Posted on 03/11/2025 2:35:29 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A new revival of Christopher Marlowe's pioneering play about the 14th-Century King of England puts the spotlight back on his relationship with his male "favourite" Piers Gaveston.
This week, at its base in Stratford-upon Avon, the world-famous Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is opening a new production of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II. Though this influential 16th-Century play about a beleaguered queer monarch is more than 430 years old, it still feels stingingly relevant. Marlowe depicted a king whose authority and ability to rule is fatally undermined by his relationship with another man. Modern-day UK monarchs hold only ceremonial power, but overt queerness in the British royal family remains vanishingly rare. Lord Ivar Mountbatten, a second cousin of King Charles III who is currently competing on US reality show The Traitors, is widely described as "the first openly gay royal".
Marlowe's play dramatises the struggles of Edward II, a real-life King of England who reigned from 1307 to 1327. A year after Edward II succeeded his father, Edward I, he married the King of France's daughter, Isabella, in an effort to strengthen Anglo-French relations. Queen Isabella bore Edward II four children, and became a formidable figure in her own right – she is sometimes called "the she-wolf of France". But Marlowe's play really hinges on the king's controversial relationship with his male "favourite", Piers Gaveston, and how this sparked a constitutional crisis that he never recovered from.
The playwright never says outright that the two men are lovers, but the queer subtext is hardly subtle. In one scene, after he is reunited with his favourite, Edward beseeches him to "kiss not my hand [but] embrace me, Gaveston, as I do thee". In another, Isabella bemoans the fact "the king regards me not, but [instead] dotes upon the love of Gaveston".
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
If he wasn’t bending Gaveston over the coffee table (or vice versa) then he wasn’t “gay”.
Lord Mountbottom?
Constitutional crisis? In 14th century England?
No.
Magna Carta? Yes.
So that’s where the muslims learned it from.
Magna Carta was way before Edward II.
That movie took endless liberties with history, the most notorious one being the implication that Isabella had an affair with Wallace. IRL, she was an 8yo girl in France when Wallace was executed.
9 or 10 years old, but she hadn’t left France yet (1205). She married Edward II in 1307 (when she was 12 years).
Lord Ivan Amandakissnhug of Powurbottum
“Brilliant! Why, that’s exquisite. Rather!”
Why are our cousins so ghey?
So the “She Wolf of France” was Edward’s beard.
She basically engineered the Hundred Years War, launched by her son Eddie III.
I know. That was what, 1200’s? I’m not aware of England having a Constitution in the 1400’s. That is why the phrase “Constitutional crisis” in the article had me shaking my head.
Everything in history was gay apparently.
Archie Bunker was right about England.
Nothing like making money off defaming a guy that cannot defend himself...like child porn.
Not an artist, but a perv of the worst sort. Maybe london will welcome him.
[[pioneering play]]
Is that what they call debauchery and filth these days? pioneering play is code for ‘some gay producer somewhere wants to bastardize history
Lord Mountbatten, who was blown up by the IRA liked little boys.
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