A host of feminist and queer analyses (to name only two kinds of politically engaged criticism) of literature from earlier periods has started from the assumption that neither a contemporary critic nor a writer from long ago is obliged to accept the dominant prejudices of the day. 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.
