Discuss Marlowe’s Edward
II as a Tragedy. / How far does Marlowe’s Edward II satisfy the
notion of a high tragedy?
The
tragedies of Marlowe are known for their grand
design, extravagance
grandeur, ‘rant
and bluster’, the monomaniac
characters with their single obsession of power, the passion for their
boosting up of self in a way that we marvel at them, and a certain ruthlessness
which defies human sentiment. His last celebrated tragedy Edward II is concerned with the tragic fall of a historical king, Edward II.
Aristotle
in his Poetics defines tragedy as “an
imitation of an action that is serious and complete and of certain magnitude...
not of narrative through pity and fear affecting the proper purgation of these effects.” Marlowe’s Edward II surely
abides by certain points of Aristotelian definition of tragedy.
