Resource Post 8

I would like to turn again to secondary sources by looking at Randall Martin's essay, "Arden winketh at his wife’s lewdness, & why!’: A Patrilineal Crisis in Arden of Favrersham," published in Early Theater issue 4 (2001).

In this essay, Martin compares Arden’s behavior towards Alice with his behavior towards other characters, namely Mosby. He argues that the play fashions Arden into a man preoccupied with business; he is always hunting for ways to elevate his social status and reinforce his financial stability, particularly as a way of ensuring his familial line continues with the same status which he has attained by the beginning of the play. Martin argues that it is Arden’s preoccupation with business and his tolerance for the adultery which Alice is committing that allows Alice and Mosby’s murder plot to have power and to ultimately be successful.

Martin touches on a number of good points in this essay. From the very beginning of the play, we are able to see two things about Arden quite clearly. The first is that Arden is very concerned with his social status. He seems to revel in his own successes while viciously critiquing the successes of others, namely Mosby, whom I see as very much like Arden in his own rise to success (both came into prominence through work, not inheritance). The second is that Arden seems to simply ignore his wife's adulterous behavior, even though it is made quite clear (in my opinion) that Arden knows full well of Alice's adultery. Martin explores the connection between these two aspects in this essay, and he (as I mention above) argues that it is this obsession with his social status that facilitates and leads Arden to his eventual murder.

This essay is obviously wonderful for my own research, as I also aim to explore the connection between Arden's behavior and his eventual murder. Unlike Martin, however, my argument is that it is Arden's prioritization of the bond of male friendship over the need to address his wife's adulterous behavior that eventually ends with Arden's murder. Seeing as the connection between Martin's work and my own is so strong, I feel that I would be remiss not to use it in my research.

Now, in my experience, I have found that economy and social status are prominent concerns in the works of the early modern (and later, Restoration) English stage. Thus, even if your topic of interest is not what mine is (I should certainly hope that it is not...), this work would still be worth checking out in order to see how the anonymous author of the play interweaves this concern over economy and social status with another major concern of early modern English society: the power of women. There's a lot that might be taken from Martin's article,  and I definitely recommend it to anyone whose subject matter is related to this topic.