Gender and Sexuality

Abstract

The reading of gender relations in texts that are over four hundred years old is fraught with difficulties. Similarly, the problems that emerge from attempts to categorise sexuality in the early modern context are considerable. In Marlowe’s plays, issues of gender are rarely central in the way that they frequently are in Shakespeare’s work, the comedies in particular. Marlowe’s plays do not contain very challenging roles for women (with the sole exception of Isabella in Edward II). Zenocrate in the Tamburlaine plays has some fine speeches, but she could hardly be described as a detailed character study. Abigail has some nice comic moments in The Jew of Malta, but is essentially lightweight, rarely much more than a foil for her father Barabas (there is some discussion of her death scene in the next chapter; see pp. 176–81). Nevertheless, the female characters in Marlowe’s plays are not totally devoid of interest: the figure of Helen in Faustus is a curious, conflicted persona: a paragon of beauty, but seen as an insidiously destructive force, both in history and, possibly, in terms of her role in Faustus’s damnation. Abigail is apparently a ‘good’ Jew (as opposed to the irredeemably evil Barabas) because she converts to Christianity. Zenocrate is idealized and deified by Tamburlaine; at the same time, she works at crucial moments in the plays to invite the audience to critique her husband’s behaviour. In Edward II, Isabella plays a number of different ‘roles’ (female stereotypes), shifting from passive dependence, to wronged wife, to deceitful adulteress, to vengeful predator.