Murder Scene in Edward II

The Death Scene or the Murder Scene [V.v] of King Edward in Marlowe’s play is the horrible climax of the Deposition
Scene [V.i]. Here we find the king facing indescribable ignominy and humiliation. Marlowe conceived it with a rare
imaginative excellence. Out-doing Holinshed, his original source, Marlowe presents here a situation that makes one’s hair
creep and fills one’s mind with a deep gloom. Of the Murder Scene of Edward II, Charles Lamb has his celebrated
comment:
“The death scene of Marlowe’s king moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern, with which I am
acquainted.”

The king is shown confined in a dungeon at Berkeley Castle where the filth of the entire castle falls. Edward must keep
standing here, and he cannot sleep and lest he falls asleep, one keeps beating the drum all the time. Such inhuman is the
condition that Edward’s guard Gurney remarks:

“I opened but the door to throw him meat,

And I was almost stifled with the savour” [V.v.8-9].

Lightborn, the assassin hired by Mortimer to execute the murder of the king enters with a letter from his master. He
speaks of his skills of his skills of poisoning, strangling, and the use of mercury to kill a man. But in the case of King
Edward, Lightborn intends to use a still braver way which surpasses even the tortures of the damned sinners in hell. He
seizes the helpless king who immediately guesses his foul objective and becomes active in no time to accomplish his
heinous crime. He asks Matrevis and Gurney to prepare a red hot spit. A table is laid upon the king and Lightborn and
others stamp on it. The weak, poor king resists in vain against death and falls at last after commending his soul to God.

The horrible murder is performed with utmost devilry by Lightborn. But the murderer gets no way out, and is killed by
Gurney, who, along with Matrevis, flees away. Holinshed’s Chronicle tells us that the death shrieks of the king ran
through the castle and town of Berkley. The shrieks of Marlowe’s king must have also overflowed the dungeon for
Matrevis remarks:

‘I fear me that this cry will raise the town,

And therefore let us take horse and away’

Thus the horrors which the scene presents are too shocking for our senses. The very setting of the dungeon makes the
death sordid and undignified. The language with its particulars of the murder: a table, a feather bed, a red hot spit etc.
focuses our attention on his sufferings. Edward’s frantic cries such as ‘I feel a hell of grief!’ evokes an atmosphere of
terror.

In this context a comparison may be invited between the Death Scene of Marlowe’s king in Edward II and Shakespeare’s
Richard II. The Death Scene of Richard II has tender poetic touch. It is full of intense pathos. Richard in his last moments
inspires affection in the groom and his monologue shows that he is still the poet, a devotee of the fancy. His death fills us
with a profound sense of sadness. But the scene of Edward’s death is too cruel and horrible. Edward here becomes the
embodiment of humiliation. As F.P. Wilson remarks that compassion seems not to have come to Marlowe and there is a
cruelty in the last scene which we do not find in Shakespeare. Placed beside the Death Scene of Richard II, the Murder
Scene of Edward II seems more shocking and awe-inspiring. Clifford Leech remarks that no other tragic figure is treated
in the degrading way that Mortimer permits for Edward II.

This scene is of an utmost significance to draw the sympathy for the king. The incredible cruelty with which he is put to
death, no doubt turns the balance of sympathy in the favour of the king. Boas rightly remarks: “So persuasive is his art
that our recollection of Edward’s sins is almost effaced in the contemplation of his long-drawn journey”

In the Deposition Scene, something of the king’s arrogance and unreasonableness still remains. But, in the Murder Scene,
the king is cleansed of all impurities and all that is found about him is truly pathetic and pitiful. The scene, indeed, serves
to evoke tragic awe, although the full element of tragic pity cannot be perceived here because of the basic weakness of the
king.
The scene also throws light upon the character of Lightborn. He is both symbolic and disturbingly real. The name
Lightborn is ambiguous meaning both ‘bastard’ and ‘bearer of light’, and the appropriateness of the second meaning is
very ironic. It has been suggested that the name itself is a translation of Lucifer. He literally comes with a light in this
scene. Probably Marlowe drew this character from a devil that appears in the Chester Mystery Cycle.

The scene is also important from the structural stand-point. It ends the tragedy of the king and prepares the ground for the
retribution of Mortimer’s tyrannical ambition. It is the gruesome murder of his father that prompts the prince to gather
courage to stand against Mortimer and bring about the tyrant’s just doom. The scene is, thus, the end of the hero, Edward,
and a prelude to the punishment of the tyrant, Mortimer.

Another phenomenal aspect of this scene is the complex panoply of Christian images. Marlowe embellishes these
dramatic actions with verbal and visual images derived from conventional medieval and early Renaissance descriptions of
Christ's Passion. In the Death Scene, Marlowe constructs a stage picture that may be seen to complete this biblical figure:
skewered on a red-hot spit, pressed beneath an overturned table, Edward dies in an inverted image of the Pascal lamb on a
spit, a figure that translates Lightborn's "grim game of deceit and destruction" recalls also the playful sadism of the
"tortores" who, in the Passion Plays, execute Jesus with giddy professional pride. The king attempts to dissuade his hired
assassin with a bribe, a vestige of his royal wealth: “One jewel have I left; receive thou this”, Lightborn’s tearful
dissembling has failed to trick Edward. "I see my tragedy written in thy brows”, Edward says before undergoing a kind of
Christian anagnorisis. Just before Matrevis and Gurney rush to press and tread him beneath the table, Edward prays,
“Assist me, sweet God, and receive my soul”--a prayer like Jesus’ last words: “Father, into thine hands I commend
my spirit”

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