This 'lamentable and true tragedy', as it is announced on its title page, dramatises a domestic murder of the sort that nowadays scandalises and thrills the readers of tabloid newspapers. Although the title advertises 'the great malice and dissimulation of a wicked woman' and her 'unsatiable desire of filthie lust', the unknown playwright with great dramatic skill and psychological insight manages to balance the motivations of all the main characters. Thomas Arden, one of the rapacious landlords so reviled in mid-Elizabethan social drama, was murdered at his own house in Faversham, Kent,...