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.

[vi]

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. 

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