End of Edward II

One thing that struck me throughout the entire play was the lack of female characters. The only female we meet in the play is the Queen, whom Marlowe portrays as naive and dumb-minded. She truly believes that her getting Gaveston to return from exile will win back Edward's love for her; this is a completely ignorant thought, extremely nonsensical. With the background we were given on Marlowe and his supposed homosexual preference, this kind of portrayal of the ONLY woman in the play may cause the reader to wonder how little Marlowe valued women, as a writer and as a person. If his sexual preference was for men, it is possible that his all around preference was for men, and given the time period, women did not play a large role in society, and maybe that is simply all he's reflecting. This issue is highly debatable. In the end, the queen manipulates her son and continues to be cast as a negative character in the play. However, many of the characters are cast as pretty negative; though for me, I really could not stand the queen's character, and I wonder if that was Marlowe's intention - whether he crafted this character to be thus despised.