Edward II

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.