Robert W. Anderson

English 289: Seminar in Genres: Renaissance Drama

Professor Willis

23 March 2000

"It Was the Fault of the Sodomites": Sodomy, Homophobia, and Edward II

The role of sodomy and homosexuality in Christopher Marlowe's play Edward II is a topic that has produced much scholarship in the past ten years or so. Primarily, this scholarship has focused on Edward's relationship with Gaveston, and whether it was Gaveston's social status or his inappropriate morals that are the cause of his and Edward's deaths. In this paper, I intend to explore some of those issues, but I also intend to place Edward II within early modern England's discourses about sodomy, which are markedly different from ours. I intend to examine how homophobia functions in the context of the play, in the context of the culture, and in the context of the commentary upon the play. Specifically, I intend to examine the relationship between power and homophobia, paying close attention to the figure of Mortimer Junior. Furthermore, I intend to examine the relation of sodomy to fear of disease, the foreign, and other threats to the state and the body politic.

It must be understood that like homosexuality and heterosexuality, homophobia is an anachronistic term to use with regard to Renaissance England. As Foucault points out, before the late nineteenth century, "sodomy was a category of forbidden acts; their perpetrator was nothing more than the juridical subject of them" (43). Sodomy represented not only homosexual acts, but acts we consider heterosexual as well; as a category, it is difficult, if not impossible, to tease out what constituted sodomy and what did not. Jonathan Goldberg notes that "among the categorical confusions of the confused category 'sodomy' is a categorical confusion itself" (122). Add to this that the notion of sodomy forming the basis of an identity, and talking of homosexuality in Renaissance England becomes an endeavor fraught with problems. Similarly, talking about any coherent heterosexuality or heterosexual identity is equally unclear, as heterosexuality entered the lexicon of sexology after homosexuality. Without any coherent notion of homosexuality or heterosexuality, speaking of homophobia is as difficult as discussing homosexuality. For the purposes of this paper, I intend to use homophobia to describe a constellation of terms that are invoked by Mortimer Junior in describing the "unnatural" relationship between Edward II and Gaveston, as well as terms that Bray describes being invoked in other anti-sodomy literature that was in circulation at the time of the writing of Edward II.

Both Goldberg and Bruce R. Smith argue that it is Piers Gaveston's lowly birth and class position, not his sodomy, that is important to the lords. Smith writes "it is Gaveston's lowly birth, not the sexual relationship between Edward and Gaveston, that truly enrages the lords" and "for the lords, it is Gaveston's lowly social station that makes him so threatening" (215). Goldberg notes that "the radical move in the play lies in having the Mortimers contend that although Gaveston has not remained in his proper place, there is nothing wrong with his sexual relationship with the king" (121). However, as I shall attempt to show, the sexual relationship with the king does matter, at least to Mortimer Junior, and enough to the other lords that Mortimer Junior is able to acquire their alliance in his rebellion against the king. When forcing Edward to banish Gaveston, Mortimer mocks both: "the king is lovesick for his minion" (I.iv.87). Later in the scene, Mortimer describes Gaveston as a "vile torpedo" (I.iv.223), and numerous times as "base". The context in which Mortimer and the other barons speak is important here: Queen Isabella comes to them complaining not of Gaveston's lowly status, but that he's robbing her of her husband. Her first exchange with Mortimer, Mortimer Senior, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lancaster, and Warwick, is telling:

QUEEN Unto the forest, gentle Mortimer,

To live in grief and baleful discontent,

For now my lord the king regards me not

But dotes upon the love of Gaveston.

He claps his cheeks and hangs about his neck,

Smiles in his face and whispers in his ears,

And when I come he frowns, as who should say,

'Go whither thou wilt, seeing I have Gaveston.'

MORTIMER SENIOR Is it not strange that he is thus bewitched?

MORTIMER Madam, return unto the court again.

That sly, inveigling Frenchman we'll exile . . . (I.ii.47-57)

 There is no mention here of Gaveston's lowly social station or baseness, and the nobles are responding to the Queen's complaint that Edward no longer dotes upon her, but instead upon Gaveston. Later, she again addresses the lords with this complaint: "QUEEN [to the lords] Hark, how he harps upon his minion" (I.iv.311).

In her article on the relation of homophobia to Edward II, Viviana Comensoli argues convincingly that homophobia is a factor in the peers' rebellion against Edward II. She examines the Holinshead histories from which Marlowe drew the source material for this play, delineating many of the changes to the story that Marlowe made. Comparing Fabyan's version to Marlowe's, Comensoli writes:

Marlowe, on the other hand, unequivocally treats Edward's reinstatement of his friend and lover, which contradicts the late Edward I's edict that Gaveston be forever banished from the kingdom, as the main cause of the ensuing clashes of power. This essay will argue that Marlowe's deliberate departures from official explanations of the insurrection against an anointed king help to locate the dramatization of Edward II's homosexuality as a practice whose punishment is rooted in a form of paranoia--specifically homophobia--that is fostered and encouraged by a society that is in crisis precisely because the structures of patriarchy (an orderly body politic, compulsory heterosexuality, and strict allegiance to the law) are no longer available. (180) That homophobia, rather than Gaveston's class position, is the source of at least part of the nobility's problem is logical and supportable textually. Comensoli points out that the barons are the ones who argue that Gaveston is of a "base" class, but this is an uncertainty: "while the barons persistently refer to Gaveston as a 'peasant,' a characterization that has been readily accepted by critics, there is no textual evidence to support the claim that Marlowe has modified his sources to make Gaveston lowly born" (188). There are a few instances where the rhetoric of Gaveston's base class standing slips. MORTIMER Thou villain, wherefore talks thou of a king,

That hardly art a gentleman by birth?

EDWARD Were he a peasant, being my minion,

I'll make the proudest of you stoop to him. (I.iv.28-31, emphasis mine)

 Both Edward and Mortimer recognize that Gaveston is not, in fact, "base", as Mortimer will later claim. While "hardly" a gentleman, he is a gentleman nonetheless. Furthermore, by Edward II's indication, he is not the peasant that Mortimer Senior casts him as earlier in the scene: "See what a scornful look the peasant casts" (I.iv.14). These characterizations of Gaveston are all part of the barons' campaign to get rid of Gaveston.

While I largely with Comensoli's intention, I cannot agree with the how she makes her argument. Invoking Freud, she argues that Mortimer Junior's homophobia stems from his repressed homosexuality. She writes "Mortimer's latent homosexuality is suggested by two important ahistorical developments: his preoccupation with and contempt for Gaveston's deviant masculinity, which the barons equate with baseness; and his collusion with Isabella in plotting Gaveston's death" (187). Earlier, she quips "Mortimer, at least ostensibly, is heterosexual like the father" (187). This is a psychoanalytic maneuver that is itself steeped in homophobia. Essentially, there are three homosexuals in the text according to Comensoli's reading: Edward II, Gaveston, and Mortimer Junior. Mortimer's heterosexuality is merely "ostensible". Comensoli largely ignores the fact that Mortimer is quite possibly the only heterosexual male in the play in favor of reading his homophobia as symptomatic of his repressed homosexuality. The notion that homophobia is not essentially a heterosexual problem, but a homosexual one, that the homophobe is really another homosexual, is, at the very least, heterosexist. The homophobe, under this logic, is not a "normal" heterosexual, and in fact is not really a heterosexual at all. Homophobia, the virulent hatred of homosexuals, is regarded as the very symptom of that which it's aimed against. The psychoanalytic logic of paranoid homophobia that Comensoli invokes pits one queer against another, even if it must force someone into the position in the first place. This logic tends to deflect attention away from the compulsory heterosexuality that she invokes at the beginning of her essay. It also has the effect of rendering homophobia a psychological problem in an individual, rather than as a powerful ideology produced by society. Her article provides an argument that possibly explains Mortimer Junior's homophobia, but it fails to explain why the other barons follow along with him when both Mortimer Senior and Lancaster attempt to check his homophobia.

In Renaissance England, the sodomite was part of an unholy trio formed by the sorcerer, the sodomite, and the heretic. Alan Bray wrote "the place homosexuality occupied in that symbolic universe is made clearer by the third of the three figures that Coke linked together. If the heretic and the sodomite were two of the three, the third was the sorcerer" (21). While they were not considered the same, they are associated with each other. Bray points out that the sodomite was often considered to be the offspring of the union between a witch and the Devil (22). All three were considered threatening to people in early modern England. They brought with them chaos, disorder, and disease, as well as God's punishment. Bray writes

Homosexuality was not part of Hooker's law of nature. It was not part of the chain of being, or the harmony of the created world or its universal dance. It was not part of the Kingdom of Heaven or its counterpart in the Kingdom of Hell (although that could unwittingly release it). It was none of these things because it was not conceived of as part of the created order at all; it was part of its dissolution. And as such it was not a sexuality in its own right, but existed as a potential for confusion and disorder in one undivided sexuality. Hence the absence already commented on of any satisfactory parallel for the contemporary use of 'homosexuality' in the sense of an alternative sexuality. What sodomy and buggery represented--and homosexuality was only part of these--was rather the disorder in sexual relations that, in principle at least, could break out anywhere. (25) It is the connection of sodomy to disorder that would be threatening to an early modern English audience; Gaveston's relationship with Edward II introduces disorder to the body of the king, who represents the state. Sodomites were blamed for all kinds of social ills ranging from disease and plagues to catastrophic events. Bray notes that in holding the horrors of homosexuality responsible for the divine wrath a number of needs were satisfied together, for homosexuality as we have seen was not part of the created order; rather it was part of its dissolution. In projecting onto homosexuality the cause of this fundamental malaise and thus placing the cause outside the created order altogether, not only had an explanation for the malaise been found, but one that did not undermine the concept of a single divinely-ordained universal order. Indeed it strengthened it and -- for this was no mere abstraction -- in doing so strengthened the established social order that it claimed to be its reflection in the world. It was a disarmingly simple answer operating within a complex system of ideas: it was the fault of the sodomites. (30) The connection between sodomy and disorder provides the context in which the audience would understand the play, as well as the context which Mortimer Junior can exploit to his own purposes. Mortimer uses this social atmosphere to his best advantage, manipulating the notion that Gaveston, "swoll'n with venom of ambitious pride, / Will be the ruin of the realm and us" (I.ii.31-32). Here Mortimer connects Gaveston's pride to the ruin of the realm; later, he connects that pride to Gaveston's dress, in a moment of homophobic clarity: I have never seen a dapper jack so brisk.

He wears a short Italian hooded cloak,

Larded with pearl, and in his Tuscan cap

A jewel of more value than the crown.

Whiles other walk below, the king and he

From out a window laugh at such as we,

And flout our train, and jest at our attire.

Uncle, 'tis this that makes me impatient. (I.iv.412-419)

 Mortimer's use of "Italian" here is telling, as it reinscribes his rhetoric back within the discourses of homophobia. Comensoli notes that "Mortimer is obliquely echoing the cultural commonplace that Italians were responsible for exporting to England and France not only a 'fashion' for clothes but also for sodomy" (192). Jonathan Goldberg writes "'Bugeria is an Italian word,' the learned Justice Coke would write in his Laws of England; sodomy was an Italian vice. Gaveston the Frenchman appears to be one of its Continental exponents" (106). Gaveston cloaks himself in sodomy. High fashion, sodomy, foreignness, and pride all become associated with one another in Mortimer's speech. Further, we have the notion that Gaveston's pride, connected in Mortimer's words to sodomy, is infectious--the king, too "laugh[s] at such as we." Mortimer's speech here is a clever one, for he is being accused by his uncle of taking his homophobia too far. His uncle justifies Edward's sexual relationship: "The mightiest kings have had their minions: / Great Alexander loved Hephaestion, / The conquering Hercules for Hylas wept, / and for Patroclus stern Achilles drooped" (I.iv.391-394). On the surface, Mortimer agrees, but as we can see here, after saying "Uncle, his wanton humour grieves not me, / But this I scorn, that one so basely born / Should by his sovereign's favor grow so pert", Mortimer then reinvokes sodomy and homophobia (I.iv.402-405). Mortimer Senior makes a brief protest, but Mortimer Junior maintains his stance that he "will not yield to any such upstart" (ignoring that he will become such an upstart himself later in the play) (I.iv.423).

Mortimer Junior is primarily motivated by his lust for power in the play. Mortimer has attains everything he desires: power, the queen, the king in captivity, and the kingdom. Early in the play, he connects removing Gaveston to lawful revolution: "and yet ere that day come / The king shall lose his crown, for we have power, / and courage too, to be revenged at full" (I.ii.58-60). As early as the second scene, Mortimer hints at revolting against the king, using Gaveston's friendship as an excuse for his grab for power. He states toward the end of the play that his intent all along was power:

The prince I rule, the queen do I command,

And with a lowly congé to the ground,

The proudest lords salute me as I pass.

I seal, I cancel, I do what I will.

Feared am I more than loved. Let me be feared,

And when I frown, make all the court look pale.

I view the prince with Aristarchus' eyes,

Whose looks were as a breaching to a boy.

They thrust upon me the protectorship

And sue to me for that which I desire,

While at the council table, grave enough,

And not unlike a bashful Puritan,

First I complain of imbecility,

Saying it is onus quan gravissimum,

Till, being interrupted by my friends,

Suscepi that provinciam, as they term it,

And, to conclude, I am Protector now. (V.iv.48-64)

 Gregory W. Bredbeck makes a convincing argument to this effect, but it stops short of connecting his homophobia to his thirst for power. Bredbeck writes "significantly, this character who refuses to empower the obfuscatory aim of redactive mythologies is also the one who exhibits the keenest awareness of the relationship between the construction of homoeroticism and the pragmatics of power" (69). Mortimer, as can be seen in the above quotation, is not above exploitation to gain what he desires. He plays coy and denies that he wants the Protectorship until he is "sued" to take it by the peers. Mortimer understands how he can utilize his own homophobia and the homophobia of others to cause them to rebel against their king. Comensoli argues that "his love relationship with Queen Isabella always takes a second place to his desire to overthrow Gaveston, suggesting, I will argue, an unconscious fear of his own homoerotic impulses" (187). While it is true that his love relationship with Isabella is second to his desire to overthrow Gaveston (and, by the way, Edward II), both are part of his overarching desire for power. His desire to overthrow Gaveston stems not from "an unconscious fear of his own homoerotic impulses", but from his desire to do what he sees Gaveston has done: move ahead of his station. While his homophobia may be an effect of the social environment from which he comes, which I suggest as an alternate to Comensoli's reading of his homophobia, it is also clearly his tool to gain power. Bredbeck writes "the attention rests solely on Mortimer's actions, which now change from avenging the unjust actions of Edward to punishing the unnatural role of Gaveston" (70). His own rhetoric shifts through the play. At first, he opposes Gaveston because he sees Gaveston as a social climber ("takes one to know one"). His rhetoric, however, shifts to Gaveston's homoeroticism. Bredbeck notes that "the purging of Gaveston is no longer a way to protect the politic order; it is now a means to both 'praise' and a place in 'the chronicle'; for Mortimer, the king's homoeroticism now provides a means of personal advancement and historical fame" (71).

Mortimer's relationship to the Queen would have been regarded, in Renaissance England, as being as problematic to the social order as Gaveston's was to Edward II. Mortimer, like Gaveston, uses one of the monarchy to raise himself up above his class. Also, his relationship to Isabella, and adulterous one on her part, would have been regarded as sodomy just like Gaveston's with Edward II. Mortimer is not only a social climber, like Gaveston, but he's also a sodomite. As Eve Sedgwick would note, Mortimer is in the precarious situation of stating "I-know-it-when-I-see-it" but avoiding the charges of "it-takes-one-to-know-one" with regard to both sodomy and to pride (100). Goldberg writes that

the king, in such a view, exists to maintain social order, yet Edward, from the first line of Marlowe's play, inviting Gaveston to share the kingdom, instigates a sodomitical order, one that alienates his peers and his wife, driving Queen Isabella and the younger Mortimer into an adulterous and rebellious embrace. If, as Foucault argues, sodomy is the word for everything illicit, all that lies outside the system of alliance that juridically guarantees marriage and inheritance, the prerogatives of blood, as the linchpin of social order and the maintenance of class distinctions, then what is remarkable in Marlowe's play is the way in which one normative system of alliance--friendship--is unleashed against another. (122) Goldberg here argues that Edward's sodomy with Gaveston causes the adulterous (and therefore sodomitical) relationship of Isabella and Mortimer, although this causal link is by association only; it is by no means a direct link.

The question of Mortimer's adultery with Isabella is as important as the question of his homophobic rhetoric. As early as the first act, Edward and Gaveston accuse Isabella of adultery with Mortimer:

EDWARD Fawn not on me, French strumpet; get thee gone.

QUEEN On whom but on my husband should I fawn?

GAVESTON On Mortimer, with whom, ungentle queen--

I say no more; judge you the rest, my lord.

QUEEN In saying this, thou wrong'st me, Gaveston.

Is't not enough that thou corrupts my lord

And art a bawd to his affections,

But thou must call mine honour thus in question?

GAVESTON I mean not so; your grace must pardon me.

EDWARD [to the Queen] Thou art too familiar with that Mortimer. . . (I.iv.145-154)

 Gaveston implies that the Queen is dishonoring her marriage vows; both Edward and Isabella pick up on Gaveston's implications. Isabella protests that she has been wronged, and returns the charge upon Gaveston--that he is the "bawd" and the corrupting influence, rather than Mortimer. Smith writes "[Edward] wrongly accuses Isabel of adultery with Mortimer" (218). However, on closer examination of the scene, it is Gaveston, not Edward, who launches that specific charge first, and whether the accusation is incorrect or not is debatable. Isabella denies the charges, but she is not in any position to admit to them. Further, Smith writes "Isabel and Mortimer in fact become the adulterous lovers that Edward has imagined them to be all along, and their motives shift from selfless patriotism to sexual passion and lust for power" (218). As I have showed earlier in this essay, Mortimer's motives have been "lust for power" all along--his homophobia is merely a tool, as is his "sexual passion" for Isabella.

Gaveston's social standing provides Mortimer with a reason for rebelling against his king, but his sexual relationship with the king does as well. Both Isabella and Mortimer are not above invoking homophobia in order to attain their desires--Isabella does so early in the play in order to have Gaveston banished from the realm, and Mortimer does later with his uncle. Both successfully deflect attention away from the fact that their own sexual relationship parallels the king's with Gaveston: Mortimer uses the Queen to attain the same, if not more, power than Gaveston attained from King Edward II. As far as base upstarts are concerned, Mortimer and Gaveston are not much different, except that Mortimer is more successful (but only marginally--he, too, dies). Mortimer and Isabella utilize both Gaveston's social standing and his sexual relationship to convince the other lords to rebel against Edward. The tragedy here is "the fault of the sodomites": Isabella, Mortimer, Gaveston, and Edward II.

Works Cited and Consulted

Bray, Alan. Homosexuality in Renaissance England. 1982. 2nd Ed. New York: Columbia UP, 1995.

Bredbeck, Gregory W. Sodomy and Interpretation: Marlowe to Milton. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1991.

Comensoli, Viviana. "Homophobia and the Regulation of Desire: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Marlowe's Edward II." Journal of the History of Sexuality 4.2 (1993): 175-200.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction: Volume I. 1978. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

Goldberg, Jonathan. Sodometries: Renaissance Texts, Modern Sexualities. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1992.

Jarman, Derek. Queer Edward II. London: British Film Institute, 1991.

Marlowe, Christopher. Edward II. 1592. Ed. David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995.

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: U of California P, 1990.

Smith, Bruce R. Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England: A Cultural Poetics. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991.