Arden of Faversham

Foreshadowing is a literary device wherein an author gives an oblique hint about something that will happen later. In Arden of Faversham, the circumstances of Arden’s murder are foreshadowed throughout the play. The first instance comes when Arden is scolding Mosby for wearing a sword, which only the nobility was allowed to carry. He tells him to instead wield “your bodkin, / Your Spanish needle, and your pressing-iron” (1.312-313). Later, when Mosby contributes to Arden’s murder, he says, “There’s for the pressing-iron you told me of” (14.229). The historical figure Thomas Arden was bludgeoned to the head; depending on how the director of the play wanted to depict Mosby’s strike at Arden, they could easily feature a pressing-iron in the murder scene, making Arden’s earlier words foreshadow his death.

Arden’s interactions with Reede also feature foreshadowing. Reede curses Arden to die on the same plot of land that Arden holds from him, Faversham Abbey: “The plot of ground which thou detains from me […] Be ruinous and fatal unto thee! […] there be butchered by thy dearest friends” (8.32, 34-35). Though Alice and her co-conspirators aspire to murder Arden when he is away from home, he ends up being killed in his home—thus the