The Politics of Access and Representations of the Sodomite King in Early Modern England
This essay treats the image of the sodomite king—in Marlowe's Edward II and in the gossip surrounding James I and his favorites — as a figurative response to resentments stemming from the regulation of access to the monarch. Animosities in Marlowe's play anticipate criticism of the Jacobean Bedchamber in part because Marlowe was responding to libels provoked by innovations in the chamber politics of the French king Henri III that also anticipate Jacobean practice. The figure of the sodomite king offers a useful vehicle to explore tensions between personal and bureaucratic monarchy that are exacerbated by the regulation of access.