Edward III of England is the central character in the play Edward III, sometimes attributed to William Shakespeare. He also appears as a boy in Edward II by Christopher Marlowe. Edward is also the protagonist of William Blake's early drama Edward the Third, part of his Poetical Sketches, published in 1783. George Bernard Shaw portrayed Edward for dramatic purposes as, in Shaw's preface to The Six of Calais, behaving himself like an unrestrained human being in a very trying situation.