53 pages • 1 hour read
AnonymousArden of Faversham
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1592A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Cuckold’s Horns
Cuckold’s horns are a symbol of infidelity both in Arden of Faversham and in early modern English culture more widely. Almost always, the horns are associated with a male character whose wife is unfaithful, which is a source of public humiliation and emasculation.
It is unclear whether Arden is more emotionally upset by his wife’s infidelity or being perceived as a cuckold. In Scene 4, Arden laments Alice’s infidelity to his companion Franklin. He says, “At home or not at home, where’er I be, / Here, here it lies, ah, Franklin, here it lies” (4.31-32). Depending on the actor’s interpretation, Alice’s infidelity lays heavily “here,” on either his heart or on his head, where a cuckold horn would grow. Different physical motions by the actor can style Arden more as a loving husband or as a social climber who is most concerned with the social repercussions of being cuckolded.
When Alice and Mosby prepare to taunt Arden by locking arms, Alice calls Arden “my husband Hornsby” (12.68), indicating that she is aware of Arden’s fear of being cuckolded. Mosby then taunts Arden openly about having cuckold’s horns: “the horns are thine” (13.82). This is a potent taunt that compels both Arden and Franklin to violence. As Franklin says, “no wrong could spite a jealous man / More than the hateful naming of the horn” (13.141-142). Early modern cultural standards of masculinity demanded that men be in command of their wives; to bear the cuckold’s horn was thus to be symbolically emasculated, shamed, and impotent.
Words and Oaths
Words, specifically in the form of oaths, are a motif that helps illuminate several key themes, particularly Female Sexuality and Autonomy. Alice continually weighs her marriage vows to Arden against her desire to be with Mosby: she cannot be with Mosby while her oath to Arden stands. She minimizes the power and authority of her marriage oath to Arden, while somewhat contradictorily swearing on the power of her oath to Mosby.
On one hand, Alice insists that words and oaths are meaningless. She uses this principle to justify her infidelity. When Mosby expresses hesitance to importune Alice while her marriage oaths stand, Alice says,
Shall an oath make thee forsake my love?
[…] Tush, Mosby, oaths are words, and words is wind,
And wind is mutable. Then, I conclude,
Tis childishness to stand upon an oath (1.433, 436-438).
Alice argues that if oaths are merely words, and words are like the wind, which can easily change, then oaths, too, can easily change. By minimizing the power of her marriage oaths, her transgression seems less egregious.
At the same time, when it comes to her vow of love to Mosby and their oath to kill Arden, Alice insists that oaths are binding. While detailing everything that she has risked to kill Arden and be with Mosby, Alice asks, “Remember, when I locked thee in my closet, / What were thy words and mine? Did we not both / Decree to murder Arden in the night?” (1.191-193). While her oath to Arden is mutable, the oaths she has made with Mosby are unbreakable: the criteria Alice uses to differentiate between false and true oaths seems to be whether they advance her interests.
Mosby notices Alice’s relationship to the instability of words, and it affects his perceptions of and trust in her. He tells Alice, “Ah how you women can insinuate / And clear a trespass with your sweet-set tongue!” (8.146-147) Mosby implies that women’s words have an obscuring, almost hypnotizing quality such that sweet words can cover misdeeds. Observing the way Alice wields the power of words over Arden, Mosby assumes that she will eventually do so to him: “But what for that I may not trust you, Alice? / You have supplanted Arden for my sake / And will exterpin me to plant another” (8.39-41). Mosby’s contentious relationship with the power of Alice’s words and imagined betrayal has more to do with his paranoia than with Alice’s intentions; she has not given Mosby cause to think she is less than faithful to him. However, witnessing Alice’s dual and contradictory treatment of oaths has embittered Mosby to her, cuing his plan to get rid of her.
Blood
Blood serves as a potent recurring symbol in the text, though it symbolizes different things at different moments: it is a symbol of someone’s character, a symbol of revenge, and a symbol of guilt. Arden invokes his “blood”—a symbol of his high status—to contrast himself with Mosby, heightening their class tension (see Class Tension and Social Mobility). Arden says, “I am by birth a gentleman of blood” (1.36). Mosby, on the other hand, is an “injurious ribald” with “lustful blood” (1.36, 43), symbolizing what Arden perceives as his low birth and indecent relationship with Alice.
When Will’s face is bloodied by the closing shop window, Greene tells him to clean the blood from his face and remember his oath to kill Arden. To Will, word-based promises are worthless: “I have broken five hundred oaths!” (3.82) Instead, he turns the blood on his face into a symbolic promise of revenge: “Seest thou this gore that cleaveth to my face? / From hence ne’er will I wash this bloody stain / Till Arden’s heart be panting in my hand” (3.97-99). For a hardened criminal like Will, being maimed in such a visible way requires a promise of revenge that is more potent than words.
Finally, blood serves as a symbol of guilt. In the early modern period, there were many pervasive myths about how the blood of a murder victim would react to their assailant. One was the belief that the bloodstains of a murdered victim were providentially indelible. As such, Alice and Susan struggle to clean Arden’s blood. Susan remarks that “the blood cleaveth to the ground and will not out” (14.249) while Alice says, “the more I strive, the more the blood appears” (14.251). Arden’s magically multiplying blood denotes their guilt. Later, when Alice is taken to Arden’s corpse, it begins to bleed again. Alice says, “The more I sound his name, the more he bleeds. / This blood condemns me and in gushing forth / Speaks as it falls and asks me why I did it” (16.4-6). Early modern popular thought held that a corpse would begin to bleed anew in the presence of its murderer, their blood symbolizing that person’s guilt. This evidence was sometimes permissible in court and likely played a role in Alice’s condemnation.
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