Dr Faustus: The A- and B- texts (1604, 1616): A parallel-text edition

By Manchester University Press

Dr. Faustus is one of the jewels of early modern English drama, and is still widely performed today. Interestingly, the play has come down to the contemporary audience in two distinct versions that have become known as the 'A' and the 'B' texts. David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen, who edited the original Revels edition over twenty years ago (and are two of the most eminent editors currently working), have hit upon the fascinating idea of presenting both texts on facing pages. This allows readers to compare the two ‘versions’, the ‘A’ text which is the one closest to Marlowe, and the longer ‘B’ text with additions by Samuel Rowley; in this unique edition, the reader is made aware of the changing tastes of audiences, the stage history of the play, and of just how intricate ‘editing’ a play can be.

With a concise and illuminating introduction, and relevant notes and images, this Revels Student Edition of the 'A' and 'B' texts of Dr. Faustus will prove to be an enthralling document, and an excellent edition for student and theatre-goer alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: Oct 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781526101709

Book preview

Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright

Introduction

Prologue

REVELS STUDENT EDITIONS

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DR FAUSTUS:

THE A- AND B- TEXTS

(1604, 1616)

Christopher Marlowe

A PARALLEL-TEXT EDITION

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REVELS STUDENT EDITIONS

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Based on the highly respected Revels Plays, which provide a wide range of scholarly critical editions of plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries, the Revels Student Editions offer readable and competitively priced introductions, text and commentary designed to distil the erudition and insights of the Revels Plays, while focusing on matters of clarity and interpretation. These editions are aimed at undergraduates, graduate teachers of Renaissance drama and all those who enjoy the vitality and humour of one of the world's greatest periods of drama.

GENERAL EDITOR David Bevington

Dekker/Rowley/Ford The Witch of Edmonton

Fletcher The Tamer Tamed; or, The Woman's Prize

Ford ’Tis Pity She's a Whore

Jonson Bartholomew Fair Volpone

Jonson Masques of Difference: Four Court Masques

Kyd The Spanish Tragedy

Lyly Galatea

Marlowe The Jew of Malta Tamburlaine the Great

Marston The Malcontent

Middleton Women Beware Women

Middleton/Rowley The Changeling

Middleton/Tourneur The Revenger's Tragedy

Webster The Duchess of Malfi The White Devil

Plays on Women: An Anthology

Middleton A Chaste Maid in Cheapside

Middleton/Dekker The Roaring Girl

Anon. Arden of Faversham

Heywood A Woman Killed with Kindness

REVELS STUDENT EDITIONS

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DR FAUSTUS:

THE A- AND B- TEXTS

(1604, 1616)

Christopher Marlowe

edited by

David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen

based on The Revels Plays edition

edited by David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen

published by Manchester University Press, 1993

A PARALLEL-TEXT EDITION

MANCHESTER

UNIVERSITY PRESS

Manchester and New York

distributed in the United States exclusively by

Palgrave Macmillan

Introduction, critical apparatus, etc.

© David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen 2014

The rights of David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen to be identified as the editors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Manchester University Press

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Distributed in Canada exclusively by

UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall,

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN 978 0 7190 8199 6 paperback

First published 2014

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Introduction

The dramatic career of Christopher Marlowe was short and sensational. When the first part of Tamburlaine opened in 1587, Londoners knew at once that they had a radical new talent to admire – or to deplore. Its account of a lowborn shepherd who rose to become the mightiest monarch of the Middle East by sheer force of charisma offered dreams of self-advancement like nothing that Londoners had heard or seen before. The King of Persia and other potentates fell before Tamburlaine's onslaught in dizzying succession. At the end of Part I, Tamburlaine was triumphant and unstoppable. Part II followed the next year, to equal popular acclaim. It did indeed pursue the story to the end of Tamburlaine's life, but without reassuring traditionalists that the death was divine punishment for towering presumption. The Jew of Malta, c. 1591–2, followed the career of an alien merchant who rose to become the kingmaker of his island and indeed of much of the Mediterranean; to be sure, he was overthrown in a violent death by his enemies, but not before he had flourished by Machiavellian skill in a world of realpolitik where the race seemed to go to the swiftest. Edward II, perhaps Marlowe's last play, in 1593, chose England's political history as its arena of action, and accordingly chose to end on a note of restored order under the young King Edward III, but even here Marlowe dramatized the rise to power of a ruthless übermensch (Mortimer Junior) who subverted all traditional customs of obedience and loyalty. (This very brief account leaves out the early Dido Queen of Carthage and the later The Massacre at Paris; they too can be fitted into the pattern.) When Marlowe died a sudden and violent death in 1593 at the grand old age of 29, Puritans rejoiced at what they took to be God's vengeance against a writer and dramatist who seemed to stand for political overthrow, naked ambition, self-indulgence, and moral relativity, even sodomy.

Where does Doctor Faustus fit into this astonishing portrait of a rebel with a cause? Its date is hard to fix. Scholars still debate the rival claims of approximately 1588–9 or 1592, though opinion tends to favour the earlier possibility. Marlowe's chief source, an English translation of the German Faustbook (Historia von D. Johann Fausten, dem weitbeschreiten Zauberer und Schwartzünstler, 1587) under the title The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus, was printed in 1592, though perhaps earlier also in an edition that has not survived, and Marlowe may well have had access to it before 1592. We might like to know if Doctor Faustus was the capstone of Marlowe's brief and meteoric career, culminating in a thoughtful and tragic story of a man who sells his soul to the devil and pays for it by being eternally damned, or else a dispiriting study of human ambition to be followed by other plays, but we cannot be certain.

In either case, Doctor Faustus presents an unusual critical challenge. Is the play an orthodox study of sin and punishment, or is it an integral part of Marlowe's study of towering ambition and pride? Surely it is both, but the critical problem remains: is the play an edifying demonstration of the consequences of sinful pride and hence a warning to spectators and readers, or is it an unsettling exploration of sceptical thinking that has the effect of interrogating religious orthodoxy? Here the critics divide, and in such a way as to suggest that the opposing views are ultimately irreconcilable. The play is a kind of Rorschach test, in which readers and viewers will find a reflection of their own deepest selves. Those who are religiously inclined will tend to see the play as confirming, however darkly and tragically, the teachings of the Christian church; those who are sceptics will find scepticism in the very heart of the play.

The present essay will argue that both are deeply embedded in the play, where they are presented as equally viable alternatives. The tension between the two sets up an unnerving uncertainty that remains to the very end. Such tension is the stuff of great drama. It is what keeps the audience on the edge of its chairs (so to speak) until the last moment. Is it too late, at any given moment in the play down to the final hour, for Faustus to be saved, or is it not too late? The answer, we suggest, is that it is both. It is too late and it is not too late. The Evil Angel and the Good Angel are both right.

But how can that be?

The case for an orthodox interpretation is straightforward and essentially undeniable. Faustus is guilty of deadly pride in his quest for knowledge, power, and pleasure. He sells his soul to the devil in return for twenty-four years of enjoying every gratifying thing that life has to offer, and at the end, as he has been plainly warned, he is carted off to hell for eternity. What more could one wish by way of edifying instruction in the teachings of the Christian church?

Conversely, however, the play invokes Promethean legends of a human figure who dares to question all received truths and is punished for his presumption by being struck down. When Prometheus stole fire for human use, Zeus punished his daring by chaining him for all eternity to a rock where Zeus's own eagle would daily devour his liver, only to have it grow back so that the torture could be repeated day after endless day. Heavenly power refuses to countenance rebellion of this sort. Faustus's career is tragic in the best sense: he is condemned by supernal authority for daring to be the questioning, restless intellectual that he has become through sceptical inquiry. He is Prometheus; he is Oedipus, discovering in his relentless quest for knowledge that his intellectual nature will prove his undoing. He is modern Man, born in the Renaissance, doomed to be brought down by his inability to leave hard questions unchallenged.

As an instance of the irreconcilable nature of the two great truths of this play, take a look at the opening chorus. To outward appearances it is as orthodox as any believer could ask. The speaker of this chorus appears to be a figure of authority, telling us what we are to expect and how we are to interpret the play that follows. We learn that Faustus is a man of humble beginnings who has risen to a high position in the Church by means of his acquiring, through his own brilliance, a profound learning in matters of divinity. All seems well ‘Till, swoll’n with cunning of a self-conceit’, he falls to ‘a devilish exercise’ and ‘surfeits on cursed necromancy’. ‘Nothing so sweet as magic is to him, / Which he prefers before his chiefest bliss’, i.e., his precious soul and hope of salvation. (Quotations as of now will be from the A-text of Doctor Faustus. More later on the relationship between the A- and the B-texts. At this point, the two are not materially different from each other on matters discussed here, in the opening and closing choruses.)

The words quoted above from the opening chorus are unambiguous in their denouncing of sin and evil in Doctor Faustus: ‘devilish’, ‘cursed’, etc. Nothing could be clearer, it seems.

Ah, but look at this pair of lines: ‘His waxen wings did mount above his reach / And melting heavens conspired his overthrow.’ (The B-text clarifies with its punctuation: ‘And melting, heavens conspired his overthrow.’) So, the heavens ‘conspired’ in overthrowing Faustus's presumption, did they? That is a powerful verb. No one likes a conspiracy; it sounds unfair, as if the heavenly powers are ganging up on Faustus, leaving him with no chance of success in his challenge of the heavens. The celestial powers will not allow that sort of thing. Moreover, the lines just quoted invoke the myth of Icarus, son of Daedalus, who with his father escaped the Cretan labyrinth on ‘waxen wings’ devised by his father and then flew too near the Sun, whereupon he was thrown down into the Aegean Sea. Perhaps the Chorus also recalls the story of Phaethon, who failed to control the horses of his sun-god father Helios's chariot and was destroyed by his father when the chariot came too close to Earth. Both legends were often invoked in the Renaissance as emblematic of Lucifer-like pride being punished for its presumption, but they could also be read in a Promethean sense as about human aspiration that the jealous gods will not allow. In Marlowe's own Tamburlaine, Part I, the mighty protagonist defiantly boasts, ‘sooner burn the glorious frame of heaven / Than it should conspire my overthrow’. The vaunt captures at once the spirit of hubristic ranting and the boldness to insist on having what the gods deny to ordinary mortals.

The play's final chorus embodies the same duality. Much of the language is unambiguously denunciatory. ‘Faustus is gone. Regard his hellish fall, / Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise / Only to wonder at unlawful things.’ ‘Hellish’ and ‘fiendful’ seem to leave little or no room for sympathy. Yet the chorus does in fact express what we might call tragic sympathy for a man whose great promise was not fulfilled: ‘Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, / And burnèd is Apollo's laurel bough / That sometime grew within this learnèd man.’ The citing of Apollo links Faustus to learning in its fullest sense, including music, poetry, and art. Moreover, the worrisome idea of conspiracy is back again. The very last lines of the play describe Faustus as one ‘Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits / To practise more than heavenly power permits’. Some things that human beings long to do are simply not permitted. The issue is ‘power’, a power that is destined to prevail.

When we turn to the first act of the play, ambivalence of tone resides there fully as much as in the play's choric prologue and epilogue. Faustus is impatient with what he has learned from wise men of the past. This impatience bespeaks arrogance, of course, but it also savours of a restless desire to know more than the acquired wisdom of the ages can provide. The very authors that Marlowe picks to be the object of Faustus's scorn are the great progenitors of learning inherited by Renaissance Europe: Aristotle in philosophy, Galen in medicine, Justinian in law.

For many a medieval thinker, all ideas seemed to flow from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and other works, including the Analytics mentioned in line 6. Faustus in fact admits to having been ‘ravished’ by Aristotle's writings on moral philosophy and on the nature of proof in argument, but he now wishes to learn more. His attitude is like that of Sir Francis Bacon, who argued for a new inductive and scientific method of reasoning based on experimental evidence rather than relying on the deductive logic of Aristotelean tradition as exemplified in St Thomas Aquinas's syllogistic proofs of the existence of God. To rely on the learning and method of Aristotle, wrote Bacon in The Advancement of Learning, 1605, is to limit one's accomplishments to those already achieved by Aristotle. Faustus is of the same sceptical frame of mind: ‘Is to dispute well logic's chiefest end? … Then read no more; thou hast attained the end.’

So too with Galen, the leading authority on medicine for many Renaissance practitioners and theorists. If one were to go by Galen's precepts, one would be following the supposed wisdom of a Greek physician practising his art in Asia Minor in the second century AD, whose theorizing about the four bodily ‘humours’ or temperaments (sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic) led to treatments designed to rid the body of unwholesome ‘humours’ by means of bloodletting and purging. Faustus, already renowned for his medical cures, longs to know where to go next.

Justinian is the ancient authority on the law that Faustus finds tedious and overly technical.

New thinkers were at hand in all these fields. Faustus does not mention the new thinkers, but his audiences would know the name of Peter Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée) as a new and controversial student of rhetoric, famous – or infamous – for having declared that ‘All Aristotle's doctrines are false’. Galen had been challenged no less directly by Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim), a German-Swiss physician and alchemist, whose professional name, Para-celsus, meant ‘greater than Celsus’, a first-century authority on medicine. And if one wished to turn Justinian and the Roman law on its head, one might well turn to Niccolò Machiavelli, Florentine humanist and political thinker, whose pragmatic approach to matters of statecraft was so shockingly irreligious to many people that his The Prince was banned from entry into England. ‘He who neglects what is done for what ought to be done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation’, he wrote in chapter 15 of that notorious work.

Arguably, then, Faustus's impatience with authority figures of the past places him in the company of Renaissance intellectual iconoclasts, daring to expand the frontiers of human knowledge at the risk of being condemned as blasphemous for doing so. Marlowe absorbed the new and secular way of reasoning during his years at the University of Cambridge. The play suggests that he found it irresistibly fascinating if also manifestly dangerous. Faustus's espousal of the new learning is potentially admirable, but it also sounds hubristic and even blasphemous at times, particularly when he yearns to be able, as a medical doctor, to ‘make man live eternally, / Or, being dead, raise them to life again’ (1.1.24–5). Orthodox thinkers interpreted the New Testament as

Reviews for Dr Faustus

[kaelirenee · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The steps we take to gain knowledge and save our souls... It's a classic for a reason.

[becky221_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting play, rather short. I enjoyed reading the original English translation (from the German) more.

[deptstoremook · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This short but important work seems to pre-figure the more nuanced and complex ethical questions that Shakespeare starts addressing a few years down the line from when this piece was written and performed.The length of the piece makes it easy to analyze, but also leads to a shallowness of meaning. Doctor Faustus, having explored and mastered all the fields of study he knows of, turns to the occult to relieve his boredom. Though constantly advised against it, he summons the demon Mephistopholes and sells his soul to Lucifer in exchange for "four and twenty" years of power.These years are squandered--naturally, perhaps; what is the point of doing anything when you needn't expend any effort doing it? Faustus refuses to repent to God for his sins, and is dragged down to Hell/consumed by demons. End of story. If you don't repent, you're damned, but if you do repent, you're saved. Not quite the multi-layered ethics Hamlet.While the piece might lack in symbolic depth, the language is (in my opinion) very well-crafted, not to mention quotable:Was this the face that launch'd a thousand shipsAnd burnt the topless towers of Ilium?Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.(I remember one of my high school English teachers reflecting that Faustus must certainly have been lonely to summon an apparition of Helen to accompany him. I must admit, though, that I too would like to see just what was so great about this girl!)Overall, one of the 'classic' Elizabethan plays, it lives up to its reputation and is only rated so because it is overshadowed by other formidable works of the time period.

[m.akter.tonima · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

its the first of its kind, so there is no comparison. The only problem in this play is that it has no perfect structure, its a comedy and at the same time its a tragedy, the comical stature dominates entirely in the play leaving the reader completely diminished and disappointed by the unfair tragic ending.If God forgives all,shouldn't the realization be all that needed,why MUST it be ASKED?!

[rinnreads · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I found this a little dull to start with, due to the way it's written (why does that make me feel bad?). But it picked up when Faustus finally signed the contract. It was actually pretty funny!

Here are just some of Faustus' hijinks...

- Faustus often talks about himself in third person, so I was just imagining him as some sort of crazy doctor
- he doesn't seem to completely realise what he's getting himself into when he signs the contract
- one of the first things he does is ask Mephistophilis for a wife. He is presented with a demon in a dress
- he sees an opportunity to punch the Pope in the face, and takes it. He's going to Hell anyway, so why not?
- he also steals food and wine from the Pope's plate
- he insults a knight by suggesting his wife is committing adultery (makes him wear horns upon his head -> cuckolding)

[mstrust · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Doctor Faustus doesn't believe in hell, and so has no fear of conjuring a demon. Faustus wants to sell his soul, which he does, in return for fame, status and knowledge. He quickly begins moving in circles with the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, able to conjure Alexander the Great and Helen of Troy and make himself invisible so he can punch people. His plan is to spend his allotted time being rich, famous and devious, then repent in order to save his soul from Lucifer.For the Elizabethan audience, this play must have been like nothing else. There are devils, the Pope and his Cardinals, Alexander killing his foe Darius, and whores. The theatergoer must have left feeling they had gotten their money's worth. Marlowe was the bad boy of playwrights and this play shows why he had that reputation.The big surprise for me was the amount of Latin spoken, which is a lot. I don't know how much Latin the average person would have understood, especially since illiteracy was the norm, but Marlowe certainly flaunts his fluency in it.

[regularguy5mb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dr. Faustus is the classic tale of a man who sells his soul to the devil in return for power and prestige. This is the story that so many similar stories over the years have taken their cues from.This is one of those plays that gets mentioned in pop culture so much that Faust is just an accepted part of the cultural zeitgeist. There was even a short lived television show in which two agents for Good tracked down humans who had made deals with the devil called "Faustians."I feel like everyone should either read or see this play performed at least once in their lives.

[unionhawk_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A tragic tale, yet not so tragic, if you think about it. Faustus isn't exactly a character you can really cheer for, given his devilish tricks and arrogance.I enjoyed reading Doctor Faustus, despite being assigned to read it for English class. It was an interesting story, and I would read it again.

[brent6hall · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A must read, it's a classic

[klai_78 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Perhaps it's because this play only survives in two very different source texts, I couldn't help feeling that it didn't work nearly as smoothly as I had hoped. Mostly enjoyed it, except for the occasional cobbled-togetherness. The story itself is a classic.Could have done with a more erudite edition, too: the annotations etc in this edition are about high school level.

[the_awesome_opossum · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Faustian deal of selling your soul to the devil is so pervasive in our culture now, most people would probably be familiar with the story without having read it - either Marlowe's version or any other. Partly morality play (although more engrossing than most) and partly commentary on pre-destination versus free will, Doctor Faustus is about a young scholar who manages to conjure up a devil and live a short and sweet life of luxury before his eternal damnation. Faustus is never a particularly sympathetic character - he is horrifically short-sighted and solipsistic, right up to his final hour before damnation. But it is entertaining, and would be a fun play to stage. Plus it's interesting to see the origins of what I had thought of as a timeless cultural legend

[velmeran · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

And interesting take on the Medieval morality play.

[pgchuis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This edition comes with an almost oppressive number of notes and commentaries and background pieces and questions to think about. A good read, but I imagine a stage production would be disturbing.

[soplada · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Doctor Faustus won't make you close your head as soon as you close the book, No it will ignite it to question every thought which you encounter in your life with the relation to your major standards in your life wither it is your religion or just thought about life and why we are here

when the story is embodied by a protagonist it will be much closer to you; you will feel the sufferance of the loss and the deviation the shattering that is caused because of confusion, hesitance, indecision and in the end despair.
Maybe some people will think of Faustus as a sinner and that no matter what we do we would not be like him he is damned and he is the one who chose it, so we won't choose it and end up like him, of course! but his humanist side (even if it's sometime more apparent in the play) is within us too. we could encounter a situation when choosing the truth is so much harder than staying on the easy and appealed side, right ?
we may be put in a situation like this, like what happened to Faustus, but I'm not sure if we really could be patient on the verge of choosing the damnation , life is deceiving .. but being fortified by truthful rules will do the trick :)
and in conclusion this is of course a tragic End and tragic play too.

[pitcherbooks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I always feel it is unfair to review a script... that one should only review the actual enacted play. But here goes anyway. One can guess that the visual effects would have been great fun. Audiences apparently found the stage devils terribly frightful back in the day. Not a complex or terribly clever script but a popular play in its time. Pretty direct and quite easy to read even today. Seems like a fairly basic morality play to me. The intellectual Faust over-reaches himself by selling his soul to Lucifer for more knowledge and supernatural powers for a period of 24 years. Despite Faust's eventual regrets and opportunities for redemption, his lack of faith & enjoyment of his worldly success damn him. Some read this 1604 play as an indictment of John Dee (1527-1608) a respected, well-known scholar and adviser to Queen Elizabeth I who by 1582 devoted himself to the occult & supernatural. An interesting look at a past era.

[maowangvater · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Based on the Faustbuch, an anonymous cautionary tale about the German magician who sold his soul to the devil, this Elizabethan update on the old medieval morality play is enlivened by short comic sketches layered between the miraculous conjuring tricks—complete with fireworks for special effects—and tragedy as Faustus, torn between Good and Evil Angels struggles with thoughts of repentance only to sign a compact with the devil in his own blood in exchange for the spirit of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Troy, to be his lover. The language is marvelous. Here’s three verses, from Scene 13, of what Ben Johnson characterized as “Marlowe’s mighty line.”Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships,And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.

[alera_6 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This play reveals the story of a common man who allows his greed for knowledge to overwhelm his common sense and objectivity and lead him down a cursed path from which he cannot recover. It is also a commentary on the plight of the Renaissance man as he attempted to find and define himself without God. Intriguing to look at, and quite revealing to the mindset of both the author and the time.

[wellreadcatlady · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It's one of those plays you need to read through and reread to get the whole idea of what's going on. My first opinion of it was that it didn't make sense and was poorly put together, but once I read it again and allowed myself to get sucked in and think "ok lets say this is possible" I felt like I had a better understanding and can actually say I kinda like the play now. The characters are similar for a reason, and I know this, but it bothers me.

[leslie398 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Glad I read this but think that Elizabethan English will continue to be a trouble for me. Maybe I should look for a modern-language version...

[meditationesmartini · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Faust legend-topos is one of our really old and deeply rooted ones, allied to those of Raven and Icarus and Frankenstein and Babel (esp. as seen by early modern Faustian scholar-mystics like Jakob Böhme and Athanasius Kircher*) and the tragical history of the Germans (as seen by Thomas Mann); and in the darkest and smokiest irony, also that of Lucifer. And it is more relevant every day, and indeed may prove in this age of moneymancers entering a kind of posthuman state and technomagi melting icecaps to chase the singularity to be humanity's fittest epitaph. (It is of course also at some level the motivation for just about everyone still studying the humanities in our age. What profit a man if he gain forbidden knowledge but lose his job prospects? That's hubris!)So I really want Marlowe's version to be the definitive one, not only because it's for the stage and that's where all our deepest folk-warnings should play themselves out, not only because Marlowe himself stands as such a vivid and brilliant transgressor of norms in the literary mythic unconscious, but also because of when it was: English Renaissance, kicking off a modernity that was already making whole new types of human, whole new types of self-creation, possible. The Romantics would famously rediscover Faust (and cf. to Goethe's probably more definitive Faust the Prometheus of Shelley or the Hyperion of Keats), but the Romantics also show that transgressive knowing becomes mere self-improvement if everyone's doing it; the Elizabethans still burned witches at the stake.But expecting a magnificent light-bringer here turns out to be expecting just a bit too much--Marlowe is too canny a player of both sides against the middle to make of Faust an antihero for the present's version of the forward(-thinking) edge of the past and risk getting burned. Instead of Galileo-as-a-smouldering-leading-man, sapere aude, we get something more akin to a dangers-of-excess tale, where everyone is clucking their tongues about Faust and he is using his devilish servant, after a few initial sallies at the kind of music-of-the-spheres, number-of-the-birds-of-the-air deep lore deftly turned aside by Mephistophilis with pseudo-answers, to cuddle up to the HREmperor and take Helen of Troy as concubine and do the kind of groundling-oriented stage business like slapping the Pope and giving horns to hapless dickhead knights that might have gone over when everybody still half-wanted (and official culture and state religion explicitly wanted) Faust to fall on his arse for thinking he was a smart fucker with his books. You thrill a little bit at his initial daring in rejecting God, no matter how guided and groomed by the devils—the effortlessness with which he assumes that he’s forced Mephistophilis to take on corporeal form and he’s not just being manipulated, the flaming human pride with which he meets Lucifer as a kind of equal, though the imposing figure he cuts will prove insubstantial once they have his soul and he’s left with an eschatological credit card debt no honest man can pay. This, again, makes him a hero for our times (I too drape myself in nicer rags than I can afford! Pleasantly, capitalism in this metaphor is Satan), but it is disappointing in a larger sense if we see the truest tragedy as the tale of nobility brought low. Crucially, Faustus does not merely gamble his soul: he gambles on the existence of his soul, because if there is no such superstitious thing, what punishment can he face? And that kind of radically enlightening Do-As-Thou-Wiltism promises us a kind of paragon in Faust, but as he indulges his appetites we learn to our chagrin that what he’s really about is a (with apologies to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra) less principled “nothing is true; everything is permitted.” He never learns a thing … but then it turns out he never really wanted to anyway, which transmutes a bit too much of the pathos into satire for me.Two particular notes on all this. The first on religion and meritocracy: We today are used to thinking of Protestantism, liberal capitalism, and science as mutually reinforcing threads in the early modern period, and the Catholic Church as essentially medieval in its hierarchies, attitudes, and practices, but this here was not so long before the Thirty Years’ War set Faustus’s Germany on fire and the situation is entirely more complicated. Marlowe went to Cambridge during the period of the great debates there on the Calvinist idea of absolute predestination, which was actually adopted as official doctrine by the Church of England in this period, and which of course sees Faust as tragic because he is destined to be great but not good, full of supernatural mojo borrowed from Lucifer, who takes back with interest, rather than truly Elect. This play has been read both as a substantiation and a critique of that view, an ambiguity of course by authorial design. But it’s interesting the way the Catholic Church as “worldly” (and “demonic”) is aligned somewhat with Faust’s knowledge-quest and certainly with his brilliant career (the Pope gets sooooo mad when Faust steals his lunch) and not with the backward ignorance we’re comfortable ascribing to the historical Church in the Anglo-American, post-Protestant present; Protestantism here is still a rude young fundamentalist movement with a lot of its own transgressives still to burn. In this sense it’s almost too cute when Marlowe gestures back to the Faust story’s roots as a medieval morality tale by conducting a Parade of the Sins only instead of scaring us they are being held out by Lucifer to Faustus as baubles, as instances of the kind of knowledge (and, implicitly, indulgence) he can expect.The second on books: we fetishize them plenty today, of course, rise of the ereader notwithstanding, but it’s fascinating to see what a monopoly book-learnin’ had on knowledge transmission and people’s ideas about what had meaning and where it was located in this pre–scientific method, vernacular-Bible era. Books lubricate the plot and embody the choice between good and evil—the Good Angel** enjoins Faustus to “lay that damnéd book [that he uses to summon the devil] aside […] Read the Scriptures:—that is blasphemy”; and it is deeply adorable when Mephistophilis asks Faust what’s his command and Faust takes the most literal-minded interpretation of the “Book of Nature” that he could and wants a book about the secrets of the Earth and one about the firmament and one about Hell so that he can go back to his room and read them like a bookworm. (It makes me laugh to think about the Hollywood film version, where instead of a Master and Margarita-style effects-laden flight to the source of the rainbow and the dark side of the moon we get Faust sitting in his study with a candle rubbing his chin like “I see, I see” and pushing the cat off his lap.) And these same “conjuring-books” then stand as knowledge-talismans or fetishes (most people still couldn’t read, of course), appropriated in various ways by other characters and leading to much hijinx. (The only other motif of comparable complexity to books in the play, barring perhaps the planets, is fire, and, well, we know what you get when you put fire and books together, literally and symbolically.)You can’t always get what you want, so don’t try or you’ll be damned, damned, damned, seems to be the message; but this is salvaged and made darkly majestic by its author’s wisdom about the evil in the hearts of men: he knows what we are and that we’ll never listen to that old saw, and that certainly makes this a powerful tragedy, albeit simply one of the appetites, not the “tragedy of the scholarly mind” or the “tragedy of the creation of the self” that the Faust-legend can be at its best.*Whaaaa I was just reading about these mystics and found out Faust was a real dude! A cabalist, astrologer, etc., just like those others. The real guy is distinct from and preceded by the legend-topos, of course, whether it took his name or not.**Is the angel-and-devil-on-the-shoulders thing beloved of Looney Tunes animators original with Marlowe?

[baswood · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Most people will have heard of Doctor Faustus. There have been plays, novels, films, operas all based on a folk legend of a man who sold his soul to the Devil to enjoy power on earth. Christopher Marlowe is credited with the first play probably written in 1588/9. His play was an adaption of a story in a chapbook "The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus" which was probably available in an English translation a couple of years before Marlowe wrote his play. The title from the chapbook gives the game away immediately it was a morality story and Doctor John Faustus brought it all on himself. Marlowe's Doctor Faustus pretty much follows the storyline to the extent that some early critics have called it just a theatrical treatment of a popular legend. It is not considered that today to the extent that the ambiguity of Marlowe's treatment of the legend has led it to be considered a cultural work of art. I would also add that that some great lines of poetical drama have ensured it continues to be read today:"Was this the face that launched a thousand shipsAnd burned the topless towers of Ilium?Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss."The play has come down to us in two main versions: the A text and the B text both published some time after Marlowe's death: the A text in 1604 and the B text in 1616. The A text is quite a short play of 1517 lines while the B text is an extended version running to 2121 lines. It is known that two playwrights were commissioned to write some additions to the play in 1602 which probably were included in the B text, but as playwrights in the Elizabethan theatrical world often collaborated or patched plays there is no real evidence of how much of Marlowe's hand is in either of the texts. However most of the thrilling lines of poetry are contained in both versions. I read the two versions one after another and found the shorter A text much more to my liking. It seemed to me that many of the additions in the B text were aimed at drawing out the comedy which I thought was merely padding. The B text also aims to make the drama more clear in its interpretation and provides more in the way of instructions to actors/producers to aid the flow. I think the extended B text seriously undermines the drama of the A text. Of course producers/directors of a live performance are able to combine the two. With the existence of the two published texts there have been reams of study by academics and others on the subject of how much of the texts did Christopher Marlowe actually write. It is always going to be an open ended question because we do not know what Marlowe's handwriting looked like and there is no artistic work in existence with his signature. This debate in my opinion is futile, what matters is the text that has come down to us with the knowledge that Marlowe probably wrote some of it. That is enough for me, because obsession with authorial identity can lead to a failure of enjoyment in the work, almost like not seeing the wood for the trees.The play was an immediate hit. It was performed pretty much continuously (when the theatres were open) from the early 1590's until the closing of the theatres in 1642 and played again after the restoration. With hindsight it is not difficult to account for its popularity with the Elizabethan audiences, because it would have probably pushed some of their buttons: the power of the magician, the threat of the devil and the admonition to repent. The plays opening scene shows Doctor Faustus in his study and a chorus has already informed the audience that:his waxen wings did mount above his reachAnd melting heavens conspired his overthrow.Faustus tells us that he has achieved all he can by study and he is now going to turn to magic to get more power and change the world, he invites two conjurers Valdes and Cornelius to teach him the art of conjuration. It is not long before Faustus has summoned a devil: Mephistopheles with whom he negotiates a contract for ultimate power on earth in return for his soul on his death. While this may appear far fetched to modern audiences it would not have been to many levels of Elizabethan society. Magic and natural science was of great interest to the intellectual free thinker group led by Sir Walter Raleigh which included John Dee (Queen Elizabeths favourite) and Marlowe. Lower down the pecking order spells, conjuration, black magic was part and parcel of many peoples lives and so the act of summoning devils from hell would have an horrific resonance to theatre goers. The drama in the play is whether Faustus will be able to save his soul: can he have his cake and get to eat it too. Repentance for protestants as well as catholics was a powerful tool of the clergy and playgoers would have this in mind when at various points in the play Faustus wonders how he can get free of his contract. He is visited by a good angel who encourages him to repent, to throw himself on the mercy of God, however along with the good angel appears an evil angel who has no trouble in appealing to Faustus baser instincts. In a powerful final act the clock is ticking down on Faustus contract and when he attempts to turn to God for salvation Mephistopheles says he will rip him to pieces. The appearance of the devils on stage makes for tremendous visual theatre and would no doubt have frightened some play goers.Todays readers and theatre audiences will know the story, the surprise element would be diminished, but there is still much to enjoy. Crucially some of the text is ambiguous and different interpretations can be placed on it: for example how much free will does Faustus really have, could he have saved himself? For readers at home and directors of the stage play there are plenty of talking points, it is a play that does invite debate; for example assuming that Marlowe wrote a substantial amount of the text how much could it be considered to be autobiographical. How much of Marlowe is in Doctor Faustus. The play could be considered a cultural milestone in the early modern theatre. It was dramatic, it was popular and it contained some great writing. It has held up through the intervening years and there have been modern successful productions. However it was not completely new, it still shows a debt to the old morality plays, it goes back further by incorporating a Greek style chorus at the beginning of the first four acts and there is still room for pageantry when the severn deadly sins are paraded across the stage. The character of Faustus and his relationship to Mephistopheles holds our interest, but there is nothing much else. There are no female characters to speak of, only the Duchess of Vanholt gets to say a few words; even Helen of Troy is just paraded around the stage. Then there are the comic interludes. In the A text the scenes with Wagner (Faustus servant) serve to provide some light relief by mirroring some of the actions of his master. Wagner steals one of Faustus magic books and sets out to summon some devils. It is however in Act 4 where the comedy comes into its own when an invisible Faustus creates some havoc at a banquet thrown by the Pope. I think the play of the A text just about survives these comic interludes and Faustus dealing with the Pope and the Horse-courser throws some additional light onto his character, however the bulk of the extended B text is a rewriting of the comic scenes and while they might have served a demand for more entertainment at the theatre they do not in my opinion enhance the play.I read the Norton Critical edition of the play which has all you need as a student or interested reader. It has both the A text and the B text. It has substantial extracts from the chapbook that provided Marlowe with his story. It sketches in the religious context and Marlowe's wranglings with Richard Baines who accused him of atheism. There is some early criticism, some modern criticism, articles on ideas and ideologies and performance. Altogether an excellent book that should enhance your enjoyment of the play and so 5 stars.

[br13wivan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Doctor Faustus is a stunning literary jewel by Christopher Marlowe. It is a fascinating and moving religious work. It is hilariously funny at points and brutally serious at others. This story of Victorian jihad (the struggle is lost in this case) couldn’t have been clearer in its message, touching in its story, or crafted better than Marlowe had from his block of marble, the Historia von D. Iohan Fausten, which provided the bones of this spectacular theatrical work.It tells the tale of a Doctor in Wittenburg, Germany. While experimenting in the dark and unholy art of magic, he summons a demon named Mephostophilis. Through the cajoling of the demon and an evil angel, and regardless of God’s offers of forgiveness and callings, the Doctor, John Faustus, sells his soul to Lucifer in exchange for twenty-four years of absolute power given to him by Mephostophilis, who will stay with him until that time and grant whatever Faustus desires. He goes from swindling money from unsuspecting people to even haunting the Pope. And through it all he denies God, trading eternal life in Heaven for a mortal life full of all the knowledge and power that he could ever want. In the end, one hour before his demise and descent into Hell, he is shown of the tortures that await him. And he prays to God for forgiveness, declaring his repentance and begging for mercy. Sadly, Faustus does not receive it, and is torn asunder by demons who proceed to drag his soul away.There wasn’t really anything wrong with the writing at all. It was beautiful and got its point across quite easily. One might even wish for it to be longer! A definite five stars.

[cleverusername2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love Shakespeare too, but his verbiage is much harder to follow than Marlowe. This story, what can I say. It's about hubris, forbidden lore, attaining ultimate power and ultimate corruption. It's epic and just as relevant all these years later.

[heidilove_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

fun, witty, and all that marlowe has to offer.

[dcarchitect_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Shakespeare's contemporary Christopher Marlowe gives us his version of the Faustian Legend.

[smiler69 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This short play is based on a classic German legend about Faust, a scholar who makes a deal with the devil where he proposes to sell give his soul in exchange for unlimited knowledge and pleasure. In Marlowe's interpretation, Doctor Faustus asks the Devil for twenty-four years of life during which time the demon Mephistopheles will do his bidding, in exchange for his soul which will spend eternity in the fires of hell, and he signs his pact with Lucifer in his own blood to finalize the deal. Throughout the play, we see Doctor Faustus being pulled between his craving for unlimited power and his yearning for salvation, with the Good Angel urging him to repent and the Bad Angel encouraging him to fulfill his promise. Faustus chooses to keep to the path of sin for the privileges that power affords him, such as the ability to perform magic, and is taken to hell by Mephistopheles when his time on earth is expired. Of course, there is much more that can be said about this play, but I am not a scholar and have found that Wikipedia gives a very interesting—and thorough—analysis of it. I did have a little bit of trouble understanding some of the old English and numerous Latin quotes and expression, although these were translated in my annotated version. I was expecting a very serious and dark approach to this story, but was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was in fact treated with quite a lot of humour. I initially became interested in the legend of Faust when I was reading [The Master and Margarita], which is why I got this book, forgetting all along that Bulgakov had based himself on Goethe's [Faust], written much later, but am glad I did read the Elizabethan classic interpretation first which will give me something to compare Goethe's version to when I get to it.

[eldatari · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Even if you haven't read this play, you're probably familiar with the tale of Dr. Faustus. The fact that this tale has proven so enduring over the centuries is due in good part to the power of this text. Reading this play, it's hard to believe that it was written back in the 1500s. Marlowe is every bit as good as his contemporary, William Shakespeare.

[antiquary_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The great scenes meeing the devil, Helen, the final damnation) are truly great, but some of the comedy is very feeble.

[akblanchard_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Elizabethan dramatist Christopher Marlowe wrote the first English-language version of the classic German tale of a man who sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for knowledge and worldly pleasures. There are different, varying texts; I read the 1604 edition as provided by Project Gutenberg, which "is believed by most scholars to be closer to the play as originally performed in Marlowe's lifetime" (according to Wikipedia). I was pleasantly surprised at how readable and easy to follow this play was. Faustus is not a sympathetic character (one sign of his narcissism is that he always refers to himself in the third person) but it is hard not to feel sorry for him when the end of his twenty-four years of earthly pleasure come to an end, and the Devil takes is due.My 2008 Kobo e-reader (which came with the text pre-loaded) did not allow me to easily access the footnotes at the end of the text, which was just as well. The footnotes tend to be a distraction, and most of them compared varying editions of the play, which may be useful for scholars, but not for general readers.