This is possibly the most unusual play I have read to date and I’m not quite sure how well this play works into our seminar on marriage. Though marriage plays a part in the play, it is not its main focus, rather its focus is on the many people who want Arden dead for their own benefit.
ie:
-Alice wants Arden dead so she can pursue her relations with Mosby
-Mosby wants him dead for Arden’s wealth
-Greene wants him dead so he can gain back his lost land
-Michael and Clarke want him dead to have Susan
-Black Will and Shakebag want him dead for money
This play does discuss the themes of women being used as commodities (in the case of Susan), and woman in positions of power (like Alice). Alice is an interesting character, even though she is very adamant about having her husband dead, she still assumes the personality of a “good wife”. This is predominant almost everywhere, but an example is in the scene when she appears to her husband while arm-in-arm with Mosby. When the murder plot fails, she states that is was only done in jest, when it was actually meant to enrage him.
There were a few elements that I found odd about the play though. First was the separation of the play into scenes without acts. Also at the beginning of each scene we there were no descriptions of the setting, they just begin and as a reader you have to decipher where you are (ie. either with Alice and Mosby, with Arden, or somewhere between both), eventually it became easy to decipher.
Another item that I found unusual was the 2 times in the text when Black Will’s and Shakebag’s lines where put into block text as apposed to poetic format. When it first appeared (II:19) I thought it was because both men were criminals and it was used as a method of showing their outcast position compared to others, but then it disappeared, so did my theory. As I chalked it up to a typo in my edition it appeared once again (XVI:12) I don’t know why this is like this and after talking to Stevie I still don’t know.
The final item that I found unusual was the many attempts and failures of the murder of Arden. In my experience in reading Elizabethan plays, normally when someone is to be murdered it only takes one try (two if you wanted to show troubles in his murder). But this play did it too many times! At first it was dramatic, then it became comical, and then it was just sad (I was almost happy for Arden to be killed so these poor people can move one with their lives).
