When was doctor faustus written

During the Elizabethan period, the popularity of theatre had grown so much that the Crown was concerned about the effects of controversial plays. Plays were given an official licence if they were deemed suitable, but playwrights could be censored, arrested or even imprisoned.

Marlow was forced to make a number of revisions to Doctor Faustus. The audio recording of an extract from the play, which starts with the line 'Was this the face that launched a thousand ships', is read by actor Michael Sheen. Can't play the file above? Listen to the audio clip here. This is an allusion to the ancient Greek myth of Icarus, who attempted to escape from Crete with a pair of waxen wings, but flew too near the sun and plunged to his death when the sun melted the wax see Figures 2 and 3.

It is interesting to compare Brueghel's treatment of the myth with that of Marlowe's Chorus and Whitney's emblem. Icarus, just visible in the bottom right of the painting as he sinks to his death in the sea, is unnoticed as the rest of the world goes about its business. What happens to the language when the Chorus starts to talk about Faustus's study of magic?

Why is the Chorus referring to eating, specifically to eating too much? It seems that once again the language is not working literally; instead, it is drawing metaphorical links between Faustus's intellectual curiosity and a kind of greedy self-indulgence. So, by looking closely at the language of the Prologue, we can see more clearly what the Chorus is saying about Faustus — that it associates his intellectual ambition with an immoderate appetite, with an inflated sense of his own value, and with a dangerous, Icarus-like overreaching that brings him into conflict with the Christian God.

So even though the Prologue praises Faustus for his intellectual brilliance, it also insists that this brilliance is not an unqualified good; if it pushes past certain boundaries, it becomes sinful and provokes divine punishment.

The Prologue tells us, in short, that the play's protagonist lives in a Christian universe that places limits on the pursuit of knowledge. The Chorus now introduces Faustus, who delivers his first speech of the play. The way the speech is staged and written serves to emphasise Faustus's position as an eminent scholar. It is set in his study, and he is surrounded by books, from which he reads in Latin.

The works he consults, written by such great thinkers of classical antiquity as the Greek philosopher Aristotle, the Greek medical authority Galen, and the Roman emperor Justinian, were central texts in the sixteenth-century university curriculum. The first impression the speech gives us, then, is of the breadth of Faustus's learning. There is no one on stage with Faustus as he delivers these lines, which means that it is a soliloquy , a speech in which a dramatic character, alone on stage, expresses his or her thoughts, feelings and motives.

The soliloquy is an ideal device for establishing a strong relationship between a character and an audience, for it seems to give us access to that character's mind at work.

We listen as he tries to make up his mind, now that he has been awarded a doctorate in theology, what subject he wants to specialise in. Immediately, then, we hear a note of dissatisfaction and restlessness in Faustus's voice; despite his dazzling academic success, he is impatient for more knowledge. Yet as he runs through the four main academic disciplines he has studied — philosophy, medicine, law and theology — he dismisses each of them as an intellectual dead-end.

Faustus feels that he has already achieved everything that the study of philosophy and medicine has to offer. For a moment, he returns to divinity as the most worthy profession, but then rejects that as well, as the passages he reads from Jerome's Bible stress only human sinfulness and the damnation that awaits it. So what is it that Faustus wants that these traditional fields of study fail to supply? What he wants, then, is to transcend his human limitations, to break through the boundaries that place what he sees as artificial restrictions on human potential.

Historical periods are too complex to be boiled down to a single, defining essence; nor are there clear breaks between them. Nevertheless, there were developments in Europe from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century that, broadly speaking, encouraged a newly secular view of the world: the growth of scientific investigation into the structure of the universe and the laws of the physical world; the voyages of exploration, expansion of trade routes and colonisation of the Americas; the new technology of printing, which allowed for the rapid dissemination of new ideas and discoveries; and the development of a humanist educational programme, based on the study of ancient Greek and Latin authors, and dedicated to the restoration of classical ideals of civic virtue and public service.

When he tells Mephistopheles that he is not afraid of damnation because he believes instead in the classical Greek afterlife see 1. It is highly unlikely, though, that any sixteenth-century humanist would have countenanced this kind of explicit challenge to Christian doctrine, so if Faustus represents the secular aspirations of the Renaissance, he does so in an extreme or exaggerated form.

Moreover, the fact that Doctor Faustus is set in a Christian universe and affirms the reality of hell and damnation should warn us not to overstate the secular values of Renaissance England. Indeed, what the play explores — its principal theme — is the conflict between the confidence and ambition its protagonist embodies, and the Christian faith, which remained a powerful cultural force when Marlowe was writing and required humility and submission to God's will.

The play's two opening speeches set up an opposition between the Prologue's view of boundless ambition as sinful presumption and Faustus's implicit claim that the Christian universe places unjust restrictions on human potential.

Which side in this conflict do you think the play encourages us to take? We saw earlier that the Prologue seeks to discredit Faustus's interest in necromancy by portraying it in terms of an intemperate appetite. Is there more evidence in the opening scene to support its claim?

Have another look at Faustus's speech on page 4, lines 80—, in which he imagines the power that magic will bring him. What is it he wants to achieve with this power? What kinds of motives or desires do you think he expresses in these lines? Right away, then, he echoes the language of the Prologue and so identifies his own longing for godlike power with a gluttonous craving.

Faustus's motives in this speech seem to be mixed, neither all good nor all bad, rather like the Chorus's initial portrait of him. In this line he is voicing antipathy to an Elizabethan hate-figure. Doctor Faustus was written during a protracted period of military conflict with Catholic Spain.

The Prince of Parma was the Spanish governor of the Netherlands, and in the s he was closely involved both in Spain's plans to invade England and in the suppression of a Protestant rebellion in the Netherlands which England supported. This is a good example of the way in which reading literary texts with their historical context in mind can help to shed light on their meaning.

The mention of the Prince of Parma in this speech strongly suggests that Marlowe was, at least to some extent, seeking to arouse audience support for Faustus. There is no doubt though that the play keeps drawing our attention to its protagonist's weaknesses.

The comic scenes in Act 1 serve to reinforce the connection between magic and appetite. This is one of the main functions of the play's comic scenes — to comment on the serious action. Time and again, Marlowe juxtaposes scenes so that the later comic one comments on the preceding serious one by re-presenting Faustus's ambitions in their lowest form, stripped of the power of his own speeches.

By techniques such as these the play diminishes its hero by exposing the triviality and foolishness of his aims. Act 2, Scene 1 opens with another soliloquy.

Please look now at this soliloquy page 15, lines 1— How would you describe its mood? Jot down any points you think are important about the way the language helps to create this mood. I would say that the mood of this speech is one of self-doubt and inner division. Just as in the first soliloquy, Faustus is talking to himself, but on this occasion the voice we hear sounds markedly less confident.

This voice seems to get the upper hand briefly, but Faustus silences it with an extreme statement of his commitment to the devil. Faustus appears to be wrestling with his conscience in this soliloquy. He clearly feels the urge to repent, so why doesn't he? So what's the point, he asks himself, of thinking of God or heaven?

If you count the syllables in lines 2 and 10, you will see that each line has only six. This means that in performance the actor would have to pause for a moment because the lines are shorter than normal, and this would have the effect of drawing attention to the sentiments expressed in the two lines, that is, to Faustus's despairing conviction that he cannot be saved and that God does not love him. Why should Faustus feel so strongly that he is damned, when at this point in the play there seems to be every reason to believe that repentance will secure God's forgiveness?

Some critics, most notably Alan Sinfield and John Stachniewski , have argued that Marlowe is exploring the mental and emotional impact of the form of Protestantism that prevailed in England during the late sixteenth century, based on the doctrines of the French-born Protestant reformer Jean Calvin.

Calvinist theology developed and changed over time, but at this historical juncture it stressed the sinfulness and depravity of human nature. In contrast to the traditional view of salvation as something that an individual could earn by living a virtuous Christian life, Calvinism argued that salvation is entirely God's gift rather than the result of any human effort. Moreover, according to the doctrine of predestination, God gives that gift only to a fortunate few whom he has chosen; everyone else faces an eternity of hellfire.

This theology formed the official doctrine of the Elizabethan Church. However bleak it sounds, its effect on believers was often positive; for those persuaded by their own virtuous impulses that they were chosen by God, it proved an enormous source of comfort and well-being, perhaps especially for poorer members of society, for whom the conviction of divine favour could be empowering. But for some, these doctrines provoked a sense of powerlessness and anxious fear about their spiritual destiny.

It is possible to argue that Marlowe's Faustus is a depiction of one of these casualties of Calvinist doctrine, and that this helps to explain not only his opening dismissal of Christianity as obsessed with sin and damnation, but his repeated inability to repent. As in the soliloquy that opens Act 2, he cannot bring himself to believe that God favours him and has granted him salvation. The desire for repentance is overwhelmed by a still stronger belief, consistent with Calvinist doctrine in its early modern form, that the chances are that God does not love him at all.

Numerous critics have been troubled by a particular episode in the play that seems to cast doubt on the presence of divine mercy and benevolence. This is the moment in Act 2, Scene 3 when Faustus makes his most serious attempt at repentance. And what happens? Lucifer, Beelzebub and Mephistopheles enter. Why does God not intervene to save Faustus? The stony silence that greets his plea for divine assistance seems to call into question the traditional Christian notion of a loving and merciful God.

Other critics have argued that God is silent on this occasion because Faustus's repentance is insincere, and that he consistently fails to repent not because he is suffering from theologically-induced despair, but because he is afraid of the devils and constantly distracted by the frivolous entertainments they stage for him, like the pageant of the seven deadly sins which follows this episode.

One could argue as well that the play does represent the Christian God as loving and merciful, and shows human beings to be free to shape their own spiritual destinies. The Good and Evil Angels, after all, seem to give dramatic form to Faustus's freedom to choose: he has a choice between good and evil, and he chooses evil in full knowledge of what the consequences will be.

As late as Act 5, Scene 1, the Old Man appears on stage to drive home the availability of God's mercy if only Faustus will sincerely repent his sins. Looked at from this perspective, it is Faustus and not God who is responsible for the terrible fate that greets him at the close of the play.

This critical debate serves to remind us that it is difficult to evaluate how much sympathy the play arouses for its protagonist without taking into consideration its treatment of the Christian God.

If you think the God of the play is fundamentally benevolent then you are less likely to feel favourably disposed towards Faustus than if you think he comes across as a harsh and punitive cosmic despot. It is clear, though, that the play offers textual evidence in support of both views. Once again, we find Marlowe refusing to be pinned down to one interpretation.

Act 2 points repeatedly to the failure of Faustus's attempt to secure power and autonomy through his pact with Lucifer: in Act 2, Scene 1 Mephistopheles declines his request for a wife, and in Act 2, Scene 3 he refuses to tell him who made the world.

Acts 3 and 4 cover the bulk of the twenty-four-year period that Faustus purchased with his soul. How do they make us feel about what he actually achieves through his embracing of black magic?

Are we encouraged to feel it was worth it? Please have another look at Act 4, Scenes 1 and 2 pages 35— On the basis of these scenes, would you say that Faustus has realised his dreams of power and pleasure? What evidence would you offer in support of your view?

These two scenes show us Faustus in the role of court magician, entertaining the emperor Charles V and then the Duke and Duchess of Vanholt with conjuring tricks. Faustus asks Mephastophilis to get him a wife, but the devil refuses and will only bring him prostitutes:. Tut, Faustus, marriage is but a ceremonial toy If thou lovest me, think no more of it. I'll cull thee out the fairest courtesans And bring them every morning to thy bed.

She whom thine eye shall like, thy heart shall have. Act 1, Scene 5, Echoing this, Frankenstein's monster asks his creator for a wife for company. Frankenstein initially agrees, but abandons the task halfway through in disgust, leaving the monster alone. In the last century, Dr Faustus enjoyed numerous revivals, many of which featured famous actors. Indeed, part of the play's popularity in performance is due to the vast scope for the two lead roles of Faustus and Mephastophilis.

Michael Billington, writing in the Guardian in , argues that the play '[attracts] heroic performers who seem to find in it a self-fulfilling prophecy of destruction', mentioning in particular Orson Welles's Broadway version. Welles also staged a version in Paris, featuring music by legendary jazz pianist Duke Ellington. Likewise, when in Richard Burton did both a stage and a film version starring Elizabeth Taylor as Helen of Troy, many people drew parallels between Burton's career and his role.

Several reviewers, including Billington, have argued that the famous actors portraying the Doctor add an extra layer of irony to a performance because of their own success and the binding nature of Hollywood contracts: the temptation of fame and fortune is often seen by theatre-goers and critics as mimicking Faustus's own temptations. For many people, one of the things that makes Faustus such an endearing play is the impish delight that Marlowe takes in evoking his hero of the dark arts.

Minions of Hell appear on stage - something that deeply affected audiences at the time - at Faustus's request, as do a pair of good and evil angels:. Devils dress up as women, Faustus has a false leg torn off, Lucifer and Beelzebub 'ascend from Dis', hell is through the stage and Helen of Troy 'passeth over the stage' flanked by Cupids. Marlowe pokes fun at all the standard Catholic figures of authority, as Faustus and Mephastophilis play elaborate pranks on cardinals and even the Pope. It is no wonder that audiences enjoy Faustus : it is impossible not to be drawn into the wild extravagance of the play as theatre, whilst still feeling the tragedy of human overreaching.

Do you think Dr Faustus has qualities that make it more likely than most to come into and out of fashion? Are there things about it that seem to be particularly in tune with new developments in modern society? Might some aspects of it be losing their sharpness? Stephanie Derbyshire ends by saying it is 'impossible not to drawn into the wild extravagance of the play'. Do you think we are supposed to fight against this? Or does the attraction of the play tell us something about our weaknesses?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 13th, at pm and is filed under Marlowe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2. Both comments and pings are currently closed. Marlowe: The Fortunes of Doctor Faustus In this essay undergraduate Stephanie Derbyshire looks at the changing fortunes of the play between its first performances and the present day.