The Transmutation of Rhetoric in "Edward II"

Author(s): C. P. Seabrook Wilkinson

Source: Shakespeare Bulletin , SPRING 1996, Vol. 14, No. 2 (SPRING 1996), pp. 5-7
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26352999

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 SPRING 1996 SHAKESPEARE BULLETIN - 5

The Transmutation of Rhetoric in Edward II

By C. P. Seabrook Wilkinson

Though certain scenes in Christopher

Marlowe's Edward II, notably that of the protago
nist's execution, have never wanted for eloquent
admirers, criticism long disparaged its verse, only
Gaveston's set piece speeches in act one being
considered up to the playwright's usual standard.
Recently, some have argued that he deliberately
denies himself the luxury of poetic rhetoric to aim at
effects even his mighty line could not achieve. The
abandonment of poetic diction in act five is merely
the most conspicuous of a number of innovations
and adjustments whereby, aptly in view of his plot,
the playwright practices this self-denial. In Edward
II, Marlowe compensates for the sacrifice of his
wonted verbal richness as rhetoric is transmuted
into other forms of persuasive expression, some
verbal and some independent of words.
Marlowe could not dispense with speech alto
gether—English drama would have to wait until
Beckett for that—but Edward II is conspicuously
short on speechmaking, its only virtuoso perfor
mances being those of Gaveston, which John Cutts
designates "speeches of sexpectation" (204) and
which traditionalist critics such as J. B. Steane,
constricted by narrow definitions of poetic merit,
find oases in an arid prosody.1 Frequent confusion
of language faithfully reflects the moral and intel
lectual confusion of an England whose denizens
exhibit Brownian motion in a moral vacuum where
language is contingent, not iconic. Debra Belt's
claim that the play "relentlessly embodies ... a
struggle for rhetorical control" (138) suggests that Simon Russell Beale as Edward II in Royal Shakespeare Company's 1990 Edward II,
language is used by playwright and by characters by Christopher Marlowe. Photo by Michael LePoer Trench.
chiefly as a means of manipulation. As too many
critics forget, Edward II was designed as a vehicle not for critics but for his brother: Edward's words are shorn of their poetry as the oblique
actors, for whom word is but cue to performance. reference to death becomes explicit.
Realizing that true power lies elsewhere, the characters voice a There is a marked shift towards greater explicitness in language and
growing skepticism about the efficacy of speech. Edward, commenting onprop in the final act, in which Marlowe consistently realizes the possibilities
the "devices" Lancaster and Mortimer have devised for the "statelyof his new approach to the interiorization of character. The enforced
triumph" celebrating the return of Gaveston, remarks the conflicting abdication, a public ceremony, necessarily retains a primary reliance on
signals of words and emblems: "Can you in words make showe of amitie, language; in the execution scene, a private and irregular action, language
/ And in your shields display your rancorous minds?" (2.2.32-33).2 Al is overshadowed by stage business. Chief character and creator wean
though Brecht perversely recasts Mortimer as a classical scholar in histhemselves of their poetry synchronically—it is at the level of language,
adaptation,3 there are no intellectuals in Edward II. Briefly a philosopher rather than in terms of any supposed sexual identification, that Edward and
manqué at Neath (4.7.16-25), Edward can no more sustain this role than he Marlowe most significantly share. In the abdication scene, the prop's the
has that of king or homosexual partner. The shallowest major character, thing in the long hiatus as Edward wavers about acquiescence. The
early marginalized and eliminated before act three, Gaveston alone, appro cornered King's commentary on his manipulation of props also manipu
priately, speaks in the luxuriant fashion of his early speeches. His syntax lates the response of his audience within the play: "See monsters see, ile
is as foreign to the world of the play as he, in his Italian guise, is to the noblesweare my crowne againe" (5.1.74). Edward's penchant for explaining his
he threatens to supplant. Unnaturally florid language is natural to him, and emblematic or symbolic actions survives the shock of abdication, for near
his verbal prowess proclaims the inability of the play's only accomplished the end of the scene he comments while tearing Mortimer's letter: "Well
rhetorician to attain political power or psychological purchase. An element may I rent his name, that rends my hart" (5.1.140). After the main part of
of Marlovian self-parody informing Gaveston's first speech, fitting the his performance, the teasing juggling of options expressed in the settling
prevailing homosexual stereotype, is ironic in that much of the criticism and removal of his crown, Edward slumps, when urged by Leicester to
leveled at the play's verse has been occasioned by its author's conspicuous recall the envoys, into a confession of impotence: "Call thou them back, I
failure to conform to his own stylistic stereotype. have no power to speake" (5.1.93). Having relinquished his prop, the
Allowing situations and their sequencing to outweigh the local interest crown, Edward now abdicates his right to make decisions and to give
of poetic merit evinces a rethinking of dramatic priorities. Even charactercommands. Even Steane recognizes that, on occasion, the lack of poetry is
istic speech now varies according to situation, as Marlowe creates fullyattributable not to imaginative exhaustion but to coherent dramatic aims
rounded if morally lopsided characters, at least three of whom-Edward, (213). Edward's verbal incapacity in the abdication scene becomes richly
Mortimer, and Gaveston—have distinctive styles of speaking. The dramaticresonant, as it had been at the beginning of act three, when Spencer speaks
but denuded poetry often achieves an eloquence transcending rhetorical on behalf of the traumatized King in a speech that commencing in the
flourishes, as in Edward's reaction to marching orders: "Whether you will, optative~"Were I king Edward, Englands soveraigne" (3.1.10)—modu
all places are alike, / And every earth is fit for buriall" (5.2.144-45). In a lates to the imperative—"Strike off their heads, and let them preach on
work in which the skewed parallel is pervasive, the King's words are echoed poles" (3.1.20).
by his brother Kent at the end of the following scene: "I, lead me whether The authority of the verse is bound up with Edward's crumbling sense
you will, even to my death" (5.3.66). Fittingly, Kent is less affecting than of self. If he is no longer a king, he can no longer speak as a king, and he

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 6 - SHAKESPEARE BULLETIN
has not yet begun to learn how to speak as a mere mortal. Deprived
office that has defined him, he has no concepts by which to and
nightmarish incarceration. In commenting on the confused world
play, Claude Summers floats eminently postmodern notions
quence of incoherence and the allure of extratextuality: "Where
bling is the norm, the most powerful preaching is the silence that
from bodyless heads set upon poles 'for trespasse of their tongues'...
the incoherent shriek of pain that issues from the hapless king and
town" (230).
As if to emphasize the unreliability of language, the dénouement turns
on an instance of syntactical ambiguity that mirrors the moral confusion,
Mortimer's unpointed letter. Intended to be ingeniously ambiguous, this
missive is actually the most "speaking" prop of all. Lightborn, who does not
bel ieve in anything other than his own virtuosity (in this as in other respects inexpressible agony. The blank verse line could never capture the terrible
paralleling Gaveston), fails to realize that the significance of this text is
extratextual, that the bearer of this ambiguous message will be unambigu
ously dispatched: "And by a secret token that he bears, / Shall he be
murdered when the deed is done" (5.4.19-20). As they influence the action,
indeed often generate it, letters become more than props.
All of the most striking props are employed in the latter part of the play,
their increased prominence serving to offset the effects of verbal austerity
and lack of ceremony. David Bevington and James Shapiro rightly stress
their importance in the execution scene, in which Edward's reduction "to
appalling physical indignity is... a shocking affront to proper ceremonial
form and a reminder of the impermanence of all worldly prosperity. The
numerous hand properties and movable stage objects of this play reinforce
the point" (275). It is plausible to view the featherbed as a prop with
symbolic overtones, suggestive of the sensual delights with which Gaveston
tempted Edward and initiated his fall, but it is less easy to find the table
emblematic, as Charles Masington does (111). Any alert audience ought to
appreciate a symbolic dimension in another prop utilized earlier in this
scene, the torch with which Lightborn, "ironically providing a visual pun
on his own name" (Zucker 139), goes to summon Edward from his
cesspool. This torch is representative of a group of props that are also
embodied symbols. The torch earlier extinguished by Matrevis (5.3.47) for
a practical reason-to diminish further the chances of rescuers recognizing
the newly-barbered king-doubles as a symbolic extinction of hope.
The characters' response to symbols is often revealing. As King,
Edward is a symbol, and even if he does not fully appreciate this aspect of
his own role, he has some understanding of the way symbols work. James
Voss finds his "capacity to respond imaginatively and emotionally to
primarily symbolic formulations" (258) one of the salient differences
between him and Mortimer, that robust literalist of the imagination. The
soliloquy the latter delivers after Lightborn's exit (5.4.48-72) is the
measure of the man, crowded with happenings, strikingly devoid of
thought. In the abdication scene, Edward has tried, and failed, to think;
"proud Mortimer" is too arrogant even to try—he can only gloat.
The reintroduction or transformation of a prop can be crucial. Almost
every modern critic has noticed the way in which the iron spit is a correlative
of the phallic delights touted in Gaveston's first speech. Bevington and
Shapiro suggest that "the huge jewel Mortimer describes in Gaveston's
Tuscan cap' is recalled in Edward's final moments" (274), when the King
proffers his last physical link with the status of which he has been
systematically divested, saying simply, "Onejewell have I left, receive thou
this" (5.5.84). A king no more, Edward is for once acting the part of aking,
it being customary for a monarch under sentence of death to reward the
executioner. This vestigial jewel not only recalls his royal status, and the
conspicuous jewel in Gaveston's cap, but also suggests Edward's "eternal
jewel," the soul he is also about to surrender, in one of Marlowe's grimmest
ironies, to Lightborn, or Lucifer, who is first summoned by Mortimer
("Lightborn, / Come forth"-5.4.20-21) as the evil spirit he is.
Often props illuminate the characters with whom they are associated.
The "unpointed" letter suggests the similarly "unpointed" nature of Ed
ward's character and actions. First apawn and then a prop, the King is acted
upon for most of the play. By act five, he has lost his independence of action,
while retaining an individuality of speech, a chastened simplicity of diction
which becomes him. In the execution scene, Edward's somewhat steadier
utterance betokens a new maturity grounded in partial awareness of his
situation. By this time, the deposed King has become a prop as well, a
movable property unceremoniously shunted from dungeon to dungeon. He
is literally a prop in the funeral procession his son stages in the final scene,
in which Mortimer, reduced to a severed head, is even more radically
dehumanized. He and Edward have traded places again: Mortimer is
degraded as the murdered King's violated royalty is reaffirmed in dignified
ceremony. Restored to royal status, Edward resumes symbolic stature.
Parallel scenes give an ironic structural coherence to the disordered
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SPRING 1996
doings ofof thethe
plot. Much of what happens in act five reworks earlier events
steer in his
speeches, as Sarah Munson Deats recognizes in comparing the "chris
tening" of theBishop of Coventry in the opening scene with Edward's
of the
of the
shaving elowater in 5.3." An inverted ritual, albeit of a sexual nature,
in ditch
is centraldissem
to the play's most celebrated moment, Edward's murder, which
emanates
is also the most intricate instance of verbal and visual repetition, utilizing
and
all of the elements discussed above—"characteristic" speech, parallels to
otherraises
scenes, the
props, and props that double as symbols. That the punishment
meted to Edward somehow fits the "crime" that cost him his kingdom has
become a critical commonplace, but not all have seen beyond the sexual
implications to find the execution a complex completion of thematic
development and technical innovation as well. The action is so extreme, so
obscene, that Edward's final soliloquy is reduced to a prolonged scream of
cruelty of this occasion; here, crucially, Marlowe must move beyond
words. Again, Edward and his creator are in step. Already in act three, the
King had developed an understanding of showing as a form of telling, but
there gesture, framed by commentary, was not allowed to replace words
altogether: "Yet ere thou go, see how I do devorce Embrace Spencer. /
Spencer from me" (3.2.176-77).
Marlowe's innovations in Edward II are the more remarkable in view
of the commercial and managerial constraints under which he labored.
Possibly some of his striking shifts away from reliance on his mighty line
originate not in aesthetic restlessness but in pragmatism. Tucker Brooke
long ago stressed the significance of the fact that Edward II was not
performed by Henslowe's company and, therefore, would not have had
Edward Alleyn in the cast, speculating that "the great increase in vivacity
of dialogue at the cost of sounding rhetoric" attests to "an almost painful
regard for the interest of a company not possessed of any star performer but
capable of good ensemble effects" (48).
Whatever features may have been dictated by such considerations,
Marlowe achieves a deliberate and astonishing self-restraint, the more
remarkable in that, uniquely among his plays, the subject matter encom
passes his own presumed sexuality. For John McElroy, the play's starkness
reflects "a conscious stylistic choice, a self-imposed limitation" (208). The
self-limiting aspect ironically echoes a theme of limitation traceable
throughout Marlowe's dramatic output, in which overreaching protago
nists batter their egos against unacknowledged limitations. Marlowe's self
denying ordinance itself illustrates the theme of limitation: he is revealing
at once the limitations of Edward's character and of kingship, the limita
tions of his own mature style, and the limited use of any language in
expressing the most profound emotions.
What is there to build on in the new techniques with which Marlowe
here experiments? Obviously, there is much from which Shakespeare
might and did learn, though some have been troubled by the lack of
resemblance between Marlowe's history play and early Shakespeare,
particularly Richard II with its strong parallels in plot. Steane, finding in
Edward II "the Shakespearean working ... in embryo" (209), speaks for
a whole befuddled generation in adumbrating the dreary notion that
Marlowe has merely been subcontracted to drive the pilings for
Shakespearean tragedy.
In Edward II, verbal yields to visual imagery as poetic suggestiveness
is effectively superseded by symbolic props. Already in act two, when the
fate of Gaveston hangs in the balance, the despised favorite is becoming a
prop as his captors discuss him as though he were inanimate. In this scene
within a scene (2.5.50-70), the audience must attend to the reactions of the
characters, not to their unexpressive declared sentiments, which have all
been heard before. The declining importance of language itself is most
striking in act five, in which the two most eloquent moments are wordless.
At 5.1.85, the stage direction reads laconically: "The King rageth." This
stage direction is quite unlike earlier ones in which the action is to proceed
ad libitum : "Alarums, excursions, a great fight, and a retreate" (3.1.184)
and, introducing 4.5, "Enter the King, Baldock, and Spencer the sonne,
flying about the stage." It is an invitation to the actor to improvise
emotions the playwright, recognizing that at this juncture Edward would be
incapable even of semicoherent speech, has not attempted to put into words.
Exhibitionist that he is, Gaveston alone speaks the mighty Marlovian
line with consistency. This is appropriate, as it is that he stands literally and
symbolically aside during his friend's first altercation with the barons
(1.1.74-133), for, of all the characters, he is most detached from the somber
realities of power and intimidation. Just as Edward is deprived of Gaveston,
the play is soon deprived of his favorite's gorgeous but peripheral rhetoric.
That the seduction scene with Lightborn is virtually a mimed version of
Gaveston's first "sexpectation" speech shows how power has shifted from
rhetoric. The execution scene becomes the crux of Marlowe's innovations
in speech and stage business; it has no counterpart in Elizabethan drama,
 SPRING 1996 SHAKESPEARE BULLETIN - 7

and indeed so shocking is its action that scholars continue to dispute of the scene, Roger Sales is becomingly cautious in
bowdlerization
whether it could ever have been staged.5 The world in which Edward
eschewingdies
certainty, concluding that "Elizabethan productions would
is one not of poetry but of obscene parody, a change faithfully reflected in staged the execution as it was recorded by Holinshed" (116).
probably have
language, gesture, and props. Words themselves, elaborate or stark, have
been marginalized. The playwright, with the courage signally lacking in his Works Cited
protagonist, does change his ways, the style by which he breathes. Like
Lightborn, one of his most compellingly rebarbative creations,Bartels,
Marlowe Emily C. Spectacles of Strangeness: Imperialism, Alienation,
has in Edward II found "a better way." and Marlowe. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania?, 1993.
Belt, Debra. "Anti-Theatricalism and Rhetoric in Marlowe's Edward II."
English Literary Renaissance 21 (1991): 134-60.
Notes Bevington, David and James Shapiro. "'What are kings, when regiment is
gone?': The Decay of Ceremony in Edward II." In A Poet and a
1 Steane remarks, "The verse is indeed normally thin and drab.
Filthy Play-maker: New Essays on Christopher Marlowe. Ed.
Gaveston's first speech is fine, but generally it is a matter of only lines and Friedenreich, Roma Gill, and Constance B. Kuriyama. New
Kenneth
York:
phrases here and there having any considerable poetic merit" (206). HeAMS, 1988. 263-78.
allows that the verse he finds disappointing as verse is true to the Bowers, Fredson, ed. The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe.
real speech
of men: "It is thin, unsustained and virtually unpoetical. But it is often Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1973.
remarkably natural" (212). Lamenting the decay of rhetoric,Brooke, Steane C.
ob F. Tucker. The Life of Marlowe and The Tragedy of Dido
serves perceptively that Edward's "subsequent miseries are terrible enough Queen of Carthage. 1930. New York: Gordian, 1966.
to ensure the response which the verse of itself is incapable ofCharlton, arousing"H. B. and R. D. Waller, ed. Edward II. 1930. New York:
(222). Gordian, 1966.
2 All quotations from Edward II are from Fredson Bowers' edition. Cutts, John P. The Left Hand of God: A Critical Interpretation of the
3 As Ronald Hayman observes of Brecht's 1924 adaptation, undertak Plays of Christopher Marlowe. Haddonfield: Haddonfield House,
en in collaboration with Lion Feuchtwanger, "Socially and sexually Brecht 1973.
specifies more than Marlowe" (99), making Mortimer into "a scholarly Deats, Sara Munson. "Marlowe's Fearful Symmetry in Edward II." In A
nihilist who is reluctant at first to enter the political arena" (99). Poet and a Filthy Play-maker: New Essays on Christopher
' Deats says, "In both instances, a dignitary is first denuded of his head Marlowe. 241-62.
gear and robes, emblems of his regimen, later dispossessed of his actual Hayman, Ronald. Brecht: A Biography. New York: Oxford UP, 1983.
property, and finally humiliated by an inverted ritual" (248). The corre Masington, Charles G. Christopher Marlowe's Tragic Vision: A Study
spondences are too close to be fortuitous. in Damnation. Athens: Ohio UP, 1972.
5 Most recent writers on Edward II agree that the execution was McElroy, John F. "Repetition, Contrareity, and Individualization in Ed
staged, but in 1930 H. B. Charlton and R. D. Waller assumed otherwise in ward II." Studies in English Literature 24 (1984): 205-24.
a note to 5.5.30: "Lightborn appears to be preparing for murder by the Sales, Roger. Christopher Marlowe. New York: St. Martin's, 1993.
gruesome means Holinshed names. ... Naturally Marlowe proceeds no Sanders, Wilbur. The Dramatist and the Received Idea: Studies in the
farther with it" (200). Commenting on this note, Wilbur Sanders comes to Plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
an opposite conclusion: "This is strong meat, so strong that the play's most 1980.
recent editors question whether Marlowe dared to stage it. Yet it is afact that Steane, J. B. Marlowe: A Critical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
he specifies feather-bed, table and spit... and it seems gratuitous to assume 1964.
that the spit was requisitioned yet not used. Clearly the whole gruesome Summers, Claude J. "Sex, Politics, and Self-Realization in Edward II." In
scene is enacted unexpurgated in full view of the audience" (124). For A Poet and a Filthy Play-maker: New Essays on Christopher
Emily Bartels, the question is not whether the execution is staged but how Marlowe. 221-40.
to avoid making Lightborn appear a caricature : "Commissioned by Mortimer, Voss, James. "Edward II: Marlowe's Historical Tragedy." English Stud
he is brought in from the outside as a sort of deus (demon?) ex machina ies 63 (1982): 517-30.
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have eroticized the role to bring him in" (158). After alluding to Brecht's Marlowe. Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache, 1972.

Contributors

Alan Armstrong, Southern Oregon State College, Ashland, ORHarry Keyishian, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ
Bradley S. Berens, University of California, Berkeley, CA William T. Liston, Ball State University, Muncie, IN
Paul Bertram, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ Mel Meeks, Austin, TX
David G. Brailow, McKendree College, Lebanon, IL Paul Nelsen, Marlboro College, Marlboro, VT
Maurice Charney, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ Frank Occhiogrosso, Drew University, Madison, NJ
Dorothy and Wayne Cook, Central Connecticut State Universi Louis Phillips, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY
ty, New Britain, CT Justin Shaltz, Tinley Park, IL
Betty L. Corwin, New York Public Library for the Performing Michael Shapiro, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
Arts Urbana, IL
H. R. Coursen, Shakespeare Globe Centre, Brunswick, ME Michael W. Shurgot, South Puget Sound Community College,
Samuel Crowl, Ohio University, Athens, OH Olympia, WA
Helen Deese, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA M. L. Stapleton, Stephen F. Austin State University,
Rodney Stenning Edgecombe, Cape Town, South Africa Nacogdoches, TX
George L. Geckle, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC Doug Stenberg, Sinking Spring, PA
William M. Hamlin, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID C. P. Seabrook Wilkinson, The College of Charleston, Charles
Miranda Johnson-Haddad, Howard University, Washington, ton, SC
DC William Proctor Williams, Northern Illinois University,
DeKalb, IL

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