“Perhaps I shall write about a Ganymede. Thus would Neptune discover a swimmer on the shore: Leander, so lovely that he might be a maid in man’s attire.” Christopher Marlowe, after seeing Sander fresh from swimming and thinking him a boy. Chapter XIX, The Secret Player
Here Marlowe is referring to his poem, “Hero and Leander,” which describes Leander’s homoerotic appeal within the tragic story of his love for the girl Hero of Sestos. Leander swims the Hellespont to visit her and dies in the attempt. To quote Marlowe:
Some swore he was a maid in man’s attire
For in his looks were all that men desire,
A pleasant smiling cheek, a speaking eye,
A brow for love to banquet royally;
And such as knew he was a man, would say,
“Leander, thou art made for amorous play.”
Leander’s charms are so enticing that a rude Thracian soldier “moved with nought, Was moved with him and for his favour sought.”
In his plays, Christopher Marlowe depicts homoerotic affection explicitly. Dido in Carthage opens with Jove dandling the boy Ganymede on his knee and saying how much he loves him. He promises him anything, even his own divine power, to which Ganymede replies that if he gives him a jewel for his ear and a fine brooch for his hat, he will “hug with [him] a thousand times.” Venus interrupts what she calls Jove’s “toying with this wanton boy”: there is business afoot. But what an opening scene!
Who but Kit Marlowe would write a homosexual tragic love story? Historical chronicles agree that King Edward II was unduly influenced by “favourites,” Piers Gaveston and after Gaveston died, Hugh Despenser. In creating his play Edward II, Marlowe takes the most vivid of the chronicles [in particular about the nature of King Edward’s relationship to Gaveston and the manner of the king’s death] and presents an intensely homosexual reading of Edward’s character.
The play opens with Gaveston reading a letter in which King Edward, newly succeeded to the throne, invites him, his “dearest friend” to share his kingdom. Marlowe leaves no question about whether they are lovers: for these “amorous lines,” Gaveston says he would swim to England like Leander, gasping upon the sand, “So thou wouldst smile and take me in thine arms.” Gaveston cares nothing for London, only for his beloved Edward.
Gaveston returns from France to be with Edward, but his enmity toward the English remains. Now Gaveston need not stoop to lordly peers nor fawn to the multitude: he kneels to none but the king.
To please King Edward, Gaveston, intends to stage masques: beautiful boys playing out mythic scenes. He envisions a pretty boy crowned in pearls as the naked goddess Diana, whom Actaeon fatally spies upon. In his “sportive hands” the boy holds an olive branch covering “those parts which men delight to see”.
When Gaveston arrives in England, King Edward greets him publicly with words of love. He spurns his Queen who later complains that the king “smiles only on his minion.” Edward flees for his safety, leaving Queen Isabella with scarcely a farewell,
The play is the tragic love story of two men. When King Edward hears that Normandy has been taken, he cares only about the fate of Gaveston, who has been captured by Warwick and Mortimer.
Gaveston’s arrogance warns us of his inevitable downfall—and the king’s, compounded by their sexuality. Yet Gaveston is charming and speaks with emotion. He is not evil incarnate, even if that’s how his enemies among the nobles see him. Only in the context of hubris and doom could such a love be depicted on the Elizabethan stage, but Marlowe clearly savors doing so.
In Act III, Gaveston is murdered, which causes Edward to take arms against the barons. A civil war is fought for love and revenge.
The play ends with the Queen’s lover, the Earl of Mortimer, capturing the king, imprisoning him and doing all he can to cause him “bitter tears”. When King Edward’s brother tries to save him, Mortimer has him executed.
Our sympathies move toward Edward: Mortimer, now regent for Edward III, is a brutal thug. He hires the murderer Lightborn who commits the most heinous murder depicted on the Elizabethan stage. He has a red-hot poker brought to him, presses Edward on the feather bed by having his guards stamp on it. The implication: it is not suffocation but the red-hot iron that causes Edward’s death, in gruesome imitation of anal sex.
By contrast to Marlowe’s, Shakespeare’s presentation of same-sex male love subtle. Richard II’s extravagance includes an intimate band of ‘favourites’, though specific relationships aren’t highlighted. In general, the men who love other men—Captain Antonio for Sebastian in Twelfth Night; Antonio for Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice—suffer unrequited and are alone at the end of the play as their sweet young man weds a woman.
*Note: Derek Jarman directed a notable film version of “Edward II” in 1991.