"Outing" Edward, outfitting Marlowe: Derek Jarman's film of Edward II.

The reign of the English king Edward the Second (1307-1327) has long been a subject of study, discussion, and debate for scholars and artists alike. Indeed, there is much in what has become the legend of this sovereign to draw one's attention. Arguably one of the first clear historical cases of a regularly troubled regime, the reign of Edward has become an ideal subject for the exploration of the nature of power by historians and sociologists, as well as by novelists, poets, and dramatists. Their studies, however, have been regularly subject to complications and distractions due to the many potentially prurient aspects of this reign: multiple murders, a grossly unhappy marriage, revolutions, rebellions, and, especially, Edward's engagement in homosexual activity. While the importance of Edward's sexuality is obvious as a means to explore the nature and treatment of sexuality in early English history, it has almost invariably distracted from or colored discussions of the more central, political issues of his rule.

The most significant artistic examination of Edward's reign has been subject to similarly skewed treatment. So resonant is Christopher Marlowe's play Edward II (1592) that it has become a veritable locus for cultural discourse on sexuality. Both in studies of the text and in performances of the play, the emphasis has been on questions of Edward's sexuality, whether through direct address of the subject or a conscious moral choice to avoid it. This is not surprising given that, historically, the drama is a form well suited to reinterpretation inspired by the whims of changing times and changing fashions. Accordingly, the treatment of Edward II throughout its critical and stage histories has almost always been based on prevailing opinions about sex and the dominant view of homosexuality. In fact, ever since the issue of sexuality became truly controversial in the fifteenth century, Edward in general, and Marlowe's play in particular (as well as Bertolt Brecht's adaptation of it, titled The Life of Edward the Second of England [1924]), have been subjected to a legacy of misrepresentation.

While it would be impossible, even absurd, to completely avoid the issue of sexuality in any consideration of Edward, a character for whom desire (sexual and otherwise) is an important character trait, most stagings of, and writings about, Edward II make two fundamental errors in their address of his sexual practices. First, the critical and performance histories of the play focus almost solely, even obsessively, on Edward's sexual practices in spite of Marlowe's conscious attempt in his text to suppress discussions or enactments of the King's sexuality. Second, the essays and books and productions have approached the subject of Edward's sexuality in a virtual historical vacuum, yoking the text to a contemporary conception of sexuality that is factually inaccurate and, perhaps more importantly, dramaturgically illegitimate.

Both historically and in Marlowe's original dramatic text, discussion of homosexual relationships as defined in the modern era is nonexistent. Indeed, part of the play's power derives from the fact that the sexuality in it is an accepted condition of human life. And in today's modern political landscape, this simple fact has the potential to be an extremely powerful statement of both individual sexual emancipation and overall sexual harmony, at the same time as it avoids the assumptions and prejudices that characterize modern sexual politics. It should be clear, then, from both the historical and dramaturgical perspectives on Edward II--the evolving view of homosexuality, the evolving view of Edward II as a historical figure, the manner in which his reign and his sexuality have been treated by successive dramatists and directors--that the issue of sexuality in the play is best addressed in relation to its political aspects and ramifications, rather than its moral ones. The 1991 film adaptation of Marlowe's play by the British filmmaker Derek Jarman (1942-1994) does exactly this--not by accident, avoiding in the process many of the distortions that have characterized previous adaptations or productions of Edward II.

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Jarman's film adaptation follows a schema that cosmetically appears similar to that of Gerard Murphy's 1991 production of the play for the Royal Shakespeare Company, which called attention to the King's homosexuality through every available means. This is probably unsurprising in that the late Jarman, in his career as an artist, writer, designer, and filmmaker, had been driven by his active assertion of his own sexuality as the most important, if not sole, defining characteristic of his personality. All the films he made are concerned in some manner with homosexuality and the often marginalized role of the homosexual in a predominantly heterosexual society. Often, they reinvestigate historical personages in light of their homosexuality, as is the case for Sebastiane (1976), Caravaggio (1986), and Wittgenstein (1992), each of which contains a powerfully explicit depiction of homoerotic passion.

Obviously, Edward II itself shares this defining characteristic of Jarman's work. Given this fact, along with his reputation as an uncompromising and highly controversial filmmaker, it would be safe to assume that Jarman's Edward II would be, like Murphy's theatrical production, a largely unjustifiable perversion of the play for the sake of the artist's own radical socio-political stance. Indeed, the director's own public comments accompanying the release of his film indicate he felt (adopting an essentialist perspective of homosexuality) that the narrative of Marlowe's Elizabethan play encapsulated the history of the homosexual experience--one plagued with misunderstanding, ignorance, denial, and suppression. Jarman even seemed to claim that he had seriously distorted a canonical text in the service of a pro-gay agenda, and that he wanted to take revenge on the straight community for its oppression of homosexuals.

A more thorough investigation of the film of Edward II, however, reveals that he fashioned a film more in the spirit of Marlowe, and to some degree of Brecht, than his own claims would lead one to believe. From Marlowe's original, Jarman took the notion of morality--or sexuality--as a nonissue and placed his primary focus on the politics of power, recognizing (unlike his "queer" predecessors) the necessity and desirability of examining a political struggle by largely adhering to the structure and content of a text that itself is primarily concerned with the politics of power. From Brecht's adaptation of Marlowe, he took the massive streamlining of characters and narrative, a greater explicitness in the expression of homosexual feelings, the complete absence of a divine ruling power, and not a little of Brecht's apparent misogyny. This is not to say, of course, that Jarman has not radically reconceived Marlowe's play (and Brecht's) on his own terms for the cinema; rather, that Jarman's film may be understood as a variation on a musical theme--emphasizing some portions of the dramatic source to the purposeful neglect of others.

Aside from content, there are two primary aspects of the Edward II--one structural, the other cinematographic--that nonetheless testify to Jarman's adherence to Marlowe's model. First, the whole of the film is constructed as a flashback, opening with Edward and his jailer-cum-executioner, Lightborn, in the dungeon that serves as the King's prison. Surprisingly, this device is not used to wholly reconstitute the film's narrative from the subjective perspective of Edward's vision, which would have allowed Jarman free reign to exaggerate the monstrosities of the sovereign's heterosexual oppressors. Indeed, at least until the last quarter of the film, Edward is rarely portrayed any more sympathetically than are Mortimer and Isabella. Second, the film of Edward II is far less of a cinematographic departure from the play than it might have been. All of the settings in the film are spare interiors, for example; the lighting itself is evocative of the theater in its lack of natural sources and self-conscious deployment; and the camera, for its part, is stationary throughout, framing the human figures in the center of each shot. The result is that the film "plays" as if it were filmed theater.

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"Playing" within the boundaries of Marlowe's dramaturgy, moreover, Jarman is determined to expel contemporary assumptions about sexuality and morality from the piece. Unlike Gerard Murphy, he refuses to present the relationship of Edward and Gaveston as superior to other relationships in the film. As in Marlowe, their relationship is in no way made remarkable other than in its effects on the political order of the nation. Basically, it remains undeveloped and has little depth. As Gaveston reads the letter from Edward requesting his return, for instance, he is surrounded by sexual and emotional alternatives to the King. His reunion with his companion, then, seems motivated more by the pursuit of status and its luxuries than by a deep-rooted love for Edward. This motivation is only reinforced by Jarman's recasting of Spenser as a lover and constant companion of Gaveston. And it is further intensified by Jarman's use of a succession of hedonistic, sensual images to accompany Gaveston's voice-over reading of Edward's letter--visions of handsome young men serving as attendants-cum-entertainers to the couple. For these "group" images undercut the idea of the singular union of Edward and Gaveston in a central love relationship.

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Subsequent scenes including the two rarely depict them alone, never mind in any situation that would give a depth to their relationship beyond an attraction based solely on sex and power. Even when Jarman depicts their potentially sorrowful and moving separation as a languorous, romantic slow-dance, he offers a distancing device to prevent the viewer from complete empathy or identification with the couple. The incorporation on the soundtrack of British pop star (and icon of androgyny) Annie Lennox warbling a badly dubbed torch-song version of Cole Porter's "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" serves not only to infuse the scene with a gay camp aesthetic, but also to undermine its emotional resonance and possible sentimentality.

Again invoking Marlowe's model, Jarman has the two men who constitute the central couple demonstrate behavior that is clearly beyond the boundaries of traditional moral systems, be they historical or contemporary. Though clearly the most sympathetic member of his society, Edward is in no way configured as a moral exemplar or model figure. Even as Jarman often fashions Edward as an attractive figure, employing close-ups of the angelic or cherubic face of Steven Waddington (who portrays the King), he balances this portrait (as Marlowe himself did) with a startling number of instances of opprobrious behavior on the King's part. In a series of scenes involving Edward and his wife, Queen Isabella, for example, he behaves violently toward her. Since his difficulties with Isabella seem to stem from her own sexuality, over which she has no more control than he has over his, Edward is depicted here as capable of irrational and destructive action. Later, the depth of his loyalty to Gaveston is called into question both by his strangely rapid assent to his companion's banishment and by his proto-sexual alignment with Lightborn as well as Spenser. Finally, Jarman constructs a number of scenes in which Edward unleashes extreme and wanton cruelty on successive representatives of his enemies.

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If Jarman's conception of Edward's amoral behavior is evocative of Marlowe's, his conception of the character of Gaveston exaggerates Marlowe's already unflattering portrait. Gaveston may be at once unfairly punished and pathetically misunderstood, but he is also the mindlessly combative rascal he is reported to be by Mortimer. While Jarman's depiction of Gaveston is increasingly sympathetic as the film progresses--especially after the relentless and merciless attacks on him--the initial rendering of his character is hardly as charitable. In a scene that perhaps best embodies this disagreeable image of the man, he and a group of thugs, despite Edward's protests, exact revenge upon the Bishop for his order to exile Gaveston. Whereas in Marlowe the Bishop is simply banished to the Tower of London, in Jarman's version the nameless thugs surround a bleeding, bruised Bishop, clad only in his underwear, as Gaveston proceeds to sexually abuse the cleric--treatment that seems in all proportion to the original offense. In what may be an even more shocking scene, Gaveston corners Isabella in a hallway and, in an atmosphere laden with sexual energy, brings his face close to hers as if to kiss her. Isabella hesitates slightly, then moves to meet Gaveston's lips. But instead of responding in turn, he unleashes a loud, mocking laugh in the Queen's face. That Jarman would so magnify the eagerness of this man to humiliate others is indicative of his overwhelming desire to re-create the amoral--nay, immoral--world of Marlowe's own play.

The other two focal characters that populate Jarman's film are, of course, no more likely to adhere to traditional tenets of morality. As in Marlowe's play, these figures often demonstrate more despicable qualities than the worst ones given to Edward and Gaveston. Mortimer, who is transformed in the second half of Marlowe's Edward II into its chief villain, functions only as a secondary one in the film (for reasons that shall become clear in my discussion of the fourth focal figure). In the first sequence of scenes in which he appears, Mortimer appears completely ridiculous in his continual diatribes against Edward and Gaveston, who have not yet behaved in an aggressive or offensive manner. He seems rather like an irrational, almost hateful parent who assumes that his children are misbehaving without investing the time or energy to discover if they are really doing so. After Mortimer has been given reason to criticize the actions of Edward and Gaveston (in the form of their abuse of the Church, their endless hedonism, and their severely contemptuous treatment of all those around them), he is temporarily transformed into an intelligent, rational force seeking to restore order to the realm. This manifestation of his persona is fleeting as well, however, as he soon begins to be driven by sadistic impulses and the promise of personal gain. Whereas in Marlowe's version Mortimer wavers a bit before fully adopting the role of oppressor, in the film he is all too eager to undertake a campaign of wanton cruelty.

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The depravity of action displayed by Mortimer pales, however, in comparison with that found in the most radical of Jarman's exaggerations or distensions of Marlovian character: his conception of Isabella. This Isabella turns fast and furiously against her king and husband. In Marlowe, by contrast, the Queen is afforded a number of scenes of great sorrow at the King's spurning of her in favor of Gaveston, and more than once pleads with Mortimer not to take up arms against Edward. In Jarman, the Queen seems more than willing to take up such arms by herself. In the play of Edward II, Isabella requests that Mortimer leave her alone for fear that the King will believe Gaveston's intimations that the two are having an affair; in the film of Edward II, Isabella aggressively and lustfully seeks out Mortimer. Her actions in Jarman's version are all directed toward destroying Edward and elevating herself, and this behavior pattern quickly transforms her from wronged wife into ruthless demagogue. Along the way, she is presented as nearly inhuman--always clad in the most artificial or plastic of outfits, and adorned with the glitteringly empty glamour of jewels and an absolutely impenetrable mask of make-up, as well as with the cold sexuality of someone who is completely self-absorbed. The extreme manifestation of this characterization of Isabella-as-monster occurs in the scene where she kills Edward's brother Kent in the most painful and grotesque of manners, by ripping the flesh from his neck with her teeth. She has thus become the ultimate human vessel of animal brutality, in the process transporting herself, and the film, far beyond the limits of a Christian moral ethos.

If only Mortimer and Isabella were shown to operate on the fringes of traditional or conventional morality, the film of Edward II might well be perceived as a mutilation of Marlowe's dramatic text in an effort to promote the "queer" agenda. However, none of the figures who inhabit Jarman's world are particularly righteous. The idea that this filmmaker is pursuing a singular, biased, and heterophobic agenda on behalf of the minority homosexual population inside, as well as outside, Edward II--a view put forward at the time of the film's release by its conservative critics, and only slightly modified by its liberal champions--is therefore grossly misguided. The film's vision of all sexuality, all human relationships, is equally dark and deadly.

While it can be argued that Jarman's excision of Marlowe's ambiguity or taciturnity concerning the homosexual nature of the central relationship in Edward II positions the film as a combative heterophobic statement, all of this director-screenwriter's enlargements, reductions, and omissions are a means of establishing the content and character of a pairing--and a faction--that will develop into a political force. Hence, unlike earlier productions that invoked modern definitions of homosexuality (including, in addition to Gerard Murphy's 1991 production for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Joan Littlewood's 1956 production at the Theatre Royal in Stratford East; Toby Robertson's 1969 production at the Edinburgh Festival; Ellis Rabb's 1975 production for The Acting Company in New York; and Nicholas Hytner's 1986 production for the Royal Exchange Theatre Company), Jarman's Edward II incorporates such definitions without relying on stereotypical gay behavior or iconography. The result is that the sexuality of the King and his companions is never alien to the environment in which it is placed (or to the environment of a contemporary audience?): the gay men in the film are not so significantly different in dress or demeanor as to place them on the outskirts of their society. Indeed, both heterosexuals and homosexuals are represented in equal portion and with equal measure by Jarman. And when he allows his heterosexual characters to sneer at his homosexual ones (as previous directors have done), the effect is immediately countered (as previous directors have not done) by an equivalent and opposite sneer on the part of the gay contingent.

With traditional moral order thus cast out of the film and the stage set for the development of the gay contingent as a cohesive force for action, Jarman mimics the absolutes of Marlowe's political order. Capitalizing on the similarities between the political struggle in the play and the political struggle of contemporary homosexuals, he chooses not to focus the conflict or debate in his film on the nature of power in relation to the state, and therefore banishes civic concerns completely. There are no indications whatsoever in Jarman's Edward II that anyone is concerned with the integrity of the nation or the welfare of its citizens; all references to international affairs or domestic unrest have been removed. Instead, Jarman fashions the political debate in his film according to the boundaries of sexual self-definition, or as defined by the struggle between biological determinism and existential individualism, casting homosexuality and heterosexuality as essentially political factions vying for control of the state. The dispute is over the integrity of sexual states rather than political states, and is thereby intended by Jarman to reflect the struggle waged daily by homosexuals in contemporary Western, if not world, society.

On the side of this allegorical determinism are Edward, Gaveston, and Spenser. The actions of these men in the film often serve to illustrate the position advocated by most politically active homosexuals today--namely, that sexuality is an integral and immutable part of their biological as well as psychological constitution. (Such a position in fact echoes Marlowe's own suggestion that it is Edward's biological birthright that ensures his regal authority.) To enforce this idea, all the gay men in Jarman's Edward II are coupled only with other gay men, and are always seen to reject the advances of heterosexual women. This idea established, Jarman then enforces the notion of the homosexual group as politically motivated and active, surrounding its members periodically with nameless gay activists who carry placards containing political slogans. In this way, the gay faction acts always to protect the boundaries of its own community, so as to insure the free expression of members' sexual birthright.

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On the side of Jarman's allegorical individualism are Isabella, Mortimer, and the baronial council, all of whom seem to advocate the position that sexuality is a conscious, individual choice. More overtly, however, their individualistic political position manifests itself in a desire for the highest degree of personal power, which is to say the freedom to act in whatever manner they see fit, in whatever situation. For this faction, Edward's sexual order represents the chief obstacle to their ascension to governmental rule and complete control. It is thus essential for Isabella, Mortimer, and the baronial council to depose Edward less as regent than as the leader of an order that is the chief adversary to their own order. And the assumption of power by the individualists can come only from their suppression of the other entrenched order, in this case the biological determinism of gay sexuality. Their motives for the elimination of the homosexual faction are never cast in moral terms (for both Mortimer and Isabella themselves are depicted as being fond of unconventional sexual practices), but always in political ones, as they fight to achieve absolute, unassailable authority. Hence Mortimer is always clad in military wear, the members of the baronial council look like Thatcherite members of Parliament in clothing and comportment, and Isabella herself both looks and acts like a demagogic head of state.

The form of the individualists' struggle for power itself evokes the form of the same struggle in Marlowe's play. That is, it manifests itself in increasingly intense corporeal violence, rather than in rational, ideological debate. In the film, as previously mentioned, Gaveston and a gang of thugs abuse the Bishop, while Isabella murders Kent by biting into his neck; priests spit on a defiled Gaveston; Mortimer furtively stabs Gaveston; policemen with shields and clubs beat down the defenseless gay activists; Edward and Spenser taunt and then kill a policeman strung up on a meat hook. Moreover--violence aside--as in the play, Edward's deterministic ideology increasingly appears to be superior to the individualistic one as the film progresses. As he begins to abandon the immature taunts and idle pleasures of his adversaries and starts focusing his attention on the protection of his individual rights against a usurping power, Isabella and Mortimer's attempts at a coup appear more and more illegitimate. The King is thus seen to protect pre-existing boundaries against the advances of those who seek to eliminate him, and his frequently being framed in close-up--especially when he is destirute in the dungeon--serves not only to emphasize the idea of "boundary" or delimited space, but also to increase our sympathy for, indeed identification with, him. In his contrasting treatment of Mortimer and Isabella, Jarman italicizes the depths of their depravity, of their draconian cruelty, by choosing shots that incorporate their large, menacing shadows as well as their savage voice-overs.

Jarman's treatment of the conclusion to this political struggle is justifiable in its designation of Edward as the essential victor--personally, sexually, and politically. After he has filmed the conclusion of the drama as written, with Edward meeting a horrific death as a hot poker is thrust into his anus, Jarman offers an alternative sequence that renders the play's ending an irrational fantasy. Lightborn advances toward Edward with the poker, but suddenly stops and throws the implement into a pool of water. He then advances toward Edward and kisses him passionately. This kiss, the first display of sexual affection in the film of any length and ardor, becomes a triumph not just for the otherwise desperate, despairing Edward but for the whole of the "queer" political community as well. In addition, in the sequence that follows, Edward's son and now ostensibly the ruler of England, clad in women's make-up and earrings, pirouettes to "The Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairies" atop a cage containing a wrecked, dissolute Mortimer and Isabella.

This sequence of scenes, although dramaturgically blasphemous at first glance, is actually within the realm of Marlowe's own configuration of the conclusion of Edward's reign and struggle. For in the final moments of the play, as of the film, the implication is that the homosexual contingent--heretofore no more able or willing to inspire peace and harmony than the heterosexual faction--has triumphed in spirit and will ultimately triumph in political reality. (In Marlowe's Edward II, Prince Edward, now Edward III and a monarch in his own right, decrees that Mortimer be hanged and dispatches Isabella, who is suspected of being an accomplice in the plot to kill her husband, to the Tower of London.)

Thus it should be clear that, in the apparent interest of purveying a modern gay sensibility and hegemony, Jarman in fact strayed less from his progenitor than much of the commentary and controversy surrounding the film would indicate. In constructing his admittedly heavily ideological version of Edward II, Jarman, like Brecht before him, succeeded through a skillful recognition of the correlatives between his own concerns and those of the play. Seizing on the similarities between the moral-social-political milieu of Marlowe's time and his own, as well as on the dramatist's banishment of traditional or conservative morality from his play, Jarman realized that he could employ this Elizabethan text to make a specific, contemporary statement about gay sexuality as well as a broad, universal one about common humanity, without at the same time undermining the essential worth of his literary source.

A film adaptation like Derek Jarman's Edward II, which on the surface seems to be too purposefully irreverent, too tied to the whims of its own age to be a close and informed reading of the original play, is revealed, then, to be the very model of a fruitful approach to translating a literary text to the screen. Whatever the reason for his initial attraction to Edward II, the director clearly pursued a thoughtful and respectful (as opposed to blindly reverent, on the one hand, or groundlessly profane, on the other) examination of Marlowe's drama. Upon close scrutiny, the film shows every sign that Jarman executed a sound dramaturgical analysis of the play, as well as a solid historical analysis of the complex context from which it emerged. The result is a film that is at once both a conscientious adaptation of its source and an imaginative, challenging recasting of that source for our own day, and for another artistic medium. Indeed, Jarman's Edward II offers testament both to the resiliency of dramatic texts in general and to the uniquely stirring, thought-provoking power those texts may have in the hands of a particularly gifted, intelligent, and inspired film artist.

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Bert Cardullo

Izmir University of Economics, Turkey