Marlowe's Edward II as "Actaeonesque History" - Connotations

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CHRISTOPHER WESSMAN
play's unique power. He cannot resist them for yet another reason: they
come so close to the tragedy's Actaeonesque "heart."
A brief catalogue of these multiple peerings and piercings will give some
idea of their nature and range. To Edward, Gaveston is "my lovely Pierce"
(III.i.8), "Good Pierce, my sweet favorite" (III.ii.43), and finally, "Poor
Pierce, headed against law of arms" (III.ii.53)-that is, beheaded in spite
of the nobles' promise of safe-passage. It is this Pierce who within the play's
opening scene sets the parameters of the alternate peerings and piercings
within the drama. First, after reading the King's letter inviting him home,
he declares, "Farewell base stooping to the lordly peers" (I.i.I8); this
designation is reinforced by the irate Lancaster ("My lord, why do you
thus incense your peers?" 1.i.98). Then, in Gaveston's description of a play­
Actaeon peering and "peeping through the grove" (I.i.67), he dramatizes
his desires to provide pleasurable "sight" for his "exiled eyes," to "view
my lord the King," and to "stand aside" and spy on the proceedings at
court (I.i.lO, 45, 73ff.). Finally, he also includes the sense of piercing as
laceration: dismissing the ill-wishing soldier he has just insulted, he
declares,
Gav.: ... these words of his move me as much
As if a goose should play the porpintine,
And dart her plumes, thinking to pierce my breast. (I.i.41-43)
With what we have seen above of the dual "hart" motif, the pierced
"breast" here may even be a sly prefiguration of the lacerated "hart / By
yelping hounds pulled down," which follows so closely after it (I.i.69-70).
In any event, in under a hundred lines Marlowe manages to crystallize
the play's essential dynamic of peering vision and its piercing punishments.
He sets forth the puns and double-entendres through which they will
contend. To return to the musical analogy of the previous paragraph,
Gaveston's "exposure" is the musical "exposition," the opening statement
of the peering/piercing theme.
The development of this motif throughout the play is lively and varied.
Gaveston, hunted and Actaeon-like, yokes the notions of chase, vision,
and piercing: