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Conclusion
The systematic analysis of the interrelations between Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and
Leander and Edward II presented in my study reveals that the representation of love in these
works is much more complex than it has generally been assumed. This is confirmed by the modern editors’ questionable emendations discussed critically throughout my dissertation. The study of the history of textual transmission of Marlowe’s epyllion and the investigation into the choices made by some modern editors of the history play has been essential for two main reasons: firstly, because, by reshaping the texts, editorial choices have influenced readers’ interpretation. Secondly, because, as they are the result of a given editor’s reading, they have left a record of his/her taste, thought and critical evaluation, and hence they play an important role in the hermeneutic tradition of these works.
Composed between 1591 and 1593, Hero and Leander and Edward II provide evidence that, in the last years of his life, Marlowe reached full artistic maturity. In reinterpreting different notions of love, as theorised by Neoplatonic philosophers and exemplified, in art, by narrative poetry, emblematics, and the Commedia dell’Arte, he gives shape to an original amorous discourse, which proves to be extremely influential for subsequent poets and playwrights, including Shakespeare, Donne, Marvell, Webster, and Dekker.
In both Hero and Leander and Edward II, Marlowe moves beyond the conventions of
Petrarchan love, and presents it as a sensual experience, whose significance is ambivalent. Far from being the object of moral judgment, love is ultimately the result of a synthesis of apparently contradictory impulses such as the search for sensual pleasure for its own sake, and the aspiration to a higher form of love; cunning attempt to enjoy sexual consummation, and genuine effort to contemplate supreme beauty. The effects of this passion and the
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reactions it exacts are delineated in full detail, so allowing a thorough characterisation of the lovers.
Love is a frivolous game which liminal lovers such as Leander, Gaveston, and Neptune are enthusiastically ready to play, and it may entice to contemplation, as inferred by the narrator when he describes Hero. It may be driven by an irrational instinct, as Neptune’s infatuation of Leander reveals, or by ambition, as in the case of the maiden in the Mercury episode. It is an essential need and the primary source of joy to Edward, but it implies radical choices, which may lead to physical and emotional sufferings, as those felt by Hero, and even to a painful death, as that experienced by Gaveston and Edward. It may be based on deception, as in the Neptune episode, and it may disillusion lovers, as the explicit of the poem seems to suggest.
The didactic function of art, which was essential in Medieval literary and cultural tradition, as well as in some of Marlowe’s contemporary writers such as Chapman and Spenser, is absent in Hero and Leander and Edward II. As a result, art, in all its forms, becomes both an immensely powerful seductive strategy and the language through which amorous discourse takes shape.
On a strictly formal level, the ambivalent representation of love is created through rhetorical tropes including puns, allusions, metaphors, comparisons, anastrophe, and irony, combined with caesuras and mastery of iambic pentameter. It is enhanced through an experimental use of several narrative and dramatic techniques such as the narrator, the asides, staged actions, and doubled roles. Through the characters and the narrator (in the case of the poem), Marlowe explicitly invites the readers and spectators to take notice of the ambivalence and interpret it critically, so fulfilling the function of this rhetorical strategy.
The polysemous amorous discourse in Hero and Leander and Edward II ultimately mirrors the instability and the anxiety which were latent in early modern England – especially
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in the closing years of Elizabeth’s reign. Perhaps, it is this specific aspect which fascinates modern readers most, and renders Marlowe’s message particularly relevant to contemporary culture.
