Edward II - Softcover

Marlowe, Christopher

3.66

6,800 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199110263 ISBN 13: 9780199110261

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1972

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Unlike Marlowe's earlier dramas, Edward II is a play without a starring role. Instead of the splendid rhetoric of Tamburlaine and The Jew of Malta comes realistic dialogue and a complex plot telling of the fall of Edward II and the rise and demise of his rival, Mortimer.

As the action unfolds, the audience's allegiances switch from character to character. Edwar's infatuation with his favourites, neglect of his kingdom and his queen are delicately offset against his genuine love for Gaveston. Mortimer's initial motives of usurping Edward are corrupted by
self-interest that rightly earns him the title of 'traitor'. Though Marlowe treats the historical facts 'imaginatively', he achieves his end of emotional authenticity in dward II.

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From the Back Cover:

Depicting with shocking openness the sexual and political violence of its central characters’ fates, Edward the Second broke new dramatic ground in English theatre. The play charts the tragic rise and fall of the medieval English monarch Edward the Second, his favourite Piers Gaveston, and their ambitious opponents Queen Isabella and Mortimer Jr., and is an important cultural, as well as dramatic, document of the early modern period.

This modernized and fully annotated Broadview Edition is prefaced by a critical but student-oriented introduction and followed by ample appendix material, including extended selections from Marlowe’s historical sources, texts bearing on the play’s complex sexual and political dynamics, and excerpts from contemporary poet Michael Drayton’s epic rendition of Edward the Second’s reign.

About the Author:

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) was an English dramatist, poet, and translator of the Elizabethan era.

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