RRP : £8.99
Our Price : £7.64
Discount : 15%
Pub Date : August 2007
ISBN : 9780713677652
Edition : Revised edition
Format : Paperback
Dimensions : 198x129mm
Extent : 160 pages
Theme :
crime, death, jealousy, revenge
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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’.
About the Author(s)
Dr Tom Lockwood, Lecturer in English at the University of Birmingham.
His article The Sheridans at Work' was awarded The Review of English Studies Essay Prize and his book Ben Jonson in the Romantic Age is published by Oxford University Press.
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