English Renaissance Drama.

Session Wednesday 15th November By Jose Miras

Notes on Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus

The first recorded performance that we know of is 1594. The play is a quintessencial
example of Renaissance tragedy. Its topic, the human drama of the fall of man and his
possible redemption, links Doctor Faustus to the mystery cycles and later English
morality plays, which, in one way or another lies at the heart of all Renaissance
English drama. According to the scholastic paradigm dominant in the West since
Thomas Aquinas, devils approach man, visibly or invisibly, when he attracts them
through his impure actions, his inappropriate words, or his apparent proclivity to sin.
Seduced by promises of infernal rewards, man grows increasingly dependent on his
wicked ways. Then, at some personal crisis, usually as death approaches, he confronts
his life's story and according to his own self-judgement seeks and obtains grace or is
eternally punished. Marlowe was not happy with such a simple outline. To complicate
it he drew on a Church Father he studied at Cambridge to propose that each person is
given not one but two guiding angels. Thus Marlowe adds scholastic logic and
disputation to scholastic theology, as the Good Angel and Mephastophilis (the Evil
Angel) debate the Christian virtues of obedience, humility, and piety against the
heroic values of power, glory and pleasure. This strikes us because the two figures are
not what we expect characters in literary texts to be like. Their names, however, tell
us all we need to know about them, for they represent abstract moral qualities rather
than having individualised personalities. What is at stake in this play is a man's soul,
all human souls, but also the very institution of Elizabeth I's Established Church,
which is what the scholastic Faustus is citing. Marlowe's play, thus, challenges part of
the backbone of Elizabethan culture by interrogating two of its foundamental
institutions, the church and the university. For, besides questioning the basis of
faith, Doctor Fausutus also questions the purpose of education. The following lines
are designed to help you guide you through a proper understanding of the play, for its
reading is challenging

The first issue of importance is how far do we read the texts and take them on trust in
relation with his author? Scholars read Marlowe's plays as statements the playwright's
own radical beliefs. Still, there is an obvious problem arising from this approach. We
simply don't know whether those hostile accounts of his opinions are accurate or,
very probably, compromised by writers' own motives and circumstances.

We know that Marlowe based the story of his play on The History of Damnable Life
and Deserved Death of Doctor Faustus (1592), an English translation of a German
book (known as Faustbuch) about an actual historical figure who gained notoriety in
early sixteenth-century Germany by meddling with the occult. This story rapidly
became the stuff of legend, and has, like most legends, been subject to a series of
retellings, amongst which Goethe's two-part play Faustus (1808; 1832), Thomas Man
's novel Doctor Faustus(1948), etc. Why was Marlowe so attracted to a story about a
English Renaissance Drama. Session Wednesday 15th November By Jose Miras

man who rebelled so flagrantly against the Christian God? What kind of non-
comformist artist was Marlowe? We shall return to this question later on, for now let
us get started and focus on the reading of this extraordinary play.
Let us have a look at the opening lines of Doctor Faustus.

Not marching now in fields of... is over turned (Prologue, Chorus, 1-4)

How many syllabes are there in these lines?

Reading the lines aloud we hear that for the most part every other syllable carries a
particularly marked accent. For instance:

“Not march-ing now -in fields -of Tra-simene”

Do the same with

“Where Mars- did mate- the Car-thagi-nia

Nor sport-ing in -the -dal-liance- of love
In courts-of kings-where state- is-o-verturned...”

What happens with the second line? Does it fit comfortably into the overall pattern?
Which is the pattern then? Is it regular? How is this metre called in poetry,
remember? Why is it so common in English, would you say? Are the lines rhymed or
unrhymed? What kind of verse is it then? Marlowe was much admired by his
contemporaries for his mastery with this kind of verse in his plays.

Have a look at Scene 1. What do the Good Angel warn Faustus of? What does the
Evil Angel urge, incite him on?

This allegorical way of creating characterisation is typical of morality plays, which

you will remember as religious dramas that enact the conflict between good and evil
embodied in supernatural figures (Mephastopheles) or personified abstractions (the
Seven Deadly Sins, Good and Evil Angels). What was primarily the aim of the
morality play? What kind of lessons do they offer to its audience? How does
Marlowe's use of Chorus do it?
In Greek tragedy the Chorus was a group of voices, of people, whereas in Elizabethan
drama it is one person. Though prevalent in England during the late Middle Ages,
morality plays were still popular in Marlowe's time. This raises questions about the
genre of the play. Is it essentially a XVIth century morality play warning his audience
of the dreadful consequences of practising black magic? Or, does it, in its attitude to
the story tell a more complex idea? Does Doctor Faustus encourage us to respond to
the central character?
Let's answer these questions by looking at the Prologue. Write a summary of it in no
more than four/five sentences. What main points would you say the Chorus is making
English Renaissance Drama. Session Wednesday 15th November By Jose Miras

here? The Chorus kicks off by giving us a brief bio account of the protagonist. Is the
picture of Faustus a mixed one? How? What is the attitude of the Chorus in relation
to Fautus' actions? Does he still point to some merit or greatness on the part of the
protagonist?
In the last eight lines of the Prologue, the tone of the speech changes, why? What
does the contemporary “swollen head” tell us about that new tone? Does “swollen”
have a figurative or a literal meaning? To put it otherwise does it provide an instance
of simile or metaphor?

Can you find any allusion to ancient Greek myths? What do you make of the
expression “the over-reacher”? (“mount above is reach” in the play). Is there an
intriguing twist on that myth?