Republican Reimaginings in Marlowe’s <i>Edward II</i>

Abstract

This essay explores the intersection of republican and nationalist ideas in Marlowe’s Elizabethan history play Edward II. I read the play less in terms of recent dominant readings: that is, focussing on the same-sex relation between King Edward and his ‘minion’ Gaveston. Instead, I focus on the play’s critique of Edward’s authoritarian and arbitrary rule, a critique of monarchy informed by proto-republican ideology and a nascent nationalism. This essay also considers the play’s archipelagic angles within the context of the play’s initial inscription—Queen Elizabeth’s two-kingdom, three-nation rule—as well as its Jacobean publications.

Keywords

• Christopher Marlowe
• England
• Scotland
• <i>Edward II</i>
• nationhood
• republicanism