ARDEN OF FEVERSHAM

Edited with a Preface, Notes and Glossary by REV. RONALD BAYNE M.A.

J. M. DENT AND CO. ALDINE HOUSE : LONDON 1897

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‘Considering the various and marvellous gifts displayed for the first time on our stage by the great poet, the great dramatist, the strong and subtle searcher of hearts, the just and merciful judge and painter of human passions, who gave this tragedy to the new-born literature of our drama ... I cannot but finally take heart to say, even in the absence of all external or traditional testimony, that it seems to me not pardonable merely or permissible, but simply logical and reasonable, to set down this poem, a young man’s work on the face of it, as the possible work of no man’s youthful hand but Shakespeare’s.’

Mr. A. C. Swinburne.

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PREFACE

Early Editions. On 3rd April, 1592, ‘The Tragedie of Arden of Feversham and Blackwall’[A] was entered on the Stationers’ Registers to Edward White. In the same year appeared, ‘The lamentable and true Tragedie of M. Arden of Feversham in Kent. Who was most wickedlye murdered, by the meanes of his disloyall and wanton wyfe, who for the love she bare to one Mosbie, hyred two desperat ruffins, Blackwill and Shakbag, to kill him. Wherin is shewed the great mallice and discimulation of a wicked woman, the unsatiable desire of filthie lust and the shamefull end of all murderers. Imprinted at London for Edward White, dwelling at the lyttle North dore of Paules Church at the signe of the Gun. 1592.’ A second Quarto, with the same title, was printed in 1599. A third, ‘by Eliz. Allde dwelling neere Christs Church,’ appeared in 1633. The second and third Quartos are founded textually upon the first, and their variations are of no value. The text of the first Quarto is unusually good even when prose and verse are mixed together, although the printer has apparently

no scientific knowledge of the nature of metre.

[A] A misprint for Blackwill.

Place of the Play in the Elizabethan Drama. Arden of Faversham is the finest extant specimen of a kind of play which[vi] has been classified as Domestic Tragedy. A picturesque or sensational murder in the sixteenth century was given to the public first in popular ballads or pamphlets, and afterwards, if sufficiently notable, in the more serious Chronicle. From the popular pamphlet, or from the Chronicle, or from both together, it found its way on to the stage. Four of these ‘murder-plays’ have come down to us, and the titles of many others. They form a minor section of the Chronicle plays or Histories. They did not attain any very striking literary development, owing perhaps to the necessary bondage of the poet to his facts. Arden of Faversham is a remarkable instance of the possibilities of this class of play, but it is to be noted that the poet used the narrative of a Chronicler who wrote twenty-seven years after the date of the murder. A Warning for Fair Women and Yarington’s Two Tragedies in One are both inferior

to Arden, though influenced by it. The fourth ‘murder-play’—The Yorkshire Tragedy—is distinct from the other three in style and method. Several famous dramatists produced ‘domestic’ tragedies, but none have survived. A Late Murder of the Son upon the Mother, in which Ford and Webster collaborated, must have been a notable piece of work.

Source of the Play. On Sunday, 15th February 1550-1, Thomas Ardern of Faversham, gentleman, ‘was heynously murdered in his own parlour, about seven of the clock in the night, by one Thomas Morsby, a taylor of London, late servant to sir Edward North, knight, chancellor of the augmentations, father-in-law unto Alice Ardern, wife of the said Thomas Ardern.’ Thomas Ardern was Mayor of Faversham in 1548, and his murder made such a stir that in 1577 the first edition[vii] of Holinshed’s Chronicle devotes five pages (pp. 1703-8) to an elaborate account of it. The chronicler begins thus:—‘About this time there was at Faversham in Kent a Gentleman named Arden most cruelly murthered and slain by the procurement of his own wife. The which murder for the horribleness thereof, although otherwise it may seem to be but a private matter, and therefore as it were impertinent to this History, I have thought good to set it forth somewhat at large, having the instructions delivered to me by them that have used some diligence to gather the true understanding of the circumstances.’ Our first

quotation was from the Wardmote Book of Faversham, and proves that Holinshed’s narrative is not minutely accurate. The Wardmote Book gives a curt account of the actual murder on the Sunday evening with the names and fate of the culprits. It tells us nothing of the previous failures of these culprits which give to Holinshed’s tale such a terrible and dramatic interest. We need not speculate on Holinshed’s sources. No doubt there were many contemporary pamphlets and ballads which recounted the murder. We know only of The Complaint ... of Mistress Arden of Feversham, preserved among the Roxburghe Ballads, and reprinted by Evans and in Miss De Vaynes’ Kentish Garland. But this is dated by Mr. Bullen about 1633, when the third Quarto of the play appeared, and was probably occasioned by that re-issue. The important point to bear in mind is the excellence of Holinshed’s narrative. To praise it adequately we must say that it is worthy of the fine play founded upon it, which probably had no other source. The play agrees always with Holinshed when Holinshed differs

from the Wardmote Book. When the play differs from Holinshed it differs also from the Wardmote Book. To the dramatic[viii] instinct of the poet we must ascribe his suppression of the fact that Arden winked at his wife’s infidelity. Holinshed and the Wardmote Book both explicitly assert this. Franklin, Arden’s friend, is also an invention of the dramatist.

Author of the Play. The three Quartos are all anonymous. We know of no other edition till 1770, when Edward Jacob, a Faversham antiquary, edited the first Quarto, and boldly claimed the play for Shakespeare. Ludwig Tieck published in 1823 an excellent German translation, accompanied by a discriminating statement of the case for the Shakesperean authorship. Delius, editing the play in 1855, agreed with Tieck, and was followed by the French translator, François Victor Hugo, and more recently by Professor Mézières. Owing to the supposed Shakespearean authorship there have been at least three translations into German, one into French, and one into Dutch. In England opinion has been more divided. Henry Tyrrell,[B] Charles Knight, and Mr. Swinburne[C] have supported the Shakespearean authorship. Professor Ward[D] and J. A. Symonds incline to reject it. Professor Saintsbury considers that ‘the only possible hypothesis on which it could be admitted as Shakespeare’s would be that of an early experiment thrown off while he was seeking his way in a direction where he found no

thoroughfare.’[E] Mr. Bullen, who edited a careful reprint of the first Quarto in 1887, suspects ‘that Arden in its present state has been retouched here and there by the master’s hand.’[ix] The latest German editors, Warnke and Proescholt (1888), ‘are of opinion that Shakespeare had nothing to do with Arden of Faversham.’

[B] Doubtful Plays of Shakespeare.

[C] Study of Shakespeare.

[D] History of English Dramatic Literature.

[E] History of Elizabethan Literature.

The Question of Shakespeare’s Authorship. The only reason for ascribing the play to Shakespeare is its merit. It seems incredible that a drama so mature in its art should have been written in 1592 by a writer otherwise unknown to us. In three directions the art of the writer is mature. First, the character of the base coward Mosbie, and of the ‘bourgeois Clytemnestra,’ Alice Arden, are drawn with an insight, delicacy, and sustained power new to English literature in 1592, and not excelled till Shakespeare excelled them. The picture of Arden, as a man fascinated and bewitched by his wife and by his fate, might match that of Mosbie and Alice if the artist had not blurred his conception by the introduction of the jarring motives of avarice and sacrilege. But the poet’s aim is clear; it is his own, and it almost succeeds. Second, the picturesque ferocity and grim humour of Black Will and Shakebag are described with a firmness and ease and restraint of style which critics have not sufficiently noted. I can compare it only with the

Jack Cade scenes of the Contention (and 2 Henry VI.). The prose of our poet is excellent. His humour has a clearly defined character and style of its own. The character of Michael, so admired by Mr. Swinburne, is as subtle and well-sustained as Mosbie’s or Alice Arden’s, and it exhibits our poet’s special humorous gift. This gift, excellent as it is, seems to me very definitely not Shakespearean. But thirdly, the terrifying use of signs and omens and of an almost[x] Shakespearean irony—e.g. Arden’s words, ‘I am almost stifled with this fog!’—combine to produce as the play proceeds an impressive sense of ‘the slow unerring tread of assassination, balked but persevering, marching like a fate to its accomplishment.’ But the special excellencies of the play are all against Shakespeare having written it by 1592. As Mr. Bullen insists, the weak point in Mr. Swinburne’s criticism is the phrase ‘a young man’s work.’ This play is not ‘a young man’s work.’ The copiousness of the young man Shakespeare’s work is the

exact contrary of the deliberate anxious effort which marks the style of Arden of Faversham except in the prose scenes. In none of Shakespeare’s plays can it be perceived that the poet has taken such pains as the poet of Arden takes. Unless Shakespeare wrote this play as soon as he reached London, and then for a year or two wrote nothing else, it is impossible to fit it into his work. And if he wrote the play as soon as he reached London and then took up the studies which resulted in Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, would he have written Love’s Labour’s Lost and Comedy of Errors on his way back to work like Arden? If Shakespeare wrote Arden it is the most interesting fact in his literary development. To suggest that Shakespeare revised the play is to shirk the question. Its excellence is in its warp and woof, not in its ornaments.

Literature. Mr. Bullen’s Introduction is the best monograph on the play. Warnke and Proescholt’s Introduction should be consulted, but lacks the distinction of style and the critical insight of Mr. Bullen’s essay. Excellent analyses and criticisms of the play are in Charles Knight’s Doubtful Plays[xi] (‘Pictorial Shakespere’); J. A. Symonds’ Shakspere’s Predecessors; Alfred Mézières’ Prédécesseurs et Contemporains de Shakspeare. Mr. Fleay in his Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama (1891) has suggested Kyd as the author of Arden.

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ARDEN OF FEVERSHAM

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

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ARDEN OF FEVERSHAM

ACT I

I. i. 4. Patents; the plural is always used in A, cf. Richard II. II. i. 202; II. iii. 130.

I. i. 14. Contrast Holinshed:—‘He, i.e. Arden, was contented to wink at her filthy disorder,’ and Wardmote Book:—‘All which things the said Ardern did well know and wilfully did permit and suffer the same.’ He was afraid to offend Lord North, ‘father-in-law unto Alice Ardern,’ whose servant Mosbie had been. This North was the father of the translator of Plutarch.

I. i. 15. Pass; so Bullen for past, A, B, C.

I. i. 25. Botcher, is not ‘butcher,’ but a mender of old clothes.

I. i. 48. Jealous: spelt jelyouse, and pronounced so throughout the play.

I. i. 60. The reference is to Ovid’s Elegy, ‘Ad Auroram ne properet.’—Amor. i. 13.

I. i. 61. Most editions reject often. If we retain it the line is an Alexandrine. Cf. i. 153, 167, 238, 479; III. v. 73, etc.

I. i. 105. Flower-de-luce. ‘An inn, formerly situated in Abbey Street, nearly opposite Arden’s house.’ C. E. Donne, An Essay on the Tragedy of Arden of Faversham, 1873.

I. i. 117. thy house of force, i.e. ‘fortified house.’

I. i. 135. narrow: so all editors; but the marrow-prying of A may be correct. Blab is either a verb with and omitted after it, or a noun, the subject of hinder.

I. i. 154. An allusion to verses or inscriptions on tapestry hangings.

I. i. 159. Cf. ‘I’ll write to him a very taunting letter.’—As You Like It, III. v. 134.

I. i. 167. ‘It was popularly supposed that a virgin might save a criminal from the gallows by offering to marry him.—See note to my edition of Marston, III. 190-1.’—Bullen.

I. i. 172. Perhaps worth should be omitted.

I. i. 174. Bolton is ‘Boughton, looking down on Canterbury.’—Donne.

I. i. 247. The name ‘Clarke’ is apparently our author’s invention, like the name and character of Franklin. The painter’s name was William Blackburn.

I. i. 266. Leave; Tyrrell reads love.

I. i. 278. makes: this singular with a plural subject is frequent in our play; cf. Enters in the stage directions with a plural, and I. 151, 437, 502; II. i. 1; III. i. 43 and 83; V. 38, etc. Consult Mr. Verity’s note on Edward II., I. iv. 362, Temple Dramatists.

I. i. 312. The statute in question was 37 Edward III. c. 9.

I. i. 314. ‘The making of Spanish needles was first taught in England by Elias Crowse a Germane about the eight yeere of Queene Elizabeth, and in Queen Marie’s time there was a Negro made fine Spanish needles in Cheapeside, but would never teach his art to any.’ Quoted by Bullen from Stowe, edition 1631, p. 1038.

I. i. 314. ‘Then Mosby having at his girdle a pressing iron of 14 pound weight stroke him on the head with the same so that he fell down and gave a great groan.’—Holinshed. Cf V. i. 241.

I. i. 323. Velvet drudge: an allusion to Mosbie’s tailoring.

I. i. 426. Populous: ‘perhaps used in the sense of thick, compact.’—Bullen. Webster quotes this passage and explains, ‘suitable to common people: hence common, inferior, vulgar.’ Delius proposes palpable.

I. i. 466. His in state, i.e. ‘his legally.’

I. i. 472. Cf. ‘To wring the widow from her customed right.’—2 Henry VI., V. i. 188.

I. i. 537. Tyrrell begins Act II. here.

I. i. 546. ‘The gentleman is not in your books.’—Much Ado, I. i. 79.

I. i. 548. make a gree, come to an agreement. Agree was used adverbially for at gree.

ACT II

SCENE I

II. i. 51. Mr. Bullen says that such a line as this ‘might have come straight out of Tamburlaine.’ He goes on, ‘but in no other part of the play can we find a trace of Marlowe’s influence.’ Cf.—

and Shakespeare’s—

II. i. 56. all to torn; ‘entirely torn.’ To in the sense of ‘asunder’ was commonly emphasised by all. Cf. ‘Her wings ... were all to ruffled.’—Comus, 380.

II. i. 58. seam rent: torn at the seams; ‘Seam rent fellows,’—Ben Jonson.

II. i. 101. Imitated in Yarington’s Two Tragedies (iii. 2):—

II. i. 114. I have inserted follow.

SCENE II

II. ii. 3. Michael’s letter is a curious effort at euphuism which calls to mind ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost.’ Note the fabulous natural history, the alliteration, and the alliterative proverb.

II. ii. 51. old filching = ‘rare filching.’ Cf. ‘Yonder’s old coil at hand.’—Much Ado, V. ii. 98.

II. ii. 63. The Counter was a London prison.

ACT III

SCENE I

III. i. 5. Couch dishonour as dishonour buds. Warnke explains Couch = ‘spread,’ comparing ‘couch-grass’; but there is no authority for this use. Is the word used in its surgical sense? The line would then = ‘Cut the bud of dishonour so that it bursts into flower.’ The surgical sense occurs in Holland’s Pliny, 1601.

III. i. 13. plenished is Warnke’s reading for the Quartos’ perisht. Delius and Bullen read flourished.

III. i. 19. Cf. ‘Sorrow and grief have vanquished all my powers.’—2 Henry VI., II. i. 83.

III. i. 45. For this use of sullen cf. ‘Why are thine eyes fixed to the sullen earth?’—2 Henry VI., I. ii. 5, and Sonnet XXIX. 13.

SCENE II

III. ii. 47. A cockshut was a large net used to catch woodcocks after sunset. Cf. ‘Cockshut time.’—Richard III., V. iii. 70.

SCENE III

III. iii. 14. rounded me = brought me round.

III. iii. 40. use: Warnke quotes Macbeth, III. ii. 10, ‘Using those thoughts which should indeed have died.’

III. iii. 44. with the tide, i.e. by boat on the Thames. Holinshed makes Greene and Black Will go to London, from Gravesend apparently, ‘at the tide.’

SCENE IV

III. iv. 18. ‘The country near Rainham seems in the sixteenth century to have been so open as to have entitled it to the appellation of a Down.’—Donne. The spot had a bad reputation.

III. iv. 25. The Salutation is an inn mentioned in Bartholomew Fair.

III. iv. 31. Except is probably the printer’s spelling of accept.

SCENE V

III. v. 4. drink: perhaps we ought to read think.

III. v. 17. stirry: this is meant by the starry of the Quartos.

III. v. 26. hive: Delius’s correction of heave, A, B, C.

III. v. 51. deep pathaires: Delius conjectures deep fet airs; but Mr. Gollancz has probably solved the crux of the play by his suggestion,—‘“Pathaire,” I take to be some special form of “petarre,” i.e. “petard,” probably used in the metaphorical sense of passionate outburst.’—(Lamb’s Specimens, I. i. 297.) The use may be quite literal; for the form cf. Powell’s Tom of All Trades, p. 163, ‘An Enginere for making of Patars.’

III. v. 58. Quoted by Bullen as of ‘genuine Shakesperean flavour.’ He adds III. v. 112-130.

III. v. 116. Mr. Bullen puts a comma at use.

III. v. 131. Thy: several editors read my; but the sense is ‘the good turns I have done you.’

III. v. 133. Warnke explains ‘the quarrel has not yet thickened to so impenetrable a fence as to separate us for ever.’ Perhaps we should read ‘is not thick-set ill.’

III. v. 157. An inconsistency. Cf. II. i. 75. Holinshed quotes from the letter, ‘We have got a man for our purpose, we may thank my brother Bradshaw.’ The Wardmote Book says nothing of Bradshaw’s innocence.

SCENE VI

III. vi. 144. Shorlow should be Shurland in Sheppey.

ACT IV

SCENE I

IV. i. 1. gardant: A, B read gardeant, modern editors guardians.

IV. i. 3. path: so Warnke for pace of A, B, C; but pace in the sense of ‘path’ is not impossible.

IV. i. 17. desires: so Warnke for deserves, A, B, C.

IV. i. 44. ‘A certain broom-close betwixt Feversham and the Ferry.’—Holinshed.

IV. i. 45. Cf. Ecclesiastes, vii. 5.

IV. i. 96. nor with cement: Delius for nor semell, A, B.

SCENE II

IV. ii. 5. This mist is not in Holinshed. It is our poet’s invention.

IV. ii. 30. Cf. Midsummer Night’s Dream, V. i. 237, etc.

SCENE III

IV. iii. 40. Hock Monday followed the second Sunday after Easter. See Brand’s Popular Antiquities.

IV. iii. 68. Our poet blackens Mosbie for the same reason that he whitewashes Arden, e.g.: ‘Master Arden both then and at other times had been greatly provoked by Mosbie to fight with him, but he would not.’ ‘Mosby at the first would not agree to that cowardly murdering of him.’—Holinshed.

SCENE IV

IV. iv. 88. harebrain, A, B, C.

IV. iv. 89. welcome thee with intended; so Warnke for welcome thy intended, A, B, C.

ACT V

SCENE I

V. i. 58. Hilts is common for ‘hilt,’ e.g. in Malory and Shakespeare; ‘both his hilts’ is apparently an extension of this use. Locked I take to mean ‘crossed or clashed swords,’ with his adversary.

V. i. 105. game or two at tables: a sort of backgammon.

V. i. 155. Cf. the concluding lines of Ovid’s Elegy, already alluded to, i. 60.

V. i. 338. ‘Cecily Pounders did help to bear the dead corpse out into a meadow there, commonly called the Amery Croft.’—Wardmote Book.

SCENE II

SCENE III

SCENE IV

V. iv. 5. Faversham was famous for its oysters.

SCENE V

V. v. 30. ‘For the charges of brenning Mistress Arden and execution of George Bradshaw, XLIII S.’—Canterbury Records.

SCENE VI