Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Marlowe's Curious Queens: A Gender Study, Jonathan E. Porter

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Christopher Marlowe's plays reflect the changing concepts of gender found within the time he wrote them, as Elizabethan England struggled with the contradictions between the ancient, rigid gender roles embodied in the Petrarchan model and the paradox of a female monarch who rejected all suitors. This struggle, coupled with the rising popularity of the companionate marriage that itself implied some degree of sexual equality, challenged fundamental patriarchal assumptions about gender, property, even government, and critical thinkers like Marlowe infused their works with ideas from the debates of the day. Marlowe's early plays, especially Tamburlaine I & II, reflect a …