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.