Arden of Faversham (New Mermaids)

This ‘lamentable and true tragedy', as it is announced on its title
page, dramatises a domestic murder of the sort that nowadays
scandalises and thrills the readers of tabloid newspapers. Although the
title advertises ‘the great malice and dissimulation of a wicked woman'
and her ‘unsatiable desire of filthie lust', the unknown playwright
with great dramatic skill and psychological insight manages to balance
the motivations of all the main characters. Thomas Arden, one of the
rapacious landlords so reviled in mid-Elizabethan social drama, was
murdered at his own house in Faversham, Kent, in 1551. His murderers,
it turned out, had been hired by his wife Alice, thrall to Mosby, who
hoped to rise socially by marrying a rich widow. As the introduction to
this edition shows, sexual and material covetousness is the central
theme running through the play, which is commonly rated ‘unquestionably
the best of all Elizabethan domestic tragedies'.