Playing with Desire: Christopher Marlowe and the Art of Tantalization

Elisabeth Anne MacDonald-Murray is an assistant professor of English at
the University of Western Ontario.

In his examination of the recurring motif of tantalization in the work
of Christopher Marlowe, Fred B. Tromly takes a fresh approach to the
study of the early modern poet’s writings that sheds new light on his
creative strategies. Departing from the conventional view that
Marlowe’s writing is animated by a tragic heroism and desire, Tromly
instead posits that the playwright’s preoccupation with the myth of
Tantalus is revealed in a strategy of game playing in which both
protagonists and audience are led into expectations and desires that are
ultimately frustrated. Thus, Marlowe is shown to be “a more
disturbing, and more deliberately disturbing, writer than he is usually
acknowledged to be.”

Tromly points to Marlowe’s remarkable fascination with the
mythological figure of Tantalus and the representation of frustrated
desire as a rare means of bridging the longstanding critical gap between
the poet’s plays and poems. Although Tantalus is explicitly named in
only one poem, Hero and Leander, the narrative of a desire that becomes
its own punishment is nevertheless re-created in each of Marlowe’s
works as a character is presented with an object or idea that is
invested with desire and value, only to see it withdrawn before it can
be grasped. This motif of teasing runs counter to the conventional image
of tragic aspiration, as portrayed in the myth of Icarus, which has long
been associated with the work of Marlowe. Tromly argues, however, that
Marlowe transforms the myths of Tantalus and Icarus to produce a new
composite myth in which the heroic desire of Icarus to reach the heavens
is reduced to the self-consuming torment of Tantalus’s damnation. Even
the audience is not safe from Marlowe’s teasing games, as the
playwright engages in a dramatic strategy of promise and withdrawal in
which narrative expectations are created only to be frustrated by
anticlimaxes and false endings.

Tromly’s comprehensive examination of the works of Marlowe presents
an intriguing argument for a reappraisal of the poet’s dramatic and
narrative strategies. His study of Marlowe’s play with desire offers a
valuable contribution to a critical debate that too often reverts to
judgments of “ambiguity.”