Gale Researcher Guide for: Edward II: Sexuality and Politics in Christopher Marlowe's Play (1593) and Derek Jarman's Film (1991) is selected from Gale's academic platform Gale Researcher. These study guides provide peer-reviewed articles that allow students early success in finding scholarly materials and to gain the confidence and vocabulary needed to pursue deeper research.

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,7, University College Dublin, course: Hauptseminar: Writing and Performance in the Age of Shakespeare - Renaissance Literature, language: English, abstract: The play "Edward II" by Christopher Marlowe is a tragedy that depicts King Edward's reign, his forced abdication, and his death as well as the rise and fall of King Edward ́s opponent Mortimer Junior. The respective relationships of these men play a major role in their development, which is why this paper focuses on the homoerotic relationship of King Edward and Gaveston as well as on the relationship of Queen Isabel and Mortimer Junior. Analyzed will be sexual and social transgressions as well as their effects which drive the plot forward.

Dramatically compressing the reign of Edward II and enlivening the historical narrative with humour, romance, and horrific violence, Marlowe interrogates how the transgression of accepted codes of behaviour affects even those at the highest level of society. Kept off the stage for almost three hundred years because of its dramatization of explicit homosexual relationships, it has become increasingly popular with modern day readers and performed on stage and film to great acclaim. This student edition contains a completely new introduction by Stephen Guy-Bray, and offers students a useful and lively overview of recent criticism, an updated performance history paying greater attention to Derek Jarman's film, a background on the author and themes, as well as an updated bibliography and a fully annotated version of the playtext.

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Critically, theatrically, and politically, the time is ripe for a new edition of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II. Critically, the play has come to be, in the past several decades, a central document in histories and analyses of sexuality in early modern England, with the major figures in gay/queer history and literature of the period contributing to the discussion of male homoeroticism, same-sex friendship, and early modern sodomy in the play. Marlowe - and the relation of his life and death to his writing - has continued to generate interest and controversy among critics as well as the general reading public. At the same time, more traditional questions asked of the play- its contested status as history or tragedy, its status as an early exemplar of the history play, its relation to Shakespeare's histories-have continued to attract critical attention. Edited to the highest Arden standard, the edition gives students a modernised, comprehensively annotated text with a lengthy, illustrated introduction discussing the play's treatment of same-sex relationships both in Marlowe's day and our own, an analysis of the play in performance and in relation to other plays of the period, and a discussion of changing critical views of its themes of obsessive love, power and politics.

Gale Researcher Guide for: Playwright as Historian: From Christopher Marlowe to David Hare is selected from Gale's academic platform Gale Researcher. These study guides provide peer-reviewed articles that allow students early success in finding scholarly materials and to gain the confidence and vocabulary needed to pursue deeper research.

Depicting with shocking openness the sexual and political violence of its central characters’ fates, Edward the Second broke new dramatic ground in English theatre. The play charts the tragic rise and fall of the medieval English monarch Edward the Second, his favourite Piers Gaveston, and their ambitious opponents Queen Isabella and Mortimer Jr., and is an important cultural, as well as dramatic, document of the early modern period. This modernized and fully annotated Broadview Edition is prefaced by a critical but student-oriented introduction and followed by ample appendix material, including extended selections from Marlowe’s historical sources, texts bearing on the play’s complex sexual and political dynamics, and excerpts from contemporary poet Michael Drayton’s epic rendition of Edward the Second’s reign.

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,7, University of Münster (Englisches Seminar), course: Christopher Marlowe – Performing Power, language: English, abstract: Let me introduce the structure outline of my paper: In a first step, I’m going to have a close look at the nature of homosexuality and male friendships in Elizabethan England. In this part, I will mainly refer to theories put forward by Paul Hammond in his essay “The Renaissance“ as well as in Mario DiGangi’s essay “Marlowe, Queer Studies, and Renaissance Homoeroticism“. The Elizabethan “concept” of homosexuality actually differs greatly from what we might expect and may even seem bewildering at first. However, to create in our minds a picture of the Elizabethan culture, we will have to make an effort to let go of the clichés that are anchored in our own. In doing so, we can only rely on the few historical sources we have about Elizabethan culture. Therefore, we have to remember that we can never truly recreate the big picture. Here, Thomas Laqueur’s milestone book Making Sex as well as Ina Schabert’s chapter about the one-sex model from Englische Literaturgeschichte. Eine neue Darstellung aus der Sicht der Geschlechterforschung will come in support of my theories. The following chapter will be devoted to the status of sodomy in Renaissance England. It is vitally important to understand its political dimension, as suggested by both Alan Bray and Mario DiGangi, and the threat it was said to have exercised on the Elizabethan order of the universe. In a final step, I’m hoping to offer a new explanation for the allegation of sodomy against Christopher Marlowe as expressed in the Baines Libel. I will try to further the debate about this doubtful document by establishing a connection with Sara Munson Deats and Lisa S. Starks’s article “’So neatly plotted, and so well performed’: Villain as Playwright in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta”. The notion of the theatre will thus come to play an important part in my interpretation of the Baines Libel. Each part of my work will also include a substantial amount of text analysis in support of the interpretations offered.

Edward II: A Critical Reader gives students, teachers and scholars alike an overview of the play's reception both in the theatre and among artists and critics, from the end of the 16th century to the beginning of the 21st. The volume also offers a series of new perspectives on the play by leading experts in the field of early modern history and culture. Bolstered with a timeline tracking Marlowe's life and work, an up-to-date bibliography and an extensive index, this collection is an ideal and definitive guide to Edward II.