Edward II

Edward II is a major play and, in a sense, Bertolt Brecht’s only tragedy. Based on Christopher Marlowe’s classic of the same name, it departs from its sourse as widely as The Three penny Opera departs from Gay’ Beggar’s Opera. Brecht not only make a hundred techinal changes calculated to give the play a smaller cast and a simpler action, he creates virtually new and amazing characters out of Anne (Edward’s queen) and Mortimer, the villain of the piece. He also interprets Marlowe’s famously homosexual protagonist. If this Edward is more crudely homoerotic in the begining, in the end he is more of a hero and at that a hero of the modern an existential hero defying a meaningless universe with his courage.