Arden of Faversham (Characters)

Characters

Alice Arden

Alice Arden is the ruthless, immoral wife of Thomas Arden. She does not love her husband and is carrying on an affair with Mosby. She is so much in the grip of this passion that she plans and carries out the murder of her husband. She commits this murder even though she recognizes from time to time that Mosby is not a very admirable character. In scene 1, she taunts him as a "Base peasant" and says she was bewitched by him. Before she fell in love with him, she says, she was deeply in love with her husband. She acknowledges that Arden is a "gentleman" and that Mosby comes from a lower class. Yet she cannot free herself from her infatuation, which leads her to lie, deceive, and ultimately to murder. After Arden is murdered, Alice is at first filled with remorse, but then she pulls herself together and tries to deceive her guests, saying she is worried about Arden's safety because it is late and her husband has not returned. Then she becomes fearful about what she has done, but her fear quickly turns to a new resolve, and she seems almost gleeful, telling Mosby that they will spend the night "in dalliance and in sport." After that, she takes charge of the situation, directing the moving of the body and telling Mosby and Greene how to escape. After Alice is arrested, she repents of her actions. She is sent to Canterbury to be put to death by burning.

Thomas Arden

Thomas Arden, the husband of Alice, has recently become the owner of much land around the Abbey of Faversham, the property having being redistributed by order of the Duke of Somerset. Arden is therefore newly wealthy, but he makes enemies of former small landowners such as Greene and Reede, whose land he has taken. When they complain, he treats them in a high-handed manner, and this contributes to his violent death, since Greene vows to murder him and Reede curses the land that Arden took from him. Arden behaves in a heartless and arrogant way towards those he can control and whom he deems his inferiors. For example, when he finds out that Susan is the subject of the amorous attentions of both Michael and Clarke, he says he will dismiss her from his service. However, Arden is gracious, even obsequious, to his social superior, Lord Cheyne.

Arden is well aware of his wife's infidelity with Mosby, and it causes him great grief. He does not appear to be a bad husband, and it seems he still loves his wife. He is contemptuous of Mosby because of the latter's low social origins. When Mosby and Alice try to manipulate him into believing in their innocence, Arden on the surface goes along with this charade, even offering Mosby his friendship. But he later reveals that he is fully aware of the truth about his wife's conduct: "But she is rooted in her wickedness, / Perverse and stubborn, not to be reclaimed." This will cause grief in his heart until the day he dies, he says. Since Arden suspects nothing of the murder plot (even though he has a dream about a hunt in which he himself becomes the hunted) he is an easy target, the incompetence of the villains notwithstanding.

Black Will

Black Will is one of the low-life criminals hired by Greene to kill Arden. He was once a soldier at Boulogne, but since then has lived a life of crime in London. He likes to boast about his violent ways, telling Greene that "For a cross word of a tapster I have pierced one barrel after another with my dagger and held him by the ears till all his beer hath run out." He has run a protection racket in which prostitutes had to pay him a fee before he would allow them to set up a whorehouse. Even Lord Cheyne knows about Black Will's lawless ways and predicts that he will hang one day. Black Will is eager to kill Arden and talks a lot about how it is his destiny to do the deed and how efficiently he is going to do it. When he sees Arden, Franklin, and Michael together, he says he will kill all three of them. When it comes to action, however, Black Will is not so efficient. When a shopfront falls on him, bloodying his head, the whole murder plan is ruined. Still he vows, "From hence ne'er will I wash this bloody stain / Till Arden's heart be panting in my hand." His role in the slaughter is to pull Arden down with a towel, allowing the others to stab him. After the murder, Black Will is brought to justice and burnt on a scaffold in Flushing, Holland.

Bradshaw

Bradshaw, a goldsmith, knows Black Will from their time together as soldiers at Boulogne and seems proud of the fact that he now owns his own shop. But Bradshaw is in trouble; he appears unwittingly to have handled a stolen plate belonging to Lord Cheyne and is facing a trial. Will supplies him with information about the thief, that Bradshaw plans to use to get himself acquitted. At the end of the play, Bradshaw is condemned to death for being an accomplice to the murder, even though both he and Alice swear that he knew nothing of it.

Lord Cheyne

Lord Cheyne, a nobleman, appears only in scene 9, when he enters with his men just as Black Will and Shakebag are about to murder Arden. Lord Cheyne is on good terms with Arden and invites him and Franklin to his home for supper. Lord Cheyne also knows Black Will, and when he sees him he rebukes him, saying that he will likely end up hanged. Behaving with the easy assurance of the born aristocrat, Lord Cheyne gives Will a crown and tells him that he must reform his disreputable life.

Clarke

Clarke is a painter who desperately wants to win the hand of Susan, Mosby's sister. He is so unscrupulous that he agrees to Mosby's request to create a painting that will poison anyone who looks at it. Mosby promises him Susan's hand in return. When Mosby and Alice decide they do not like the idea of a poisoned picture, he agrees to produce a poisoned drink that can be used to kill Arden. After that does not work, Clarke agrees to produce a poisoned crucifix. After the murder, which is actually carried out without any of his materials, Clarke flees, and no details of his fate are known.

Adam Fowle

Adam Fowle, the landlord of the Flower-de-Luce inn, appears in scene 1, bringing a message for Alice from Mosby. Alice gives him a pair of silver dice to take to Mosby.

Franklin

A loyal friend of Thomas Arden, Franklin is the only man to whom Arden can confide his inner thoughts and feelings. Franklin always tries to cheer Arden up. He gives his friend sound advice about how to handle the difficult situation with Alice, suggesting that he treat her gently. He suggests in scene 4, as a way of comforting Arden, that others have to bear greater woes. When Arden says he cannot bear to be in his own house, Franklin invites him to stay with him in London. Just after this, Franklin's soliloquy shows that he has genuine compassion for Arden. After Arden talks about his nightmare, Franklin tries to reassure Arden that it does not mean that anything bad is about to happen to him. Franklin always has Arden's interests at heart, as when he suggests that Mosby stay away from Arden's house. Arden appreciates Franklin and the friendship he offers: "Franklin, thy love prolongs my weary life; / And, but for thee, how odious were this life."

Greene

Greene is a tenant on land that has recently been passed by higher authority to Arden. Formerly, Greene owned the land on which he lived. He is indignant about the situation because he believes that Arden is being greedy and has cheated him of what is rightfully his. He vows to have his revenge, and Alice pays him money to arrange for Arden's murder in London. It is Greene who hires Shakebag and Black Will to carry out the plan. He gets increasingly exasperated by the incompetence of the two villains and at one point wants to give up the whole enterprise. He has a direct hand in the murder by keeping Franklin away from the scene and then dragging the body out to the fields. He is hanged.

Michael

Michael, Arden's servant, wants to marry Susan, Mosby's sister and for that reason agrees to take part in the plot against Arden. He is also a greedy, immoral man who tells Alice that to win Susan he will even get rid of his elder brother so that ownership of his brother's farm will pass to him and he will be wealthy. Michael agrees to betray his master to the killers, but he is troubled by his conscience, and in his confusion, he manages unwittingly to foil the plot to kill Arden in his own house. However, he plays a significant role in the actual murder, for which he is condemned to execution in Faversham.

Mosby

Mosby, the lover of Alice Arden, was formerly a low-born tailor, but he has managed to climb the social scale and is now steward in the house of the nobleman, Lord Clifford. He is conscious of his humble origins, and when Arden insultingly reminds him of them, he asks that he should be judged by what he is now, not what he was formerly. Mosby is a determined and ruthless man who is also conscious of the price he has paid for his successful social climbing. He admits that when he was poor he was happy, but now that he has more wealth and prestige, he worries about losing them. He is fully aware of the dangers of the course he is pursuing with Alice in their joint effort to get rid of Arden, but he knows that he cannot pull back from it. He is too much in love with Alice. Mosby is the active planner of the two; it is he who solicits Clarke to produce the poisoned painting, and he is unscrupulous enough to bribe the painter with the promise of marriage to Susan if he does what he is asked. Mosby lies to Arden directly, swearing he has no interest in Alice, but then he has a fit of conscience and tells Alice he cannot court her because he has promised Arden he would not. Although he appears to be sincere in this promise, he soon abandons it.

Mosby reveals the full extent of his cunning and his ruthlessness in his soliloquy in scene 8, when he says he will not be safe even when Arden is dead. Greene and Michael must be killed, too, lest they cause trouble for him. He even decides that he will also have to kill Alice because he does not trust her. He states his ambition clearly with the words, "I sole ruler of mine own." He wants to rid himself of anyone who could possibly be a threat to him.

After the murder, Mosby is arrested, and his love of Alice turns to hatred. He is taken to Smithfield, London, to be executed.

Dick Reede

Dick Reede, a sailor and inhabitant of Faversham, appears only in scene 13, when he confronts Arden with a complaint similar to that of Greene. He claims that Arden has taken a plot of land that was his. Although he is going off to sea, he needs the land for his wife and children. Arden tries to brush him off, and Reede responds by cursing the land that Arden took. He says he hopes Arden will be murdered there or meet some other bad end.

Shakebag

Shakebag is one of the two ruffians whom Greene hires to kill Arden. He prides himself on being a vicious cutthroat and boasts that he has stolen more money as a pick-pocket than his partner in crime, Black Will. At one point, he and Will get into a fight with each other. After the murder, in which Shakebag is the second man to stab Arden, Shakebag manages to find sanctuary in some unspecified place, and it appears that he evades capture by the authorities. However, Shakebag meets a bad end, murdered in Southwark.

Susan

Susan is Mosby's sister and Alice Arden's maid. Both Michael and Clarke want to marry her; Michael is even prepared to kill in order to win her hand. After the murder, Susan tries to wash the blood off the floor, and she also helps to move the body. Although she claims that she knew nothing about the plot against Arden until after he had been killed, she is condemned to death and executed at Smithfield in London.