The ballad's full title is "The complaint and lamentation of Mistresse Arden of / Feversham in Kent, who for the loue of one Mosbie, hired certaine Ruffians / and Villaines most cruelly to murder her Husband; with the fatall end of her and her / Associats."
[1] The ballad is framed as the scaffold confession of Alice Arden, related in the moments before her execution by burning at the stake.
[2] The ballad opens with the lamentation of the guilty Alice Arden: "AY me, vile wretch, that ever I was borne, / Making my selfe unto the world a scorne: / And to my friends and kindred all a shame, / Blotting their blood by my unhappy name."
She tells the audience that she marries Arden, a "Gentleman of wealth and fame," and lives happily with him until she is seduced by a man named Mosby.
Michael tells Black Will and Shakebag that they will have another opportunity the next day on Raymon Down, as Arden is traveling back to Faversham.
Alice says that she and Mosby "revell[ed]" while her husband was gone, and she is disappointed that he returns to her, but she pretends otherwise and awaits another opportunity to have him killed.
When Black Will reports their failure to Alice, she tells them that Arden will be vulnerable again the next day, on his way to Lord Cheiney's; the fifth attempt on his life fails, however, when a mist appears around the murderers, so thick "[t]hey could not see although they had foure eyes."
They are immediately discovered and arrested; the ballad describes the discovery of their crime as divine justice ("For God our secret dealings soone did spy, / And brought to light our shamefull villany").
The ballad draws upon two source texts: Holinshed's Chronicles and the anonymous play Arden of Faversham, likely written between 1588 and 1592[4] and entered into the Stationers' Register in 1592.