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The Occupation of Murder
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A notorious murder in 1551 was the subject of an anonymous play first published in 1592: THE LAMENTABLE AND TRUE TRAGEDY OF M. ARDEN OF FAVERSHAM IN KENT. Who Was Most Wickedly Murdered, by the means of his disloyal and wanton wife, who for the love she bare to one Mosby, hired two desperate ruffians, Black Will and Shakebag, to kill him. Black Will ("for a crown he'll murder any man") and Shakebag are masterless men recruited from the London criminal underworld, where "murder would grow into an occupation." This frontispiece to the 1633 Quarto illustrates the murder: Black Will "pulls him down with a towel" while Mosby, Shakebag, and Arden's wife prepare to stab him. |