This cleverly crafted novel has two timelines. In the first, we follow the fortunes of Alice Arden, nee Brigandine. She is married to Thomas Arden, a Kentish merchant, and we are in the fourth and fifth decades of the sixteenth century, in the dying days of the rule of Henry VIII, and the brief reign of his son, the boy King, Edward VI. A young Warwickshire man, Will Shakspere*, who works as a glove maker in his father’s business, is the second subject. We are in the same century, but in its final two decades. On the throne is the daughter of Ann Boleyn, Elizabeth.
*I have retained the spelling of the surname used in the novel, rather than the modern alternative.
Alice has been married off to Thomas Arden, an unscrupulous merchant who, for all his cut and thrust in the business world, has absolutely no interest in Alice as a sexual partner. Her dismay is compounded by the fact that, before her marriage, she had an intense physical relationship with a local tailor, Tom Mosby. Thomas and Alice have moved to the town of Faversham, where Thomas has been made Mayor. When Mosby turns up and seeks to renew his relationship with Alice, she is drawn into a maelstrom of desire and wrong decisions that will have fatal consequences.
The dissolution of the monasteries, in the later years of the reign of Henry VIII, might be viewed as an act of cultural vandalism today, but for the secular world at the time, it provided endless business opportunities. The monasteries had huge land holdings and when Henry’s Treasury put these acres up for sale, merchants and investors sensed an unmissable business opportunity. Inevitably, rivals clashed, and two such were Thomas Arden and Sir Anthony Aucher. It is no exaggeration to say that they were sworn enemies.
As this rivalry blew hotter and hotter, Arden and his wife had come to an astonishing domestic arrangement. Tom Mosby had reappeared, and had sought out his former lover, Alice. Arden was still dependent on the patronage of Sir Edward North, Alice’s stepfather. Arden reluctantly allowed Alice and Mosby to carry on their passionate affair, metaphorically under his nose, but literally under his roof.
Years on from the events in Faversham, Will Shakspere is increasingly frustrated with his lot. He and his wife Ann and their three children rely on Will’s wage from his father’s glove business. Will is not a great craftsman. Profits are made by making the maximum pairs of gloves from any given hide, and Will botches more often than he succeeds. In a desperate attempt to provide meat for his table and leather for his workshop, Will tries to poach a deer from Charlecote Park, but he is caught by Sir Thomas Lucy’s gamekeepers, and is forced to flee Stratford to avoid serious punishment. He scrapes out a living in London as a bit-part actor, trying his best to send money home to Anne and his children.
The book’s title resonates throughout its pages, but in different ways. It was the dense forest that covered much of what is now the West Midlands in Roman times. It was the family name of Shakspere’s mother. They had once been noble, but had fallen from favour long ago. And of, course, it became Alice’s married name when she and Thomas were wed.
Will eventually makes his mark as a playwright in London, but before works such as The Taming of the Shrew made him rich and famous, he dramatises the events in Faversham fifty years earlier. However, as it contains obvious references to families who are still rich and powerful, it is never performed properly.
Aeschylean tragedy, used by Shakspere in such works as Hamlet, Othello and Macbeth, is based on the idea of men and women brought down not because they were inherently evil, but because of poor decisions, ambition, vanity, and human traits like jealousy. Thomas Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge is one such and, like him, Thomas Arden comes to grief when he offends one too many local officials and merchants, and loses all his power and authority. Alice Arden, another tragic figure, makes the mistake of trusting her lover, Tom Mosby, and becomes sucked in to a plot to kill her husband. It goes disastrously wrong and, within hours of the deed, she is arrested, thrown into jail, tried and burnt at the stake, but not before she is subject to an astonishingly vile act of revenge by the local authorities. Decades later, Shakspere learns of this and, now a celebrated and wealthy man, is determined to place on record the last hours of Alice Arden’s life.
Arden is beautifully written, with meticulous historical research. Alice Arden is a truly tragic figure, certainly not a heroine, but a woman brought low by her own desires and poor choices. I have not read a book that brings Will Shakspere to life with such energy since Anthony Burgess’s 1964 novel Nothing Like the Sun. Arden is published by Ginger Cat and is available now.
fullybooked2017 