Arden of Faversham

by William Shakespeare

This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘Arden of Faversham’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of William Shakespeare’.

Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Shakespeare includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

Genres: Plays

178 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 17, 2017

About the author

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".

Reviews

[Anna-Marie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good plot just was quite boring compared to other shakespeares

[Lene · Rating 3 out of 5]

you know, if you ignored the ending, this is actually hilarous

[Dominic H · Rating 4 out of 5]

The biggest single change which came with the New Oxford Shakespeare (NOS) in 2016 following its riveting, pioneering predecessor 20 years before, was the addition of Arden of Faversham, now included along with Edward III ('admitted' in that earlier volume). The NOS comes in three volumes: a modern spelling and an original spelling edition and an Authorship Companion. The last volume runs to nearly 800 pages and I suppose tells us something about this continuing to be a major, certainly the most headline grabbing, area of Shakespeare Studies. The Authorship Companion devotes three substantial essays to Arden of Faversham, full of an almost Kinbotian academic zeal with all the linguistic and stylistic analysis imaginable, to justify Arden's inclusion. But it's so cold and hollow, academic in the worst sense. In most cases, I'm loathe to abandon erudition for gut feel, but I want to advocate the experience of the reader here, one who has been steeped in Shakespeare as long as he can remember - this play is so overwhelmingly alien to the rest of the canon and in particular the contemporaneous plays we know are by Shakespeare, in subject matter, tone, dramatic treatment and handling of blank verse, that it astonishes me that the question ever arose. What about co-authorship and the argument that Shakespeare's hand can be clearly seen in the famous Scene 8? I'd say read Titus first and then come to this. Yes, Scene 8 is different to the rest of the play and the verse writing of higher quality but honestly as a reader it feels a thousand miles away to the rest of the canon. Just because it stands out doesn't mean it has to be by Shakespeare (or Marlowe or Kyd).

Anyway I apologise for simultaneously raising and lowering the tone on Goodreads with non rational non critical digressions but I feel so passionately about getting this out of my system and this is the lucky outlet. But look, if you don't want my opinion (and really why should you?) then a much, much better guide comes from those who act in and direct Shakespeare. Back to the NOS. One of the interesting things it does in the Modern Critical Edition is to preface each play with a large number of quotations about it, what the editors have pretentiously called 'bricolage'. (Every time I come to these sections I simultaneously curse the editors for making me go to the Critical Reference Edition for orientation around textual issues and then am riveted by how well chosen the 'bricolage' remarks are.) Those for Arden include these from Terry Hands, who I continue to (perhaps unfashionably) assert was the greatest director of Shakespeare of his generation:

I cannot see any evidence of Shakespeare in any part of the play, and neither could three different casts of experienced actors. The singularity of purpose, the tightly-associated sub-plots, the peasant society, indeed the major theme, murder, are all unShakespearean..

That's good enough for me and far more authentic than the thousands of words the NOS offers to the contrary.

In the newish Arden (i.e. Arden Shakespeare!) Early Modern Drama Critical Reader for Arden of Faversham, the editors make an obvious point but one that needs to be stressed - the endless debates about authorship have rather tended to obscure the merits of Arden as a play. It's a hugely entertaining drama, at times slapstick, at times something much darker, always compelling. An absolute must read for anyone with an interest in EMD.

PS Only - don't read in it the Delphi Complete Works edition. I use the Parts edition quite often as a cheap and convenient and reasonably Kindle-friendly way to read and refer to individual plays. But the OCR for Arden is shocking and clearly has not been proofread which is desperately, desperately shoddy for a product one is paying for. So I went via the non Kindle friendly NOS (only available as an expensive DRM'd PDF - what were you thinking OUP??).

[Amilia Garside · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprising read for me! I was so engaged in this story and found myself being quite shocked from different turns the plot took.