This ‘lamentable and true tragedy’, as it is announced on its titlepage, dramatises a domestic murder of the sort that nowadaysscandalises and thrills the readers of tabloid newspapers. Although thetitle advertises ‘the great malice and dissimulation of a wicked woman’and her ‘unsatiable desire of filthie lust’, the unknown playwrightwith great dramatic skill and psychological insight manages to balancethe motivations of all the main characters. Thomas Arden, one of therapacious landlords so reviled in mid-Elizabethan social drama, wasmurdered at his own house in Faversham, Kent, in 1551. His murderers, it turned out, had been hired by his wife Alice, thrall to Mosby, whohoped to rise socially by marrying a rich widow. As the introduction tothis edition shows, sexual and material covetousness is the centraltheme running through the play, which is commonly rated ‘unquestionablythe best of all Elizabethan domestic tragedies’.
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