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Published in 1979: This is a play based on the reign of King John with notes.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

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.