Das Leben Eduards des Zweiten von England (The Life of Edward II of England)

In 1923, Bert Brecht was hired as director for the Munich Kammerspiele. Lion Feuchtwanger advised Shakespeare and Caspar Neher was already painting the set for Macbeth when it was decided otherwise.¹ Brecht’s first independent directorial work was to be Marlowe’s Edward II. Based on a translation by Alfred Walter Heymel (1912), the play was adapted by Feuchtwanger and Brecht.² The result can neither be called a translation nor a drama by Christopher Marlowe. Several characters (including the Mortimer the Elder or Lightborn) and storylines are deleted. The text is considerably shorter than the original, and of the approximately 2,000 lines, only about 350 can be considered an actual translation of the English text.³ In Brecht’s work, Edward II became a play about class society and the abuse of power by the state.⁴

The Life of Edward II of England had its premiere on 19 March 1924. The set and design were by Caspar Neher, and the main roles were played by Erwin Faber, Erich Riewe, Oskar Homolka, Hans Schweikart and Maria Koppenhöfer. The audience reacted favourably, but it was not a success.⁵ Since the 1950s, however, Brecht’s version has been shown repeatedly in England and the USA..⁶

Brecht probably did not attach great importance to this work retrospectively, for he commented on it at most casually, although an important preliminary work for the Epic Theatre is seen in The Life of Edward II of England.⁷ It cannot be considered a Brechtian "Gegenentwurf ", for hardly anyone in the German-speaking world knew of Marlowe’s existence and even fewer had ever heard of Edward II, let alone read it.⁸ This was probably one of the reasons why Brecht chose a drama by Marlowe rather than Shakespeare. In the German-speaking world, an image of Shakespeare erected by Romanticism prevailed, which the newer currents in theatre were no longer prepared to accept, something Brecht openly expressed:

"Wir wollten eine Aufführung ermöglichen, die mit der Shakespearetradition der deutschen Bühnen brechen sollte, jenem gipsig monumentalen Stil, der den Spießbürgern so teuer ist."⁹

Since Shakespeare’s plays were well known, it was easier to demonstrate the "original" or "new" in an unnoticed work. It goes without saying that Brecht thereby distanced himself far from Marlowe and that the innovations had less to do with Elizabethan theatre than with Brechtian theatre,¹⁰ because:

"Brecht wrote a pastiche based on Marlowe’s play and more loosely on works by Shakespeare which he intended his audience to take as an authentic Renaissance history play."¹¹