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Edward II Context
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Summary of 4 pages for the course A2 Unit F673 - Dramatic Voices at OCR (Edward II Context)
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Barney LindsellEd II Context, Performance History and Criticism
The Text
- Entered in the Stationers’ Register on 6 July 1953, five weeks after Marlowe’s murder
Marlowe
- Had powerful political connections including the spy master and Secretary of State to
Queen Elizabeth I
- A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May 1593. No reason was given for it,
though it was thought to be connected to allegations of blasphemy—a manuscript
believed to have been written by Marlowe was said to contain "vile heretical conceipts".
o On 20 May, he was brought to the court to attend upon the Privy Council for
questioning. There is no record of their having met that day, however, and he
was commanded to attend upon them each day thereafter until "licensed to the
contrary".
o Ten days later, he was stabbed to death by Ingram Frizer. Whether or not the
stabbing was connected to his arrest remains unknown.
The Play and its Shakespearean Relatives
- When Marlowe came to stage the degradation of Edward II he turned to Stowe’s
Chronicles of England (1580) for a human interest and a pathos not available in either
Holinshed’s or Grafton’s Chronicles. It was here that he found the detail of Edward
being shaved in puddle water - a detail that underscores the theme of humiliation, for
shaving was apparently undertaken not merely to make the king unrecognisable but
also to violate his royal dignity, his symbolic manhood, as signified by the beard.
The Treatment of Sources
- Modern historians tend to divide the reign of Edward II into three phases; (i) 1307-11
was dominated by the king’s dispute with his barons over the unprecedented influence
and privilege of Gaveston (ii) 1311-22 logical outgrowth of the first beginning with
proclamation of the Ordinances, a formal set of restrictions upon the royal prerogative,
followed rapidly by the capture and execution of the favourite at the hands of the king’s
powerful enemies (iii) 1322-27 defined by the burgeoning ambitions of the Despensers,
who virtually directed national policy after the fall of Lancaster.
- Significantly, Marlowe associates both battles closely with Gaveston, who had already
been beheaded before either contest was fought: Bannockburn (1314) and
Boroughbridge (1322).
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