Holinshed, the body and Marlowe's 'Edward II' - Part 2

The cell in which Edward was reportedly held at Berkeley Castle

Firstly, I apologise for the delay in uploading this second post. I have been stuck on jury service for a couple of weeks! In the first part of these two posts on Marlowe's Edward II, I outlined the account of Edward's murder from Holinshed's Chronicles. In this post, I will now consider how Marlowe uses the corporeal and physical focus of Holinshed's material within the most significant speeches of his murder scene that occurs in Act V Scene v. 

In his celebrated account of Marlow's play, Charles Lamb concluded that 'the death scene of Marlowe's king moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern, with which I am acquainted'. This is certainly something that I would agree with. The transformation of Edward from arrogant monarch to degraded and tortured prisoner is just as shocking each time I come back to it.

This is one of my favourite speeches of the murder scene, spoken by Edward:

'And there in mire and puddle have I stood
This ten days' space; and lest that I should sleep,
One plays continually upon a drum.
They give me bread and water, being a king,
So that for want of sleep and sustenance
My mind's distempered and my body's numbed,
And whether I have limbs or no, I know not.
O, would my blood dropped out from every vein,
As doth this water from my tattered robes' (V.v.58-66).

In this speech, what the audience sees is a focus on the disorder of Edward's body. He is no longer the monarch in total control of his own self, or with the authority to dictate the existences of other beings around him (although this was clearly affected by Gaveston's control over Edward). Instead, Edward appears in symbolically 'tattered robes' and is tortured through his sense of hearing and taste, causing a great disparity between, and separation of, his immaterial and physical self: 'my mind's distempered and my body's numbed'. As though this unbearable feeling were not enough, Marlowe takes it one step further, as Edward states that he does not even know 'whether I have limbs or no', thus becoming totally dissociated from his physical being.

By creating such highly emotive speeches, I would suggest that the corporeal focus of Marlowe's text goes beyond what Holinshed achieves in his account. By having such torturous images and expressions spoken by his protagonist, Marlowe makes it even harder for his audience to ignore the cruelty of Edward's imprisonment and murder. Hence, what I think Marlowe achieves by including these speeches as a pre-amble to the actual murder, is that he succeeds in increasing the audience's sense of Edward's extreme suffering, causing them to re-consider the justice that is apparently achieved by killing him in such a disturbingly retributive and medieval manner.

A depiction of Edward II's death 

 References:
1. Christopher Marlowe, Edward II, ed. by Martin Wiggins and Robert Lindsey (London: A & C Black, 2006)
2. Cell at Berkeley Castle: http://allkindsofhistory.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/they-dont-like-it-up-em-revisiting-the-sordid-deaths-of-edmund-ironside-edward-ii-and-james-i-of-scotland/
3. Depiction of Edward's death: http://www.glreview.org/article/article-1403/

© Jenna Townend 2013