Queering History in Christopher Marlowe's Edward II

Abstract: This article argues that Christopher Marlowe's Edward II participates in historiographic debates of the early modern period and suggests one mode of synthesizing contemporary conversations about temporality and history in queer studies. By queering time through its insistence on and attachment to alternative histories, supposition, and forgetting of national history, Marlowe's play obscures the focus on historical events—their chronological organization and their constructed causality. Insofar as Marlowe's characters signal their longing for something else, their articulations reveal the play's incorporation of strange temporalities: revised histories, alternative presents, and potential futures.