Read Marlowe's Edward II - In Person

The king of England is in love. Like any young man in love, he wants to give his sweetheart the moon, but, failing that, he’ll settle for what lies in a king’s gift: land, titles, riches, and protection against the envy of fellow courtiers. And there’s plenty of envy to go around. As far as Edward’s barons are concerned, civil war is preferable to having to smile and kneel to someone they consider unfit for the king’s company, let alone his bed: Piers Gaveston, a foreigner, a commoner…and another man.

Now, more than 400 years after its first performance, aspects of Christopher Marlowe’s ode to passion and political violence still feel strikingly modern. The most obvious of these is its portrayal of Edward’s sexuality. Marlowe—generally understood to have been queer himself—makes clear what Edward and Gaveston mean to each other, and the nobles who object to Gaveston are under no illusions, either. Edward himself, moreover, is a character who would not be out of place in the cast of Succession. Neither all villain nor all victim, by turns irritating, frightening, and heartbreaking, the 14th-century king speaks directly to our messy, flawed humanity. He’s terrible at his job, but then again, he doesn’t really want his job. What he wants is “some nook or corner…/To frolic with my dearest Gaveston”—a private life, a loving relationship between equals, the one thing that a king, by accident of birth, can never have.

Of course, Edward II is still a Marlowe play. There’s introspection and more naturalistic verse, sure, but fans of the Bard’s brasher, flashier high-camp contemporary will still find plenty to enjoy. Nobles squabble, armies clash. Heads are severed, fists are shaken, terrible vengeance is called down from the wrathful heavens, and that’s not even touching the infamous dénouement with the red-hot poker. But at the heart of the political capital-T Tragedy is a smaller, more personal tragedy, one that still resonates deeply with anyone who’s ever been told that the way they love is wrong.

So come out and celebrate* Pride month with Kit Marlowe, one of the brightest, boldest luminaries of late-Elizabethan England.

*for some value of “celebrate"

Logistics:

We will read the first half of the play, take a break for snacks and chat, then read the second half of the play. Afterwards we'll have a short discussion - you're welcome to stay for this if you'd like, or leave if you'd prefer. Lately a few of us have taken to going out to dinner after the reading, too, if you’d care to extend the conversation.

RSVPs will open one week before the event (Saturday, June 14). I've posted a list of the sixteen reader roles, so you can take a gander at them in advance.

After you RSVP, please send me (Adrian) a Meetup message listing your top three role choices. If you’re open to reading anything, please still send me a message letting me know that you have no preference. I’ll update the role sheets every couple of days to show which parts are left.

Our reading this month will be at the Columbia City branch of the Seattle Public Libraries. Parking in the neighborhood isn’t too dire, I’m told, but the library is about a 10m walk from the Columbia City light rail station, so parking at a Park and Ride along the 1 Line light rail route (e.g. Northgate) and taking the light rail the rest of the way would be a viable alternative.

Finally, a note about THE TEXT!

Edward II’s textual sources are more consistent than those of other Marlowe plays (looking at you, Faustus) but we don’t have the convenience of a single authoritative Folger edition this time.

There are a couple of free, downloadable online playtexts. I would recommend working from the “Theatre Script” version on elizabethandrama.org, which tidies up the speaker prefixes and line breaks. I’ve used the scene breakdowns in this edition as the basis for my role assignments.

Here’s the link: https://elizabethandrama.org/the-playwrights/christopher-marlowe/Edward-ii-by-christopher-marlowe/

For you purists who are willing to put up with awkward formatting and variable speaker names for a more authentic quarto-flavor experience, the Version 3.0 encoding on the Folger Digital Anthology of Early Modern English Drama is quite similar to the elizabethandrama text, give or take a few lines.

Here’s the Folger link: https://emed.folger.edu/ed2