Checkov's Red-hot Poker

Edward II by Christopher Marlowe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There was no one in this drama particularly admirable or memorable. Marlowe's language, as always, is impressive, but there was little else to draw me back to read this play. It took me a crazy long time to push through it.

The most accurate parts of the history were the hardest to believe--fortunes rise and fall over and over, and just about everybody comes to a bad end. Up one day, down another. You're in power; you're banished; back in power; banished; back home; dead. This guy's on your side, then your enemy, then on your side again. You're the king one day; you're a prisoner the next.

Why anyone wanted the crown in those days is beyond me.

Anyway, I'm glad I'm done. I rather root for Marlowe, but didn't love reading this. YMMV, of course. There is always something to catch one's interest in Marlowe's plays.

[Oh, yeah. The assassin asks them to prepare a red-hot poker--supposedly the way Edward II was killed, with it jammed up ow ow ow can't say... it burns... ow--but then they kill him by "pressing" with a table on top of him, standing on it. The poker is never mentioned again. That's just bad form! I bet he got some boos for that.]

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