Arden of Faversham

While the play depicts a society in which social mobility is increasingly possible, this mobility heightens class tension between the play’s upper-class and middle-class characters. Characters can climb the social ladder, but there are still deeply entrenched class divisions and prejudices. This theme mainly manifests in the tension between Arden and Mosby, though it is also evident between Alice and Mosby, as well as between Arden, Greene, and Reede.

Arden is “by birth a gentleman of blood” (1.36), whereas Mosby is a tailor who has risen to become the steward of a gentleman’s house. The class tension between Arden and Mosby is evident insofar as Arden uses it to degrade Mosby when he sees him as a competitor for Alice’s love. Arden can socialize in a friendly manner with Mosby when they are getting along. He even invites Mosby to his house on the night when he is eventually murdered. When he is at odds with Mosby, however, he mocks his profession to his face and behind his back. Arden is more insulted by the fact that Alice is having an affair with a former tailor than he is by her having an affair in general. Confronting Mosby, he says, “Villain, what makes thou in her company? / She’s no companion for so base a groom” (1.304-305). By labeling Mosby a villain, Arden makes clear that Mosby has socially transgressed. His next words elaborate on the nature of his transgression: Mosby is too “base” for Alice’s company. Calling someone “base” is a frequent descriptor in early modern literature that indicates low-born status. Though Mosby has risen from his previous status as a tradesman, he cannot escape his low birth.

Alice, too, mobilizes class against Mosby when they are at odds. When Mosby feigns annoyance to test Alice’s love, she calls him a “base peasant” and asks him how he can hope to match with her, who is “descended of a noble house / And matched already with a gentleman / Whose servant thou may’st be” (1.202-204). Not only does Alice compare Mosby’s social status to Arden’s, but in doing so she uses the informal “you” of Elizabethan England: “thou.” While this form of address can indicate familiarity or intimacy, it can also denote social inferiority. Alice only ever uses this form when she addresses Mosby. It is a pointed comment on his social class.

Arden despises Mosby for climbing from tailor to steward due to his “servile flattery and fawning” (1.28), but Arden has benefitted from this same system of social mobility. Though Arden hasn’t changed ranks as drastically as Mosby, he benefitted enormously from his proximity to King Edward VI through Franklin. It is due to this closeness that Arden is enriched with the letters patent for Faversham Abbey, “sealed and subscribed with [the Duke of Somerset’s] name and the king’s” (1.6). This enrichment comes at the expense of both Greene and Reede, who also have claims to the abbey. Greene tells Alice that “your husband doth me wrong / To wring from me what little land I have” (1.470-471). Greene is poorer than Arden and his livelihood, and therefore life, is tied to Faversham Abbey, which Arden feels no guilt in taking. Arden similarly feels no guilt toward Reede, who claims that Arden “wrongfully detain[s]” the abbey lands from him. Reede says that though the income from the land is small, “yet will it help my wife and children” (13.15). Like Greene, Reede’s livelihood has been taken from him by Arden, who uses it to bolster his wealth and power.

Class tensions exist amid social mobility throughout the text. Upper-class characters like Arden and Alice weaponize their nobility in moments when it suits them against characters they deem as “base,” like Mosby. Whether they realize it or not, they carry entrenched prejudice against the lower classes. Arden, for instance, has climbed the social ladder at the expense of the livelihood of those far less well-off than he is, which he does not see as a problem. Yet when he sees this behavior in Mosby, his class prejudices emerge.