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Perhaps we should consider that Marlowe, whose plays and poems present an exceptionally wide variety of radical opinions, might want us to sympathize with a king who would rather spend the country’s money on culture than on killing.
KENT Ah brother, lay not violent hands on him, For he’ll complain unto the See of Rome. GAVESTON Let him complain unto the See of Hell;
Voi veli, älä lyö, tai hän valittaa Rooman istuimeen.
Valittakoon Helvetin istuimeen --
Come Spencer, come Baldock, come sit down by me; Make trial now of that philosophy That in our famous nurseries of arts Thou sucked’st from Plato and from Aristotle. Father, this life contemplative is heaven – 20 O that I might this life in quiet lead! But we, alas, are chased; and you, my friends, Your lives and my dishonour they pursue.
Mortimer! Who talks of Mortimer? Who wounds me with the name of Mortimer, That bloody man? [He kneels] Good father, on thy lap Lay I this head, laden with mickle care. 40 O might I never open these eyes again, Never again lift up this drooping head, O never more lift up this dying heart!
A king to bear these words and proud commands!
‘Must’! ’Tis somewhat hard when kings must go.
To die, sweet Spencer, therefore live we all; 110 Spencer, all live to die, and rise to fall.
Curtis Perry, ‘The Politics of Access and Representations of the Sodomite King in Early Modern England’, Renaissance Quarterly 54 (2000), 1054–83.
