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.
- ISBN10 0713666692
- ISBN13 9780713666694
- Publish Date 9 August 2005 (first published December 1950)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 24 October 2014
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Imprint Methuen Drama
- Format Paperback
- Pages 176
- Language English