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DOCTOR FAUSTUS , CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Introduction Christopher Marlowe based his play Doctor Faustus on stories about a scholar and magician, Johann Faust, who allegedly sold his soul to the devil to gain magical powers. Born in 1488, the original Faust wandered through his German homeland until his death in 1541. In 1587, the first story about his life appeared in Germany, translated into English in 1592 as The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus. Exactly dating Renaissance texts can be difficult, but Doctor Faustus poses particular challenges. Scholars believe Marlowe heard or read the story of Johann Faust and composed Doctor Faustus sometime between 1588 and 1592. London's Stationer's Register entered the play into the official records in 1601, but in 1602, at least two other writers were paid for additions to the text. (Most critics believe that Marlowe wrote the play's tragic beginning and end, while his collaborators wrote much of the comical middle sections.) A theatrical company named the Earl of Nottingham's Men (commonly known as the Admiral's Men) performed the play twenty-four times between its opening in 1594 and 1597. Thomas Busshell published the play in 1604, though John Wright published a different version in 1609. Editors generally combine parts of these and other versions of the text to create the play as it is widely read today. Contemporary theatre records indicate that in early performances, Faustus may have worn the cloak of a scholar, decorated with a cross, while the devil Mephistopheles appeared in the costume of a dragon. It has been said that performances of the play were so terrifying that during the 17th century audiences believed that the devil actually appeared among them. In spite of a literary career prematurely shortened by his violent life, Marlowe profoundly influenced English literature. In particular, scholars credit his play Tamburlaine with successfully introducing blank verse into English drama and with developing the Elizabethan concept of tragedy as a way of exploring key moral issues of the Renaissance. Although not a favorite with early audiences, today critics and theatre-goers alike consider Doctor Faustus Marlowe's masterpiece. Critical Evaluation Doctor Faustus is probably Christopher Marlowe’s most famous work. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, and author of nondramatic poetry as well, Marlowe wrote only seven plays. If Shakespeare had died at an equally young age—twenty-nine rather than fifty-two—Marlowe might be the more famous of the pair. Marlowe was one of the first English writers to perfect black verse—unrhymed iambic pentameter—and to use it with flexibility and poetic effect in drama. He was killed in a tavern brawl. The manuscripts of Doctor Faustus , surviving in different versions, were revised by theatrical companies after Marlowe’s death in 1593. Printed versions of the play, one in 1604 and another in 1616, indicate further editorial adjustments, particularly involving the comic scenes. Scholars do not agree about which version is more authentic. They agree that Marlowe wrote the tragic scenes, but disagree about the authorship of the comic scenes. Moreover, they question whether the comic scenes comment on or detract from the main plot.
The comic scenes of Doctor Faustus , however, follow the medieval practice of the farce or interlude—humorous, clownish, or boisterous amusement that entails variations on or exaggerations of Faustus’s dealings with Mephostophilis. For instance, the servants and the clowns try to conjure devils, and Faustus’s sale of a horse to a horse-courser, who
returns to pull off Faustus’s leg after the horse proves to be a creation of black magic, parody Faustus’s own more serious deviltry. The episode involving Faustus’s pulled-off leg, actually a bundle of hay that dissolves, suggests Faustus’s own bodily disintegration at the end of the play and the disintegration of his chances for salvation. Faustus remains giddy with hollow, short-lived successes. He never experiences the somber reflection that usually grips the living in the presence of mortal decay. Overall, the comic elements present thematic reminders of how evil lures by deceit and blunts or vulgarizes sensibility.
Marlowe based Doctor Faustus on the early sixteenth century German doctor Johann Faust, a practitioner of magic, who was thought to have sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for knowledge and magical power. Marlowe dramatizes tales that gathered around Faustus’s name, those typically involving the conflict between human aspiration and human limitation. His version of the life of Faustus greatly enriches and extends its scope. He incorporates many literary, philosophical, and religious contexts.
In particular, Marlowe structures Doctor Faustus as a morality play combining religious instruction with vivid entertainment. The morality play, a medieval poetic drama, mingles tragic and comic aspects of ordinary life with Christian liturgical services and the homily. Its concern is humanity’s earthly existence and spiritual state, but especially humanity’s well-being in the afterlife. Death stands as preoccupation, as in the play itself, because it ought to bring every moment of life into sharp focus. The present should be viewed as a preparation for eternal life; the struggle for salvation calls for faith, endurance, repentance, and constant alertness. Furthermore, the morality play is allegorical; it personifies virtues and vices. Good and bad forces in a person’s heart and mind are presented in the likeness of living men and women, and they act in accord with their names or natures. For example, in the morality play, the main character, representing all, encounters characters such as Faith, Hope, and Charity as well as Pride, Lust, and Envy. The ensuing struggle demonstrates life’s trials and the soul’s particular relation to God, and Christ’s blood is shed for its salvation. Medieval culture had emphasized that believers should detach themselves as much as possible from things of this world.
Through elements of the morality play, Marlowe makes Doctor Faustus’s situation expressive of the lives of all believers. For example, he presents the conflicting dialogues of the Good and Evil angels and Faustus’s response to them as a form of spiritual decision-making in slow motion that is intended to teach through contrasts. These dramatic encounters, as with those involving Faustus and Mephostophilis, and the varying comic ones, illustrate that acts of choice and their motivations have temporal and eternal consequences.
In addition, Marlowe sets the morality-play framework of Doctor Faustus within the wider context of Renaissance Christian humanism, in which intellectual and cultural currents greatly differ from the medieval period. He makes Doctor Faustus represent the new learning that highlights the importance of individual thought, expression, and worldly experience. Christian humanism seeks to extend boundaries of knowledge beyond the religious sphere, with a revival of classical learning. It stresses all knowledge of human and physical nature, the arts, and sciences together. It values and appreciates the present life—the good things of the here and now and the almost unlimited potential of humans to be, have, or do what they would. For example, the discovery of the New World had greatly broadened physical, intellectual, and imaginative horizons. Human beings, having wondrous capabilities and possibilities, should realize them through generalized curiosity about all things. Struggles to understand how the world works and to discover how its parts are connected makes humans more than they already are.
has already done for him—is eventually revealed for the arrogance and blindness it is. As the play unfolds, Faustus reaffirms his belief that his condemnation cannot be transcended through an appeal to God’s grace, his pact with the Devil strengthening his certainty that his sins are too great to be forgiven and that his destiny is predetermined. He ignores that a sincere prayer to Christ, however briefly or humbly said, will be answered; that God’s mercy, without limit, open to all who ask, and so easily acquired, will make whatever happens work for his good. Christ’s “free gift” will do for him what he cannot and need not do for himself. Nevertheless, Faustus makes his assurance of doom a self-fulfilling prophecy, rejecting the goodness of good—Christ’s redeeming sacrifice.
Faustus’s disappointment in his pact with Lucifer begins immediately, as he learns what he already knows: that God made the universe, that Hell is wherever God is not, and that his choices will lead him to Hell for eternity. His dissatisfaction continues, his desire for power and fame reducing him to diversionary trifles: mocking the pope, conjuring up grapes in winter, pursuing images of beautiful women; all are devils disguised to fulfill his wishes. The comic subplot also illustrates the futility of his pact. For example, the least-educated clown summons a demon; magic is shown to be nonexistent; and a demon appears whenever anyone disavows Christ. Faustus surrenders true power—the power of faith, choice, and intellect—for empty gestures that perish with occurrence.
The final scene of the play summarizes the tragic irony of Faustus’s life; the clock counts the minutes left in the life of a person who, having determined life’s length, remains incapable of calling upon Christ when there is no unpardonable sin. Faustus will not accept that divine mercy predominates over divine justice, and he wants to hide from God. Hell, shadowing him throughout the play, completes its objective because the terms of his contract have been fulfilled. Isolated, alienated from God, and screaming in futility that he will burn his books, Faustus is confronted by devils, who tear him apart limb by limb; only his soul remains intact, taken to Hell.
