Book - BookDetective

Name: Edward II

Author: Christopher Marlowe
Year: 1598
Rank:

Rating:

Original Rating:

Pop Rating:

Genres/categories:
Classic, Play

Purchase/reserch links:

ISBNs:
9781854594105
9781419117329
1854594109
1419117327

Marlowe's play retains its power to shock even today, and this edition gives full value to its three overriding themes of sexual favouritism, political confrontation and sheer cruelty. Critics in the last twenty years, who have focused on the overtly sexual relationship between Edward and his favourite Gaveston, have hailed it as a 'gay classic'; earlier interpretations concentrated rather on the deposition by his subjects of a weak king, reading it in tandem with Shakespeare's Richard II. The introduction shows how the play works to give the audience an equal emotional commitment to opposing points of view and concludes that this is what makes Edward II such an uncomfortable and challenging play.