A Gentleman Of Blood Arden Analysis

Since Arden’s dramatic representation is altered to be “by birth a gentleman of blood” (1.36), his altercation with Mosby, “the botcher” (1.25-27) becomes the quintessential new gentleman’s challenge against the birth gentry. As according to Civile and Uncivile Life, people of those times when comparing two gentleman “accompt him more or lesse honorable or worshipfull, as hee is more or lesse landed or wealthy” (Jones 21). If Arden, being of wealthier status, would have been understood by sixteenth century audiences as more honorable in consideration of his wealth, than the dramatist would have been compelled to fashion Arden as honorable and a victim of an unjust crime. Although, some critics such as Belsey, and Sullivan in a milder interpretation of Belsey’s argument would both attribute Arden’s management of land, and his disregard …show more content…
Considering “household economics in the sixteenth century” as examined by Keith Wrightson’s discussion of Edmund Dudley’s the Tree of Commonwealth, changes in economics variegated women’s domestic role to include “self-provisioning activities, the supervision of servants, assisting her husband in farmwork or trade, wage-earning in or out of the domestic environment, and independent enagement in small business” (Wrightson 48). Alice synchronized with concurrent economic changes of the sixteenth century is appropriately distinguished with new freedom and advances in authority, by reason of Arden’s presence and action—or lack thereof. If the time periods’ domestic economics allowed females newfound higher authority, than they, and Alice are part of the new social mobile movement. In addition, Alice’s abuse of Arden’s properties and her handling of her new freedom and power, serve the needs of herself before the needs of her country, and characterizes her as an unvirtuous gentlewoman according to civil