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The Politics of Access and Representations of the Sodomite King in Early Modern England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Curtis Perry
Curtis Perry*
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
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Abstract

This essay treats the image of the sodomite king—in Marlowe's Edward II and in the gossip surrounding James I and his favorites — as a figurative response to resentments stemming from the regulation of access to the monarch. Animosities in Marlowe's play anticipate criticism of the Jacobean Bedchamber in part because Marlowe was responding to libels provoked by innovations in the chamber politics of the French king Henri III that also anticipate Jacobean practice. The figure of the sodomite king offers a useful vehicle to explore tensions between personal and bureaucratic monarchy that are exacerbated by the regulation of access.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , Winter 2000 , pp. 1054 - 1083
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2000

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