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.

Sources to the play

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.

A subversive play?
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.

German sources
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,
English Renaissance Drama. Session Wednesday 15th November By Jose Miras

amongst which Goethe's two-part play Faustus (1808; 1832), Thomas Man 's novel Doctor Faustus(1948),
etc.
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Why was Marlowe so attracted to a story about a 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.

Verse and pattern

Let us have a look at the opening lines of Doctor Faustus.

Not marching now in fields of... is over turned (Prologue, Chorus I- lines 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.

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).
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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?

Myths from antiquity

In Greek tragedy the Chorus was a group of voices, of people, whereas in Elizabethan drama it is one person.
English Renaissance Drama. Session Wednesday 15th November By Jose Miras

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.
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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/ Chorus, lines 1-27.
Write a summary of it in no more than four/five sentences.
What main points would you say the Chorus is making here?
The Chorus kicks off by giving us a brief bio account of the protagonist. Ç
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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 (21-27) , the tone of the speech changes, why? What does the
contemporary “swollen head” tell us about that new tone?
Does “swollen” (l. 20) 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?
English Renaissance Drama. Session Wednesday 15th November By Jose Miras

Have a wee look of this amazing painting by Pieter Brueghel entitled, “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,
1555, which hangs in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.
Take a few minutes to compare Brueghel’s treatent of the myth with that of Marlowe’s Chorus in the play.
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What happens to the language when the Chorus starts to talk about Faustus’s study of magic? (Chorus I,
lines 24-28).
In those lines, look for a word that means “overfull” or “stuffed” in contemporary English and, another word
that would be synonimous to “eat too much”, “gorge oneself”.
Why is the Chorus referring to eating, specifically to gluttony, to immoderate appetite? Is it a metaphorical
use? If so, which would be its tenor? In other words, what is that brings our protagonist into conflicto with
the Christian God?

In Scene I we are introduced to Faustus, and we see him in his study. Faustus delivers his first speech of the
play. How does the staging of the text emphasize Faustus’ position as an eminent scholar?
Are these lines (Scene I, 1-64) a solioquy, why?
Do these lines establish a strong relationship between the character and the audience? Do we gain Access to
the character’s mind at work?

In line 1, “Settle thy studies, Faustus, and begin…” Faustus addresses himself in the third person creating
the impression that he is talking to himself. Why?
English Renaissance Drama. Session Wednesday 15th November By Jose Miras

Which are the four main academic disciplines he has so far studied, which he now dismisses as an intelectual
cul-de-sac?
Line 23 reads, “Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man.” What does he lament while contemplating all his
remarkable academic achievements?

Lines 58 and 59 are quite striking, aren’t they? Which desire does inflect Faustus’s speech?
In Scene 3, lines 1-61, Faustus tells Mephastopheles that he is not afraid of damnation, why? What does he
believe in then?
How likely do you think it is that a XVIth century humanist would have so explicitly challenged the
Christian doctrine?
Does Faustus represent the secular aspirations of the Renaissance? How?
Is Marlowe advising us not to overstate the secular values of Renaissance England, do you think?
What is the opposition we get betweenm the Chorus’s view and that of Faustus’s claim in these scenes? What
is the conflict? What side do you think the play encourages us to take?
Have another look at Faustus speech lines 80-101, in which he imagines the power that magic will bring him.
What is it he wants to achieve with this power? What kind of motives and desires do you hink he esxpresses
in these lines?
Identify in Faustus speech, a line which voices antipathy to an Elizabethan hate-figure. Which country was
England in militaryconflict with at the time? Who was the Prince of Parma? What plan was there in the
1580s in which Parma was closely involved?

l. 96 “And reign sole King of all our provinces”.

Who is this line referred to?
What does Parma represent?

Some comic scenes

The play, no doubt keeps drawing on the many weaknesses of its protagonists. Can you mention one or two
so far?
From what we have seen about Renaissance drama, what would comic scenes reinforce?
What happens in Scene 3? How is this conference described?
Scan read Sc. 4 looking for a comic scene. Which would this be? Which is the device procurring the comic
effect?

Further on, in lines 9-11, the clown provides another joke. Coming directly after Faustus has conjured up
Mephastophilis, what absurdity does the joke underline?
What is the main functin of these two comic scenes? What do they comment on?
What does Marlowe achieve by juxtaposing these serious and comical actions? What does they tell us about
Faustus’ aims?

Faustus and God

In Sc. 3, line 25, after a devil enters, Faustus says, “Go and return an old Franciscan friar” What is the
significance of him asking the devil to return in the likeness of a friar, do you think? Notice that
Mephastophilis obeys (“disguised as a friar”).
English Renaissance Drama. Session Wednesday 15th November By Jose Miras

Sc. 5 opens with a soliloquy (lines 1-14). How would you describe Faustus mood? Jot down any points you
think are important about the way the language helps to create this mood.
Does Faustus’ voice here sound more or less confident than in the first soliloquy? If less, how does his
discourse show his uncertainty?

Clarify the significance of line 3, “What boots it then to think of God or heaven?”
What is that of the imperatives in the next lines? Is Faustus trying to backtrack, do you think?
Which of the two angels seems to get the upper hand briefly?

Wrestling with his conscience and feeling such an urge to repent, why doesn’t he before signing his pact with
Lucifer? Does he seem his own damnation as unavoidable?
What does the repetition of the word “despair” (lines 4 and 5) emphasize?

How many syllables are there in lines 2 and 10? What is their effect?

Reading these lines, do you muster/think Faustus believes God loves him?
Why does Faustus feel so strongly that he is damned when he still has not signed the pact with the devil in
his own blood?

What does this scene stress about the Calvinist theology?

Why cannot Faustus bring himself to believe that God loves him and has granted him salvation?