Arden of Faversham - Plot

Plot

The playwright followed the account in Holinshed's Chronicle fairly closely, not only in the sequence of events leading to the murder and trial, but also in the unusually complex thematics of the event. From the first scene, Arden is a markedly ambiguous character; he is shown to be intemperate, domineering, and deceitful, having just in essence stolen a piece of land from a fellow townsman named Greene. These touches of characterization seem to clash with the play's stated intent (itself perhaps an attempt to dupe the omnipresent official censors), announced on the title page as a didactic play which is to show "the great malice and dissimulation of a wicked woman, the insatiable desire of filthy lust, and the shameful end of all murderers"; they do, however, reveal an ability to create complex characters decidedly above the norm for anonymous Elizabethan playwrights. A similar complexity is found in the murder scenes, which combine genuine tension, for instance in the assassins' attempts to find Arden on a foggy night, with almost bathetic humor, in their incompetent attempts on the man's life.