『エドワード二世』のエドワードについて

抄録

In spite of E. Tillyard, we can find some playwrights, some exceptional few, in the days of Elizabeth, who are, in a sense, the forerunners of modern dramas. These playwrights may consciously have been on the same level with most of the playwrights of their time, and may still have believed, say, the 'order' or 'the chain of being', as Tillyard maintains; yet they wrote, as they really did, some new kinds of dramas which must be said quite akin in their essentials to some modern dramas of a certain kind rather than to the Elizabethan dramas. Among these few was Christopher Marlowe. In Edward II, it seems, as A. L. Rowse or W. Sanders says, that the writer's chief interests are always laid on, and ever confined to such earthly or humanly problems as the conflict between the king and Mortimer, or the sodomy between the king and Gaveston, or again the love between Mortimer and Isabella. Of these three problems the first is of course the biggest one and makes the motif of the play. In this sense, this is a play which tries to depict Edward II's reign, not as a 'record of God's Providence' as R. W. Battenhouse maintains, but as a history of 'the stronger prey upon the weaker' theory. This theory is, though the writer may not have been conscious of it, yet an embrye of a certain modern philosophy. The king tries to hold on to the golden crown, by which to squander anything, everything on Gaveston, his sole favourite or paramour; while Mortimer, the king's antagonist, tries to usurp the throne from the king, by which to satisfy or surfeit his boundless ambition 'that aspires heauen.' Gaveston is the counterpart of the king; Isabella, that of Mortimer. Here can we hardly find any man of 'justice' in the mediaeval sense of the word. One may name Edmund, the king's brother, as such a man of justice, but he is given too weak a part in the play to carry out God's justice. M. C. Bradbrook says in her Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy, 'Edward II is generally acclaimed as Marlowe's greatest dramatic success; but this is only possible by ignoring Elizabethan standard,...' and 'In Edward II there is no central feeling or theme; it is merely a history.' I don't think she wrote these two statements with much sympathy with Edward II, but these are the main points of view from which I try to analyze Edward II. It is, I think, not always necessary for us to stand upon Elizabethan standard when we view such a play as Edward II, because the play is a mere history and not a historical play in a narrowest sense possible. From the aspect of dramatical composition, Edward II has nothing to do with the 'sin-and-punishment' theory which lies behind the tragedies of his time. Edward II is, and thinks he is, murdered 'without cause.' He is merely killed by the hand of a Machiavellian, not by the hand of God. This is the point of the play. The process of the play is quite interesting. First, Edward is deprived of Gaveston, his favourite, who loves the king 'more then all the world', and then, he is again deprived of the two Spensers, the substitutes of Gaveston, and at last, the king who is now deprived of everything to turn to, and who is left all alone in the world, is killed by Mortimer and the false queen. The soliloquies and speeches of the king at the death scene are psychologically very interesting because they suggest something new, something existentialistic. Here the conditions of Edward II are in no sense those of a king but of one poor individual. He is murdered merely as an individual. If Shakespeare's Richard II is one of the typical 'historical plays' of the day, then we can say Marlowe's Edward II is one of the forerunners of modern plays, in the form of a historical play.