Edward II and a Literature of Same-Sex Love by Cornelius Michael G.;

Author:Cornelius, Michael G.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Gaveston charges that Edward I had defrauded the people of England, taxing them heavily for a crusade he never intended to undertake. This may be historically accurate; Edward I had depleted the national treasury with his wars against the Scottish, the Irish, and the French, and while some historians speculate that Edward I did wish to return to Crusade (he had attended one briefly, in 1270), most historians believe that this desire was only a passing whim, and that he had no legitimate reason to believe he would ever accomplish this. Thus, the Crusade Tax was quite possibly a fraud, and the depletion of England’s finances clearly Edward I’s fault; yet, many medieval and Elizabethan chroniclers/writers placed the blame for the resulting recessionary problems squarely on the shoulders of Edward II, a casualty of his riotous living, another charge to place before the flawed king, another reason to depose him.

Drayton is perhaps the first writer who considers Edward as fiction to nonetheless get the history about his father right, and yet these brief few lines seem counterintuitive to what Drayton is attempting to accomplish in Peirs Gaveston. Or are they? It is important to remember that Drayton believes Gaveston, and not Edward II, to be the chief villain and orchestrator of the king’s eventual downfall. Gaveston is in exile, though, and thus there is no way for him to cause the bankruptcy of the country (which, though traceable back to Edward I, does not reveal itself until some time after his death). Drayton cannot blame Gaveston, so he blames Longshanks, a suitable and accurate replacement villain. This reflects Drayton’s relationship to his narrative’s historical sources and to history. Drayton himself declares that it is the essential, historical truth of Edward and Gaveston that he seeks to represent. Naming his sources for his legend, he writes:

On whom I onely relyed in the plot of my History; having recourse to some especiall collections, gathered by the industrious labours of John Stow, a diligent Chronigrapher of our time. A man very honest, excedding painfull, and ritch in the antiquities of this Ile. (208)

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