Shakespeare’s Edward III: in one act
Director’s Notes
Edward III is Fringe-speare. It’s the fringiest of Shakespeare’s plays in the respect that for one hundred fifty years, it has remained the fringes of the Shakespearean canon. In 1875, German academic Alexander Teetgen called the exclusion of Edward III from the rest of Shakespeare’s body of work “absurd” and a “scandal.” This “scandalous” exclusion has started to fade only within the last several decades. Recently, a growing cohort of scholars have come to accept it as a work by Shakespeare, with significant editions of the play published by the New Cambridge Shakespeare in 1998 and Arden Shakespeare in 2017.
Today, we present you with a small sample of this Fringe play, which has been overlooked for centuries. Even in the heavily cut version we present today, we can spot some of Shakespeare’s ideas for this story. We see King Edward III, one of England’s most revered warrior-monarchs, faced with contradictions and limits of his unlimited power. While he wages war and conquest on another nation, he cannot have any woman he chooses. He plays political, military, and romantic games, moving his chess pieces, with the least amount of calculus in the latter.
Meanwhile, King Edward desires the industriousness of the rest of his army and nation. He says, “Oh, that I were a honey-gathering bee,” wishing that he could be as productive as those around him. The tension, of course, is whether or not the King will realize his role in the national hive. Can Edward gather the honey, or will he end up as the “poison-sucking envious spider” he fears lies within?
Today, we present a short episode from this much longer and far too neglected play. Who knows, maybe someday we will present the full-length version.
Until then, enjoy the Fringe-Spear, and may you gather some honey and avoid the spiders,
William Wolfgang, PhD
Director, Edward III: in one act
