The method in which Edwards murderers performed their horrible regicide, was perhaps chosen not only to avoid immediate suspicion that the King had met a violent death, but as brutally allusive to his passive sexual habits. In "Edward II," Marlowe, has indicated the King's doting passion for his "minion", in several scenes; including one in which the English nobility in their anger and solicitude, with the Duke of Lancaster, the truculent Mortimers and one of the high clergy at their head, compel the sovereign to sign a decree of banishment against Gaveston. In part, it is as follows; couched in Marlowe's extravagantly theatrical diction, which however does not spoil its psychical realism:
King Edw.Meet you for this, proud, overbearing peers?
Ere my sweet Gaveston shall part from me,
This isle shall fleet upon the ocèan,
And wander to the unfrequented Ind.
. . . . . . . I will not yield!
Curse me, depose me, do the worst you can!
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And share it equally amongst you all,
So I may have some nook or corner left
To frolic with my dearest Gaveston.
Archbish.Nothing will alter us, we are resolved.
Lancast.Come, come, subscribe!
Young Mort.Why should you love him whom the world so hates?
King Edw.Because he loves me more than all the world.
All, none but rude and savage-minded men
Would seek the ruin of my Gaveston.
You that be noble-born should pity him.
Archbish.Are you content to banish him the realm?
King. Edw.I see I must, and therefore am content.
Instead of ink, I’ll write it with my tears.
(He subscribes)
King. Edw.Tis done! And now, accursed hand, fall off!
French Sove-
reigns.
Several French kings possess historic distinctness as Uränians. Henri III was a
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