Christopher Marlowe Doctor Faustus PDF

Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faustus
Subject: English
Lesson: Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faustus
Course Developer: Sumita Sharma
College/ Department : Shyam Lal, University of Delhi
1
Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi
The Writer and His Work
Portrait of a young man said to be Marlowe, 1585. In possession of Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge.[1]
[1] For an examination of the questionable authenticity of the portrait see Stephen Orgel,
‘Tobacco and Boys: How Queer Was Marlowe?’ GLQ 6:4 (2000): 555-562.
2
Marlowe’s Life
Christopher Marlowe’s life makes a story as if straight out of one his own plays.
Marlowe, baptized on 26 February 1564 in Canterbury, was the second child of his parents.
His father John Marlowe was a shoemaker by profession and his mother, Katherine Arthur,
also had humble origins.[1] His older sister Mary died when he was two and a half. Two
younger brothers died too in their infancy, in 1568 and 1570. Four of his younger sisters
and a youngest brother survived beyond childhood. The Marlowes were a poor family
receiving welfare assistance from local charities during Christopher’s boyhood.[2]
Marlowe’s early education included a scholarship at King’s School (or, Queen’s School as it
was called during Elizabeth’s reign) in Canterbury in 1579-80. Later he won a scholarship to
Cambridge where he completed his B.A. in 1584 and M.A. in 1587.[3] At Cambridge the
student body included a mix of ‘fee-paying gentlemen’ and ‘base-born scholars.’ According
to David Riggs, this division between the two groups laid the groundwork for many of the
scenes of social conflict that arise in Marlowe’s works. Note that even Faustus is born of
‘parents base of stock’ (Prologue 11). Further, Marlowe’s own classical education at
Cambridge, where scholastic logic was rejected in favour of persuasiveness (through
rhetoric), influenced his own poetry and plays.[4] Both during his B.A. and M.A., Marlowe
made extended absences from college that has led to speculations about his joining the
secret service of Queen Elizabeth. Another reason for these speculations is that during this
time he formed acquaintances with some figures involved in spying and intelligence
operations: the playwright Thomas Kyd, Richard Baines, the poet Thomas Watson, and the
Kentish Squire Thomas Walsingham.[5]
Marlowe came to London in about 1587, which was the same year that the famous Rose
Theatre was built by Philip Henslowe. There he formed associations with the Lord Admiral’s
Men, their leading actor Edward Alleyn, and the theatrical manager Philip Henslowe.[6] The
Lord Admiral’s Men performed his Tamburlaine, Parts 1 and 2 in 1587-88. The other major
plays The Jew of Malta, Doctor Faustus, Edward II and The Massacre at Paris were written
between 1588 and 1592 (and performed by Lord Strange’s Men). He also wrote a poem
Hero and Leander (1592-3) that seems to have been left unfinished due to his untimely
death in 1593.[7] Riggs detects a pattern in the chronology of these plays that corresponds
to Marlowe’s career: ‘He evolves from heroic drama written in the classical style (Dido and
Tamburlaine) to the native form of the morality play (Faustus and The Jew), to the new
vernacular genre of the history play (Edward II and The Massacre at Paris).’[8]
Marlowe also wrote plays in collaboration with Thomas Kyd, which were performed by his
patron Lord Strange’s Men. He was part of a group of writers educated in the university like
him who called themselves the ‘University Wits’. These included Thomas Lodge, George
Peele, Robert Greene, and Thomas Nashe. They wrote drama, pamphlets, and prose fiction.
His most famous contemporary was, however, William Shakespeare. Born in the same year
as Marlowe he came to achieve success a little later than Marlowe did. Various critics have
read a great deal of rivalry or even an anxiety of influence in Shakespeare’s work. A recent
book by Robert A. Logan suggests that Shakespeare used different dramaturgical elements
from Marlowe’s work at different times in his own writing career.[9]
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Although much is not known about Marlowe’s personal life there are records that indicate
his involvement in some criminal or seditious activities. He was arrested four times-- three
for street fighting, and a fourth for counterfeiting.[10] In 1589, Marlowe, along with fellow
playwright and poet Thomas Watson, was jailed on suspicion of murder of William Bradley.
Watson was found to have killed Bradley in self-defense and Marlowe was released on bail.
In 1592, he began to make counterfeit money with the spy Richard Baines and the
goldsmith Gifford Gilbert but Baines got his partners arrested.[11] Allegations of heresy and
atheism were also made against Marlowe. In May 1593, just before his death, Marlowe had
to appear before the Privy Council for interrogation. Kyd had been arrested a few days
earlier and a manuscript containing certain ‘vile heretical conceipts’ had been found in his
lodgings that he shared with Marlowe and which he said belonged to the latter. Baines too
had delivered a letter to the authorities once Marlowe’s questionings began. The ‘Baines
Note’ was entitled ‘a Note containing the opinion of one Christopher Marlowe concerning his
damnable judgment of religion and scorn of God’s word.’ It states nineteen instances of
Marlowe’s alleged heresies and blasphemies. These include comments as ‘that the Angel
Gabriel was bawd to the Holy Ghost,’ and ‘that St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to
Christ… and used him as the sinners of Sodoma.’ There is also the (now famous) statement
that ‘all they that love not tobacco and boys were fools.’[12]
Perspectives on Marlowe have long been affected by the availability of these texts. The
alleged atheism and homosexuality that has been read into his plays and the presence of
these elements in the Note has in turn led to a corroboration of this image. However, recent
work on Marlowe has moved away form these critical commonplaces to create more
nuanced understandings of his life and works. For example, the reading of homoeroticism in
Marlowe’s plays has been modified. As Riggs points out, homosexuality was very common in
unmarried persons in early modern England and did not define a ‘type of person.’ It
constituted an offence only in combination with other offences.[13] Marlowe himself, then,
was not as much of a ‘colorful’ character as he has been made out to be.
Charles Nicholl draws attention to the textuality of these documents upon which Marlowe’s
‘reputation’ rests. He reads these documents as texts ‘authored by individuals, aimed at a
certain audience, conscious of the power to create an effect—one might almost say to
create a truth, though not necessarily the truth.’[14] He suggests that Baines, who had
betrayed Marlowe earlier in the counterfeit currency case, might have invented these
accusations. Especially significant is the fact that Baines himself had been charged of
atheism and heresy in 1582 when, although an ordained priest, he was discovered to be a
spy and imprisoned. The confession that he wrote is, according to Nicholl, very similar to
the statements he attributes to Marlowe.[15] Although Nicholl doubts the veracity of the
‘Note’ but not that of the confession, even if we are to think of it as a voluntary or forced
document what is important here is that the language of charging someone with atheism
was already available to Baines.
Baines concludes his ‘Note’ thus: ‘I think all men in Christianity ought to endeavour that the
mouth of so dangerous a member may be stopped.’[16] He apparently delivered this letter
to the Council on 27th May, just three days before Ingram Frizer killed Marlowe in a
drunken brawl. The doubts regarding his death being a coincidence or conspiracy only make
stronger the fascination that Marlowe holds for us even today.
4
[1] Conflicting theories about his parents’ social and financial status exist with most
biographers until recently suggesting that John Marlowe was a prosperous shoemaker and
Katherine Arthur a clergyman’s daughter.
[2] David Riggs, ‘Marlowe’s Life,’ The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe, ed.
Patrick Cheney (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004) 26.
[3] Constance Brown Kuriyama, Christopher Marlowe: A Renaissance Life (Ithaca: Cornell
UP, 2002).
[4] Riggs 27.
[5] Riggs 29.
[6] Acting companies in those days were often under the patronage of some aristocrat or
the other and were usually known by their names. See Roslyn L. Knutson, ‘Playing
Companies and Repertory,’ A Companion to Renaissance Drama, ed. Arthur F. Kinney
(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002) 180-192.
[7] Riggs 36.
[8] Riggs 34.
[9] Robert A. Logan, Shakespeare’s Marlowe: the Influence of Christopher Marlowe on

Shakespeare’s Artistry (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).
[10] Patrick Cheney, ‘Introduction: Marlowe in the Twenty-first Century,’ The Cambridge
Companion to Christopher Marlowe, ed. Patrick Cheney (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004)
1.
[11] Riggs 34
[12] Charles Nicholl, ‘ "By my onely meanes sett downe"’: The Texts of Marlowe’s Atheism,’
Shakespeare,
Marlowe, Jonson: New Directions in Biography, Eds. Takashi Kozuka and J. R. Mulryne
(Hampshire:
Ashgate, 2006) 153-54.
[13] Riggs 35-36.
[14] Nicholl 153.
[15] Nicholl 154-55.
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[16] Nicholl 154
The Play
The Two Texts of Doctor Faustus

Marlowe’s play is available to us as not one but at least two different texts. Since plays at
the time were meant to be performed, and not published, there weren’t any authoritative
copies circulated by authors. Many works of this period have now been reconstructed from
manuscript copies (or even parts of these) that were in the possession of actors or the
playing companies. This, however, raises questions of authenticity. Even when authors, or
more likely theatre owners, started investing in written copies of plays for the sake of
greater authenticity or to prevent imitations, it did not help restore the plays that were
already altered in the process of production. Doctor Faustus was printed at least twice and
the debate still continues as to which of the two texts may be Marlowe’s original, or at least
closer to the original. Opinions regarding the authenticity of the two texts differ. The Norton
Anthology of English Renaissance Drama accepts the A-text (1604) as the one with greater
textual authority and the B-text (1616) only an ‘expanded version put together long after
Marlowe’s death in response to popular demands for more clowning.’[1]
Variations between the A and B texts of Doctor Faustus

The two texts show several differences in terms of treatment of the subject of Faustus’s
desires and aspirations, his use of the magical powers and his inner conflict. As a critic
notes, the 1604 version is closer to our idea of a tragedy in which individual volition is
paramount, whereas 1616 text has affinities with the didactic medieval form of the morality
play, in which virtue is rewarded and vice punished.
The A-text 1604
The B-text 1616
Sources of Doctor Faustus

Why do we need to study sources at all?[2] In instances when known ‘originals’ of a plot,
character, or theme are present the text in question becomes more of retelling than
otherwise. The figure of Faust, whose name Marlowe Latinized as Faustus, has been traced
to a number of sources, historical as well as literary, which in turn were based on real or
fictitious figures. Marlowe’s play is, however, not just about Faustus. It draws into itself the
entire historical and cultural milieu in which Marlowe lived, read, and wrote. No doubt then
that like any other text the study of this play is made more meaningful by studying the
other texts from which specific aspects of it may be derived, some of them not even
belonging to his times. This enables us to trace the ways in which, given the writer’s own
historical and temporal location, his own views on a given topic are altered in the process of
the re-telling.[3]
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Although we classify the sources here as historical, literary or folkloric it is important to

remember that even the historical sources might become available to Marlowe only through
some textual medium-- written, dramatic or oral. Similarly, the motifs in the play that we
discover in oral literature might also be absorbed from repetitive occurrences in other
media.
Historical Sources
The Historical Faustus[4]
This was a wandering magician called George Faust or Georgiux Sabellicus who also called
himself Faustus junior. He was born, perhaps about 1480, in the small town of Knittlingen in
northern Wurttemberg, Germany. Historical accounts of him appear in at least thirteen
sources: letters of scholarly opponents, public records, and tributes from satisfied
customers, memoirs, and reactions of Protestant clerical enemies. The earliest known
account is found in a letter of August 1507 written by Abbot Trithemius of Wurzburg to his
friend Virdung-mathematician, court astrologer to the Elector Palatine, and professor at the
University in Heidelberg:
The man about whom you have written to me, Georgius Sabellicus, who dares to call
himself the prince of necromancers, is a vagrant, a charlatan, and a rascal, deserving to be
scourged with rods, that he might not venture in future to profess publicly what is so
abominable and hostile to Holy Church. Indeed, what else are the titles he assumes but
evidence of a most foolish and insane mind, proving him a fool and not a wise man? Thus
the title he has adopted truly befits him: Master Georgius Sabellicus, Faustus junior,
fountainhead of necromancers, astrologer, the second Magus, chiromancer, aeromancer,
pyromancer, second in hydromancy. Consider the fatuous temerity of the man--what
madness he exhibits when he presumes to proclaim himself the fountainhead of
necromancy! One who is, in truth, lacking in a good education ought to call himself a fool
rather than a master.[5]
The name Sabellicus may have been an adopted one. The Sabelli, a collective name for a
group of Oscan-speaking Italic tribes including the Marsi and the Paeligni, were famous for
the practice of magic and particularly for divination.
In another source, a letter of October 1513, the Erfurt humanist Konrad Muth (Mutianus
Rufus) commented sarcastically on the activities of ‘a certain palm- reader named Georg
Faustus, [calling himself] the Demi-god of Heidelberg.’ Muth said that he had heard Faust
holding forth at an inn, advertising his skills as a fortune-teller, and had decided that the
man was a mere braggart and a fool. He was also mentioned sometimes in the course of
Martin Luther's table-talk; and in a conversation recorded by Lauterbach in 1537; the
reformer said that with God as his protector, he would not be afraid of Faust. [6]
After his death in about 1539-40, ‘bizarre’ stories about Faustus’s feats began to appear in
print.
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Faustus the Printer
In the 1570 edition of his Actes and Monuments, John Foxe mentions the existence of a
German goldsmith named Joan Faustus who invented the art of printing. In an earlier
edition of 1563 he had given the name as Jhon Guttenbergh (whom we know as Gutenberg,
the inventor of the printing press). In the later edition, having given the name of the
inventor as Faustus he adds that Gutenberg was also involved, but bound by an oath to
keep silence for a season. Foxe does not identify the printer Faustus with the magician but
as later writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth century revisited the history of printing
‘the two Faustuses, printer and necromancer, both of debatable existence and identity,
came to overlap in the historical imagination.’ This was because of the early modern writers’
and readers’ ‘trepidation about the potential and danger of print technology, even as it
records their rapt fascination with the book as a powerful object.’[7]
Simon Magus
Although most critical readings of Doctor Faustus have focused on the figure of the
sixteenth-century necromancer of the Faustbook many others centre on the figure of the
legendary Simon Magus as a prototype. The theory that the Faust legend derives in part
from the legend of Simon was propounded by Emil Sommer in 1845 and revived by Theodor
Zahn.[8] Faust is thus partially modeled on Simon Magus, and the Faust legend
incorporates some of Simon's adventures, including marriage to Helen. Justin Martyr
(Apology 1.26), Irenaeus (Against Heresies 1.23), and several other early Christian writers,
most notably the Clementine Miscellanies, describe how the gnostic Simon found the
reincarnated Helen in a brothel, married her, and made her one of his apostles.[9] In fact,
early stories of Simon tell of his glorification of a reincarnated Helen of Troy, raising her to
the status of a goddess and his being dashed to earth when he attempts to fly to
heaven.[10]
[1] Norton Anthology of English Literature. 284
[2] Stephen Greenblatt called source study ‘the elephants’ graveyard of literary history.’
Greenblatt, ‘Shakespeare and the Exorcists,’ Shakespeare and the Question of Theory Ed.
Geoffrey H. Hartman (New York: Metheun, 1985) 163.
[3] Also see Vivien Thomas and William Tydeman, eds., Christopher Marlowe: The Plays and
Their Sources (London: Routledge, 1994).
[4] All these details are from Karl P. Wentersdorf, ‘Some Observations on the Historical
Faust, Folklore 89. 2 (1978): 201-223. JSTOR. 22. Jan. 2009.
[5] Wentersdorf 201.

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[7] Sarah Wall-Randell, ‘Doctor Faustus and the Printer’s Devil,’ SEL 48. 2 (Spring 2008):
259–60. JSTOR. 22. Jan. 2009.
[9] George A. Kennedy, ‘Helen's Husbands and Lovers: A Query,’ The Classical Journal 82. 2
(Dec., 1986 - Jan., 1987): 152-153. JSTOR. 22 Jan. 2009.
[10] A. D. Nuttall, The Alternative Trinity: Gnostic Heresy in Marlowe, Milton, and Blake
(Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998).
Literary/ Dramatic Sources
The German Faustbuch

While stories of the necromancer and magician Faust were in circulation in Germany since
the early sixteenth century, the earliest version of the anonymous Faustbuch was compiled
only by c. 1580. A sixteenth-century manuscript version was discovered in the nineteenth
century and published as the Historia D. Johannis Fausti des Zauberers, ed. Gustav
Milchsack in 1892 (called the Wolfenbuttel manuscript). The Faustbuch was first printed in
Frankfurt in 1587 as the Historia von D. Johann Fausten, dem weitbeschreyten Zauberer
unnd Schwartzkunstler.[1]
The Faustbuch was a huge success. In just two years of its publication there were as many
as sixteen German versions, which included additions to the original book, and a version in
verse. There were also translations in Low German, Dutch and French.[2]
The English Faustbook
The German Faustbuch’s popularity prompted its translation into English as well. It was
published as The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus
in 1592 and translated by someone who signed himself as P.F.
Differences between the Two Faustbooks:
The English version of the Faustbook is different from the German. Marlowe’s source for his
play is primarily the English Faustbook. However he too deviates from his source in various
ways.
The first scene is Marlowe’s own creation. In the German Faustbuch Faust’s education is not
specified though there is dissatisfaction with available knowledge and a consequent turn
towards magic, because mere ‘men are unable to instruct me any further.’ But the English
Faustbook has him as a genuine intellectual who is examined and found to be the best by
the university: ‘none for his time were able to argue with him’ and who seeks knowledge
through his use of magic (like a true Renaissance magus). Marlowe’s Faustus, significantly,
seeks power. Knowledge alone is not enough for him, he now wants to create life, be
immortal, hold dominion over the entire earth and the elements, and thus, be a ‘mighty
god’:
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Yet art thou still but Faustus and a man.
Couldst thou make men to live eternally,
Or, being dead, raise them to life again,
Then this profession were to be esteemed. (1.1.21-24)[3]
All things that move between the quiet poles
Shall be at my command. Emperors and kings
Are but obeyed in their several provinces,
Nor can they raise the wind or rend the clouds;
But his dominion that exceeds in this
Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man.
A sound magician is a demi god: (1.1.56-61)
There are other differences too. The moralizing tone of the Faustbuch was reduced in
Marlowe. The role of Helen too is changed. While in the Faustbooks she lives with Faustus
and has a son, in Marlowe, she remains an illusory figure. Even the Good and the Bad
angels are treated differently in Marlowe’s play.[4] Marlowe’s Wagner too has a sympathetic
bonding with his master, which is absent in the Faustbook.[5]
Marlowe’s Variations from the Faustbook

Although Marlowe’s primary source is the English Faustbook, yet he makes the story his
own by introducing variations that not only redefine the character of Faustus but also have
a different purchase on some other aspects of the conflicts and dilemmas in the play.
Hell
In the English Faustbook Hell is a place of physical torment. While the B-text of Faustus
uses the common notion of hell as place of physical punishment it also expresses the more
spiritual idea of hell as separation from God. The source of this idea has been traced to the
Greek father St. John Chrysostom (AD 347-407): ‘if one were to speak of ten thousand
hells, they would be nothing compared with being excluded from the blessed vision of
heaven,’ Homily in St. Matthew, xxiii.9. [6]
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Mephistopheles
Marlowe’s Mephistopheles too is a much more complex character than the one in the English
Faustbook. While in the Faustbook he never regrets his exclusion from the joys of heaven
he does, when asked, speak about his terrible suffering in his separation from God.
Mephistopheles: Why this is hell, nor am I out of it:
Think’st thou that I, that saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,
In being deprived of everlasting bliss? (1.3.75-79)
A somewhat similar sentiment is expressed by another literary devil identified as a source

for Marlowe’s Mephistopheles. This is Astarotte in Luigi Pulci’s epic romance, Il Morgante
Maggiore (1482): ‘if after a million and a thousand centuries we could hope to see even the
least of the flames of that love, every burden would be light’ (XXV. 285).[7]
Morality Plays
This was a form of dramatic entertainment popular in England and France in the 15 th and
16th centuries. These plays were dramatized allegories of forces of good and evil fighting for
man’s soul. The obvious content and purpose of morality plays was moral edification though
they also deployed various popular devices to engage the attention of the spectators, for
example, by including farcical scenes. Some popular morality plays were Everyman, The
Pride of Life, and The Castle of Perseverance.
Marlowe’s play resembles the medieval morality play in form, characterization, and
theatricality and in its use of space on stage. Like the morality play it shows the temptation
of Faustus, his fall and its consequences, and the final damnation (though the protagonist in
the morality play usually repents and is saved.) Typical features are the Great Temptation
itself, the Good and the Bad Angels always using their respective separate doors for entry
and exit, the scenes of buffoonery when the protagonist is in his sinful phase, and a clearly
articulated ‘moral’ of the story. In Doctor Faustus, the Good and Bad Angels keep advising
Faustus regarding his choice of good or evil while Mephistopheles tempts him to indulge in
various immoral and unethical acts.
(See ‘Contexts’ below for more on morality plays as a genre of medieval and Renaissance
drama. Also see the ‘Criticism’ section below for an analysis of the use of the form in Doctor
Faustus for theatrical and ideological effect.)
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John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments (1563)
This is a history of English Protestant martyrs who suffered torture at the hands of
Catholics. It is also known as the Book of Martyrs. Certain segments of the plot of Doctor
Faustus are loosely based on this text, such as the scenes in Rome.
Nathaniel Woodes’s Conflict of Conscience (1581):
This play is based on the true story of Francesco Spira. The protagonist, like Faustus, is
convinced that he will be damned. But his friends persuade him to repent. The play was
published in two versions. In one he hangs himself (notice that Mephistopheles too offers a
dagger to Faustus, 5.1.58-59) and in the other he repents and is saved.
Myth/ Folklore
The ‘foolish wish’ motif from folklore:
Such myths are always in circulation in popular discourse in most cultures. They usually
center on the figure of the discontented person who transgresses the boundaries of what
can be had legitimately in order to fulfill his desires and suffer terrible consequences.
The myth of the compact with the devil:
The compact (a legal agreement) with the devil was believed to be an important part of
witchcraft rituals. This was converted into a legalized act in the Faustbuch. There had been
other stories too of pacts with the devil. A famous one was of Gerbert, who became Pope
Sylvester II in A.D. 999 after having made a pact with the devil for this. Like Faustus, he
too was horribly dismembered at his death in 1003. However, his dismemberment was at
his own request as part of his last-minute repentance. All the early versions of his life
recounted that he had thus saved his soul from damnation; the later Protestant versions did
not.[8]
Woodcut showing a young man swapping the Book of Salvation with the Devil's Black Book
of the Damned.
Source: Web page of Roy Booth, Royal Holloway University of London,
http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhle/001/Witches%27Sabbath.htm
This list in no way exhausts the possible sources by which Marlowe’s play may be inspired.
For a more detailed discussion see Vivien Thomas and William Tydeman’s Christopher
Marlowe: The Plays and Their Sources[9]
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Form
Blank Verse
The play is written mostly in blank verse.[10] This form of writing was particularly popular
with Elizabethan playwrights as its rhythms are very close to the sounds of spoken English.
Thus, while the lines on the page read like verse, in performance they sound very much like
regular prose speech.
Marlowe has been credited with the introduction of blank verse on the English popular
stage. Before Marlowe its use was restricted to plays intended for select audiences. These
were Gorboduc (1561) Jocasta (1566)-- translated and ‘digested into Acte’ from Euripedes’s
Greek tragedy Phoenician Women by George Gascoigne and Francis Kinvvelmershe,
Misfortunes of Arthur (1587) and Woman in the Moon (before 1584). Such was the effect of
Tamburlaine on versification that plays before 1587 which were written in rhyme, were,
after that date, recast in blank verse, e.g. Tancred and Gismunda, The Three Ladies of
London, Selimus. This form went on to become ‘the default mode of dramatic speech.’[11]
Performance History[12]
Doctor Faustus was apparently first performed in 1592. It had many successful
performances till the end of the Elizabethan period. Thereafter, productions began focusing
more on those theatrical elements that added to the spectacle value of the play, such as the
antics of devils.[13] Most of the later productions during the Restoration and the eighteenth
century were adaptations. Still later, in the nineteenth century, the style of presentation of
the play changed considerably, primarily because of the influence of Goethe’s Faust (See
‘Influences’ below). At this time two distinct styles of staging the play were developed: the
first was the opulent production using elements of spectacle woven around a freely adapted
text and the second resembled the medieval pageants of the Mystery cycles.[14]
In the twentieth century, however, conservative productions were far outnumbered by those
which used experimental techniques such as the use of female characters to play
Mephistopheles and the devils, or the use of contemporary settings and props. See
‘Productions with a Difference’ below.[15]
The Dramatic Magazine (1829) cites ‘The Blacke Booke’ published by T.C. for Jeffery
Chorlton in 1604 which records a performance of Doctor Faustus during which ‘the audience
and the doctor suddenly discovered one more and much uglier devil than belonged to the
piece, who was dancing and kicking his heels about very merrily with the rest. Immediately
on his being observed, he took flight, and, it is added, carried away with him the roof of the
theatre. (57)
[1] Wentersdorf n 21.
[2] Ian Watt, Myths of Modern Individualism: Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Robinson
Crusoe (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997) 27.
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[3] All quotations are from David M. Bevington and Eric Rasmussen, eds., Doctor Faustus A-
and B- texts (1604, 1616): Christopher Marlowe and his Collaborator and Revisers
(Manchester: Manchester UP, 1993). This book contains both the 1604 and 1616 editions of
Marlowe's play. It also includes literary criticism and style and staging/performance
assessments.
[4] See Suroopa Mukherjee, ed, Doctor Faustus (Delhi: Worldview Publications, 2004) 17-
20.
[5] Mukherjee 19.
[6] John Searle, cited in Bevington and Rasmussen130 and also in Thomas and Tydeman
179. Also see Nicholas Brooke, ‘The Moral Tragedy of Doctor Faustus,’ in Marlowe: Doctor
Faustus, ed. John Jump (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 1969) 120.
[7] Cited in Thomas and Tydeman 179.
[8] Watt 26.
[9] Vivien Thomas and William Tydeman, eds., Christopher Marlowe: The Plays and Their
Sources (London: Routledge, 1994).
[10] In this form of writing each line has five stressed and five unstressed syllables usually
arranged in the pattern of stressed/unstressed. This pattern is called the iambic
pentameter. So while the rise and fall of words is pretty rhythmic, the lines do not rhyme
with each other, hence the term ‘blank’ verse.
[11] Russ McDonald, ‘Marlowe and Style,’ The Cambridge Companion to Christopher
Marlowe. Ed. Patrick Cheney (Cambridge: Cambridge UP) 62.
[12] Mukherjee 5-13.
[13] Mukherjee 9.
[14] Mukherjee 10.
[15] Also see Mukherjee 10-13.
14
Contexts
The Revival of Learning
Beginning in the Middle Ages, there were increased attempts to create centers of learning in
various parts of Europe. For example, the emperor Charlemagne (c.742-814) established
many schools as part of his agenda to bring about reform in his state. By the time of the
Renaissance and the Reformation it became increasingly possible to acquire an education.
Even in England admissions to Oxford and Cambridge universities apparently tripled
between 1560 and 1590, and these numbers included many poor boys who got in on
scholarship. One reason for this increase was the need for educated ministers of the new
Church of England and for professional learned men to cater to the administrative needs of
the city-states.[1]
School. Laurentius de Voltolina. 2nd half of 14th century.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Laurentius_de_Voltolina_001.jpg
Medieval Scholasticism
In the Middle Ages there had developed a pattern of studying certain specific disciplines that
were called the studia humanitatis. These included the study of the artes liberalis, or the
seven liberal arts, so called because they were believed to liberate the individual. The arts
were divided into groups: the trivium— rhetoric,grammar and logic; and quadrivium—
,geometry, mathematics, music (including cosmology), and astronomy.
The revival of learning was an attempt at bringing reforms in the field of education. The
revival of the seven liberal arts had the greatest impact on the shape and spread of
medieval culture. The teachers at these schools, working against fixed religious dogma,
sought new answers to philosophical problems chiefly by disputation.
15
The Seven Liberal Arts. "Hortus Deliciarum" of Herrad von Landsberg (about 1180)
(Source:
http://www.google.co.in/imgres?q=The+Seven+Liberal+Arts.+%22Hortus+Deliciarum%22
+of+Herrad+von+Landsb
erg+%28about
+1180%29+wikipedia&um=1&hl=hi&sa=N&tbm=isch&tbnid=chcXNhOQnOvrWM:&imgrefurl
=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts&docid=4W91Pk4hret2mM&imgurl=http://upload.
wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/Septem-artes-liberales_Herrad-von-
Landsberg_Hortus-deliciarum_1180.jpg/250px-Septem-artes-liberales_Herrad-von-
Landsberg_Hortus-deliciarum_1180.jpg&w=250&h=328&ei=s9LWT-
70FsfwrQeF4vH7Dw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=105&vpy=202&dur=2220&hovh=257&hovw=1
96&tx=94&ty=135&sig=115057883650139139571&page=1&tbnh=164&tbnw=125&start=0
&ndsp=14&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:71&biw=1360&bih=579
16
[1] Marlowe himself, a scholarship student, had intended to take holy orders before he left
Cambridge in 1587 to make a living as a writer. Although a university education seemed to
promise much by way of creating a new kind of individual, the meagre opportunities for
employment that this education provided resulted in some kind of reaction. The formation of
the self-styled ‘University Wits’, the group of writers that Marlowe belonged to, represented
some kind of a collective reaction to the ‘disparity between the vast expectations that the
academy aroused and the meagre opportunities of realizing them that society afforded’.
Humanism
From about the fourteenth century onwards there was a strong opposition to scholasticism.
The humanists, the university teachers who taught the studia humanitatis now, disapproved
of the way in which the scholastics used logic, one of the chief opponents being Petrus
Ramus. Otherwise, they studied the seven liberal arts as well. These subjects were also
distinguished from the sciences and engineering and therefore the term ‘humanista’ or
humanist was used.[1]
The humanists were greatly influenced by the philosophies of Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC) and
Augustine (354 AD-- 430 AD). Cicero had placed great emphasis on oratory. Humanists like
Petrarch enthusiastically imbibed this tradition from Cicero (he even thought of himself as a
reincarnation of Cicero).[2] It offered to the humanists ‘a new way of thinking about how
the cultured individual united the philosophical and contemplative side of life with its more
active and public dimension.’ Following Cicero, Petrarch’s humanism aimed at the unification
of the philosophical quest for truth, and the more pragmatic ability to function effectively in
society through the use of rhetoric and persuasion. To obtain the perfect balance the
civilized individual needed rigorous training in the disciplines of the studia humanitatis,
namely grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy.’[3]
A major thrust area for the humanists was the improvement of vernacular languages that
would imitate the eloquence and idioms of classical Latin and Greek. The Florentine poet
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) in his Latin treatise De vulgari eloquentia (On the Eloquence of
Vernacular) argued for the creation of a vernacular literature and to honour the ancients not
by using their language but by doing what they did, developing a literary idiom out of the
spoken languages of their own compatriots.[4] The circulation of the numerous texts was no
doubt made easy by the availability of the printing press: ‘The complex web of relations
between writers, readers and characters…is wholly contingent upon an economy of cold
commercial exchange whose principal agents – printer, compositor, bookseller – remain
virtually nameless and invisible.’[5]
Desiderius Erasmus translated the Bible in 1516. He had learnt these skills from the Roman
scholar Loranzo Valla who in turn had acquired them from Florentine Greeks in the
1430s.[6]
17
Pico Della Mirandola wrote what is now considered a seminal humanist text, ‘Oration on the
Dignity of Man.’ The purpose of humanist studies for Pico was to know ‘the causes of things,
the ways of nature, the plan of the universe, the purposes of God, and the mysteries of
heaven and earth.’ (Cassirer, 1948, 237-38)[7]
Another important work was Montaigne’s Essays (1580).
Magic
According to Karl P. Wentersdorf, although occult arts (such as pyromancy and necromancy)
had been condemned throughout the Middle Ages, humanists insisted that all of the magic
lore deriving from ancient times was not evil. They distinguished between natural magic and
the black arts:
Natural magic was the art of establishing contact either with benevolent spirits or with
natural planetary forces, and then drawing on their powers through the talismanic use of
natural substances, mystic signs, and figures, or through incantations containing the secret
names of the celestial and planetary angels.
Black magic was the art of conjuring up and exploiting diabolic spirits with similar
techniques. The term necromantia, technically the art of discovering the future by conjuring
up and interrogating the spirits of the dead, was often used as if synonymous with diabolic
magic, since the opponents of necromancy argued that the conjured spirits were not those
of dead men but in reality demons impersonating the souls of the departed.[8]
18
The Magus
A magus was one who studied magic according to the principles mentioned above. It was
believed at this time that it was possible for man to harness the energies of nature. Some
famous figures of the time were: Pico della Mirandola, Giordano Bruno, Simon Magus, and
John Dee.
John Dee was a Renaissance philosopher-magician. In the twentieth century he came to be

seen as a scientific figure that had been marginalized because of a reputation for
occultism.[9]
Pieter van Laer's (1592-1642). ‘Magic Scene with Self-portrait’ ca. 1638–39.
Oil on canvas 31 1/2 x 45 1/4 in. (80 x 114.9 cm)[10]
Source: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/pieter-van-laer
Since education included the study of ancient Greek and Latin classics there was an
increased exposure to Greco-Roman thought. Learning was now a specialized field. The
ideas and structures of understanding introduced by these studies (like logical thinking) now
provided a new frame of reference/s, a new ideology, through which to learn about and
understand one’s identity in the world. Learning now did what religion had done for
centuries. It was a new religion! Let’s see how it negotiated existing worldviews in medieval
and renaissance society.
19
[1] The term ‘humanism’ was only coined in 1808 by the German educator, F. J.
Niethammer, where he describes a program of study distinct from scientific and engineering
educational programs, a sense in which we still use the word humanities today.
[2] Tony Davies, Humanism (London: Routledge, 1997) 73.
[3] Jerry Brotton, ‘The Humanist Script,’ The Renaissance Bazaar: From the Silk Road to
Michelangelo. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003) 67-8.
[4] Davies 78-9.
[5] Davies 80.
[6] Tony Davies, Humanism (London: Routledge, 1994) 75.
[7] Cited in Davies.
[9] According to William Howard Sherman, this figure of the Renaissance magus, however
historically accurate it may or may not have been, was the result of work done in the field
by the Frances Yates and her followers. Her focus on his use of magic has resulted in the
elision of Dee’s participation in English and European academic, commercial, and courtly
circles and the creation of what he calls the ‘myth of the magus’. Although in later years he
succeeded in acquiring a high social position (according to his class) it is a supposed attack
by an angry mob on his library in his absence that has interested some of his biographers.
The perceived Faustian parallel has prompted one particular biographer, Colin Ronan to call
it ‘the tragedy of Dee’s fall from grace.’
[10] In Pieter van Laer's amusing 'Self Portrait’, according to Roy Booth, ‘one surmises that
a love-spell is being attempted: the open book has a pierced heart motif. The smoking
potion being brewed up in the skull inverted on the hot coals at left has, however,
summoned up the fiend, whose talons enter right, to the alarm of the sorcerer. To depict
oneself as a sorcerer obviously requires confidence that your witty picture will be recognised
as just that, and not insanely self-incriminating.’ Roy Booth, Witches Sabbath Page, Royal
Holloway University of London. 2 Aug. 2009
<http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhle/001/Witches'Sabbath.htm.>
Religion, Reform and the Marking of Psychological Space
Perceptions: Social and Religious
20
The social may be said to be largely a construct of the political, the economic and, especially
in the medieval period, of the religious. That is, it is the combined action, though in different
degrees at different moments, of all these that determines the way the social shapes up.
Religion, or religious belief often maintains a strong hold on the minds of people, regulating
their lives from birth to death. But, as the history of the progress of any religion might tell
us, there are more factors that govern how it shapes up than its own intrinsic features.
16th century England, under King Henry VIII, broke away from the Roman Church over
issues that had more to do with his personal life and also with the wealth of the monasteries
than his faith, thus leading to the establishment of the Anglican Church. In the same period
across Europe there was widespread criticism of the abuses in the medieval church. The
emergence of humanism stirred interest in the recovery of the past and the reclamation of
original texts thus discounting the work of medieval theologians and returning to the Bible
and early Fathers such as Jerome and Augustine. Also, humanist philological methods
revealed serious weaknesses in the claims of the Church. For example Erasmus’s edition of
the New Testament (1516) pointed out errors in Jerome’s Latin translation, the Vulgate,
which had been used by the Church for centuries.[1] The corruption in the Church also
caused unease regarding the way in which it mediated the human-divine relationship. With
Martin Luther’s very theatrical protest (he pasted the ninety-five theses on the door of a
Castle Church in Wittenberg in 1517) there occurred a tremendous shift in the way in which
Christians imagined and practiced their relationship to God. It also gave rise to renewed
debates about some of the deepest theological issues within Christian belief, such as ideas
of salvation and damnation, and heaven and hell. Calvinist doctrine further complicated
these debates by bringing in the question of pre-destination and free will: since man’s
destiny had already been fixed by God, thereby making his good or bad actions
inconsequential, how does free will operate?
The Christian Imaginary

Religion operates through an apparatus of symbols and images that provide a frame of
reference/s by which a person can create meaning in and negotiate his relationship with the
world. This exercise also involves practices of naming objects, and in order to mark one’s
perceived territory/ also an identification of space, such as heaven and hell which create a
coherent cosmology that makes sense of worldly suffering. These images also function as
tools for controlling how people live and conduct themselves. Within Christianity myths of
the souls of the blessed and faithful going to heaven and those of the sinful or faithless
going to hell function as disciplining agents. These concepts are infused in the minds of
people with an entire corpus of myths about the fall of angels, fall of man and apocalyptic/
millenarian visions. The most effective myth among these is that of the idea of evil. Let’s
see how this operated on the psyches of people in the given period.
21
The Devil
The idea of the Devil filled the popular imagination as concerted efforts by the clergy and/or
the state kept people on the right moral track by evoking their deepest fears of going to hell
and burning for eternity. Representations of the Devil abound not only in literature and art
in the period but in other non-literary writings as well, such as Andreas Althamer’s Sermon
on the Devil (1532).
Hell, as depicted in Hortus Deliciarum (L. for Garden of Delights)[2]
http://www.google.co.in/imgres?q=Hell,+as+depicted+in+Hortus+Deliciarum+%28L.+for+
Garden+of+Delights%29&um=1&hl=hi&sa=N&tbm=isch&tbnid=2GCNKccJMZei1M:&imgref
url=http://idlespeculations-
terryprest.blogspot.com/2010/01/devil.html&docid=KDCSMFWsgV9v8M&imgurl=http://2.bp
.blogspot.com/_GzQnzaF4k-
o/S1r6shjrLSI/AAAAAAAAJc4/wJ7N56VCw9c/s640/devil%252B1%252B%252B%252Bgerma
n%252Bminiaturist.jpg&w=483&h=640&ei=6NfWT5C6JMvyrQfog738Dw&zoom=1&iact=hc&
vpx=178&vpy=100&dur=972&hovh=258&hovw=195&tx=129&ty=117&sig=115057883650
139139571&page=1&tbnh=129&tbnw=95&start=0&ndsp=26&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0,i:71&biw
=1360&bih=579
Hell Mouth, as figured in the Roxburghe Ballads. University of Victoria Library
22
http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/ideas/hellmouth.html
The work of the artist Hieronymous Bosch whose depictions of hell, devils etc. had a clearly
moral, didactic purpose.
Hieronymus Bosch. Mankind Beset by Devils (1500-04). Reverse of the left wing. Oil on
panel. Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
23
http://images.google.co.in/imgres?imgurl=http://www.all-
art.org/early_renaissance/images/bosch/82.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.all-
art.org/early_renaissance/bosch11.html&usg=__MFrbUO9lnSAtfAC99AgHcRGRwq0=&h=70
0&w=344&sz=156&hl=en&start=4&um=1&tbnid=xGA48X0t35tfJM:&tbnh=140&tbnw=69&p
rev=/images%3Fq%3DHieronymus%2BBosch.%2BMankind%2BBeset%2Bby%2BDevils%
26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26rlz%3D1T4ADBR_enIN323IN325%26sa%3DG%26um%3D1
[1] Isabel Rivers, ‘Reformation and Counter-Reformation,’ Classical and Christian Ideas in
English Renaissance Poetry: A Student's Guide (New York: Routledge, 1994) 89-106.
[2] Hortus Deliciarum was a medieval illuminated encyclopaedia in manuscript form

compiled by Abbess Herrad of Hohenburg (1167-1185). The only manuscript was destroyed
in Strasbourg in 1870 but copies of miniatures made earlier remain for young novices
(who would later become members of a particular religious order. It contains 336
24
illustrations and many quotes from the Bible. In this illustration individuals representing the
various categories of malefactors are being punished in a Hell full of red, leaping flames.
The Seven Deadly Sins

The idea of the Seven Deadly Sins did not come from the Bible. Instead it evolved from
earlier lists of transgressions that were created in the fourth century by Evagrius of Pontus
(eight evil thoughts) and by John of Cassius in the mid-fourteenth century (eight principal
vices). Later, Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) discussed the Seven Deadly Sins in his
Moralia in Job. These were Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Anger, and Sadness. The last
sin, Sadness, was later replaced by the sin of Sloth. These sins were called deadly as they
were more dangerous to the spiritual health of a person than the other set of sins called the
venial sins, which could be forgiven. These Seven Deadly Sins also had their contrary Seven
Heavenly Virtues: the significant virtues of Prudence, Restraint, Justice, and Perseverance;
and apostolic virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity.
In the thirteenth century St. Thomas Aquinas discussed the Seven Deadly Sins in his
Summa Theologica (1266-73).With the consolidation of institutionalized Christianity the idea
of the Seven Deadly Sins was popularized. This served to identify anomalies in and thus
control the lived experiences of people. The idea of ‘sin’ itself was produced in an attempt to
mark behaviours and attitudes harmful to the communal structure of society. For example,
Gluttony was perceived as a sin for fairly practical reasons. As William Ian Miller states in
Wicked Pleasure: ‘In an economic order in which there is not enough food to go around, in
which starvation and famine are always lurking about … gluttony… was, in a sense, murder
or a kind of criminal negligence.’ Miller cites Langland’s (1330-1387) Piers Plowman, where
every mouthful that a glutton took was an affront to the poor- “The more you ate the less
someone else did. And any ingestion beyond what was necessary for the maintenance of life
was an act of injustice.” Langland’s gluttons were the non-producing rich, sturdy beggars
who would not work, and above all the friars whose gluttony was undertaken not only in the
face of the poor but also in spite of their own vows of poverty.’[1]
In Doctor Faustus the Bad Angel shows hell to Faustus:
These that are fed with sops of flaming fire
Were gluttons, and loved only delicates,
And laughed to see the poor starve at their gates. (5.2.128-130)
Similarly, the sin of Pride too had a social basis. In a social structure where communal living was
a necessary condition of survival divisive attitudes had to be condemned. Quoting Fairlie, pride
‘isolates and alienates from both God and society; [and] is a form of self-satisfied and self-
sufficient withdrawal, (42) Jerome Neu states that ‘for a medieval world committed to discipline,
hierarchy, and corporate order, this made [pride] particularly heinous.’[2]
The Deadly Sins became a very popular theme in folklore, homilies, sermons, drama--
popular and liturgical, and art throughout Europe in the Middle Ages and continued into the
Renaissance. Writers such as Chaucer, Dante and Spenser used personifications of the
25
Seven Deadly Sins or even the Seven Heavenly Virtues in their works. For example: The
portrayal of the Seven Deadly Sins in Langland's Piers Plowman (given in Vol. 1A, 222-224).
An interesting pageant of the Seven Deadly Sins is seen in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie
Queene, Book 1, Canto 4, stanzas 18-36 (666-671).
http://www.google.co.in/imgres?q=the+Seven+Deadly+Sins&um=1&hl=hi&sa=N&tbm=isc
h&tbnid=gq4-
Fj2tfGz8eM:&imgrefurl=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins&docid=VBDk0-
_K7bezvM&imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/Boschseve
ndeadlysins.jpg/300px-Boschsevendeadlysins.jpg&w=300&h=258&ei=lgrXT4i-
M83QrQfwsPz7Dw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=98&vpy=143&dur=1851&hovh=206&hovw=240
&tx=152&ty=93&sig=115057883650139139571&page=1&tbnh=133&tbnw=155&start=0&n
dsp=25&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:68&biw=1360&bih=579
Hieronymus Bosch. Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things. c.1486.
Source: Wikipedia
Hieronymus Bosch. Death and the Miser, c. 1490. Oil on wood, 93 x 31 cm. National
Gallery of Art, Washington.[3]
26
http://www.google.co.in/imgres?q=Hieronymus+Bosch.+Death+and+the+Miser,
+c.+1490.+Oil+on+wo
od,+93+x+31+cm.+National+Gallery+of+Art,+Washington.&um=1&hl=hi&tbm=i
sch&tbnid=TQQQN0QqaB1wBM:&imgrefurl=http://www.eurocles.com/arpoma/ar
poma.php%3Faction%3Drep%26rep%3D../peinture/oeuvres//bosch&docid=pf4
KOuAfYekvMM&imgurl=http://www.eurocles.com/peinture/oeuvres//bosch/bos
ch%252520-%252520Death%252520and%252520the%252520Miser.%25
25201490.%252520Oil%252520on%252520wood.%25252093%252520x%252
52031%252520cm.%252520National%252520Gallery%252520of%252520Art,
%252520Washington%252520DC.jpg&w=575&h=1507&ei=MQvXT9WKBITWrQfj
14T8Dw&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=293&sig=115057883650139139571&page=1&tb
nh=114&tbnw=43&start=0&ndsp=33&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:68&tx=11&ty=54&bi
w=1360&bih=579
27
Witchcraft and Witch-hunting

The fear of evil, which permeated the social consciousness of an entire population during
this period, manifested itself in fear of the evildoer too. Practitioners of black magic or
witches (sorcerers/ magicians) came to be seen as agents (or even consorts, when female)
of the Devil. Such was the combined paranoia of society that any perceived deviants from
their idea of ‘normal’ behaviour were systematically pursued and eliminated. Witch-hunting
was an effect of attempts to order and police any perceived threats /deviant elements
within the community.
Catholic and Protestant Demonologies
What also needs to be factored in before examining the sudden increase in witch-hunts in
the 16th century is the bifurcation of the Church. Although the Catholic Church had already
had an apparatus for the identification and persecution of witches and sorcerers it was the
emergence of Protestantism upon the European scene that suddenly pushed the subject of
witchcraft to the centre of theological debates. Stuart Clark identifies the mutual
antagonism and rivalry between the Catholic and Protestant Churches as a cause of
increased instances of witch-hunting.[4] Protestants accused Catholicism of being a religion
based upon witchcraft as it engaged in ritualistic practices that sought to endow physical
things with powers beyond their natural capacities. Catholics in turn viewed Protestantism
as yet another in a series of heretical challenges to the ‘true’ faith. Since the medieval
Church had identified heresy with magic it was easy to see Protestants’ denial of the Virgin,
the saints, the sign of the cross etc. as comparable to the rejection, parody, ridicule and
subversion of the same by witches.[5]
According to Ian Watt, a possible reason for the marked increase in the number of witch-
hunts in England once Protestantism emerged upon the European scene was precisely the
move away form Catholic ritual. Catholicism, with its material practices of worship, offered
concrete objects through which to sense the presence of the divine. With this one’s deepest
fears could be confronted and ‘controlled’. Once this was discontinued in Protestantism
people must have looked for other ‘objects’ through which they could engage in similar
exercises. Thus, one of the reasons for the increase in witch-hunting was the increase in the
fear of the demonic once the traditional fortifications against evil spirits were removed:
[T]here were no longer guardian angels, patron saints, or the Virgin Mary to act as
beneficent mediating spirits; relics, talismans, penances, masses for the dead no longer
promised daily protection against fear and loss; and the Lutheran church no longer offered
the ceremony of exorcism against evil spirits…[R]ecourse even to white magic was
stringently forbidden.[6]
[1] William Ian Miller, ‘Gluttony’, Wicked Pleasures: Meditations on the Seven Deadly Sins,
ed. Robert C. Solomon (Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001) 25-26. Also see Peter
28
Humphrey Sedgwick, ‘Ideas of Labour, Leisure and Work-Ethic,’ The Market Economy and
Christian Ethics, 155-57.
[2] Jerome Neu, ‘Pride’, Solomon 54.
[3] Walter Bosing analyses this painting thus:
That man persists in his folly even at the moment of death, when the eternities of Heaven
and Hell hang in the balance, is the subject of the ‘Death of the Miser.’ The dying man lies in
a high, narrow bedchamber, into which Death has already entered at the left. His guardian
angel supports him and attempts to draw his attention to the crucifix in the window above,
but he is still distracted by the earthly possessions he must leave behind; one hand reaches
out almost automatically to clutch the bag of gold offered by a demon through the curtain.
Another demon, delicately winged, leans on the ledge in the foreground, where the rich
robes and knightly equipment probably allude to the worldly rank and power which the
miser must also abandon. The battle of angels and devils for the soul of the dying man
occurs also in the Prado ‘Tabletop’ (where the traditional figure of Death armed with an
arrow likewise appears), and both scenes reflect a popular fifteenth-century devotional
work, the ‘Ars Moriendk’ or ‘Craft of Dying’, which was printed many times in Germany and
the Netherlands. This curious little handbook describes how the dying man is exposed to a
series of temptations by the demons clustered around his bed and how, each time, an angel
consoles him and strengthens him in his final agony. In this book, the angel is ultimately
successful and the footnote 57 contd. soul is carried victoriously to Heaven as the devils
howl in despair below. In Bosch's painting, however, the issue of the struggle is far from
certain. An opened money chest can be seen at the foot of the bed, where an elderly man,
perhaps the miser shown a second time, places a gold piece into a bag held by a demon. He
seems little concerned with the rosary hanging from his waist. (Analysis by Walter Bosing,
Hieronymus Bosch, c. 1450-1516: Between Heaven and Hell (Köln: Taschen, 2004) 32.
[4] Stuart Clark, ‘Protestant Witchcraft, Catholic Witchcraft.’ Thinking with Demons
(Oxford: Oxford UP 1997) 526-46.
[5] Clarke 534-35.
[6] Ian Watt, Myths of Modern Individualism: Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Robinson
Crusoe (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997) 18.
Social-‘Utopian’ Demonologies
What is important to note here is the fact that these fears often had more of a social than a
spiritual basis. In an age shaken by natural calamities (as in the ‘Black Death’—the plague
that swiped thousands off the face of the earth) or those created by human actions (wars in
Europe) factors like shortage of food and increased rates of mortality gave rise to a
heightened sense of mortality and a desperate search for explanation/ causes. It all boiled
down to the desire to create utopian spaces where anyone or anything that constituted a
threat to the powers that be (state/ institutionalized religion/ patriarchal society) was
named a witch and executed.
It was also precipitated by the work of some enthusiasts like the German Inquisitors
Heinrich Krämer and Jacob Sprenger who published a treatise on witches Malleus
Maleficarum (Latin for ‘The Hammer against Witches’) in 1487. The primary motive of the
29
Malleus was to systematically identify, target, and convict whoever could be named a witch.
It also sought to provide magistrates the vital knowledge about the modus operandi that
would enable them to catch the witches and convict them (an example of the way in which
state and institutionalized religion can collude to create artificial utopias.) It became an
immensely popular handbook on witch-hunting (with many editions being printed in just a
few years) and contributed to deaths of about 40,000 to 60,000 people, mostly women, on
charges of witchcraft.
Between the span of 1487 to 1520, thirteen editions of the Malleus were already in
print.Owing to its huge popularity, another sixteen editions were put in print between 1574
to 1669. These were published in various cities in Germany, France and Italy. Between 1584
and 1669 five editions came out in English as well.[1] Ironically, it was extensive publishing,
an innovation that was seen as ushering in an age of reason and emancipation that became
an agent of regressive and ruthless oppression of the weaker sections of society.
A case in point was the independent duchy of Lorraine situated between France and the
Holy Roman Empire where nearly two thousand witches were sentenced to death within a
period of two decades in late 16th century, most of them by Nicolas Remy, Procureur-
General (Chief Prosecutor) for Lorraine, writer, and demonologist who also wrote about his
witch-hunts in his Demonolatry (1595). For a population of around four hundred thousand
these numbers were huge, and significantly, belonged to the poor and underprivileged
sections of society.[2] During the first two-thirds of the 16th century the population had
risen dramatically, putting increased pressure on the land that was devoted to cereal crops
and viticulture. By late 16th century Lorraine was in economic decline with the poor facing
tremendous economic hardships. Many peasants became indebted and had to sell their
holdings to the urban elite and the aristocracy. Poverty and begging infused Lorraine.
According to Richard Golden: ‘No wonder then that Remy and the elevated social group he
represented feared witchcraft because they believed it to be the weapon of choice of the
poor (especially beggars) and powerless against the rich and powerful.’[3] What instigated
these witch-hunts was not merely superstitious belief in the diabolical dealings that ‘witches’
seemed to have with the devil but the perceived danger that the presence of the poor posed
to the idea/ of a utopia for the privileged.
30
Oppositional Voices
The socio-economic inequalities that made it possible for those at the margins of society to
be easily named witches and be executed were recognized by reformers such as Cornelius
Agrippa (1486-1535) and Reginald Scot. Agrippa’s De Vanitie was an attack on established
knowledge and institutions, exposing the corruption of the Inquisitors.
Reginald Scot’s The Discovery of Witchcraft (1584)
Scot was a justice of peace, a Member of Parliament, and a reformer who identified ulterior
motives in the persecution of poor, aged, and simple people who were accused of
witchcraft. His book The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), countering the Malleus
Maleficarum, looks at the psychology of those accused, mostly old and poor women who
were either mentally incompetent or insane. He speaks of the ease with which the so-called
witches could be persuaded that the most bizarre fantasies of their accusers were real. [4]
Sydney Anglo argues that in Discoverie Scot offers a metaphysical interpretation of spirits
and devils, ‘which, in effect, approximates to a psychological theory, and which virtually
reduces spirits to an operation of the human imagination… To say that somebody is
possessed of a devil is as much to say that the person is a lunatic.’[5]
31
Texts Depicting Magic/ Witchcraft

Often plays like The Witch of Edmonton (1658, performed 1621) written by Thomas Dekker,
John Ford and William Rowley or Late Lancashire Witches by Heywood and Brome drew
upon accounts of English witchcraft cases.[6] Such works then serve as interesting examples
of the way in which literary/artistic representations feed off and in turn influence socio-
political practices, thereby validating each other and creating a closed system of references.
Dekker, Ford and Rowley’s play The Witch of Edmonton (e-text)
The title page of the first quarto of The Witch of Edmonton.

http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhle/001/Woodcuts_of_witches.htm
On this title page of the first quarto of The Witch of Edmonton (1658) Black Dog Tom can be
seen expressing his entry line, Mother Sawyer giving utterance to her spell, and Cuddy
Banks being bewitched by the sprite into the pond.
32
The title page of the pamphlet on the life of Doctor John Lambe.

http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhle/001/Woodcuts_of_witches.htm
(1628)
Dr. Lamb, the Duke of Buckingham's wizard, comes under an attack in the street after being
seen on a visit to the Fortune theatre. This assault leaves him with serious injuries that
finally claim his life within few days of the incident. Lamb incurred the wrath of several
people, primarily because of his association with the universally denounced Buckingham,
with his insinuating clairvoyant practices, and the rumour that he had ravished an eleven-
year-old girl. The pamphlet is an odd production, converging the ethical with incidents that
closely resemble comic scenes in Doctor Faustus, and Lamb in a marvelous manner
obtaining wine from the Globe Tavern, brought to him instantly by a spirit boy.[7]
There were other texts as well that used the motif of witchcraft for ideological statements,
for example, John Bale putting in practice the anti-Catholic use of sorcery or witchcraft in
his allegorical play, The Three Laws (here Idolism, or Catholicism is depicted as a witch).
Similarly an early Jacobean anti-Catholic use of witchcraft can be found in Thomas Dekker's
The Whore of Babylon, (see Dekker.htm) Robert Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay
(c.1590), depicts a learned mage, who also repents of his art.
Look at the proliferation of images of witchcraft in the period as in the artwork of Jacques
de Gheyn II (1565-1620).
33
Technologies of Power: The State and its Discontents

Religious Skepticism
Skepticism regarding the existence of God was also quite common in the sixteenth century.
Skeptics, although alienated from society in many ways, did manage to engage the minds of
their audiences and foment debate and disagreement. [8] Skeptics were also labeled
‘atheists’. Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) explorer, poet, and historian, was a prominent
figure known for his atheism.
Public Executions of Heretics and Traitors
There were numerous state efforts to rein in skeptics which is evidence of the threat of loss
of a hold on the imagination of people, and by implication, loss of the power that the state
or religion wielded over them. For example, a commission was set at Cerne Abbas in 1594
seeking information about anyone who had doubts about the existence of God. Anyone who
refused to conform to accepted, consensual (that is by consensus among people) codes of
social, religious, ethical or political conduct would be seen as a threat.[9] They would then
be tried by the state on a charge of heresy and executed.
Tudor Spectacles of Violence[10]
Illustration from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.
William Tyndale is burnt at the stake in Belgium; he cries, "Lord ope the king of England's
eies." From an Elizabethan edition of Foxe's Martyrs. (Source: Wikimedia)
http://www.unc.edu/~charliem/foxe.jpg
34
[1] Karen Louise Jolly et. al. Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, ed. Bengt Ankarloo (London:
Athelone P, 2002) 240.
[2] Reformers like Reginald Scot protested against the persecution of poor and old people
by accusing them of witchcraft.
[3] Golden 24.
[4] Lillian Feder, Madness in Literature (New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1980) 117.
[5] Cited in Feder 117.
[6] James Alan Downie and J.T.Parnell, Constructing Christopher Marlowe (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2000) 68.
[7] Roy Booth, Woodcuts of Witches, Royal Holloway University of London. 2 Aug. 2009
http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhle/001/Woodcuts_of_witches.htm.
[8] Benjamin Bertram, The Time is Out of Joint: Skepticism in Shakespeare’s England (New
Jersey: U of Delaware P, 2004) 27.
[9] See Bertram 22-23
[10] For an analysis of scaffold speeches in Shakespeare’s England see Rebecca Lemon,
Treason by Words: Literature, Law and Rebellion in Shakespeare’s England (New York:
Cornell UP, 2006).
35
Criticism
Morality Play
As representations of angels, the Devil, heaven and hell, sorcerers and witches were quite
common in literature and art of the period, readings of Doctor Faustus within the morality
framework often use such representations as evidence of the validity of their approach.
Thus, Doctor Faustus has been read in conjunction with other plays by Marlowe’s
contemporaries such as Dekker, Ford and plays such as Rowley’s The Witch of Edmonton, or
the paintings of the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. Many such works during the
Renaissance depicted with clearly moralistic attitudes the dangers of falling into temptation,
witches and sorcerers performing horrible magic rituals, or the Devil carrying away men,
witches or sorcerers to hell as they had sinned.[1] Since Doctor Faustus uses the dramatic
structure and rhetorical devices of a morality play, such as the figures of the Good and the
Bad Angel, and the moralising Chorus, its conventional readings are governed by the
meanings attached to morality plays in general. Thus, Faustus may be seen as an Everyman
figure that commits the sin of pride, making a pact with devil by selling his soul to Satan in
exchange for twenty-four years of supernatural powers. After futile efforts by the Good
Angel to convince him of God’s benevolence he fails to repent and suffers eternal
damnation.[2]
The play begins with the Chorus describing Faustus’s aspirations and their consequences:
So much he profits in divinity
That shortly he was graced with doctor’s name,
Excelling all, and sweetly can dispute
In th’heavenly matters of theology;
Till, swoll’n with cunning of a self-conceit,
His waxen wings did mount above his reach,
And melting, heavens conspired his overthrow. (Prologue 15-21)
Similarly, at the end of the play, the Chorus restates the moral of the story just told:
Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
36
And burned is Apollo’s laurel bough
That sometime grew within this learned man.
Faustus is gone. Regard his hellish fall,
Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise
Only to wonder at unlawful things,
Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits,
To practice more than heavenly power permits. (Epilogue 1-8)
Thus, the speeches of the Chorus frame the action of the play and constrain its meaning/s.
37
Exceeding generic limits
Most likely, when the possible meanings of a text are controlled by the conventions of the
genre the possibility of reading other meanings is foreclosed. However, this is not to say
that the text may not exceed its own generic limits. Although Faustus desires to know more
than what ‘heavenly power permits’ his questioning the denial of knowledge by God renders
the play subversive in content if not in obvious intent.[3] His mockery of specific religious
practices such as the attempted exorcism by the Friars with the help of ‘bell, book and
candle’ too may find a sympathetic audience at times (both in Protestant objections to
Catholic rituals and in atheistic audiences). Further, his life of intellectual and material
pleasures has the potential to afford vicarious pleasure to the audience. The morality form,
rather than prescribing/ reiterating the limits of what may be known, is used to test exactly
where these boundaries may be porous or may be stretched to accommodate human
desire.[4] Let us examine these in detail.
We saw earlier that Doctor Faustus is structured as a Morality play that implies that its
conventional readings are governed by the meanings attached to morality plays in general.
The audience is expected to read pre-designed meanings and respond in predictable ways.
Thus, even before Faustus’s high humanist aspirations and discontent with available
knowledge is articulated on stage the audience has been directed to respond to his speech
with a degree of horror. But why were Faustus’s desires constrained by the tight morality
framework? What is so dangerous in the Acts that the Prologue and Epilogue denounce so
vehemently?
The Question of Knowledge: ‘Renaissance Man’?
The Chorus offers an advisory to the audience in the Epilogue: not to fall into temptations
which make intelligent men like Faustus seek more than what God allows and ‘[o]nly…
wonder at unlawful things.’ To see just how relevant this ill-concealed threat is to an
audience that has direct or indirect access to education in new disciplines we need to
understand Faustus’s desire for knowledge in relation to the status of knowledge in the
period.
The underlying logic of humanism was a quest for knowledge, and its performance (in the
form of rhetorical skills and disputation) that, as far as the early humanists were concerned,
could be learned by a thorough study of classical Greek and Latin texts. There was,
however, a rejection of some of the topics and methods of inquiry that scholastics had used
before them, as they were found irrelevant (See Background). In Faustus too, we find just
such discontent with the scope of the knowledge that he has acquired and mastered. While
on the one hand his learning enables him to acquire mastery over the disciplines of
philosophy, medicine, and theology, on the other it’s closed, circular structure and the
unavailability of further channels of advancement frustrate his inquisitive mind.
38
In the very first scene Faustus says to himself: ‘Settle thy studies’ and then goes on to
articulate his dissatisfaction with the giants of medieval learning: Aristotle, Galen and
Justinian:
Is to dispute well logic’s chiefest end?
Affords this art no greater miracle?
Then read no more; thou hast attained the end; (1.1.8-10)
By the time the figure of Faustus appears on the Elizabethan stage medieval scholasticism
had effectively been replaced by humanist studies. His rejection of Aristotle, Galen and
Justinian is thus not as shocking a revelation to the (knowing) audience as it might seem.
‘This study fits a mercenary drudge,’ he says. Somewhat similar remarks can be found in
Petrus Ramus’s tirade against scholasticism.[5]
Faustus’s yearning for greater knowledge, and consequently greater power to affect change
in human life, is thus symptomatic of the spirit of the Renaissance.
Even where he expresses his desire to assume supreme power over ‘[a]ll things that move
between the quiet poles’ (1.1.55) Faustus is articulating the European desire for territorial
expansiveness that ultimately resulted in the colonization of almost the entire world.
Such desire for knowledge and power, something he cannot have within the available
systems of knowledge of the period, Faustus seeks to fulfill by studying and practicing
magic:
O, what a world of profit and delight,
Of power, of honor, of omnipotence
Is promised to the studious artisan! (1.1.52-54)
39
White Magic
Hans Burgkmair’s illustration for the White King.
http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhle/001/EN3012.htm
Faustus’s obsessive inquiries about the material world and the cosmos are in tune with
Renaissance theories about the application of (white) magic to the study of nature.
Renaissance magi such as Pico della Mirandola had sought to use magic to harness the
energies of nature. In the play, the Bad Angel tells Faustus:
Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art
Wherein all nature’s treasure is contained.
Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky,
Lord and commander of these elements. (1.1.73-76)
Look at the questions Faustus asks Mephistopheles:
Are there many spheres above the moon?
Are all celestial bodies but one globe,
40
As is the substance of this centric earth? (2.2. 33-35)
[1] Stephen Orgel points out the ways in which Marlowe’s depiction of magic in Doctor
Faustus is different from Shakespeare’s in The Tempest (1613). While in the former magic
is a matter of theology, in the latter, though written only twenty years later, it is an art and
a science: ‘There is nothing whatever in The Tempest about magic leading to damnation;
even Sycorax’s putative liaison with the devil eventuates only in Caliban. The worst that can
be said about magic in the play is that it is in the end a retreat from reality and
responsibility: that is why it must be renounced, not because it is damnable but because it
is finally just as unsatisfactory as it was for Faustus twenty years earlier’ (569).
[2] This reading, however, is applicable more to the 1616 version of the text than the 1604
version as the former has a more explicitly moralistic conclusion.
[3] Compare with the biblical Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
[4] See Jonathan Dollimore. Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of
Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989).
[5] Soon even humanism underwent a similar process of renewal. Later humanists such as
Francis Bacon denounced the obsessive reliance on authorities and laid emphasis on
practical experience. Grafton 205.
41
Limitations of White Magic

However, many of Faustus’s questions are not really answered in a satisfactory manner by
Mephistopheles because of the limitations of knowledge available in the period. The
cosmology of the Renaissance was still in its infancy. Ptolemy was still the standard
authority even though some knew the alternative theory propounded by Copernicus. It is
interesting to note that such was the resistance towards new knowledge that even
Copernicus did not circulate his heliocentric theories as they went against contemporary
authorities.
Dr Faustus using magical spell to call forth Mephistophilis: Title page of a late edition of
Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, showing a devil naking his entry through a trapdoor.
1620.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Faustus-tragedy.gif.
42
The Uses of Magic
The depiction of magic and sorcery in Doctor Faustus also lends itself in support of theories
of Marlowe’s critique of Protestantism in the play. Magic had been practiced by Renaissance
philosopher-magicians like Ficino and Pico as a radical extension of the humanists’ vision of
humankind. As expounded in their works, it served as a technological tool through which
the intelligible and physical aspects of the cosmos could be united (see Background).
However, with the advent of Protestantism magic came increasingly to be identified with the
kind of material practices of worship prevalent in Catholicism. The forms of worship that
allowed an exteriorized identification with God through material/physical objects were
denounced vehemently during the transition from Catholicism to Protestantism. Martin
Luther in his tract ‘The Babylonian Captivity of the Church’ (1520) mentions some such
objects:
IN THE FIRST PLACE, in order to grasp safely and fortunately a true and unbiased
knowledge of this sacrament, we must above all else be careful to put aside whatever has
been added by the zeal and devotion of men to the original, simple institution of this
sacrament – such things as vestments, ornaments, chants, prayers, organs, candles, and
the whole pageantry of outward things. We must turn our eyes and hearts simply to the
institution of Christ and to this alone, and put nothing before us but the very word of Christ
by which He instituted this sacrament, made it perfect, and committed it to us. For in that
word, and in that word alone, reside the power, the nature, and the whole substance of the
mass. All else is the work of man, added to the word of Christ.[1]
Martin Luther (1483–1546). Workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder (German, 1472–1553).
Oil on wood 13 1/8 x 9 1/8 in. (33.3 x 23.2 cm)
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/refo/ho_55.220.2.htm (October 2006)
43
The rejection of such material practices of worship, however, may have left a void in the
lives of a people for whom the externalization helped structure the ways in which they
related to the divine. While adopting Protestantism as required by the law of the state,
many Elizabethans may have continued to wish for the physical presence of Christ offered
by the Catholic Church. Since magic used certain actions and gestures similar in enactment
to those in Catholic worship, it may have offered, to some extent, the same kind of
satisfaction of having formed an externally identifiable connection with the metaphysical.
Faustus, for example, conjures spirits in Latin, reminding us of Catholic rituals like
transubstantiation or exorcism. He speaks the abbreviated names of holy saints as he “tries
the uttermost magic can perform” (3.3.14). Such scenes in the play must have reminded its
audience of the ceremonies and rituals that had been given up during the Reformation. [2]
Faustus, then, may be seen as rebelling against Protestant doctrines on communion and
other ceremonies through the use of magic. Significantly, Richard Baines claimed that
Marlowe spoke of Protestants as ‘hypocrites’ for abandoning the ceremonies of the Catholic
Church.
The Question of Faith
Religion and the Uncertain Position of ‘Man’
We have seen that although clothed as a morality play Doctor Faustus does not necessarily
endorse its compulsory theology of the only two possible ends, those of salvation and
damnation. At the centre of the discourse of salvation and damnation that the Chorus and
the Good Angel articulate is deep skepticism regarding the position and prospects of man.
Ever since the Reformation, skepticism towards one or the other forms of Christian belief
had been widespread throughout Europe. The source of the skepticism in Doctor Faustus is
perhaps Marlowe’s own unease about the position of man within the new state-imposed
Protestant faith. While on the one hand he was expected to follow Protestantism, on the
other, if the testimony given by Richard Baines is to be believed, he called all Protestants
‘hypocrites.’ With the emergence of Calvinism this rift only got deeper. Questions of
salvation and damnation got magnified into debates on questions of predestination and free
will. Since man is already fallen the pressure on him to conform to social and religious
expectations should be removed, as Faustus puts it, ‘che sera sera.’ These different
attitudes towards the position of ‘man’ in the Christian universe are foregrounded in the two
different versions of the play. While the A-text is more sympathetic to Faustus’s dilemma,
the B-text seems to sharpen the theological polarity by making the choices more rigid. It is
only the Old Man who gently keeps asking Faustus to correct his ways and repent while the
Good Angel disappears from the scene for almost nine hundred lines. In fact, according to
some critical readings the text has two different versions because there were attempts in
the 1616 version to weed out Calvinist references in the 1604 version. [3]
Metaphysical Despair
Faustus may also be seen as trapped in a metaphysical universe where all these mutually
conflicting forms of Christian faith push him into despair. This could be a consequence of
loss of faith either in traditional religious structures that offer possibilities of salvation, or in
the existence of any transcendental reality at all. The despair could also be a consequence
of Faustus’s awareness that he is, as Jonathan Dollimore puts it, the ‘site of the power
struggle’ between God and Lucifer. If Lucifer is keen to acquire Faustus’s soul, God too
seems to be tyrannical; he speaks of God’s ‘heavy wrath’ (1.1.71).
44
Gnosticism
The play need not necessarily be read as articulating theological skepticism only within the
Christian worldview. In fact in the Elizabethan period, according to A. D. Nuttall, there was a
great deal of theological conflict regarding the accuracy of the biblical tradition. Traditions of
Gnosticism had always coexisted with institutionalized Christianity, Catholic or Protestant.
He traces such rigorous and organized efforts to impose a Christian morality onto the public
to such traditions. The proliferation of literature that advocated morality can thus be
accounted to such doubts: ‘Homilies of obedience were read in churches not because
everyone was joyously obedient but because many were not.’[4]
Ideological Tensions
Faustus finds himself in conflict with Counter-Reformation forces such as tradition and
religious authorities at loggerheads with the new renaissance or humanistic ideals of
individualism, materialism that put man at the center of the universe.[5] These
contradictory discourses circulating in the period exert oppositional pulls on him thereby
producing intense ideological conflict and making his desire for knowledge and power
legitimate and illegitimate at the same time. Let us examine how these conflicts affect him.
Conflict with Old Worldviews
Changing Ideas of Sin and Virtue
We know that humanist studies were increasingly challenging and abandoning previously
formed religious and cultural models. A case in point is the central ‘flaw’ in Faustus,
according to the morality framework, is his pride. Although the display of the Seven Deadly
Sins draws attention to Faustus’s own sin of Pride (over wealth and power) here the moral
structure of the play’s universe does not coincide with the changed/ changing value system
that humanism had effected. The humanists’ agenda of inculcating the ancient traditions of
civic service and public virtue through a classical education could not have been
accomplished without also reviving the ancient prizes of fame and glory. Hence, the
reclamation of pride as a virtue becomes important. Similarly, the desire for wealth,
negativized as the sin of ‘Greed’, was also redefined in the humanist worldview. Many
humanists praised the acquisition of wealth as useful to individuals and the state as ‘without
wealth it was impossible to display the virtues of liberality and magnificence. The poor were
a threat to the welfare of the state; the rich rendered it beautiful, prosperous and
powerful.’[6] Wealth, fame and glory were then rewards that one got in this life itself.
Significantly, this reinvention of Christian vices as humanist virtues is reflected in Faustus’s

conflation of the Christian Hell (or rather the popular idea of it) with the classical Hades:
This word ‘damnation’ terrifies not me,
For I confound hell in Elysium.
My ghost be with the old philosophers! (1.3.57-59)
45
Here, the morality framework serves to represent and reinforce the traditional Christian
values that the medieval period centered on, while Faustus’s pride, ambition, desire for
wealth etc., the new values emerging with humanism are denounced.
Throughout the text Faustus is confronted with scriptural messages that he either misreads
or chooses to ignore:
And Faustus hath bequeath’d his soul to Lucifer.
But what is this inscription on mine arm?
‘Homo, fuge!’ [Fly, O man!] Whither should I fly?
If unto heaven, he’ll throw me down to hell.--
My senses are deceived; here’s nothing writ.--
O, yes, I see it plain. Even here is writ
‘Homo, fuge!’ Yet shall not Faustus fly. (2.1.75-81)
Look at the irony in the use of the metaphor of flight here. Faustus does not ‘fly’ i.e., flee
the scene of his damning pact with the devil. And yet it is his ‘flying’ like Icarus (flying in
space with Mephistopheles), a dream that his classical education could show him, that
damns him.
The opposing pulls of Christian doctrine/s and humanist thought must have created a great
deal of conflict in individuals in terms of structuring their everyday lives. In such a scenario,
that Faustus is punished for his pride by ‘conspiring heavens’ makes him a victim of his own
precarious position in Renaissance culture.
Robert N. Watson identifies this as the new tragic hero, one who does not suffer as an
individual but as a cultural type. Such tragedy focuses more on the conflict of values than
on the personality of the person enduring them. Dramatic conflict here replicates conflicts in
the culture itself. This is what gives rise to the grand visions of Elizabethan tragedy:
When one complete and valued world-view (the native Christian legacy) is actively tested
against another (the revered classical example), and when new practical problems
(merchandising, manufacturing, navigation, optics, epidemiology) present themselves in a
context imbued with established and evolving religious faith, powerful new perceptions are
inevitable, and so are the artistic innovations that will seek to assimilate and expand those
perceptions.[7]
[1] Martin Luther. The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. 2 Aug. 2009 <
http://www.lutherdansk.dk/Web-Babylonian%20Captivitate/Martin%20Luther.htm >.
46
[2] For this interpretation see Benjamin Bertram, The Time is Out of Joint: Skepticism in
Shakespeare’s England ( New Jersey: U of Delaware P, 2004) 111-112.
[3] Alan Sinfield, ‘Reading Faustus’s God.’ Doctor Faustus, Mukherjee 268. Sinfield also
examines another play written in the period, Nathaniel Woodes’s The Conflict of Conscience
(1581) that appeared in two different versions (with different endings) in the same edition.
Philologus, although a good Protestant, falls into temptation and pursues worldly pleasures.
The first version shows him realizing that he cannot be saved, as he is ‘reprobate.’ In the
second version he repents in the end and is saved. Thus the play articulates the
contemporary debate about the position of man vis-à-vis God as rendered within the two
polarized sects in Christianity.
[4] A. D. Nuttall, ‘Raising the Devil: Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus,’ The Alternative Trinity:
Gnostic Heresy in Marlowe, Milton, and Blake (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998) 22.
[5] Watt xiv
[6] James Hankins, ‘Humanism and Modern Political Thought.’ The Cambridge Companion to
Renaissance Humanism. Jill Kraye. Ed.1996. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003) 125-6.
[7] Robert N. Watson.
From Icarian Flight to Nuclear Power
The fact that perceptions and ambitions that entered the European worldview as a result of
humanist endeavour did go on to increased scientific enterprise, somehow, ironically, harks
back to the problem of the Icarian myth: how close should he have flown to the sun?
Watson reads in Faustus a forewarning of the consequences of Renaissance aspirations. [1]
His desires are only partially materialistic. It is primarily his quest for knowledge, especially
of the field of astrology (i.e., astronomy), the desire to see new places, and even religious
reform (itself initiated by humanist studies)--note how he ridicules the Catholic Pope-- that
drive him to use magic. This solution of a system of belief assorted from residual morality
and convenient humanism is not as easy as it appears. Faustus is no Pico or More to write
about the ‘dignity of man’ or create bookish utopias. He is a middle class ambitious person
aspiring to live the dreams he has been shown. But these are aspirations that later led to
colonization and today, as Watson ruefully recognizes, to nuclear-powered world on the
verge of self-destruction. The Chorus’s comparison of Faustus with the figure of Icarus
suddenly seems very pertinent:
So much he profits in divinity
That shortly he was graced with doctor’s name,
Excelling all, and sweetly can dispute
In th’heavenly matters of theology;
Till, swoll’n with cunning of a self-conceit,
47
His waxen wings did mount above his reach
And melting, heavens conspired his overthrow.
(Prologue 15-21)
This speech uses the mythical image of Icarus, the son of Daedalus the inventor, who flies
so close to the sun in his desire to reach the heavens that his waxen wings melt and he
drowns into the sea. Note the irony in the Chorus’s use of an image from Greco-Roman
culture to condemn Faustus’s Christian sins.
The Roman poet Ovid (43 BC- AD 17) also used the myth in his Metamorphoses:
the boy
Began to enjoy his thrilling flight and left
His guide to roam the ranges of the heavens,
And soared too high. The scorching sun so close
Softened the fragrant wax that bound his wings;
The wax melted; his waving arms were bare;
Unfledged, they had no purchase on the air!
And calling to his father as he fell,
The boy was swallowed in the blue sea’s swell,
The blue sea that for ever bears his name. VIII 224-233[2]
Visions of flight that Icarus had (or rather his father Daedalus who invented the wings had),
were also explored by a prominent Renaissance visionary artist Leonardo da Vinci who made
numerous drawings of, among other things, flying machines.
48
Ornithopter. 1490. Leonardo da Vinci (source Britannica online Encyclopedia)
Conflict and the Loss of Stable Identity
We saw how Faustus is trapped between the opposing pulls of Christian doctrine/s and
humanistic aspirations and, since others sharing his historical and geographical location
experience the same pulls, becomes a cultural type.
Religion functions as a shared system of references that, primarily by virtue of its being
shared with others, gives people a stable identity.[3] When new systems evolve they often
create turmoil as the same people need to discard previous identities and learn to form new
ones—often a traumatizing and destabilizing process unless there are continuities between
the old and the new that facilitate the transformation/ shift. But to live precariously in this
way in the liminal space between different and conflicting worldviews is to feel divided and
lose any sense of stable identity[4] Faustus experiences such a sense fragmentation and
disintegration:
You stars that reigned at my nativity,
Whose influence hath allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist
Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud,
That when you vomit forth into the air
My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths,
49
But let my soul mount and ascend to heaven. (5.2.160-166)
Fear of Fragmentation
Shattered Self/ Shattered Body
While on the one hand there was a deliberate construction of images of unification, in
accordance with religious or state agendas of unification and homogenization, there was
also a simultaneous articulation of this fragmentation through the body. There was no
concept of an abstract ‘self’ at this time, especially outside of religious discourse. The only
way in which the self could be imagined in this period was through the body. [5] Thus,
representations of body parts separated from each other signified the shattered, divided,
self. According to Cynthia Marshall, this desire to see one’s body as mutilated and
dismembered, this ‘self-shattering’ was a way of dealing with the pressure of conforming to
a unified identity.[6]
Is Faustus’s final dismemberment then a kind of self-shattering that resists conforming to

the humanist ideal? As stated earlier, one of the aims of humanist studies was to train the
students for a future career as an ambassador, lawyer, priest, or secretary, ‘a highly
marketable education for those who wanted to enter the ranks of the social elite.’ [7] He was
a scholarship student with an education that perhaps, in the absence of sufficient options of
earning a livelihood left him discontented.[8] Even his practice of magic secures him only the
‘service’ of the emperor, a regular goal for one acquiring a humanist education, though a far
cry from his initial plans to ‘wall all Germany with brass.’ His final dismemberment then, can
be seen either as his failure to become the great ‘demi-god’ or, it may as a final dismantling
of the false identity that he had created for himself following an unholy pact with the devil.
Either way, the dismemberment indicates the impossibility, within his theological milieu, of
creating a cohesive self at all. The ‘modern individual’ is not the culmination of the journey
begun by the ‘Renaissance man’. It is instead, this internally divided, fragmented and yet
aspiring individual[9]-- one who aspires for the skies, like Icarus, but ends up killing himself
and one who is always at odds with his environment.[10]
Ian Watt reads in a figure such as Faustus the emergence of the modern individual. He
places the figure of Faust along with three others whom he calls modern individuals: Don
Quixote, Don Juan and Robinson Crusoe.[11] Significantly Faust, along with Watt’s two other
‘modern individuals’ Don Juan and Don Quixote, although not based on historical figures,
appeared in literature during a period of some thirty or forty years. [12]
1516).
Such use of images of fragmentation to represent inner conflict created new uses of the
body in literature and art. Numerous literary and artistic works in the period depicted
violated and mutilated bodies as a means of representing such fragmentation. For example
Bosch’s painting Garden of Delights: ‘[I]n it we find bodies, half-formed and deformed,
jumbles of limbs, and body parts alone and in shocking combination. Bosch therein reveals
the base-level fear of fragmentation that drives human attempts to secure identity.[13]
Garden of Delights, Hieronymus Bosch: triptych with the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’, oil on
panel, 2.20×1.95 m (central panel), 2.20×0.97 m (wings), c. 1504 (Madrid, Museo del
Prado); Photo credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY (Grove art)
50
http://www.google.co.in/imgres?q=garden+of+delights+by+hieronymus+bosch%27&hl=en
&gbv=2&tbm=isch&tbnid=Qe25oGtyHdqP5M:&imgrefurl=http://www.guardian.co.uk/artand
design/2009/jan/14/museums-internet-google-earth-
prado&docid=mobcqtswhIwYkM&imgurl=http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-
images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2009/1/14/1231924369511/The-Garden-of-Earthly-Del-
002.jpg&w=460&h=276&ei=4Qe-T7-
FHYj4rQe0g7y1DQ&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=533&sig=110486134258393903709&page=2&tb
nh=115&tbnw=192&start=33&ndsp=45&ved=1t:429,r:4,s:33,i:151&tx=98&ty=23&biw=16
80&bih=850
51
Construction of W0holeness
It is precisely this fear of fragmentation that drives one to create images of unification that
are available externally, hence the adoption in this period of rigid religious, social and
national identities. It is significant that it was in the time of England’s first formation of its
national identity in the sixteenth century that, so many representations of witches,
sorcerers etc. were made, perhaps because it served to suture any ruptures caused by
differences in faith. Partially derived from the attempts to consolidate appropriate Protestant
ethics, these representations, almost always negative, also contributed to the consolidation
of a (Protestant) nation-state (Christina Larner, quoted in Bertram 32) As Benjamin Bertram
points out, the new witchcraft statutes of 1543 and 1563, which made witchcraft, magic,
and sorcery a crime against church and state, were part of this movement toward
ideological conformity.[14]
[1] Watson 326.
[2] Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. A. D. Melville (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986)
[3] The word ‘identity’ derives from the Latin root ‘idem’ which means ‘the same.’ Identity
then is the formation of an idea of oneself that conforms to an externally created idea of
that which one would want to be the same as.
[4] The word ‘individual’ means that which is not divided.
[5] It was only within traditions of monasticism that one could conceive of a self as distinct
from one’s social/ political identity.
[6] See Cynthia Marshall, The Shattering of the Self: Violence, Subjectivity, and Early
Modern Texts (Maryland: Johns Hopkins University, 2002).
[7] Brotton 64.
[8] One might actually read parallels with Marlowe’s own life here.
[9] Compare Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust; the latter
may be read as an expression of the tragic destiny of modern man.
[10] Significantly, Goethe’s Faust is not damned. At the end of the play, his soul ascends to
heaven.
[11] The composition of the group is determined by the fact that these figures have
continued to fill the imagination of people ever since they appeared.
52
[12] Faustus in the original Faustbuch appeared in 1587, Don Juan in the play El Burlador
written between 1612 and 1616 (published in 1630), and Don Quixote in Miguel de
Cervantes’s The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (1605, 1615).
[13] Donald E. Hall, Subjectivity (New York: Routledge, 2004) 83.
[14] Bertram 32.
Self-fashioning through Role-play
Stephen Greenblatt has identified such efforts towards the creation of whole identities as
role-play. According to him, the fashioning of one’s identity through role-play was a way of
dealing with acute metaphysical despair. Faustus too, according to him, attempts to fashion
an identity for himself through role-play for dealing with his loss of faith in any transcendent
reality and the acute consciousness of a void: ‘This is play on the brink of the abyss,
absolute play.’[1] This struggle is of course in vain as his self is constructed by the
dominant culture against which he rebels, even the roles that he plays.
Greenblatt illustrates his theory of the void at the centre of Renaissance self-fashioning by
analyzing a painting by the German artist Hans Holbein (1497-1543) The Ambassadors
(1533). The two figures in the painting are Jean de Dinteville and George de Selve and
between them are objects representing the seven liberal arts. In the centre is a skull, which
is an anamorphic image, that is, it has been painted using a process that distorts an image
when seen form a frontal perspective but reveals it from a specific angle. For Greenblatt,
this skull symbolizes the sinister forces that stand in opposition to the phenomenal
accomplishments made during the Renaissance, the conflicted flipside to the grand visions
of the period. ‘To move a few feet away from the frontal contemplation of the painting is to
efface everything within, to bring death into the world,’[2]
The Ambassadors (1533) by German artist Hans Holbein (1497-1543).
53
http://www.google.co.in/imgres?q=http://www.usm.maine.edu/eng/holbein%2520ambassa
dors2.JPG&um=1&hl=hi&sa=N&tbm=isch&tbnid=z_Rb42xDVL-
t6M:&imgrefurl=http://ffffound.com/image/2628c6a5cc767f48cc63d28f954f75638417c0b8&
docid=P98z44CsCa2EPM&itg=1&imgurl=http://img.ffffound.com/static-
data/assets/6/2628c6a5cc767f48cc63d28f954f75638417c0b8_m.jpg&w=479&h=480&ei=Ix
_XT7b2AcbyrQeirrz8Dw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=85&vpy=167&dur=272&hovh=225&hovw=
224&tx=106&ty=109&sig=115057883650139139571&page=1&tbnh=113&tbnw=113&start
=0&ndsp=12&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:69&biw=1360&bih=579
54
When viewed from the side, the skull in the painting becomes visible.
Source: Wikipedia
55
Spectacles of Unitary Identity
Violence and the Spectacle of Pain
The hacking to death of Saint Stanislaus in 1253.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fc/Rozsiekanie_Swietego_Stanislawa.jpg
However, this is not to say that images of violence did not exist in literature and art prior to
this. In medieval religious drama throughout Europe, for example, saints and martyrs were
flayed alive, roasted on grills, tortured with hot pincers, disembowelled, thrown into lions’
dens, amputated, mutilated, and even beheaded. [3] The source of such depictions lay in
real instances of torture inflicted on those whose religious affiliations were in conflict with
those in power. John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments records the tortures inflicted upon
Protestant ‘martyrs’ by Catholics (see background). Other offenders, usually people accused
of treason, were also subjected to torture and/or executed publicly, not merely to serve as
deterrents to potential offenders, but also in order to display the power of the state over its
enemies. The result was the creation of a public spectacle in which the state would give
specific identities to the accused and to itself, thereby legitimizing the act. This display was,
according to Karen Cunningham, almost like a dramatic presentation in which ‘the accused
56
was transformed into a figure of evil, the monarch and justices into representations of good,
and the condemned's body into a … symbol of the triumph of "right.” ’ [4]
Such public spectacles of violence can be said to have provided the model for a drama that
depicted violence on stage. Here the public to whose gaze the body of the accused would be
subjected was made more or less into a theatre audience, thus dissolving the difference
between reality and drama.[5] Marlowe’s play too uses similar techniques for creating a
spectacle. The scholars who hear Faustus’s cries and see his scattered limbs are made into
the kind of audience that would witness public torture and execution:
3 Scholar: The devils whom Faustus serv’d have torn him thus:
For ’twixt the hours of twelve and one, methought
I heard him shriek and call aloud for help,
At which self time the house seem’d all on fire
With dreadful horror of these damned fiends. (5.2.8-12)
Thus the play uses the devices of real life public violence to heighten dramatic effect. Rather
than the audience actually witnessing the violence on stage the narration of violence lends
the play greater authenticity, and therefore, greater popularity.
Faustus’s Dismemberment: the Aesthetics of Pain
There are, however, other kinds of effects possible too. Since the play Doctor Faustus
continues to be read over the centuries it is important to see how our changing aesthetic
attitudes change the way in which we are affected by degree and manner of depiction of
violence in it.[6]
Violence and/as Sublime
This preference for witnessing real drama was theorized by Edmund Burke in the eighteenth
century. He describes a theatre audience awaiting the performance of “the most sublime
and affecting tragedy”:
Choose a day on which to represent the most sublime and affecting tragedy we have;
appoint the most favorite actors; spare no cost upon the scenes and decorations; unite the
greatest efforts of poetry, painting, and music; and when you have collected your audience,
just at the moment when their minds are erect with expectation, let it be reported that a
state criminal of high rank is on the point of being executed in the adjoining square; in a
moment the emptiness of the theatre would demonstrate the comparative weakness of the
57
imitative arts, and proclaim the triumph of the real sympathy. -Burke Section XV (Adam
Phillips 43).
The representation of violence on stage produces its effect by suggesting to the audience
the physical pain felt by the victim. This however is a slightly tricky business. The question
of pain leads to the problem of the limits within which it can be represented aesthetically.
Beyond these limits pain becomes unrepresentable as it cannot move the audience to the
kind of desired effect that in Aristotelian parlance would be ‘pity’ and ‘fear’.
If in the early productions of the play the idea of a satanic rebellion against God and selling
the soul to the devil aroused extreme metaphysical horror the same was seen as sublime in
the 18th century. Around this time philosophers like Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant
theorized the idea of what constitutes the sublime. Violence being inflicted on someone on
stage could be seen as sublime as it aroused feelings of terror while at the same time
assuring us of our own safety. Thus, Faustus’s violent death at the end of the play was
sublime as it aroused feelings of horror in the face of encounters with the supernatural and
the prospect of physical torture, while keeping us safe in the knowledge of our actual safety.
Gothic Horror
The emergence of the genre of the Gothic at this time contributed to the focus on the
macabre in this play. As mentioned earlier, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus had hardly had an
afterlife in England after the early 17th century. It was only after the German writer Goethe
adapted it into a two-part play Faust that it caught the attention of readers again.[7]
However, with the fascination with the macabre that was evident in the popularity of Gothic
literature this time the interest in the figure of Faustus focused around the violence done to
his body as much as it did around the encounter with the supernatural. It is no coincidence
that interest in the idea of actual violence done to the body was widespread at this time.
The human body and its practices were written about, analyzed and discussed in various
fields in the 19thcentury: medicine, criminology, sanitation, etc.
[1] Richard Schechner, cited in Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning,

Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005)
220.
[2] Stephen Greenbatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 20.
[3] Margaret Owens, Stages of Dismemberment: The Fragmented Body in Late Medieval
and Early Modern Drama ( New Jersey: U of Delaware P, 2005) 28.
[4] Karen Cunningham, ‘Renaissance Execution and Marlovian Elocution: The Drama of
Death.’ PMLA 105. 2 (Mar. 1990) 210. JSTOR 5 Dec. 2008.
58
[5] People would go to see such executions with packed food like for a picnic. Later such
public spectacles were discontinued as their initial purpose to act as a deterrent to crime
had changed to that of providing voyeuristic pleasure.
[6] See Charles Whitney, Early Responses to Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 2006) 25-26.
[7] See Goethe’s Faust below for the afterlife of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus in Germany.
Psychological Horror
Murder as Sublime
Thomas de Quincey’s (1785-1859) analysis of the ‘art’ of murder in his essay ‘On Murder’ is
a case in point. Interestingly, here the focus shifts from the body of the victim to the psyche
of the murderer. What de Quincey describes in great detail is not horror on witnessing a
body being mutilated or killed but the aesthetic satisfaction that the murderer has on
perceiving his ‘fine art’. With this shift in the perception of violence there emerged new
genres of writing the body in literature. The body and its availability and vulnerability to
violence now included a new dimension -- the psychological. The writings of Edgar Allan Poe
are an example.
It is not surprising then that critical perspectives on Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus too then
came to dwell on Faustus’s inner self. Thus, the Good and Bad angels became his own
conscience, while his final death by dismemberment was seen as a result of his own sado-
masochist desires and his death drive.
Post-modern Individual/Body?
From ‘Renaissance Man’ to Modern Individual
Post-modern identity, however, is expressed through style and image. Watt’s reading of
Faustus as the ‘modern individual’ is also coloured by his knowledge of the history of the
ideal of the ‘Renaissance man’. Both, ‘Renaissance Man’ and ‘modern individual’ are only
descriptive identities that serve to articulate the self-image of a people. Once this self-
image changes, the interpretation changes too. In the period following the ‘modern’, called
the ‘postmodern,’ this fragmented self is no longer lamented. This idea of tragic
fragmentation is in fact transformed into fragmentation being embraced and even
celebrated in late twentieth century postmodern cultures. This is in conformity with a new
way of imagining the self: one that refuses to identify with any external idea/l. Instead, in a
bid to assert non-conformity, and the rejection of a stable identity, postmodern ‘identities’
choose to display dismembered bodies as their self-image.[1]
59
The Play and its Performance/s

Performance on Stage
Visual aspects
The Chorus in the Prologue guides audience response in this play. The classical and biblical
references too may have been lost to many in the audience. But the visual narrative
ensures that the ‘moral’ of the story is not lost: from the first conjuring scenes, the dragon
who lets Faustus travel the world, the invisible cloak in the scene at Rome, the horse-
courser pulling out Faustus’s leg, to the final scene when Faustus sees the Hell mouth.
Use of stage Props
Theatricality
Faustus’s false head that Benvolio cuts off (4.2.42), his false leg that the horse-courser pulls
off (4.4.37), Faustus’s limbs that the Scholars find the morning-after (5.2.6-7) all add to the
play’s theatricality.
Stage machinery
Descending throne in Act 5: According to an inventory of props held by the Lord Admiral’s
Men a number of stage properties had been acquired for Marlowe’s plays, including for
Doctor Faustus, ‘one Hell mouth.’[2]
Adaptations
Although Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus was itself an adaptation from the Damnable Life, any
future renderings of the story were based on this play.[3]
Popular versions
The play had no significant afterlife in England, although it was performed until the
Restoration period. As Nicholas Boyle points out, the theme was increasingly confined to
pantomime and burlesque and performed thus until the eighteenth century. However,
throughout the first half of the seventeenth century troupes of English players, clowns and
acrobats toured the German Empire performing, in a mixture of English and German, plays
which included debased versions of works by Shakespeare and Marlowe. Boyle mentions a
recorded performance of the play in Graz in 1608. Later, popular versions of the Faust story
in the German language continued to be played by traveling actors throughout Germany for
over a century. There are records of performances in Frankfurt in 1767, and in Hamburg in
1770. Thus, Boyle states, ‘Faust…returned to his native country.’ (6)
Faust Puppet plays in Germany
60
Faust puppet-plays were popular in Germany in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
partly because a puppet-theatre was much more economical and mobile than a troupe of
actors. After the early nineteenth century the trade started dying out and literary scholars
collected the scripts from the puppet-masters. The plots of these plays sometimes made
Faust partly into a figure of fun. [4]
Faust faces a lineup of devils.
http://www.google.co.in/imgres?q=Faust+faces+a+lineup+of+devils.&um=1&hl=hi&sa=N&
tbm=isch&tbnid=xTGE0ln3bGp1fM:&imgrefurl=http://www.nytheatre-
wire.com/ps07084t.htm&docid=u9TTHCXmXIEQrM&imgurl=http://www.nytheatre-
wire.com/ps07084c.jpg&w=240&h=180&ei=TifXT97wDoSGrAes_O37Dw&zoom=1&iact=rc&
dur=474&sig=115057883650139139571&page=1&tbnh=119&tbnw=157&start=0&ndsp=24
&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:68&tx=51&ty=46&biw=1360&bih=579
Lessing’s Faust
G. E. Lessing, the German critic, dramatist, and later theologian, apparently wrote a tragedy
on the Faust theme. Only certain fragments of it have survived as they were published in
1784. There was around 1750, as Boyle points out, an attempt by German literary
intellectuals to look into national past for their native dramatic tradition that could be
revived to counter the influence of French classical models. However, the changed socio-
cultural context did not allow the same kind of treatment of the themes: ‘The theological
certainties which had made Faust’s crime awesome and his end inevitable were fading’
(Boyle 8-9). Lessing’s Faust had sold his soul because of his lust for knowledge, and not for
twenty-four years of pleasure. Since Lessing had devoted his life to the spreading of the
Enlightenment he was unwilling to let his Faust come to the traditional end. So, at the end
of the play, just when he is to be carried off by devils, an angel was to appear announcing
that after all Faust’s desire for knowledge was not criminal, was indeed created and
confirmed by God Himself: ‘the Godhead did not give man the noblest of instincts in order
to make him wretched.’ The whole play so far was to have been no more than a dream,
during which Faust was asleep. Faust was to awake and thank the higher powers for their
timely warning against intellectual arrogance. Lessing’s fragments thus, ‘have considerable
historical importance, for they inaugurate the modern tradition of non-tragic Fausts, of
61
Fausts who are noble and representative of humanity, rather than criminal outsiders,
however grandiose.’[5]
Faust faces a lineup of devils.
The impish Pimprle rides on a devil's back

http://www.nytheatre-wire.com/ps07084t.htm
Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theater started again its opening 1990 production of

Johannes Dokchtor Faust, comprising a company of 100-year-old puppets. Director Vit
Horejs’s translation of this 1862 version (set in print by the mysterious “A.B.,” after
62
centuries of oral tradition) Bohemian Hall. Source

http://www.nytheatre-wire.com/ps07084t.htm
Goethe’s Faust
Goethe may not have read Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus until 1818. One of the likely sources of
his play, whose direct influence he publicly acknowledged, was the puppet-play of Faust. In
the eighteenth century, Marlowe’s play had declined to become the German equivalent of a
Punch and Judy show. However, Goethe’s treatment of the Faust theme was neither
comical, as in the puppet-play, nor is it a theological tragedy. Instead it is an ironical and
moral tragedy. Faust is seen to be justly damned, not because he has made an agreement
with the Devil, but because of what he has done to Gretchen. But his soul ascends to
heaven.
In Carl Gustav Jung’s reading of Faust ‘it is not Goethe who creates Faust, but Faust which
creates Goethe. And what is Faust but a symbol... Here it is something that lives in the soul
of every German, and that Goethe has helped to bring to birth.’
Mephistopheles appearing before Faust in the 1865 edition of Faust by Johann Wolfgang
Goethe. ( FORTEAN PICTURE LIBRARY)
Heinrich Heine’s, Der Doktor Faust: Ein Tanzpoem (Doctor Faust: a Dance Poem): In this
Faust is led astray by a female Devil named Mephistophela.
63
http://www.unexplainedstuff.com/Magic-and-Sorcery/Magi-Dr-faust-c-1480-1540.html
Doctor Faustus, novel by Thomas Mann (1945): In this novel the composer Adrian
Leverkuhn is represented as the incarnation of German history leading upto 1945. The
Faustian myth is used here to express the moral decay and ethical sickness of the time that
result in self-destruction. Leverkuhn makes a pact with the devil that stipulates that he shall
not love.
Jack Faust, novel by Michael Swanwick (1997)
Illustration (not cover) by Greg Spalenka. 1997

http://openlibrary.org/books/OL1013012M/Jack_Faust
The promotional description of the novel summarises it thus:
‘At the turn of the 16th century, Magister Faust is made an offer he cannot refuse by the
demon Mephistopheles - to know all there is to know. Faust believes that humankind will
use this knowledge only for good, but in only a few years the nuclear weapons of our 20th
century have been created.’
Mefisto, novel by John Banville: Banville’s novel tells the story of a young math genius , and
burn victim, Gabriel Swann and their journey into a personal hell. On this psychological
voyage several Mephistophelean characters attend them, which includes Felix and Mr.
Kasperl.
64
David Mamet’s play Faustus (2004): First produced in 2004 and published in 2005. In this
adaptation Faustus is a successful scientist and philosopher with a wife and a sick child. He
formulates the secret of the world into a mathematical equation. To prove the merit of his
work he bargains the life of his wife and child.
Hector Berlioz’s concert opera La Damnation de Faust (The Damnation of Faust) 1846,
which is based on Goethe’s play Faust.
Gertrude Stein’s Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights (1951) is a libretto (text) for an opera.
Productions with a difference (and the problem of creative licence)
Marlowe’s play was written, like all theatrical creations in the period, to be performed on the
popular stage. The most important determining factor in what gets to be performed, as in
commercial cinema these days, is the box-office. In such a scenario, again much like
contemporary cinema, as much of a collaborative medium as theatre, the question of
authorship becomes less complicated than we now tend to think. Doctor Faustus was
performed almost continuously from about the early 1590s till the seventeenth century.
(except when the theatres were closed down from1642 to1660). The published versions
that are available (1604 and 1616) are both significantly different from one another. The
text must, we can imagine have been altered again and again to suit the tastes of the
audience or the dramatic vision of the producers. All these ‘collaborators’ then become co-
authors in their own right. Marlowe’s own position as author, if his name appearing on the
text is any indication, as Stephen Orgel notes, becomes ‘increasingly nebulous.’ It appears
first, in 1604, as “Ch. Marl.” and then, in 1616, as “Ch. Mar.”; in the only surviving copy of
the latter, the name has been expanded with pen and ink to read “Macklin” or “Marklin.”
The author, the sense of an author, disappears. In its own time it is less a text than a
continuous event.
The twentieth century has displayed tremendous interest in producing old texts in
imaginative ways that either alter their meanings or at least give them contemporary
relevance. These new ‘authors’ also treat the productions of Doctor Faustus in widely
(wildly?) different ways. Some such recent productions are:
1. Doctor Faustus , produced by Headlong (Rupert Goold and Ben Power) in 2006
2. Ego Faust Eugenio Barba’s(2000)
3. A special performance put up by the Thetrum Mundi Ensemble for the XII Session of Ista. This Production
was studded with forty actors, dancers, musicians and singers from various cultures. Among these is the
Odissi dancer Sanjukta Panigrahi and Japanese (See ‘Dancing with Faust: A Semiotician’s Reflections on
Barba’s Intercultural Mise-en-scene’ by Patrice Pavis)
4. Faustus: The Last Night Pascal Dusapin’s opera
65
John Hancock as Faustus and Stephen West as Mephistopheles in Pascal Dusapin’s opera
“Faustus, the Last Night.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/arts/music/05faus.html?_r=1
[1] See Influences for the way in which the figure of Faust, and associated figures of the
devil, Mephistopheles, the Seven Deadly Sins etc. are appropriated for postmodern
representations of the self.
[2] Emma Smith 155.
[3] Similarly, after Goethe’s Faust, performances of Marlowe’s play too focused on
highlighting or representing the tragic in these terms.
[4] Boyle gives details about the plots of these plays.
[5] Nicholas Boyle, 8-10. Boyle also mentions here a lesser-known writer, Paul Weidmann,
who sends Faust to Heaven even before Lessing. The play, Johann Faust, was first
performed in Prague in 1775.
66
Influences
Fiction
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) is a Romantic embodiment
of the Faustian tradition.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). Dracula, according to Stoker’s friend Thomas Hall Caine is a
mix of ‘ the Flying Dutchman, Faust, the Wandering Jew, and the Demon Lover.’ [1]
Bela Lugosi as Dracula in the 1931 film.
http://www.google.co.in/imgres?um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1360&bih=540&tbm=isch&tbnid
=vr32l864ZNfjRM:&imgrefurl=http://www.onemetal.com/2012/02/19/the-onscreen-faces-
of-dracula/&docid=neNiUqVU0zKI1M&imgurl=http://www.onemetal.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/02/belalugosi.jpeg&w=500&h=332&ei=0izYT67aLILKrAf-
r7XoDw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=101&vpy=174&dur=1740&hovh=183&hovw=276&tx=139&
ty=119&sig=105737245655500325873&page=5&tbnh=161&tbnw=201&start=71&ndsp=20
&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:71,i:301
Later Gothic fiction becomes more than the genre of the sensational and points towards the
psychological tales of Poe, Emily Bronte, Hawthorne, Melville, Dostoevsky, Henry James,
Kafka, Faulkner, and others.[2]
Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851) depicts, in the character of its protagonist Ahab
something akin to the Faustian desire for the unattainable.
67
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story ‘Young Goodman Brown’ (1835) is a semi-allegorical tale
about a young man who is about lose his Faith, his wife named Faith in the story, while
participating in an unholy ritual with the Devil. He resists and finds himself alone, literally
and spiritually. He becomes an embittered man, suspicious of everyone including his wife
Faith. The story ends thus:
"And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave...they carved no hopeful verse
upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom."
Science Fiction
The Faustian desire to exceed the limits of available knowledge, whether in trying to know
the secrets of the universe or to travel in space, for example, soon found new (and
legitimate! ) channels of exploration in scientific and technological developments/ inquiries.
What is truly Faustian in the nature of these inquiries may be understood by looking at
science fiction. Writers of science fiction have always shown readers new frontiers to cross
by simply imagining them in their work. A good example of this is the cyberpunk novel
Neuromancer by William Gibson. Written in 1984, when the computer was literally in its
infancy, this novel imagined human consciousness entering cyberspace. Today scientists
have developed systems that allow users to actually experience Virtual Reality.
Film
The Student of Prague
This was a silent film made in 1913 in Germany. The writers Hanns Heinz Ewers and Paul
Wegener combined elements of the fantastic from the Faust legend, the tales of the …
E.T.A. Hoffman (The Sand Man 1816), and Edgar Allan Poe’s William Wilson (1839). The
film shows a poor student Balduin sell his soul, represented by his image in the mirror to
the devil, disguised as Scapinelli, in exchange for a pile of gold and the woman he wants,
Countess Margit. The film was remade three times: by Henrik Galeen in 1926, Arthur
Robison in 1936 and in 2004.
Popular Culture
Faust Nursery Rhyme
A nursery rhyme about Doctor Faustus was recorded in the Nursery Rhyme Book (1897) by
the famous British collector of fairy tales Andrew Lang (1844-1912). Since the book is
intended for children, Lang’s Preface warns the readers that Faustus was ‘not a “very good
man;” that is a mistake, or the poem was written by a friend of the Doctor’s.’ They are told
that ‘he was a wizard, and raised up Helen of Troy from the other world, the most beautiful
woman who ever was seen. Dr. Faustus made an agreement with Bogie, who, after the
Doctor had been gay for a long time, came and carried him off in a flash offire.’
The rhyme was set to music by Walter Crane in The Baby’s Opera (1877)[3]
68
Illustration by L. Leslie Brooke. The Nursery Rhyme Book (1897) Ed, Andrew Lang.
Illustration available in The Norton Anthology of Children’s Literature

(http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nacl/images/illustrations/section13_37.html )
DOCTOR FAUSTUS was a good man,

He whipt his scholars now and then;
When he whipp'd them he made them dance,
Out of Scotland into France,
Out of France into Spain,
And then he whipp'd them back again!
(from Project Gutenberg.)
Faust Ballad.
Scan available at:

http://library.du.ac.in/dspace/bitstream/1/428/15/Ch.5%20Ballad%20of%20faustus.pdf
69
Contemporary Popular Culture
The Superhero
The concept of the superhero too emerges to a large extent from Faustian desire. Only, in
this case, there is no diabolical deal. The superhero may arrive from outer space, like
Superman, use technology for his superpowers (a very self-reliant Faust here) like Batman,
or even become one through a lucky accident, like Spiderman being bitten by a radioactive
(originally) / genetically altered (new version) spider! Whatever the case, these superheroes
can do what ordinary mortals cannot. Significantly too, they are on God’s side, not the
Devil’s. Some earlier, now less known, superheroes like Phantom (since he works so
secretly as to seem invisible) or Mandrake (the magician) too emerged from ideas of …
What is important to remember is that the same qualities or ‘powers’ that were considered
‘evil’ in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, or unethical even till the nineteenth century (as
in the novel Frankenstein), suddenly became acceptable in the twentieth century. If the only
thing ‘evil’ about Faustus’s powers was that he had to sell his soul for them (he doesn’t
destroy the world!) then Faustus real tragedy is to have been born at the wrong cultural
moment.
Mefisto in Marvel Comics
In Marvel Comics, Mephisto comes across as a powerful devil figure, exercising his powers
over Hell; he even goes the extent of fashioning himself as the Biblical Satan.
Mefisto in Marvel Comics
Source: http://marvel.com/universe/Mephisto
70
The Simpsons
In a very relevant combination of the deadly sin of Gluttony and the pact with the devil
Homer Simpson sells his soul for a donut. He falls into hell and is given the punishment in
the Ironic Punishment Lab that he be fed all the donuts in the world. And he does.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-X3ZcZ2h4Ths/the_simpsons_donut_hell/
Bart sells his soul to Milhouse for five bucks.
Tourism
Statue of Faustus in Knittlingen

http://82.146.59.108/pict/cat5/stamp/11311s.jpg
Technology
A car named Faust that marks the availability of the figure of Faustus/Faust as a readymade
metaphor for (almost) superhuman aspiration. Significantly, as in the case of the car named
Faust, the car’s inability to match up with its more conventional counterparts (run on
conventional fuels) in terms of top speed or power is disguised by naming it after Faust. The
name Faust here works as a double signifier, indicating the passing of physical barriers.
Single seat solar race car created by the students of the Univerlity of Toronto in 2001 for an
EcoFest. It weights 200kg, has a top speed of 75mph (120km/h) and the solar base can
generate 1050 watts.
71
http://www.google.co.in/imgres?um=1&hl=en&biw=1360&bih=540&tbm=isch&tbnid=MbN8
EuEuT0_iwM:&imgrefurl=http://green.autoblog.com/2006/09/04/ecofest-report-university-
of-toronto-blue-sky-solar-
racing/&docid=3AHVycBuJsrubM&imgurl=http://www.blogcdn.com/green.autoblog.com/me
dia/2006/09/uot3.jpg&w=425&h=319&ei=9TTYT_6-
OMaIrAeQlLHPDw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=543&vpy=194&dur=555&hovh=194&hovw=259&
tx=145&ty=91&sig=105737245655500325873&page=1&tbnh=143&tbnw=204&start=0&nd
sp=11&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:0,i:78
Soul as Security against Loan!
A financial company in Latvia, one of the European Union countries worst hit by the
economic recession gave small short-term agreement loans to people with only their ‘soul’
as security.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5622CL20090703
Art
The figure of Faustus, as the scholar magician whose unquenchable thirst for knowledge as
well as worldly pleasures makes him sell his soul to the Devil, has been rendered in the
form of art through the centuries. Other associated figures such as the Seven Deadly Sins
have also been depicted visually according to the artist’s idea of these. An examination of
the way these Sins have been ‘painted’ over centuries, from the medieval to the present
period, gives crucial insights into the attitudes towards the figure of Faustus, and more
importantly, the changing ideas of ‘evil’ within changed cultural spaces.
The Seven Deadly Sins too have been appropriated to make other kinds of statements.
72
Faust. Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van Rijn. 1650-52

Etching, 209 x 161 mm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Source": http://www.lib-art.com/artgallery/15859-faust-rembrandt-harmenszoon-van-
rijn.htm
“Rembrandt's engraving, 'Dr Faustus', is a late and relatively sober image of the magus in
action. Unalarmed, the mage scrutinizes the magical apparition levitating in front of him,
which is covered with occult or cabbalistic signs. The source of unease in the picture is the
watching figure at the window, a possible informant against the Doctor. A skull also seems
to look on. The unfinished engraving leaves obscure just what Faustus is resting his weight
on, or where he is standing in this sunken lumber-room.”[4]
James Gillray
James Gillray .A Voluptuary under the Horrors of Digestion, hand-coloured stipple

engraving, 366×295 mm, 1792 (London, British Museum); photo © The British Museum
Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/A-voluptuary.jpg
73
74
Otto Dix
Otto Dix. The Seven Deadly Sins. 1933.
Source: Tigtail Virtual Museum
http://www.tigtail.org/cgi-
bin/pixS/TIG/S_Show/TVM/B/European/b.%20between%20wars/German-
Austrian/dix/M/dix_seven_cardinal_sins.1933.jpg/RURL/TIG/S_View/TVM/B/European/b.%2
0between%20wars/German-Austrian/dix/dix-2.html
Otto Dix’s portrait The Seven Deadly Sins, made during the ouster of Dix from his teaching
post at the Dresden Art Academy by the Nazis, illustrates the political climate at that time.
The figures represented in the painting are Greed (a crone trying to clasp money in her
hands), Sloth (wearing skeleton outfit), Lust (seen dancing in a sensual manner), Anger
(the demon with horns), Pride(a figure with a massive head), and Gluttony( her head
covered with cooking pot). Dix has shown the character of Envy wearing a mask of Adolf
Hitler. To avoid censure, moustache of Hitler is not painted until the war got over. Dix has
particularly put his focus on the character of Sloth. The part of the reason for highlighting
Sloth in his painting arises from Dix’s conviction that it was German’s people indifference or
lack of cautiousness that led to the Nazis rising to power.
( Source- http://www.jahsonic.com/OttoDix.html)
75
Dali
Salvador Dali. Le Vieux Faust (Old Faust) Source: Gallery of Surrealism.

http://www.galleryofsurrealism.com/SDMA-1968AA.htm
___________________________________________________________________
76
Ralph Fabri
Dr. Faustus (1947). Ralph Fabri, Hungarian Artist (1894-1975), etching, 30.1 x 22.6 cm.,
ed. 12/50. Source: Georgetown University.
For reproduction information contact artcollection@georgetown.edu
http://www.library.georgetown.edu/dept/speccoll/fabri/jpeg/faustus.jpg
Biljana Djurdjevic
Biljana Djurdjevic. 'Gluttony'. Oil on Canvas. 251x162cm. 2004
Source: Galerie Davide Gallo

http://www.google.co.in/imgres?q=Biljana+Djurdjevic.+%27Gluttony%27.&um=1&hl=hi&
sa=N&tbm=isch&tbnid=PzkNyy2d43D9HM:&imgrefurl=http://www.tica-
albania.org/tb3/press_images.htm&docid=NsqJyfQmmHHSVM&imgurl=http://www.tica-
albania.org/tb3/images/press_images_jpg/Gluttony_Biljana_Djurdjevic_2004.jpg&w=1589&
h=2470&ei=FT3YT-NFhLSsB-
XixeMP&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=89&vpy=102&dur=336&hovh=280&hovw=180&tx=86&ty=
177&sig=115057883650139139571&page=1&tbnh=126&tbnw=77&start=0&ndsp=25&ved
=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:68&biw=1360&bih=579)
77
By identifying the obese figure of the woman with Christ, the painting expresses
contemporary attitudes towards the (obese) body. Gluttony is still identified as a ‘sin’, but
for different reasons. Rather than it’s being a sign of one’s indifference to the poor it
functions as a sign of their indifference to their bodies. Moreover, the idea of crucifixion
contains within it the suggestion that it is the obesity of this woman that gives others their
identity as being thin and therefore ‘non-sinners.’ The glutton is thus redeeming man-
/womankind from an imagined sin, the guilt of obesity.
78
Commercial Art
(Above Left) Detail from Bosch’s Garden of Delights (right panel) depicting Hell. Here “a
gigantic bird-headed monster feeds on the tormented, which he defecates into the
transparent chamber pot on which he sits. The monster is sometimes referred to as the
"Prince of Hell", a name derived from the cauldron he wears on his head, perhaps
representing a debased crown.” Source: Medbib.com
(Above Right) 3D statue adaptation of Devil on Night Chair by Hieronymus Bosch. Resin
with hand-painted color details. Dimensions: 8.25"H x 4.5"L x 3.75"W.
Source:
http://www.google.co.in/imgres?q=%28Above+Left%29+Detail+from+Bosch%E2%80%99
s+Garden+of+Delights+%28right+panel%29+depicting+Hell&um=1&hl=hi&tbm=isch&tbni
d=fXms4hTKaYat1M:&imgrefurl=http://de-conversion.com/2007/11/12/in-fear-and-
trembling-the-peace-from-our-
lord/&docid=8HvgAQXOWy1PmM&imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/
thumb/3/39/Hieronymus_Bosch,_Hell_%28Garden_of_Earthly_Delights_tryptich,_right_pan
el%29_-_detail_1_%28devil%29.JPG/450px-
Hieronymus_Bosch,_Hell_%28Garden_of_Earthly_Delights_tryptich,_right_panel%29_-
_detail_1_%28devil%29.JPG&w=450&h=599&ei=P03YT9LFFsPZrQejxIHZDw&zoom=1&iact
=rc&dur=483&sig=115057883650139139571&page=1&tbnh=121&tbnw=91&start=0&ndsp
=27&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:68&tx=39&ty=63&biw=1360&bih=579
[1] Cited in In search of Dracula. 145-6.Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu. Houghton
Miflin Harcourt, 1994. 145-6
[2] Joseph Arthur Soldati. Configurations of Faust: Three Studies in the Gothic (1798-
79
1820). USA: Ayer Publishing, 1980.9
[3] The rhyme as set to music by Crane http://www.mamalisa.com/?t=hes&p=1561
[4] Analysis by Roy Booth, Royal Holloway University of London,

<personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhle/001/Witches'Sabbath.htm>
Conclusion
Considering the afterlife of Doctor Faustus, not only in terms of the continuously evolving
new interpretations but also in terms of its availability to cultural meaning-making
processes it may safely be said that the play pushes its own generic limits to ultimately
confound the possibility of any meaning at all.
80
Questions
1.What is Faustus’s response to the urgings of the Good Angel?
2. How does the play construct the ideas of Heaven and Hell?
3. What is Faustus’s idea of true learning? What does he plan to do with his new powers? 4.
Is there a discrepancy between Faustus’s intentions at the beginning of the play and what
he ultimately does with his powers?
5. Why does Faustus form a written pact with the devil? What is the significance of its being
‘written’?
6. In what ways is the figure of Faustus produced by the conflicting discourses circulating in
his society?
7. Why is magic associated with evil in the play?
8. What does the dismemberment of Faustus’s body signify for his status as a Renaissance
scholar?
9. Comment on the social construction of the fear of Hell and damnation in the play.
10. Examine the possible reasons for the popularity of the figure of Faustus in contemporary
popular culture.
11. Is it possible to say that the spectacle of the play is a major reason for its popularity? If
so, describe some such spectacular elements.
12. The play closes with the Chorus’s reiteration of the moral implied in the Prologue. To
what extent does the text prepare the reader/ audience for this closure?
13. Why, according to you, has the figure of Faustus been a popular subject for art through
the centuries, from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century?
14. Examine some of the ways in which the myth of the fall of man has been represented in
art and literature.
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Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faustus

Lesson: Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faustus

Course Developer: Sumita Sharma

College/ Department : Shyam Lal, University of Delhi

The Writer and His Work

[4] Riggs 27.

[5] Riggs 29.

[7] Riggs 36.

[8] Riggs 34.

[9] Robert A. Logan, Shakespeare’s Marlowe: the Influence of Christopher Marlowe on

Ashgate, 2006) 153-54.

[13] Riggs 35-36.

[14] Nicholl 153.

[15] Nicholl 154-55.

[16] Nicholl 154

The Two Texts of Doctor Faustus

Variations between the A and B texts of Doctor Faustus

The A-text 1604

The B-text 1616

Sources of Doctor Faustus

Although we classify the sources here as historical, literary or folkloric it is important to

Faustus the Printer

[1] Norton Anthology of English Literature. 284

[5] Wentersdorf 201.

[6] Wentersdorf 202.

[8] Wentersdorf 213.

Literary/ Dramatic Sources

The German Faustbuch

The English Faustbook

Differences between the Two Faustbooks:

Yet art thou still but Faustus and a man.

Couldst thou make men to live eternally,

Or, being dead, raise them to life again,

Then this profession were to be esteemed. (1.1.21-24)[3]

All things that move between the quiet poles

Shall be at my command. Emperors and kings

Are but obeyed in their several provinces,

Nor can they raise the wind or rend the clouds;

But his dominion that exceeds in this

Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man.

A sound magician is a demi god: (1.1.56-61)

Marlowe’s Variations from the Faustbook

Mephistopheles: Why this is hell, nor am I out of it:

Think’st thou that I, that saw the face of God,

And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,

Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,

In being deprived of everlasting bliss? (1.3.75-79)

A somewhat similar sentiment is expressed by another literary devil identified as a source

John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments (1563)

Nathaniel Woodes’s Conflict of Conscience (1581):

The ‘foolish wish’ motif from folklore:

The myth of the compact with the devil:

Source: Web page of Roy Booth, Royal Holloway University of London,

[1] Wentersdorf n 21.

[5] Mukherjee 19.

[7] Cited in Thomas and Tydeman 179.

[8] Watt 26.

[12] Mukherjee 5-13.

[14] Mukherjee 10.

[15] Also see Mukherjee 10-13.

School. Laurentius de Voltolina. 2nd half of 14th century.

Another important work was Montaigne’s Essays (1580).

John Dee was a Renaissance philosopher-magician. In the twentieth century he came to be