Tragedy and Trauma in the Plays of Christopher Marlowe by Mathew R. Martin (review)

Mathew R. Martin analyses Christopher Marlowe’s tragedies as ‘narratives of physical and psychological wounding and its consequences’ (p. 1). In the Introduction, Martin reviews the early modern notion of tragedy and modern critical responses to the genre. His original thesis examines Marlowe’s plays using ‘Lacanian psychoanalysis and trauma theory’ by focusing on mimesis (p. 6). Martin argues that in Marlowe’s plays tragedy is not an external event inflicted on characters; instead, it is internalised by the traumatised subjects through the mimetic effects of tragic events.

Chapter 1 analyses Dido, Queen of Carthage, Marlowe’s interpretation of Virgil’s Aeneid. Martin contends that Marlowe’s Aeneas is more ambiguous than previous critics have recognised. Trapped by repetitive history and the demands of persistently immoral gods, Marlowe’s Aeneas becomes a ‘traumatized subject of faith’ (p. 32). Martin then argues that Marlowe’s version of Aeneas’s attempt to leave Carthage is the play’s most complex moment. It is only on the second attempt that Aeneas successfully departs the city through repeating the trauma of leaving Troy. Therefore, for Martin, Dido, Queen of Carthage is a play about historical narratives repeating trauma. The repetition of trauma throughout history is further expressed through Dido’s suicide. Martin traces the tension between a defiant queen and a pitiful martyr to conclude that a triumphant history is only a fleeting moment within a greater narrative.

In Chapter 2, Martin examines the sadistic Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. Here, traumatic repetition demonstrates how identity is fundamentally split: it is the incompatibility of these parts that drives Tamburlaine’s endless bloodlust. It is only through Zenocrate, Martin argues, that Tamburlaine’s violence can be countered by motherly compassion. Therefore, through Lacan’s notion of the anamorphic gaze, Martin states that Zenocrate mediates the spectator’s traumatised gaze when faced with annihilation.

Chapter 3 continues Martin’s analysis with Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. In Marlowe’s sequel, Zenocrate’s role changes so that the barbaric Tamburlaine can be civilised. Challenging the critical consensus that the play’s opening battle is superfluous, Martin contends that it acknowledges a lost opportunity to end brutal conflict. As such, the traumatic mastery Tamburlaine displayed in Part I is replaced by a loss of control. Tamburlaine, however, as Martin concludes, still cannot be defeated by death. Rather, his death signifies the end of the world through the loss of a great military leader.

In Chapter 4, Martin examines the psychotic Barabas from The Jew of Malta. His psychosis stems from his refusal to enter the Lacanian symbolic order. His narcissism is equated with the wealth kept in his protective ‘little room’: this womblike space ensures endless profit mirrors Barabas’s refusal to be the stereotypical Jewish scapegoat. His killing spree transforms the victimised Jew into a masterful perpetrator.

With Chapter 5, Martin tackles how history denies pain in Edward II. He initially compares the humiliated and tortured king to Jesus Christ, whose suffering becomes an opportunity to flourish in eternal life. Martin argues, though, that Marlowe’s play articulates the impossibility of using Christ’s suffering to define history through pain and that Marlowe’s allusions to Jesus indicate that suffering is misrecognised. At the end of the play, Edward’s screams during his horrific murder further signify how pain resists meaning.

Chapter 6 defends The Massacre at Paris against the allegation that it is Marlowe’s worst play. Instead, Martin finds in the ‘textually corrupt, poetically impoverished’ play traumatic realism (p. 126). Marlowe’s play is not simply interested in replicating historical events, but its affective traumatic residue. More specifically, Martin argues that the play dramatises ‘the relationship between trauma and witnessing as a form of engagement’ (p. 129). By recording traumatic history, witnesses become part of the bloodshed. The play’s fast movement from one location to another and inexorable barbarism replicates a breakdown...