Arden of Faversham The New Oxford Shakespeare

'He must leave to live that we may love'

The Tragedy of Master Arden of Faversham is based on the murder of Thomas Arden in Faversham in 1551 by his wife, Alice. The play depicts Alice Arden's increasingly desperate attempts to kill her husband so as to be with her lover, Mosby. It is a collaborative play, but also Shakespeare's earliest 'domestic tragedy'. Complete with explanatory notes, a full chronology, and author biography, Iman Sheeha's introduction explores Arden of Faversham's place within the genres of tragedy and true crime, as well as how the play portrays gender, class, race, household service, and neighbourly relationships.

The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work.

ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

William Shakespeare

Iman Sheeha is a Senior Lecturer in Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature at Brunel University of London. She is the author of Household Servants in Early Modern Domestic Tragedy (2020). Her research has appeared in Shakespeare Survey, Early Theatre, Shakespeare, Cahiers Élisabéthains, Early Modern Literary Studies, and American Notes and Queries. Her work has either appeared or is forthcoming in several edited collections of essays, including People and Piety: Devotional Writing in Print and Manuscript in Early Modern England (2019) and Shakespeare and Misogyny, and Reading the Coastline in Shakespeare's Britain.

Terri Bourus is Professor of Theatre and Professor of English at Florida State University. She is a General Editor of The New Oxford Shakespeare and the author of Young Shakespeare's Young Hamlet (2014). She has written essays on stage directions, the performance of religious conversion, Shakespeare and Fletcher's Cardenio, the role of Alice in Arden of Faversham, and Middleton's female roles. Bourus is an Equity actor, and has directed and acted in, two very different productions of Hamlet, both based on Q1.

Gary Taylor is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor at Florida State University. He is a General Editor of The New Oxford Shakespeare and has written, edited, and co-edited numerous other volumes including The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton (2012), Moment by Moment by Shakespeare (1985), and Reinventing Shakespeare (1989). He general-edited the Signs of Race and History of Text Technologies series, founded the interdisciplinary History of Text Technologies program at FSU, and has written about the practice and theory of editing in various periods and genres. Taylor has also worked to communicate contemporary literary theory and criticism to a mass audience in newspapers, radio, TV, museums and theatres in North America and the UK.

General Editors' Preface to The New Oxford ShakespeareIntroductionNote on the TextSelect BibliographyA Chronology of William ShakespeareTHE TRAGEDY OF MASTER ARDEN OF FAVERSHAM