Theatrically, there is nothing amateurish about Arden of Faversham, and recognition of Shakespeare’s authorship of the middle scenes of Arden is likely to impact classroom curriculums and theatrical repertoires. Drawing on the author’s experience directing the play, this essay challenges the claim by Martin Wiggins that Arden was written by an anonymous amateur who did not understand costume requirements or the limitations of boy actors playing female roles. It shows that Arden was carefully designed to give the actor playing Alice a long rest in mid-play, and that the role was well within the range of boy actors in the late 1590s and early seventeenth century. We know less about the outstanding female impersonators of the 1580s, but Richard Burbage began his long career as a boy, and as an adolescent could have played a demanding role like Alice.

This chapter explores the relationship between three stretches of text in which a hunt is described: the exchange between Tamora and Aaron in Titus Andronicus (2.3.10–50); several stanzas of Venus and Adonis (830–99); and Thomas Arden’s narrative of his nightmare in Arden of Faversham, in which he is transformed from a by-stander to the prey (6.6–34). The first two of these passages are indubitably by Shakespeare, and reasons are given for concluding that all three, which share complexes of words and images, are by a single author. The order in which the works were composed is discussed. These and samples from other early plays – including a further evocation of hunted deer in 1 Henry VI, 4.2 ߝ are analysed to illustrate distinctive aspects of Shakespeare’s early poetic style, such as the way that word-play generates imagery, giving his verse its vivid particularity.