Paradise Lost and Edward II

Question 1

Edward II performance date

Answer 1

1592 towards end of Elizabeths reign

Question 2

Paradise lost publishing date

Answer 2

1667 - 6 years after the restoration of the monarchy

Question 3

Edward II Key historical context

Answer 3

Plotting and deception, machiavellianism, babbington plot, Elizabeth and her favourites Rovvert Dudley etc

Question 4

Paradise Lost Key historical context

Answer 4

Civil War and revolution, attempted assassination of James I and execution of Charles I

Question 5

PL Changes in social system

Answer 5

feudalism to capitalism, Marlowe and Milton were both aspiring middling sorts but in Marlowes time there is far more security In rule

Question 6

Machiavelli and Hobbes

Answer 6

The Prince, how rulers should maintain rule, works on the basis of divine right where as Hobbes’s Leviathan advocates divine right but doesn’t take it for granted ‘the war of all against all’
Milton strongly opposed to Hobbes but Marlowe takes ideas from machiavelli

Question 7

Spying and treachery

Answer 7

Marlowe himself was suspected of being a spy for elizabetharrested in 1592

Question 8

Marlowe vs Milton attitude towards life

Answer 8

Marlowe - pragmatic/cynical (Levin ‘ethos of loving dangerously’ Milton - dissenter but backs up views based on reason and god fearing judgements, far more moral

Question 9

Aims in writing

Answer 9

Marlowe - to make money, , he sold his play to the Earl of Pembrokes Men
Milton didn’t have to worry about money, he sold intellectual property rights to Paradise Lost for only £20.
Instead Milton was conscious of a heroic task to ‘justify the ways of god to man’

Question 10

Education

Answer 10

Both were erudite and well educates, both went to Cambridge although Milton hated it there
time of scientific revolution, Galileo and Milton’s trip to India

Question 11

Use of Primary Sources

Answer 11

Holinshead for Marlowe and Genesis for Milton but they both twist their sources No satan in genesis and Marlowe certainly overdramatises events

Question 12

Allegory of Satan

Answer 12

is he Cromwell or Charles (Roverts “the danger of these readings is that they quickly loose their specificity”

Question 13

Tillyard Paradise Lost

Answer 13

“fallen before the fall”

Question 14

Theological issues discussed by Acquinas, omniscence and omnipotence

Answer 14

omniscence and omnipotence, Evans - Satan’s rile is equivalent to “fate” but in which case, if god new about it and could do something and cared why did he not help, is it the fault of god himself??

Question 15

Blake

Answer 15

Milton “of the devils party”

Question 16

Bryson

Answer 16

Milton “puts the Protestant rhetoric of legitimate rebellion against a king”

Question 17

Milton political tracts

Answer 17

Justifys regicide in Defense oft the People of England

Question 18

Coleridge and Evans

Answer 18

Satans “motiveless malignancy” he “does evil not for the sake of any relief it will bring him but simply because it is evil”
Problematic as evil is “not just destructive, it is self-destructive”

Question 19

Edward II stymeist

Answer 19

“Homoeroticism is empowering”

Question 20

Kay on Love in Edward

Answer 20

“King becomes a subject in and to love”

Question 21

Stocker on Edward II politics

Answer 21

The play underlines the “chaos which results from the collapse of political order”
“Marlowe breaks all links with the orderly world”

Question 22

Ian Mckellen version

Answer 22

Edward falls to his knees hugging Edwards waist - reclaims Marlowes work for the gay community

Question 23

Ribner on Kingship in Edward

Answer 23

“kingship is based on human merit”

Question 24

Jarman 1991 adaption

Answer 24

Overtly sexual and glorifies Edward and Gavrston’s homosexuality
Edward III at the end presented wearing high heels and lipstick

Question 25

Stocker on god and Edward

Answer 25

“No place exists for divine guidance and aid”

Question 26

Brecht interpretation

Answer 26

Overtly political and self-examining

Gaveston as the son of a butcher- overtly about hierarchy and social order

Question 27

Isabella quotes

Answer 27

a "dissembler" according to Kent
"I am forever miserable"
She "dare not speak a word" against Mortimer
"French Strumpet
"Melancholy life

Question 28

Quotes on Gaveston

Answer 28

“Bare and obscure Gaveston
“The mightiest kings have had their minions”
“So basely born”

Question 29

Edward quotes

Answer 29

“should a king be subject to a priest”

“Pliant king” compare with “mild judge” in Paradise Lost?

Question 30

Edward quotes

Answer 30

“should a king be subject to a priest”
“Pliant king” compare with “mild judge”
“Am I a king and must be overruled”

Question 31

Contemporary view of female rulers

Answer 31

Sign of displeasure (Bacon and Calvin

Question 32

Comment on Elizabeth

Answer 32

Plotting and treachery in her court, the babington plot, walsingham, absence of women in public roles and the impact of he one women who is powerful in Edward II

Question 33

Issabella

Answer 33

Assumes the role of the Machiavel

Question 34

Divine right of kings

Answer 34

Right to rule, argued agains by Milton The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
Divine right vs fortune

Question 35

Great chain of being

Answer 35

disorder as in Troilus and Cressida where “degree is shak’d” and the “untuned string harps discord”