The Importance Of The Abdication Scene in Marlowe's Edward-II

By Saprovo goswami, Student

The essay tries to analyse Marlowe's intentions behind the abdication scene which holds a paramount position in the play. The essay deals with the various themes and moods related to the Abdication Scene In Edward II.

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The Importance Of The Abdication Scene in Marlowe's Edward-II

Marlowe, as appeared from his writings was totally against the divine right of the Kings. In the Abdication Scene he explicitly expresses his contempt against the doctrine of the 'Divine Right Of Kings', which stated that a rulers power is not subjected to secular limitation; the ruler is responsible only to God and derive the right to rule only from God. The scene also expresses Marlowe's contempt against the Absolutist Political System and implicitly satirizes Louis XIV's declaration " I am the state". Here Marlowe also tries to establish machiavelli's words regarding the Prince, the most important one been that "When Princes think more
Luxury than of arms, they loose their state".

Act V. Sc 1, the Abdication Scene holds paramount importance both in relation to the play and to the dramatist. Firstly it focuses on many themes and moods, which the play is trying to convey, and secondly shows Marlowe's Dramatic skill and poetic splendour. ActV marks the catastrophe in the tragedy. The Abdication Scene presents the king being kept as a prisoner in the KillingWorth castle. How unfortunate is the king who is imprisoned in his own land and by them who were once ruled by him. So Edward is desolated and agitated in heart. He says that 'the griefs of private persons are soon allayed, But not of Kings'. He says that a king is a like a lion who rends and tears his wounds 'with his wrathful paw' so that not a single drop of blood can kiss the lowly earth. He is right to say that though the physical conflict is over the battle of nerves continues. The king has a dauntless mind which Mortimer seeks to curb. He is tormented by the idea that he is under the control of Younger Mortimer and his unconstant Queen "Who spots my nuptial bed with infamy". He is being asked to surrender his crown which he hopes will be put on the head of Younger Mortimer. Thus the idea that Younger Mortimer will usurp both his crown and the queen torments him. Naturally he cannot have peace in mind. The idea that perturbs him most is precisely expressed thus:
"To give ambitious Mortimer my right,
That like a mountain overwhelms my Bliss
In which extreme my mind here murdered is"
The king knows that he has to surrender the crown, yet he asks the Earl of Leicester to let him wear it "till night". In his disconsolate state, he closely resembles Dr. Faustus in his ravings for he wishes the night to be everlasting so that he may remain the king forever----
"Continue ever, thou celestial sun;
Let never silent night possess this clime;
Stand still, you watches of the element;
All times and seasons, rest you at a stay,
That Edward may be still fair England's king."
But he knows that it is the imposiible he is asking for. He, therefore, surrenders his crown reluctantly. The king knows for certain that his tormenters will seek for his life. When Thomas Berkley offers to take him to Berkeley, he says that he may be taken anywhere sice "Every earth is fit for burial". He is ready to die since "That death ends all, and I can die but but once."
The Abdication scene points towards towards many themes. Firstly it shows the unstability of power and gives a tragic significance to the de-casibus theme of rise and fall. Edward II falls and Young Mortimer rises only to fall and Edward III takes his place. Here we see Edward II who is the king of England falling miserably. He who at first, apparently seemed to be highly powerful, becomes powerless.
Marlowe wrote this play during Elizabeth's rule. In the Elizabethan Period there was a misconception that the ruler of the state was Gods agent and nothing should be done against him. Marlowe through the plight of the king in the Abdicating scene gives a hard hitting blow to the prevailing thoughts and misconceptions regarding the kings . People believed that king is the state. But Marlowe shows that after the king is abdicated England continues normally. Marlowe tries to prove that the king and state are separable and if a king is unworthy to rule people should have the right to depose him. In Edward II there is not a single reference to the divine right of kings. Nor there is any reference to the king's responsibility towards God, a cornerstone of orthodox Elizabethan doctrine. The truth is that the political milieu of Edward II is the same as that of Tamburlaine, in which the unquestioned absolutism of the king is based not upon divine ordination, but upon human power, and in which the king is not controlled by any responsibility to a god who will destroy him if he neglects his duties to his people, but only by the limits of the kings owns ability to maintain his power inspite of any opposition. The tragedy of Edward II is that he is born into a position where he must be a superman in order to survive, and since he is not, he is doomed. Michel Poirer has summed up the plays content very nicely: ' It is the story of a feudal monarch to attempts to govern as an absolute monarch and fails'. But we must note that it is not in the divinely sanctioned absolute monarchy of Elizabeth that he attempts to rule, but rather in the powerful secular autocracy of Italian renaissance political theory. In his failure to maintain his position in such a state, Edward looses all the appurtenances of kingship, as he himself affirms:
"But what are kings, when regiment is gone,
But perfect shadows in a sun-shine day?"
In the tragedy of Edward II Marlowe accomplishes the political purposes of the Elizabethan historian, for in his downfall and in the abdication scene, Marlowe emphasizes the qualities which a king must have in order to rule in a absolutist state successfully. In the abdication scene Marlowe also tries to prove that a king is made of the sceptre and the crown and not of the person, for Marlowe shows that after the king is abdicated England flourishes.
After this scene Edward starts to gain sympathy which was suppressed at the beginning due to his misdeeds and Mortimer starts loosing our sympathy. Both Edward and Mortimer's fate mirror each other. After the monarch abdicates the text cannot allocate him any space and the only faith remaining to him is death.
Marlowe was in his full strength while penning this scene and through him the king makes highly poetic speeches as he feels the distress. It is hardly necessary to dwell at length on the obvious debt that Shakespeare owed to Edward II in the most lyrical of his histories-Richard II. Lamb wrote long ago that ' The reluctant pangs of abdicating royalty in Edward furnished hints which Shakespeare scarce improved in his Richard II'. Shakespeare makes much of the Paradox of a monarch who is theoretically absolute yet constrained by lesser mortals-a king who 'must': 'What must the king do now? Must he submit?-Must he be deposed?/ The king shall be contented'. Suggestions for such frustrations must have come from Marlowes Edward, who expresses similar sentiments:' Am I a king and must be overruled?; 'I see I must, and therefore am content'. Richard II is also shown physically attracted towards the crown, holding on it tenaciously in the bucket-and-well speech.
The Abdication scene establishes Hannah Arendt's words that, 'Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together.' Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Power abdicates only under the stress of counter power. Finally to end with Aeschylus's words:
'The lust for power never dies-- Men cannot have enough'.
By-
Saprovo Goswami

Further Reference:----
1. U.M Ellis Fermor : Christopher Marlowe, 1927
2. Clifford Leech: Marlowe:-- A collection of critical essays(Edited)
3. F.s. Boas : Christopher Marlowe: a bibliographical and critical study.