Beholding Violence: A Conference on Medieval and Early Modern Culture

In the anonymous domestic tragedy, Arden of Faversham, the eponymous protagonist of the play is, from the earliest scenes of the play, the object of the murderous machinations of his wife, Alice, and her lover, Mosby. The adulterous lovers also recruit several other characters in the play to murder Arden, some for their own motives of revenge against Arden, some for love of Mosby’s sister, Susan, and still others for pay. Arden is nearly poisoned at his breakfast, an artist plots to do him in with a toxic painting, several attempts are made to ambush him on the road, and his servingman plots to let murderers in the door after the household has gone to sleep. At one point, rather suggestively, the assassins Black Will and Shakebag, attempting to use a fog as cover for yet another ambush, fail properly to see the lay of the land and fall into a ditch in pursuit of their prey. The fog, Arden remarks, seems to him a “mystical mist.” (The “mystical” ways that Arden is protected again and again from his unknown adversaries suggest nothing so much as divine protection, rendering absurd the attempts on his life. His assassins remark time and again that the preservation of his life is miraculous.) As the failed attempts to kill Arden add up, each successive failure produces the effects of farce, if, to borrow a phrase from Eliot, a “savage farce.” The comical nature of the play only collapses near the end when Arden encounters Dick Reede, whom he has deprived of his land and livelihood. Confronted by a sympathetic adversary for the first time, Arden dismisses Reede with contempt, and Reede responds by invoking God to punish Arden’s transgressions. In the subsequent scene, Arden is butchered by his wife, her lover, and their assassins in precisely the manner evoked by Reede’s curse. Arden is protected from violence, and comically so, by a mystical series of miraculous escapes, but once divine retribution is invoked by a sympathetic figure, the play takes its tragic turn, the guardian angels flee, and violence is only too real.



	Miles Taylor (Assistant Professor, English, Le Moyne College) “‘A Mystical Mist’: Comic and Tragic Violence in Arden of Faversham” In the anonymous domestic tragedy, Arden of Faversham, the eponymous protagonist of the play is, from the earliest scenes of the play, the object of the murderous machinations of his wife, Alice, and her lover, Mosby. The adulterous lovers also recruit several other characters in the play to murder Arden, some for their own motives of revenge against Arden, some for love of Mosby’s sister, Susan, and still others for pay. Arden is nearly poisoned at his breakfast, an artist plots to do him in with a toxic painting, several attempts are made to ambush him on the road, and his servingman plots to let murderers in the door after the household has gone to sleep. At one point, rather suggestively, the assassins Black Will and Shakebag, attempting to use a fog as cover for yet another ambush, fail properly to see the lay of the land and fall into a ditch in pursuit of their prey. The fog, Arden remarks, seems to him a “mystical mist.” (The “mystical” ways that Arden is protected again and again from his unknown adversaries suggest nothing so much as divine protection, rendering absurd the attempts on his life. His assassins remark time and again that the preservation of his life is miraculous.) As the failed attempts to kill Arden add up, each successive failure produces the effects of farce, if, to borrow a phrase from Eliot, a “savage farce.” The comical nature of the play only collapses near the end when Arden encounters Dick Reede, whom he has deprived of his land and livelihood. Confronted by a sympathetic adversary for the first time, Arden dismisses Reede with contempt, and Reede responds by invoking God to punish Arden’s transgressions. In the subsequent scene, Arden is butchered by his wife, her lover, and their assassins in precisely the manner evoked by Reede’s curse. Arden is protected from violence, and comically so, by a mystical series of miraculous escapes, but once divine retribution is invoked by a sympathetic figure, the play takes its tragic turn, the guardian angels flee, and violence is only too real.