Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe - Study Booklet

ELit6 Drama - pre-1770
Doctor Faustus by Christopher

Marlowe
Closed Text
Copyright © 2011 TES English www.tes.co.uk

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Table of Contents
T H E T R A G I C A L H I S T O R Y O F D O C T O R
F A U S T U S
What is a synoptic exam paper?................................ 3

The Board's Definition .................................................................... 3
How the Linked Material Question will be set ............................ 4
How the Drama question will be set and assessed...................... 4
Prologue .................................................................... 5
Act One ..................................................................... 6
Scene One.......................................................................................... 5
Scene Two & Scene Three .............................................................. 8
Scene Four ....................................................................................... 10
Scene Five ........................................................................................ 11
Act Two ....................................................................13

Scene One........................................................................................ 13
Scene Two ....................................................................................... 14
Act Three..................................................................14
Scene One & Scene Two............................................................... 14
Scene Three ..................................................................................... 17
Scene Four ....................................................................................... 18
Act Four....................................................................19
Scene One & Scene Two............................................................... 19
Scene Three ..................................................................................... 20
Scene Five ....................................................................................... 21
Scene Seven .................................................................................... 21
Act Five ................................................................... 23

Scene One........................................................................................ 23
Scene Two ....................................................................................... 24

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What is a synoptic exam paper?
It is important to be familiar with all the terminology that the
exam board uses. Success depends on understanding how you are
going to be assessed as well as what you know!
Y ou will be working on this unit for most of the year with me while you explore
Chaucer’s The Nun’s Priest’s Tale with Mrs Beecham. We will be studying Christopher
Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (1616).
Synoptic
Giving an overall view; pertaining to or involving a combined or comprehensive

mental view of something (OED).
The board’s definition

“Synoptic assessment in English Literature will take account of the requirement that A level
qualifications should enable candidates to develop a broader and deeper understanding of the
connections between the knowledge and understanding set out in the specification as a whole.
Synoptic assessment will involve the explicit synthesis of insights gained from a close and
detailed study of a range of texts important for the development of English Literature. It will
require candidates to show evidence of the ways in which contextual factors and different
interpretations of texts illuminate their own readings, and ensure that candidates demonstrate
their skills of interpretation and expression to give articulate, well-argued responses.”
 The paper is 2½ hours long.

 It is worth 20% of your A level.
 You must answer two questions:
o One on Doctor Faustus
o One on the linked material.

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How the Linked Material question will be set and
assessed
The questions on each drama text will be followed by previously unseen linked material, either a
poem or prose passage. Candidates will be required to compare the linked material to an aspect
of the play studied in the light of a critical view. The questions will be based on poems or prose
passages post-1770.
As the poems and passages are not discussed by candidates before the examination, they
encourage a freshness of response, since the candidate’s personal response is sought. Such
study necessitates an appreciation in which formal aspects are related to meaning, and requires
skills of close textual analysis.
 Independent opinions are particularly valued here.
 You will need to set the passage into its contexts by considering genre, form,
characteristic use of language, references to wider social, political and cultural contexts.
How the Drama question will be set and assessed

 You will not be allowed to bring the text into the examination room.
 You will be expected to demonstrate an understanding of the ways in which writers’

choices of form, structure and language shape meaning.
 You will be expected to demonstrate an understanding of contextual influences on

the play.
 Consider the historical, social and cultural conditions of the text
 The stage conventions of the Jacobean theatre.
 Genre convention (awareness of other texts in the genre would benefit

candidates).
Essential skills for success on this paper

AO
1 communicate clearly the knowledge, understanding and insight appropriate to literary 5%
study, using appropriate terminology and accurate and coherent written expression
2ii respond with knowledge and understanding to literary texts of different types and periods, 5%
exploring and commenting on relationships and comparisons between literary texts
3 show detailed understanding of the ways in which writers’ choices of form, structure and 5%
language shape meanings
4 articulate independent opinions and judgements, informed by different interpretations of 5%
literary texts by other readers
5ii evaluate the significance of cultural, historical and other contextual influences on literary 20%
texts and study

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Prologue
The Chorus
Enter Chorus.
CHORUS: Not marching in the fields of Thrasimene,
Where Mars did mate the warlike Carthigens,
Nor sporting in the dalliance of love
In courts of kings where state is overturned,
Nor in the pomp of proud audacious deeds,
Intends our muse to vaunt his heavenly verse.
To simplify, the Renaissance can be seen as a rebirth of the study of Classical languages and
literature and a renewed interest in the drama of ancient Greece and Rome.
The Chorus originates in Greek drama and consists of an onstage group of actors commenting
on the action or furthering the plot through their narrative.
 What does Marlowe’s decision to open his play in this manner suggest about his
educational background?
 Where was he educated?
 How are the group of dramatists with which he is usually associated

named?
 What is the tone of the opening few lines of the play?
Humanism
Only this, gentles: we must now perform
The form of Faustus’ fortunes, good or bad.
Remind yourself what Renaissance Humanism was from your linked materials booklet.
 What does the word ‘only’ suggest about Faustus’ fortunes?
 Why do you think Marlowe presents his audience with ‘good or bad’ and not one or
the other?
Nothing so sweet as magic is to him,

Which he prefers before his chiefest bliss:
And this the man that in his study sits.
 What have we learnt about the kind of man that Faustus is?
 Think of three tragic heroes:
 How is Faustus similar?

 How is he different?

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Act One
Scene One
Sympathy for Faustus
Is ‘to dispute well logic’s chiefest end’?

Affords this art no greater miracle?
Then read no more: thou hast attained that end.
A greater subject fitteth Faustus' wit.
 How much of a society’s knowledge of a whole variety of arts and sciences do you
think it was possible to know in the late 1500s?
 If you were one of the foremost polymaths of your time, how might you feel towards
learning?
‘The end of physic is our body’s health’.

Why, Faustus, hast thou not attained that end?
Is not thy common talk sound aphorisms?
Are not thy bills hung up as monuments,
Whereby whole cities have escaped the plague,
And thousand desperate maladies been cured?
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.
Physic, farewell.
 Who was ‘Prometheus’ and why was he punished by Zeus?
 What could be considered Promethean about Faustus’s ambition?

 Do you feel sympathy for him?
I’ll have them fill the public schools with silk,
Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad.
I’ll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,
And chase the Prince of Parma from our land,
There were school uniforms even in Marlowe’s day. At university, students had to dress in sub
fusc (literally ‘beneath black’). Most students were training to become members of the clergy and
were locked in at night and not allowed to visit taverns and brothels. We know that Marlowe
was something of a rebel as, in his portrait at Corpus Christi college, he is wearing an expensive,
fashionable doublet with slashes through the sleeves, exposing the vivid silk lining beneath.
The Prince of Parma was Alessandra Farnese. The Netherlands were under Spanish rule. This
was of concern to England as it offered Spain an ideal location from which to launch assaults
on her. The Dutch revolted and, in 1577, Farnese was sent to lead reinforcements. He then
became Governor General.

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 How would an audience have most likely responded to Faustus here?
Lack of Sympathy for Faustus
 How many times does Faustus name himself in his first speech?
 Does this seem arrogant to you?

 Refer to yourself by your Christian name in conversation for a few
minutes.
Is not thy common talk sound aphorisms?
Are not thy bills hung up as monuments,
 So, his ambition could be seen as Promethean. What alternative motivation do these
lines suggest?
Leo Kirschbaum describes Faustus as a ‘blatant egoist’, ‘self-deluded, foolishly boastful’, ‘wholly
egocentric’ and possessed of ‘intellectual pride to an odious degree’.
 How many references to eating and consumption can you find in the Act One, scene
one?
 How might they indicate Faustus’s spiritual health?
Religion
Stipendium peccati, mors est. Ha! Stipendium, etc.,

‘The reward of sin is death’. That’s hard.
Si peccasse, negamus, fallimur, et nulla est in nobis veritas.
‘If we say that we have no sin
We deceive ourselves, and there is no truth in us.’
Why then, belike, we must sin,
And so consequently die.
Ay, we must die, an everlasting death.
What doctrine call you this? Che sera, sera.
‘ What will be, shall be.’ Divinity, adieu!
 Why do you think that Faustus quotes from a Latin bible?
 How many members of the audience are likely to understand him?

 Why do you think he rereads ‘Stipendium’ back to himself a second
time?
His second quote comes from John 1.8. The line continues: ‘If we confess our sins, he who is
faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness’.
 Why has Faustus missed this crucial next line?

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 What might Marlowe be suggesting about:
 Roman Catholicism?
 Protestantism?
Morality Plays
These are Medieval allegories, illustrating the right way to lead a Christian life. They do not have
‘characters’ as such but rather allegorical figures like Everyman (a figure who represents
humanity), Greed (the embodiment of a deadly sin) or Faith (the embodiment of a cardinal
virtue).
These plays were written in everyday language (the vernacular) in order that they were readily
understood by as wide a cross-section of the public as possible.
The plays were most popular in the 1400s – 1500s and references to them in Renaissance drama
indicate that they were probably still popular and known to audiences.
GOOD ANGEL: O Faustus, lay that damned book aside,

And gaze not on it lest it tempt thy soul
And heap God's heavy wrath upon thy head.
Read, read the scriptures: that is blasphemy.
EVIL ANGEL: 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.
 Given the modern opening that Marlowe has offered his audience, why do you think
that he is now drawing upon an earlier theatrical tradition?
Art, Artifice and Magic
CORNELIUS. Valdes, first let him know the words of art
 Reread your notes on Samuel Daniel’s poem, Musophilus.
 How might tensions between art and nature, between the artificial and
the natural inform your understanding of Marlowe’s use of the word
here?
 Be attentive to Marlowe’s use of ‘art’ and ‘natural’ throughout the play.
Every time that you encounter one of these keywords, ask yourself if it
fits into this tense opposition.
Elizabethan and Jacobean England took the supernatural seriously. Audiences would have been
familiar with John Dee (1527-1609) who even advised Elizabeth I, suggesting an auspicious date
for her coronation. He was famous as a mathematician and a scientist: his experiments in magic
and the occult suggest that science and learning and magic and superstition were almost
indistinguishable at the time.

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In the early 1580s, Dee became dissatisfied with his advancement of learning and sought to
contact angels using an intermediary or ‘scryer’ (crystal gazer). With this man, Edward Kelley,
Dee toured Europe, visiting the courts of Emperor Rudolph II (of the Holy Roman Empire)
and King Stephen of Poland.
From the beginning of the play, Faustus is associated with learning.
The Renaissance saw great advances in learning so Faustus is marked out as a man of his age.
 How were such men viewed by society?
Thomas Harriot (1560 – 1621) was a mathematician and astronomer. He founded the English
school of Algebra and the < and > signs.
He was notorious for leading a group called ‘The School of Night’, which numbered
Christopher Marlowe, Sir Walter Raleigh, the poet George Chapman (who later finished
Marlowe’s poem Hero and Leander after his death) and Ingram Frizer (one of the men present in
the brawl in which Marlowe was murdered).
It is alleged that the group studied science, philosophy and religion. However, they were all also
suspected of atheism. At the time, this was close to treason as Elizabeth was also the head of
the church. Their nighttime meetings also encouraged the public to think of them as wizards.
 How does Faustus’ status as an intellectual and a magician fit in with the Marlowe’s
biographical context?
 Is it fair or even helpful to use biographical context as a method for reading the play?
Scene Two
 How does Marlowe present Scholars One and Two?
 Why do you think the appear immediately after a long scene with Faustus?
 How does Wagner mock their learning and, possibly, their status as divines
(ministers?)
 Why has Marlowe shifted from blank verse to prose? (Keep an eye on this throughout
the play).
Scene Three
Anti-Catholicism
Sint mihi dei acherontis propitii!
 How might Faustus’s conjuring of Mephostophilis be viewed as a satire on Roman

Catholic ritual?
I charge thee to return and change thy shape.

Thou art too ugly to attend on me.

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Go, and return an old Franciscan friar:
That holy shape becomes a devil best.
 How are these lines an attack on Roman Catholicism?
 How would an audience most likely have responded to them?
Mephostophilis
FAUSTUS: Where are you damned?

MEPHOSTOPHILIS: In hell.
FAUSTUS: How comes it then that thou art out of hell?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS: Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think’st thou that I who 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?
O Faustus! leave these frivolous demands,
Which strike a terror to my fainting soul.
 Are Mephostophilis’s answers in any way surprising?
 Is this the kind of devil that you would expected to see?
 Why do you think Marlowe has resisted the temptation to present his
audience with a cliché?
Scene Four
Subplot
It is usual for plays to weave at least two different plots together. Switching from one to the
other can create suspense (think of a soap opera when it cuts away to another scene with
different characters right at the dramatic height of a scene).
In dramatic texts, you tend to find that the plot and subplot are thematically similar. The
differences between the two plots encourage the audience to explore the central theme even
more closely.
WAGNER: Alas, poor slave. See how poverty jests in his

nakedness. I know the villain's out of service, and so
hungry that I know he would give his soul to the devil for
a shoulder of mutton though it were blood-raw.
 Are we in poetry or prose?
 Why?

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 How does the sub-plot mirror the main plot?
 How do you think that the differences between the two plots invite the audience to
reappraise Faustus’s actions?
Misogyny
You already know that few female poetic voices have survived to be read and enjoyed today.
Reminding yourself of poems like Donne’s ‘To His Mistress Going to Bed’, how might women
be presented in literature?
There were no female dramatists in the period.
 How many female characters are there in the play?
CLOWN: How? A Christian fellow to a dog or a cat, a

mouse or a rat! No, no, sir, if you turn me into any thing,
let it be in the likeness of a little pretty frisking flea, that I
may be here and there and everywhere. Oh, I’ll tickle the
pretty wenches’ plackets! I'll be amongst them, I’faith.
The Clown is referring to an erotic poem, attributed to Ovid in the Renaissance.
 Do you think that a contemporary audience would respond to this in the same way as
an Elizabethan one?
Scene Five
Religion
MEPHOSTOPHILIS: Oh what will not I do to obtain his
soul!
FAUSTUS: Consummatum est: this bill is ended,
And Faustus hath bequeathed his soul to Lucifer.
But what is this inscription on mine arm?
Homo fuge! Whither should I flie?
If unto God, he’ll throw me down to hell.
My senses are deceived: here’s nothing writ!
Oh, yes, I see it plain. Even here is writ
Homo fuge. Yet shall not Faustus fly.
 Who is Mephostophilis speaking to?
 How might this change our perception of his character?
Consummatum est means ‘it is finished’ and are Christ’s last words from the cross.

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 How might an Elizabethan audience have felt about these words?
 How might they have felt about the context in which Marlowe was using
them?
FAUSTUS: How? Now in hell? Nay, and this be hell, I’ll

willingly be damned here.
What! Sleeping, eating, walking and disputing?
 What do Faustus’s questions and broken syntax reveal about what he thinks about
Mephostophilis’s assertion that he is in hell?
 Why do you think that the last term on Faustus’s list is disputing?
Misogyny
FAUSTUS: But leaving this, let me have a wife, the fairest
maid in Germany, for I am wanton and lascivious, and
cannot live without a wife.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS: How, a wife? I prithee, Faustus,
talk not of a wife.
This suggests that Faustus sees the wife’s role as satisfying his lusts.
However, in 1 Corinthians 7:8-9 Paul writes that: ‘To the unmarried and the widows I say
that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am. But if they are not practicing self-
control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion’.
 What does Paul’s writing demonstrate about Faustus’s view of marriage?
 How does help the audience to understand Mephostophilis’s reaction to his

request?
Enter a DEVIL dressed like a woman, with fireworks.
‘The conventions of Elizabethan theatre are that women’s parts are played by boys. The
testimony of sixteenth- and seventeenth- century playgoers like Thomas Platter, George
Sandys, Thomas Coryate, and Lady Mary Wroth […] suggest that audiences simply
accepted boys in women’s clothes as a stage convention’.1
However, isn’t ‘like a woman’ quite different? Marlowe seems to make it clear that this
devil is a ‘travesty’ of a woman (‘dressed as to be made ridiculous, imitate or misrepresent
ludicrously or grotesquely’ OED). This would suggest that the Devil is both homoerotic
and misogynistic.
1Smith, Bruce R., Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare’s England (London: The University of
Chicago Press, 1991), p148.

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Act Two
Scene One
Atheism and belief
FAUSTUS: When I behold the heavens then I repent,
And curse thee, wicked Mephostophilis,
Because thou hast depriv'd me of those joys.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS: ‘Twas thine own seeking, Faustus,
Thank thyself.
But thinkst thou heaven is such a glorious thing?
I tell thee, Faustus, it is not half so fair
As thou or any man that breathes on earth.
FAUSTUS: How prov’st thou that?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS: ’Twas made for man; then he’s
more excellent.
FAUSTUS: If heaven was made for man, ‘twas made for
me.
I will renounce this magic and repent.
 How does Faustus view man and his relationship with the cosmos?
 How does this differ from Mephostophilis’s view?
FAUSTUS: Tell me who made the world?

MEPHOSTOPHILIS: I will not.
FAUSTUS: Sweet Mephistophilis, tell me.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS: Move me not, Faustus.
FAUSTUS: Villain, have I not bound thee to tell me any
thing?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS. Ay, that is not against our
kingdom, but this is.
Think on hell, Faustus, for thou art damned.
 Given Faustus’s reasons for selling his soul, what is odd about this quick fire exchange
and Mephostophilis’s replies?
 Why do you think that this episode is immediately followed by a visually colourful
parade of the Seven Deadly Sins?

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Scene Two
 How does this scene reflect on the plot?
Act Three
Scene One
 Look at the Chorus’s vocabulary.
 How does it invite the audience to respond to Faustus’s activities?
 Why do you think Marlowe has reverted to talking about Classical gods?
Scene Two
Language of the Theatre

Know that this city stands upon seven hills,
That underprop the groundwork of the same.
Just through the midst runs flowing Tiber's stream,
With winding banks that cut it in two parts,
Over the which four stately bridges lean,
That make safe passage to each part of Rome.
Upon the bridge called Ponto Angelo
Erected is a castle passing strong,
Within whose walls such store of ordinance
As that the double cannons forged of brass,
Do match the number of the days contained
Within the compass of one complete year.
Beside the gates and high pyramides,
That Julius Caesar brought from Africa.
 Why is Rome so vividly described?
 Why focus on the military strength of the castle and the plunder Rome has gathered
from other nations?
Then in this show let me an actor be,

That this proud Pope may Faustus’ cunning see.
Language like this may draws attention to the artifice of the play. It also draws attention to
the fact that power has its own language. For example, although the Pope or a king or
queen are only human, and in fact are playing roles like any jobbing actor.

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Languages of Power
POPE: Cast down our footstool.
 A simple statement but how does the Pope’s language demonstrate his power?
POPE: To me and Peter shalt thou groveling lie,

And crouch before the papal dignity.
Sound trumpets then, for thus Saint Peter’s heir
From Bruno’s back ascends Saint Peter’s chair.
A flourish while he ascends.
 Why the repetition of ‘Peter’?
 Why does the Pope speak in rhyming couplets?
 How does music function as an expression of power?
 Why the public humiliation of Bruno? (He is not a historical figure but is probably
supposed to be an antipope, appointed by the Holy Roman Emperor. The papacy has
historically been in conflict with kings and emperors about who has the most power:
an intractable problem given that they both claim to have been appointed by God).
BRUNO: Pope Adrian, let me have some right of

law:
I was elected by the Emperor.
POPE: We will depose the Emperor for that deed,
And curse the people that submit to him.
Both he and thou shalt stand excommunicate,
And interdict from Church’s privilege.
Excommunication, the act of banning a Roman Catholic from receiving communion was a
serious punishment. Popes and archbishops often used it as a weapon against high ranking
officials and kings. In the Middle Ages excommunication was accompanied by a formal
ceremony during which a bell was tolled (as for the dead), the books of the Gospels was
closed and a candle was snuffed out, hence ‘bell book and candle’ (III.iii.ll.92-3).
It would surely have been difficult to watch a Pope excommunicating Bruno without
thinking of Pius V’s excommunication of Elizabeth I:
‘On 25 February 1570, Pope Pius V […] impulsively published a bull, Regnans in Excelsis,
excommunicating Elizabeth, ‘the pretended Queen of England, the serpent of wickedness’.
The bull deprived her of her kingdom, absolved all true Catholics from their allegiance to
her, and extended the anathema to all who supported her’.2
2 Weir, Alison, Elizabeth the Queen (London: Random House, 1998), p213.

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Marlowe understood the value of the public humiliation and total subjugation of enemies.
In The First Part of Tamburlaine the Great (1587?) Tamburlaine, an upstart Scythian shepherd
robber, rises to power, defeating Persia and Turkey on the battlefield. He carries Bajazet,
the Turkish emperor and his wife Zabina, around with him goading them with cruel taunts
until they dash their own brains out against the bars:
TAMBURLAINE: Thy names and titles and thy
dignities
Are fled from Bajazeth and remain with me,
That will maintaine it ‘gainst a world of Kings.
Put him in again.
They put him into the cage.
BAJAZETH: Is this a place for mighty Bajazeth?
Confusion light on him that helps thee thus.
TAMBURLAINE: There whiles he lives, shall
Bajazeth be kept,
And where I go be thus in triumph drawn;
And thou, his wife, shalt feed him with the scraps
My servitors shall bring the from my board,
For he that gives him other food than this,
Shall sit by him, and starve to death himselfe:
This is my mind, and I will have it so.
Not all the kings and emperors of the earth,
If they would lay their crowns before my feet,
Shall ransom him, or take him from his cage.
The ages that shall talk of Tamburlaine,
Even from this day to Plato’s wondrous year,
Shall talk how I have handled Bajazeth.
These Moors, that drew him from Bithynia
To fair Damascus, where we now remain,
Shall lead him with us whereso’er we go.
Realpolitik / Machiavellianism
‘Realpolitik’ refers to politics and diplomacy based primarily upon practical considerations
rather than ideological notions. Its origins lie in the Florentine Machiavelli’s Il Principe or
The Prince (1532). It is a book of advice on the right running of the state and teaches that
the lessons of the past (of Roman history in particular) should be applied to the present,
and that the acquisition and effective use of power may necessitate unethical methods not
in themselves desirable.
In Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, Machiavellian heroes and anti-heroes abound,
appearing in many guises, as pandar, atheist, poisoner, politician, miser, and revenger.
 What is Machiavellian about the Pope’s behaviour in this scene?
 How would an audience have most likely responded to the Pope’s behaviour?

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Scene Three
Religion
MEPHOSTOPHILIS: The sleepy cardinals are hard
at hand
To censure Bruno that is posted hence,
 What is implied by ‘posted hence’?
Remember that Protestants had also been martyred, burned at the stake, most famously the
bishops Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer, in Broad Street, Oxford (1556). This scene might be
played for comic value but remember that an Elizabethan audience may have seen such
events at first hand. Bruno is likely to be in poor physical condition and Faustus would
probably be seen as little short of a saviour.
POPE: Hale them to prison, lade their limbs with

gyves!
 How many different methods of coercion has the Pope used in Act Three scenes two
and three?
The POPE crosseth himself.

FAUSTUS: How now? Must every bit be spiced with
a cross?
Nay then, take that.
FAUSTUS hits him a box of the ear.
 Why is Marlowe ensuring that plenty of Roman Catholic ritual is presented on stage?
 What does his rhetorical question indicate about his role as invisible observer during
this scene?
FIRST FRIAR: Come, brethren, let’s about our

business with good devotion.
(sing) Cursed be he that stole his Holiness’ meat from
the table. Maledicat dominus.
 Given that Maledicat dominus means ‘May God curse him’, what is ironic about the
Friar’s behaviour here?

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Scene Four
 How does the action in this scene echo and comment upon the events in the main
plot? Consider:
 How Robin intends to use the stolen conjuring book.
 How Rafe views the clergy.
 How do Robin and Rafe’s prayers contrast with those of the Friar in the
previous scene – what do these differences reveal about the church’s
ministers?

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Act Four
Scene One
Patronage
The learned Faustus, fame of Wittenberg,
The wonder of the world for magic art.
And he intends to show great Carolus
The race of all his stout progenitors,
And bring in presence of his Majesty
The royal shapes and warlike semblances
Of Alexander and his beauteous paramour.
We already know that John Dee, the English magician, alchemist and mathematician toured
Europe, visiting the courts of Emperor Rudolph II (of the Holy Roman Empire) and King
Stephen of Poland seeking patronage. (In the Renaissance, musicians, artists, writers and
thinkers were not paid for their work as they are today. They gained money for their work by
dedicating it to wealthy, influential patrons in the hope that they, flattered, would reward them
with money and other gifts.
Faustus may not be seeking patronage per se, his European tour could just be seen as an
indication of his celebrity. Nevertheless, it indicates that there was a close relationship between
the aristocracy and the artistic and intellectual elite.
 Why do you think that Faustus intends to show Charles, the Holy Roman Emperor,
his ‘stout progenitors’?
 Given Faustus’s theoretically limitless powers, what do you think that Faustus’s
proposed show reveals about how he views the aristocracy?
Scene Two
Homosexuality
EMPEROR: Oh pardon me, my thoughts are so
ravished
With sight of this renowned Emperor,
That in mine arms I would have compassed him.
But, Faustus, since I may not speak to them, To
satisfy my longing thoughts at full,
Let me this tell thee: I have heard it said
That this fair lady, whilst she lived on earth,
Had on her neck a little wart or mole.
 Is there a homoerotic subtext here?
 Whose language does the Emperor’s remind you of?

19
 What point do you think Marlowe might be making here?
Scene Three
Realpolitik
There are few great speeches in these knockabout scenes. In fact, a number of editions of the
play do not even print them. However, the do illustrate a view of court life. Benvolio the skeptic
has been humiliated by Faustus’s set of cuckold’s horns and seeks bloody revenge upon him.
FREDERICK: Nay, we will stay with thee, betide

what may,
And kill that Doctor if he come this way.
BENVOLIO: Then, gentle Frederick, hie thee to the
grove,
And place our servants and our followers
Close in an ambush there behind the trees.
By this I know the conjurer is near:
I saw him kneel and kiss the Emperor’s hand,
And take his leave, laden with rich rewards.
Then, soldiers, boldly fight. If Faustus die,
Take you the wealth, leave us the victory.
FREDERICK: Come, soldiers, follow me unto the
Grove.
Who kills him shall have gold and endless love.
Exit FREDERICK with the SOLDIERS.
 What exactly is Benvolio’s involvement in the assassination plot?
This scene echo’s Marlowe’s play Edward II (1592?), probably only two years older that Doctor
Faustus. Here the English nobility are jealous of the favours granted to Piers Gaveston by the
king. They do not regard him as their social equal and capture and execute him. Marlowe’s plays
often present upstarts: Tamburlaine the Scythian shepherd who builds an empire; Gaveston, the
effeminate and socially isolated courtier who tries to influence a king; Barabas, the ostracized
Maltese Jew who is appointed governor by the Turks and, Faustus, the solitary humanist thinker
who is courted by kings and emperors.
Given that Elizabethan England was still a country in which even apparently minor treasonous
acts could be punished with execution, Marlowe’s series of socially isolated misfits looks
remarkable. With this in mind:
 Why do you think that Faustus is punished for his overreaching ambition at the end of
the play?
 It could be suggested that this is because he is Christian and that his tale is a
moral one, despite the attractions that evil holds. What are the alternatives?

20
Scene Five
Anti-Semitism
HORSE-COURSER: Alas, alas, Doctor Fustian
quotha!
Mass, Doctor Lopus was never such a doctor.
‘The most notorious case of Jewish criminality in Elizabethan England is of course that of
doctor Roderigo Lopez […] who was tried and executed in 1594 for an alleged plot to poison
Queen Elizabeth. […] Well before the scandal bkoke, however, he was referref to as a Jew:
Gabriel Harvey describes in his marginalia a “Doctor Lopez, the Queen’s physician,” who “is
descended of Jews, but [is] himself a Christian, and [from] Portugal.” And in 1584 in the
libelous Leicester’s Commonwealth he is called “Lopez the Jew” and (proleptically) credited
with skill in poisoning. William Camden’s account of the Lopez affair in his History of the
Reign of Elizabeth places special weight on Lopez’s Jewish sympathies, and suggests that these
provoked laughter at his public execution […] Lopez went to his death strenuously “affirming
that he loved the Queen as well as he loved Jesus Christ; which coming from a man of the
Jewish profession moved no small laughter in the standers-by”.3
 Given Shapiro’s information about Doctor Lopez, how insulting would an

Elizabethan audience have understood the Horse-courser’s comment to be?
Scene Seven
Women
DUKE: Thanks, Master Doctor, for these pleasant
sights. Nor know I how sufficiently to recompense
your great deserts in erecting that enchanted castle in
the air, the sight whereof so delighted me as nothing
in the world could please me more.
FAUSTUS: I do think myself, my good lord, highly
recompensed in that it pleaseth your grace to think
but well of that which Faustus hath performed. But,
gracious lady, it may be that you have taken no
pleasure in those sights. Therefore, I pray you tell me,
what is the thing you most desire to have; be it in the
world, it shall be yours. I have heard that great-bellied
women do long for things are rare and dainty.
LADY: True, Master Doctor, and, since I find you so
kind, I will make known unto you what my heart
desires to have; and, were it now summer, as it is
January, a dead time of the winter, I would request no
3 Shapiro, James, Shakespeare and the Jews (Chichester: Columbia University Press, 1996), 73.

21
better meat than a dish of ripe grapes.
FAUSTUS: This is but a small matter. Go,
Mephostophilis; away.
Exit MEPHOSTOPHILIS.
Madame, I will do more than this for your content.
Enter MEPHOSTOPHILIS with grapes.
Here now, taste ye these. They should be good, for
they come from a far country, I can tell you.
DUKE: This makes me wonder more than all the
rest, that at this time of the year, when every tree is
barren of his fruit, from whence you had these ripe
grapes.
FAUSTUS: Please it your grace, the year is divided
into two circles over the whole world, so that when it
is winter with us, in the contrary circle it is likewise
summer with them, as in India, Saba, and such
countries that lie far East, where they have fruit twice
a year. From whence, by means of a swift spirit that I
have, I had these grapes brought as you see.
LADY: And trust me, they are the sweetest grapes
that e'er I tasted.
 What might Faustus’s first line to the lady indicate to the boy or woman plating her
about how they should behave as the scene opens?
 Do you feel that Faustus’s behaviour towards her has been at all misogynistic?
 What intellectual curiosity does he satisfy by speaking to her?
 If Faustus has attempted to include her, what does the way in which the scene
proceeds indicate about social interactions between men and women, husbands and
wives?
The presence of women is felt throughout the play: we are reminded of them by the devil
dressed like a woman, the paramour who accompanies Alexander and by Helen of Troy in the
final scene. This, however, is the only time a woman speaks.
 Do you think that this is a misogynistic play?

22
Act Five
Scene One
Women
FIRST SCHOLAR: Master Doctor Faustus, since our

conference about fair ladies, which was the
beautifullest in all the world, we have determined with
ourselves that Helen of Greece was the admirablest
lady that ever lived. Therefore Master Doctor if you
will do us so much favour as to let us see that peerless
dame of Greece, whom all the world admires for
majesty, we should think ourselves much beholding
unto you.
We already know that the majority of university students were studying theology in order to
become clerics. They lived in restricted conditions, under curfew. All of them were men.
 What do you suppose most of them knew about women?
 Who was Helen of Troy? How appropriate do you find the adjectives:
 Beautifullest?
 Admirablest?
FAUSTUS: Was this the face that launched a

thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies.
 In what ways could this speech be construed as bitterly ironic?
 What is a succubus?
Morality Plays
OLD MAN: Oh stay, good Faustus, stay thy
desperate steps.
I see an angel hover o’er thy head,
And with a vial full of precious grace,
Offers to pour the same into thy soul.
Then call for mercy and avoid despair.

23
Symbolically, the Old Man represents death and wisdom.
 How does his attempt to save Faustus’s soul from damnation differ from the Good
Angel’s?
Scene Two
Religion
MEPHOSTOPHILIS: I do confess it, Faustus, and rejoice.
’Twas I that, when thou wert I’the way to heaven,
Damm'd up thy passage; when thou took'st the book
To view the Scriptures, then I turn’d the leaves,
And led thine eye.
 How Mephostophilis’s account of Faustus’s temptation strike you as Calvinist?
 Why might Marlowe have ascribed a Calvinist position to a devil?
EVIL ANGEL: Now, Faustus, let thine eyes with horror

stare
Into that vast perpetual torture-house.
There are the furies tossing damned souls
On burning forks. There bodies boil in lead.
There are live quarters broiling on the coals
That ne’er can die. This ever-burning chair
Is for o’er-tortured souls to rest them in.
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.
But yet all these are nothing. Thou shalt see
Ten thousand tortures that more horrid be.
 What is there in this Hellish scene that might have struck an Elizabethan audience as
decidedly contemporary?
 What effects do tense, ‘there’ and ‘these’ add to the description?
Faustus’s final speech has to rank as one of the finest in English literature and we will explore
this in detail in class.

24

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ELit6 Drama - pre-1770

Doctor Faustus by Christopher

Copyright © 2011 TES English www.tes.co.uk

What is a synoptic exam paper?................................ 3

Act Two ....................................................................13

Act Five ................................................................... 23

Copyright © 2011 TES English www.tes.co.uk

Giving an overall view; pertaining to or involving a combined or comprehensive

The board’s definition

 The paper is 2½ hours long.

Copyright © 2011 TES English www.tes.co.uk

 Independent opinions are particularly valued here.

How the Drama question will be set and assessed

 You will be expected to demonstrate an understanding of the ways in which writers’

 You will be expected to demonstrate an understanding of contextual influences on

 Consider the historical, social and cultural conditions of the text

 The stage conventions of the Jacobean theatre.

 Genre convention (awareness of other texts in the genre would benefit

Essential skills for success on this paper

Copyright © 2011 TES English www.tes.co.uk

 Where was he educated?

 How are the group of dramatists with which he is usually associated

Nothing so sweet as magic is to him,

 Think of three tragic heroes:

 How is Faustus similar?

Copyright © 2011 TES English www.tes.co.uk

Is ‘to dispute well logic’s chiefest end’?

‘The end of physic is our body’s health’.

 Who was ‘Prometheus’ and why was he punished by Zeus?

 What could be considered Promethean about Faustus’s ambition?

Copyright © 2011 TES English www.tes.co.uk

Lack of Sympathy for Faustus

 Does this seem arrogant to you?

 How might they indicate Faustus’s spiritual health?

Stipendium peccati, mors est. Ha! Stipendium, etc.,

 Why do you think that Faustus quotes from a Latin bible?

 How many members of the audience are likely to understand him?

Copyright © 2011 TES English www.tes.co.uk

GOOD ANGEL: O Faustus, lay that damned book aside,

Art, Artifice and Magic

CORNELIUS. Valdes, first let him know the words of art

 Reread your notes on Samuel Daniel’s poem, Musophilus.

Copyright © 2011 TES English www.tes.co.uk

Sint mihi dei acherontis propitii!

 How might Faustus’s conjuring of Mephostophilis be viewed as a satire on Roman

I charge thee to return and change thy shape.

Copyright © 2011 TES English www.tes.co.uk

 How are these lines an attack on Roman Catholicism?

 How would an audience most likely have responded to them?

FAUSTUS: Where are you damned?

 Are Mephostophilis’s answers in any way surprising?

 Is this the kind of devil that you would expected to see?

WAGNER: Alas, poor slave. See how poverty jests in his

 Are we in poetry or prose?

Copyright © 2011 TES English www.tes.co.uk

There were no female dramatists in the period.

 How many female characters are there in the play?

CLOWN: How? A Christian fellow to a dog or a cat, a

The Clown is referring to an erotic poem, attributed to Ovid in the Renaissance.

 Who is Mephostophilis speaking to?

 How might this change our perception of his character?

Copyright © 2011 TES English www.tes.co.uk

FAUSTUS: How? Now in hell? Nay, and this be hell, I’ll

 How does help the audience to understand Mephostophilis’s reaction to his

Stipendium peccati, mors est. Ha! Stipendium, etc.,