Abstract

This article takes as its prompt a persistent misprint in the early editions of Marlowe’s Hero and Leander, where Abydos and Sestos are termed “Seabordersµ rather than the correct “Seaborderersµ. The confusion is appealing: to speak of seaborders raises questions about where and how the borders lie between sea and land, questions, I argue, with which Marlowe was perennially interested. While precious scholars have focused on his land geography, I turn to the places where the sea meets the land, the shallow edges of the sea, the heavily contested, fought over, and politicized seaborders. The article focuses briefly on Hero and Leander, with its partially submerged lovers, before moving on to more extended readings of the shore in Dido Queen of Carthage, the road in The Jew of Malta, and monsters of the sea in Edward II. Marlowe’s experiments with seaborders are highly various – perhaps even contradictory. Dido Queen of Carthage stages the ethics of international hospitality; and questions the claims and duties of both hosts and guests, sovereign and refugees. The Jew of Malta insists on the highly specific role of islands to trade within the Mediterranean while repeatedly imagining the loss of those islands to a rapaciously reflowing sea. Edward II sees threats to England’s national borders through the figure of the sea monster who comes ashore – but not as a refugee this time, but as a man personally invited by a king, who will end up submerged. The article concludes by treating the fleeting fantasy moments that challenge the largely negative depiction of seaborders.