chunk: The play telescopes most of Edward II's reign into a single narrative, beginning with the recall of his favourite, Piers Gaveston, from exile, and ending with his son, Edward III, executing Mortimer Junior for the king's murder.
  Marlowe's play opens at the outset of the reign, with Edward's exiled favourite, Piers Gaveston, rejoicing at the recent death of Edward I and his own resulting ability to return to England. In the following passage he plans the entertainments with which he will delight the king:
  Music and poetry is his delight;
  Therefore I'll have Italian masques by night,
  Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows;
  And in the day, when he shall walk abroad,
  Like sylvan nymphs my pages shall be clad;
  My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns,
  Shall with their goat-feet dance an antic hay.
  Sometime a lovely boy in Dian's shape,
  With hair that gilds the water as it glides,
  Crownets of pearl about his naked arms,
  And in his sportful hands an olive tree