Marlowe: Doctor Faustus

James N. Loehlin

• Publisher: The Arden Shakespeare
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137426338
• eBook ISBN: 9781350316720
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This introductory guide to one of Marlowe's most widely-studied plays offers a scene-by-scene theatrically aware commentary, a brief history of the text and first performances, case studies of key performances and productions, a survey of screen adaptations, and a wide sampling of critical opinion and further reading.

1 The Text and Early Performances

Texts and date

The textual history of Doctor Faustus is one of the most vexing problems in early modern theatre studies. The play exists in two distinct versions, both of which went through several editions. Neither was printed until more than a decade after Marlowe’s death, and both were probably written, in part, by someone other than Marlowe.

Scholars refer to these two versions as the A-text and the B-text. The A-text was printed in 1604, the B-text in 1616. The A-text is relatively short, about 1500 lines; the B-text is more than 600 lines longer, and contains material for which there is no equivalent in the earlier text. In many scenes the texts are nearly identical, but there are significant divergences, and each contains material not in the other. We know that Philip Henslowe, who managed the theatre associated with early performances of the play, paid William Birde and Samuel Rowley £4 for ‘additions in Doctor Faustus’ in 1602, before either text was published. These ‘additions’ may or may not have been the new B-text material, but Henslowe’s record of them indicates that the text of Doctor Faustus was a malleable and unstable entity while the play was being performed in the Elizabethan theatre.

The two texts are most similar in the opening and closing sequences, in which Faustus makes his initial pact with the Devil and is finally dragged off to hell. Both contain Faustus’s rejection of traditional studies, summoning of Mephistopheles, pact with Lucifer, and entertainment by the Seven Deadly Sins; both also contain his eleventh-hour monologue and final destruction. The two versions are most different in the comic sequences in the middle part of the play. The B-text has an episode involving a rival German pope named Bruno for which there is no equivalent in A. It also has a whole series of scenes depicting the vanquishing of a knight who questions Faustus’s powers, an event that occupies only a few lines in the A-text. The comic subplot of the clowns who steal one of Faustus’s conjuring books exists in different versions in the two texts, with the B-text’s being substantially longer and including additional characters. The B-text also contains a larger presence for the supernatural characters, and includes an extra scene in which Faustus’s fellow scholars discover his torn limbs after his death. Even in the passages that are similar in the two texts, subtle differences in wording suggest divergent interpretations of Faustus’s damnation. Finally, the B-text contains more elaborate stage effects, and includes evidence of censorship relating to religious language.

Scholars have long argued about how these texts might have arisen, and which should be given priority. Some editors have favored the A-text, as earlier and less polluted by the interpolations of other hands. Others have argued for the fuller B-text, sometimes suggesting that A is a corrupted ‘bad quarto,’ a memorial reconstruction of the play by actors, perhaps reflecting changes made in performance. Many editors and theatrical producers have conflated the two texts, taking scenes or readings from each. More recent critical practice has been to treat the two texts independently, with each having an identity and authority of its own. The Revels Student Edition of the play, edited by David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen (on which the present study is based) includes both versions in parallel texts, making it possible to compare readings within a given scene. Other recent texts, such as the original 1993 Bevington/Rasmussen edition and the recent Norton Critical Edition (ed. David Scott Kastan), include both texts separately. There have also been a number of recent editions of one text or the other; but no one can now claim to present a definitive edition of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.

It is unlikely that any text we have is entirely Marlowe’s work, whether or not it includes the Birde/Rowley ‘additions.’ Other authors who might have had a hand in Doctor Faustus include Thomas Nashe, Thomas Dekker, and Henry Porter, a playwright who had been at Cambridge with Marlowe and had associations with the Admiral’s Men. Elizabethan playwrights often worked collaboratively, or added material to the plays of others. Authors had little control over intellectual property rights, and both theatre companies and printers would try to get more mileage out of plays under their control by incorporating new material. The comic scenes in the middle section of Doctor Faustus have often been considered the work of a collaborator or reviser, out of keeping with the dignity of the main story of Faustus’s bargain and his ‘hellish fall.’ The very first editor of the play, C. W. Dilke, complains in 1814 that ‘the buffoonery and stupid humour of the second-rate characters are constantly intruding on our notice’ (Old English Plays, Vol. 1, x, n.); yet Dilke seems to have thought it possible that Marlowe wrote them. In any event, the comic scenes are present, in some form, in both versions, and are clearly built into the design of the play. Apart from the scenes involving Robin the Clown, all of the comic episodes in the middle of Doctor Faustus, from the Pope to the horse-courser, are based on the same source as the rest of the play, The English Faust Book. Moreover, the comic scenes have a thematic importance. The middle section of the play depicts the degeneration of Faustus’s aspirations through the 24 years of his bargain; the scenes with the clowns present a grotesque reflection of this debasement, and Faustus eventually meets them on their own level with his pranks on the horse-courser. Whoever wrote the middle scenes of Doctor Faustus, they are a necessary part of the play, which without them would really have only a beginning and an end.

The difficulties raised by the two texts of Doctor Faustus are compounded by uncertainties about the play’s date. The first record of a performance is in 1594, when Philip Henslowe, the manager of the Rose playhouse, entered it in his ‘Diary’ or account-book, one of the leading sources for Elizabethan Theatre history. This performance was more than a year after Marlowe’s death; Doctor Faustus was certainly written, and probably performed, well before. The earliest plausible date is around 1588–9, soon after Marlowe’s initial success with the two parts of Tamburlaine. Apparent references to Faustus in other plays from the period, notably Robert Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (probably 1589), argue for the earlier date. On the other hand, there is no record before 1592 of the publication of Marlowe’s principal source, The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus, otherwise known as The English Faust Book. It is possible that Marlowe had access to a manuscript, or that there was a lost earlier edition. The German Faust Book, from which The Damnable Life derives, was published in 1587, but there is no evidence that Marlowe knew it or could have read it in German. So while Faustus could have been written early in Marlowe’s career or shortly before his death, there is no conclusive argument for either date. Scholars are divided between the two possible dates of 1588–9 and 1592, though the earlier date has been favored more recently.

As to the question of when and where Doctor Faustus was first performed, the evidence is equally inconclusive. It is unlikely that the September 1594 performance recorded in Henslowe’s Diary was actually the first; Henslowe usually specified when a play performed by the Admiral’s Men was a new work, and he did not do so in the case of Faustus. Other early modern texts refer to performances of Faustus at the Theatre in Shoreditch and at the Belsavage Inn, neither of which is likely to have taken place after 1590. It is also impossible to say who first performed the play, especially if one accepts the earlier date of 1588–9. The role of Faustus is strongly associated with Edward Alleyn, who was for years the leading player of the Admiral’s Men, but in the late 1580s he was performing with another company, Lord Strange’s Men. By the mid-1590s two pre-eminent companies had emerged: the Chamberlain’s Men, led by the Burbage family, who performed at the Theatre and later the Globe; and the Admiral’s Men, led by Henslowe and Alleyn, who played at the Rose. The Chamberlain’s Men came to be associated with the works of Shakespeare, the Admiral’s Men with those of Marlowe. The extent to which there was any official ‘duopoly’ in the London theatre has been much debated by historians, but these were the two leading companies by the time of the first performance of Doctor Faustus that we can document with certainty. While some other company may have performed it earlier, the play is primarily associated with the Admiral’s Men, and the role of Faustus with Edward Alleyn.

Early performances

We know that the Admiral’s Men produced Doctor Faustus at the Rose theatre on 30 September 1594, with Alleyn in the title role. The play brought in £3 and 12 shillings, an excellent box office taking. They continued to produce Faustus at regular intervals, 24 times over the next 3 years, when they pulled it from the repertoire because of Alleyn’s temporary retirement from the stage. It remained a profitable piece for the Admiral’s Men throughout this period (though the receipts declined over time), and was revived well into the seventeenth century. Henslowe’s payment for additions to the text in 1602, and the number of print editions of the play, attest to its continuing popularity.

The Rose was in many ways characteristic of the public playhouses of the sixteenth century. It was located outside the City of London, just south of the Thames on the Bankside, near the site where Shakespeare’s Globe would be built in 1599. Playhouses were typically situated in the ‘liberties’ outside the city limits, in part because of the anti-theatrical prejudices of puritanical civic authorities. Playhouses were a relatively new type of building in London; the Rose was only the fourth to be built, in 1587, shortly before Marlowe’s Tamburlaine premiered there. Like other London public theatres, the Rose was a polygonal structure made from timber and stucco, with tiered audience galleries roofed with thatch, and a central yard open to the sky. At one side of the yard was a raised stage. Audience members sat in the galleries or stood in the yard to watch the performance.

The archeological remains of the Rose were discovered in 1989, revealing a wealth of information about this particular playhouse. The Rose was somewhat smaller than other London theatres, about 70 feet in diameter, though it still would have held up to 2000 spectators. In 1592 Henslowe undertook renovations on the Rose to increase its capacity, giving it an ovoid shape, opening out on the stage side. He also moved the stage back to further enlarge the yard, and probably added a roof or ‘heavens’ to protect the stage from the elements. This ‘heavens’ unit would also have contained machinery allowing for spectacular entries from above, such as the descent of the heavenly throne near the end of the B-text of Faustus.

At the back of the stage was the tiring house, from which the actors entered the space through two doors. There was probably also a curtained ‘discovery space’ or central alcove in which, for instance, Faustus could be seen seated in his study at the beginning of the play’s first scene. This space may later have served for the hell-mouth into which Faustus was dragged, though he may also have descended through a trap-door in the stage itself. The Elizabethan stage had inherited a meaningful moral geography from medieval tradition. The heavens were above the stage, hell below, and humanity in the middle. This sense of the cosmic architecture of the Elizabethan stage is very strong in Faustus, so it is likely that performances employed the trap-door for demonic entrances and exits. The woodcut on the title page of the 1616 B-text shows a devil appearing to rise from a stage trap. On the other hand, the B-text also includes scenes in which supernatural agents seem to watch Faustus from above. They would likely have been standing in a gallery, or at a window, at the back of the stage. The B-text also has the mocking Benvolio ‘Enter… above at a window.’ We know the Rose had such a second level because of its prominent use in Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays, which also premiered there. The A-text does not specifically require a second level, which has led some to speculate that it represents a version of the play simplified for touring to different venues. However, it is likely that performances at the Rose, of whatever text, would have made use of this feature of the stage.

Performances of Doctor Faustus at the Rose would have taken place in the afternoon. Though some of the play’s crucial scenes take place at night, performances would have been lit by natural daylight. The atmosphere of menace and mystery for a scene like Faustus’s conjuring of Mephistopheles, or his final vigil before his midnight damnation, would have been created by other means than theatrical lighting. The language of these scenes does most of the work, along with theatrical effects like the tolling of the bell in 5.2. Early modern plays often signal night scenes by having actors carry props like torches or lanterns, but Doctor Faustus doesn’t specifically call for these.

While Elizabethan outdoor theatres could do little in the matter of lighting, they certainly had special effects. Fireworks are specified several times in the performance of Faustus: when Mephistopheles summons a devil-wife for Faustus, when Faustus and Mephistopheles disrupt the Pope’s banquet, when Mephistopheles frightens the clowns who have conjured him, and (in the B-text) when Benvolio and his followers are discomfited by a demonic army. Pyrotechnical effects would have been exciting for Elizabethan spectators, as well as downright dangerous in theatres made largely of wood (the Globe burned down in 1613 after the firing of a cannon ignited its thatched roof). Other special effects used in Doctor Faustus include the sound of thunder, the appearances of devils, and the processional entries of the Papal and Imperial courts. In general, the B-text calls for more elaborate uses of the stage, a larger company of actors, and more special effects; the A-text may reflect either a touring performance or a period when the company had fewer resources at its disposal.

The Admiral’s Men

A typical Elizabethan playing company consisted of around a dozen or so actors, all male, plus boys to play the female roles and walkon extras hired as needed. Both texts of Doctor Faustus require at least 11 actors, assuming the Seven Deadly Sins all appear onstage together with Faustus, Mephistopheles, Lucifer, and Beelzebub in 3.2. Though the play has a relatively large number of characters – more than 50 in the B-text – many of them appear only once or twice and then disappear, so doubling would have been relatively easy. The actors who played the Sins would have reappeared as the Pope and his retinue and the Emperor and his court, as well as the low-life characters in Act 4 and the devils who come for Faustus in Act 5. There are few female characters, so the effects of cross-gender casting would have been less pronounced than in other plays of the period, but still perhaps important. Helen of Troy, for instance, would have been played by a boy, so her kiss with Faustus might have contained a complicated erotic charge – perhaps especially if Marlowe’s reputed homosexuality had been widely known.

While several scenes in Doctor Faustus make use of a large company that would have filled the small stage of the Rose, the largest share of the lines, and of stage time, belonged to only two actors, Faustus and Mephistopheles. We do not know who played Mephistopheles for the Admiral’s Men, but he must have been a proficient and charismatic actor. The part is not huge from a line standpoint – Mephistopheles has around 170 lines in the A-text, a little over 10% of the play – but his presence is vital, even in the several scenes where he remains silent for long periods. Mephistopheles often has to match Faustus in tense encounters where Faustus does most of the talking, but Mephistopheles holds his own through a few concise, charged phrases: ‘In hell.’; ‘Under the heavens.’; ‘I will not.’; ‘Remember this.’ There are of course a range of ways the role can be played, but in the early modern theatre it required an actor who could command attention through his silent presence and express magnetic power through often understated speech.

About the actor of Faustus, Edward Alleyn, we know a good deal more. He was the greatest tragic actor of his age, only eclipsed in his supremacy when Richard Burbage rose to pre-eminence in the plays of Shakespeare. Born in 1566, Alleyn would have been in his late 20s when he began playing Faustus. He retired from acting before he was 40, though he continued to be involved in theatre management and the sport of bear-baiting; he had a royal appointment as Master of the Bears. Wealthy from his career in the entertainment industry, Alleyn bought a manor house in Dulwich and endowed the College of God’s Gift. Now Dulwich College, it is still one of the leading boys’ schools in England and the repository of Alleyn and Henslowe’s papers, the world’s most important archive of Elizabethan Theatre history. Alleyn had a long and successful marriage to Henslowe’s stepdaughter, and after her death he married the daughter of the poet and clergyman John Donne.

As an actor Alleyn was known for his imposing stature, powerful voice, and commanding presence. He played all of Marlowe’s leading parts, initially achieving fame as Tamburlaine, the Scythian conqueror who ‘threaten[ed] the world with high astounding terms’ in the two epic plays that...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Editors’ Preface
• Preface
• 1. The Text and Early Performances
• 2. Commentary: The Play in Performance
• 3. Intellectual and Cultural Context
• 4. Key Performances and Productions
• 5. The Play on Screen
• 6. Critical Assessments
• Further Reading
• Index