ST1604 Edward2 Folder AW

edwardII resource pack A play by Christopher Marlowe Resource pack by David Wheeler ...why should you love him whom the world hates so? Thursday 8 - Saturday 31 March 2001 A Sheffield Theatres production resource pack edward II Resource Pack Dear Colleague, A resource pack for Sheffield Theatres’ 2001 production of Edward the Second, by Christopher Marlowe. The pack is designed for pre and post-performance use with students studying AS/A level Drama and Theatre Studies and English Literature, but should also be of general interest. I have tried to link closely to examination guidelines and where appropriate, use the terms and concepts which examiners are looking for, placing considerable emphasis on drama as a performed art. The pack is divided into 4 booklets for easy use: Socio-historic context The production process Themes and Issues Staging and Performance (including pre-performance work) Each booklet provides background and production-specific information and a student Do it! section where each activity is labelled as to its suitability for AS/A level Drama and Theatre Studies or English Literature. Please work with the pack as it best suits you; you are free to photocopy it for use within your school/college. We hope you find it to be an interesting and meaningful resource. It is part of our ongoing programme to make theatre interesting and accessible to young people. It would be very helpful if you could let us know what you and your students make of the pack. Please send your comments to: Education Department, Sheffield Theatres, 55 Norfolk St, Sheffield S1 1DA or E-mail: [email protected] Best wishes, David Wheeler Edited by: Sophie Hunter and Claire Pender Rehearsal photographs: Paul Ibberson For their support I would like to thank Director Michael Grandage, Designer Christopher Oram, and the acting company, Sheffield Theatres Education Department, Sheffield Theatres staff, Iris Associates and The Production Company. Season sponsor Production co-sponsor and Education pack sponsors Gatekeepers project sponsor resource pack edward II socio-historic context A perversion of history or a true history treated imaginatively? Power and love combine to tragic effect in this story of a king’s infatuation with another man. Marlowe traces the politics and passion of Edward’s twenty-three year reign, where audacity and bigotry lead to a treacherous and violent end. Edward the Second Marlowe’s history in the manly business of war. He preferred - Edward the Second (1592) to spend his time with his handsome Glowing with national pride and keen to and arrogant favourite, the Gascon knight, learn the lessons of time, the Elizabethans Piers Gaveston. Edward showered Gaveston looked to their playwrights for information. with gifts and neglected his Queen, Isabella Rarely are historic people treated of France. dispassionately without political bias in the theatre. In his version of Edward the Enraged, the barons threatened Edward with Second, Marlowe has disregarded much of rebellion if he did not banish Gaveston and the information about King Edward II he restore proper government. Edward was would have found in Holinshed’s ‘The frightened and gave in, but Gaveston soon Chronicles of England’ (1587). Instead we returned, and this time, the barons got rid of have ‘what might have been’; Marlowe him for ever: they murdered him (1312). The perverts certain facts and jumbles certain distraught Edward had to wait for revenge dates to achieve an emotional resonance until 1321, when his new favourites the beyond the reach of his source material. Marcher lords, Hugh Despenser and his son, helped him break the domination of the Marlowe sets one of our weakest monarchs barons. Sweet prince, I come; on stage in an unconventional type of history play, looking at human nature rather than the Queen Isabella however was determined the these, these thy amorous actual events of its subject matter. The play Despensers should not humiliate her, as lines might have enforced opens with the events of 1307, Edward’s Gaveston had done. In 1325, Isabella went to accession to the throne, and follows through France and joined forces with the Despensers’ me to have swum from to his brutal murder. Twenty-three years of enemies there: one was Roger Mortimer, who history are reduced to two hours on stage. became Isabella’s lover. When Isabella and France, and, like Leander, Mortimer returned to England with their gasped upon the sand, The true history army, the Despensers and other royal - King Edward II (1307 - 1327) supporters were hunted down and put to death. King Edward was taken prisoner, so thou wouldst smile After the glorious reign of his father King forced to give up his throne and later met his Edward I, Edward II’s reign was a and take me in thy arms. gruesome end in Berkeley Castle in disappointment. To Edward II, being a king September 1327 - he was brutally murdered Gaveston, Act l Scene 1 meant doing as he pleased and enjoying with a red hot iron. himself. He had no interest in government or resource pack edward II socio-historic context Renaissance Drama - the Golden Age Queen Elizabeth l banned the performance I will have heads and lives for him, as many of Morality plays, which had begun to comment on and criticise the monarchy and As I have manors, castles, towns and towers. acts of injustice. Members of strolling Trecherous Warwick! Traitorous Mortimer! theatre companies who performed these plays were often persecuted and executed. If I be England’s king, in lakes of gore In London a new secular drama developed Your headless trunks, your bodies will I trail, - a mix of the old Morality plays and new humanist ideas. These plays included That you may drink your fill, and quaff in blood; works by Ben Johnson and Christopher Edward at Gaveston’s death, Act lll Scene 2 Marlowe. The popular plays of Shakespeare Master of the Revels man’s death and in 1592 he was arrested for dominated this period, but revenge tragedy All scripts were read and licensed before possession of counterfeit coins. Once again was also popularised by Webster, they were allowed to be performed in in 1952 he was bound over after a scuffle Middleton and Shirley. This genre was public. Any criticism of the Queen or her with two constables and in the same year he firmly based on the model for Greek government was not allowed and was a far was sued for assault after a violent attack tragedy but did follow the theories of the more important part of the job of censor on a tailor in Canterbury. Finally Roman Seneca. The Roman’s partiality for than that of cutting out blasphemy or in Deptford on 30 May 1593 aged 29, he spectacle was revised in the form of the material that was morally offensive. was stabbed to death by Ingram Frizer, English court masques often performed to a con man. mark specific dates - Twelfth Night, The Lord Admiral, The Earl of Pembroke Christmas and Midsummer. and other dignitaries became theatrical Less than a fortnight before his death entrepreneurs, who first gave patronage to Marlowe’s clashes with the authorities had These expensive affairs were an elaborate travelling theatre companies and later taken on a far more serious nature. He was ritual designed to impress foreign theatre-based companies. Marlowe wrote summoned to the Privy Council to answer dignitaries and guests at court with the use Edward the Second to be performed by the allegations over the circulation of of mime, dance, music and special visual Earl of Pembroke’s Men under such subversive and heretical materials. Most effects. Here too in Edward the Second sponsorship. damning was evidence submitted by a Gaveston puts this form to use in the former associate of Marlowe’s, Richard wooing of Edward: Wrong Side of the Law Baines, who alleged he had attacked the After leaving Cambridge University bible and the divinity of Jesus and was I must have wanton poets, pleasant wits. Marlowe was repeatedly in trouble with the trying to convert people to atheism. This Musicians, that with touching of a string law. He spent nearly two weeks in Newgate led many to the opinion that there was May draw the pliant king which way Prison in 1589 after becoming involved in a more to the circumstances of Marlowe’s I please; London street fight which resulted in a death than a simple tavern brawl. Act I Scene 1 Elizabethan England Marlowe the Spy... The Elizabethan era saw the Trade increased It is a common view that Marlowe was working for her Majesty’s government on change from feudal to Money became power to the national security matters, leading many Renaissance society commentators and biographers to speculate wealthy classes over the motives behind his death as far more The feudal system was than a simple pub brawl. autocratic and morality Artistic and cultural worlds was fixed expanded The Elizabethans discovered Demand for education new worlds and saw a change increased to an emphasis on individuality Basic literacy of the middle Religious changes unsettled classes improved the population - old Catholic Permanent systems were morality shifted to individualism challenged resource pack edward II 1 The Cast Edward II Joseph Fiennes (1) Gaveston James D’Arcy (2) Edmund, Earl of Kent Gideon Turner (3) Lancaster/Abbot of Neath David Mallinson (4) Mortimer the Elder/Leicester Jack Carr (5) Mortimer the Younger Lloyd Owen (6) Earl of Warwick /Sir Thomas Berkeley Robert Demeger (7) Pembroke/Rhys Ap Howell Andy Hockley (8) Bishop of Coventry/Spencer the Elder Leader Hawkins (9) Archbishop of Canterbury/Arundel

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