Marlowe’s English Nation: Sovereignty, Empire, and Community

Abstract

This dissertation enhances Marlovian studies by advancing ongoing scholarly efforts to demystify Marlowe’s stereotypical image as an outsider of his era. Specifically, it aims to challenge the prevailing perception of Christopher Marlowe as a subversive maverick, often delineated in contradistinction to William Shakespeare, England’s so-called national poet. Situating Marlowe in the context of nation-building in early modern England, this dissertation explores how Marlowe participated through his writing in the construction of English national identity. Through reading Marlowe’s five plays, Dido Queen of Carthage, Tamburlaine the Great Part One, Tamburlaine the Great Part Two, Edward II, and The Jew of Malta, my dissertation reveals that Marlowe’s ideal England is a political entity of complete sovereignty, a new empire of unprecedented achievement, and an imagined community ruled by its monarch and governors with good governance. With its emphasis on the inseparable fusion of nation and empire and the inevitable incorporation of outsiders, such English nationhood, I suggest, is an eighth form of nationhood in addition to the seven others proposed by Richard Helgerson. It is neither Patrick Cheney’s counter-nationhood nor completely Helgerson’s nationhood under royal absolutism. Since the monarch and patriotism are at its centre, Marlowe’s ideal English nationhood does not differ greatly from depictions offered by other contemporary writers. I argue that Marlowe shares more commonality with other authors of his era than has previously been understood, at least in terms of writing English nationhood. I propose that we should explore such commonality, rather than fetishizing Marlowe’s peculiarity, to gain a more nuanced, fuller image of Marlowe, who has long been obscured by his arguably more renowned contemporaries.