. His allusions to Ovid’s Metamorphoses in particular shed light on the relation of gender and emotion in Edward II. Edward II, who laments, weeps, and responds passively to injustice, suffers with his favorite, Gaveston, when victimized by those who acquire political leverage through violent action against them. Like the brutally violent warrior Tamburlaine, Mortimer and Isabella are presented as barbaric and uncivilized for cold-heartedly engineering Gaveston’s exile and eventual murder and Edward’s tortuous death in prison. Ironically, their stoical lack of pity for the King’s suffering deprives them of political power and alienates them from the audience. In contrast to his father, androgynous Edward III triumphs over Mortimer and Isabella because of his ability to feel the loss of his father deeply and act justly in response to it. In this way he combines a moderate and timely expression of feeling with well-timed political action.
