them of “draw[ing] the treasury dry” with “the idle triumphs, masques, lasciv-
ious shows / And prodigal gifts bestowed on Gaveston” ( 2. 2. 157 – 59 ), just as it
will not be long after the Spanish king’s death before Prince Philip accuses
Eleazar and the Queen Mother of “ripping up” England’s treasury “with
masques and antick Revellings.” Nor is it long before the nobles and the lead-
ers of the Catholic Church demand that the “wicked Gaveston” be forced
again from England for his sexual transgressions ( 1. 1. 176 ), just as it is not long
before the cardinal and Philip demand that the devilish Eleazar be banished
from Spain for his. In Edward IIas in Lust’s Dominion, since illicit desire pro-
vides unmitigated access to power, the imposition of a geographical exile
seems to be the only way, short of murder, to write the “other” out.
In embedding Edward II’s story so prominently within its own, Lust’s Do-
minionunderscores the fact that such a solution is itself a problem, a challenge
rather than a complement to the stability of the state. In both plays, the de-
mand for exile expands into a potentially treasonous play for power, with the
nobility using their case against the targeted subject to take a rebellious “stand
against [their] king” (Ed. II 1. 1. 96 ). Both kings fight that fire with fire: Fer-
nando displays his support of Eleazar to overrule the nobles’ revolt, condemn-
ing these “Subjects” for attempting to “counter-check their Soveraigns will”
(L.D. 2. 1. 720 – 21 ), while Edward displays his embrace of Gaveston to chastize
and constrain the peers, refusing to “brook these haughty menaces” and an-
swering the broader political question—“Am I a king and must be over-
ruled?”—with a resounding no (Ed. II 1. 1. 134 – 35 ). But where Lust’s Dominion
stops short of having the crisis over banishment result in an immediate civil
war, Edward IIdoes not: armed with thinly veiled allegations of sodomy (or
“baseness”), the nobles not only expel, recall, and then kill Gaveston; they also
depose and kill the king.^13 Hence, as this dramatic history shadows Lust’s Do-
minion, it amplifies not only how ubiquitous the proposal of banishment is to
the mapping of political contention but also how dangerous it is to the asser-
tion of political order.
At the end of Marlowe’s play there is no cry for the banishment of all
sodomites as there is at the end of at least one version of Lust’s Dominionfor
banishment of all Moors. Nor, ultimately, can there be. For the England of
Edward IIis a place where the king himself is a sodomite and where his no-
bles and “minions” alike vie for his “love” ( 1. 1. 79 ).^14 The peers do succeed in
ousting and destroying Gaveston, as well as the Younger Spenser who follows
him as the king’s political, though apparently not sexual, favorite. But as the
substitution of Spenser for Gaveston itself suggests, political and sexual favor
Banishing “all the Moors” 123