Edward II (New Mermaids)

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ISBN 10: 0713666692 / ISBN 13: 9780713666694

Published by -, 2005

About this Item

Edward II (New Mermaids) This book is in very good condition and will be shipped within 24 hours of ordering. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. See all our books here, order more than 1 book and get discounted shipping.

Seller Inventory # 7719-9780713666694

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Edward II (New Mermaids)
• Publisher: -
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0713666692
• ISBN 13: 9780713666694
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

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.

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.