Doctor Faustus

Christopher Marlowe, Paul Menzer, Paul Menzer

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781474295161
• Edition: 1

This fully re-edited, modernised play text is accompanied by commentary notes and an introduction written by Paul Menzer, guiding you through the fume of fact and legend that have accompanied the play across the centuries. As well as the complete text of the play, this re-edited New Mermaids edition includes: · A detailed plot summary and annotations throughout the text
· An annotated bibliography and suggestions for further reading
· A comprehensive introduction exploring the historical and literary context, and performance history, including Orson Welles's 1937 role as Doctor Faustus as well as recent productions at The Globe and the RSC One of the most spectacular and popular plays of the Elizabethan stage, Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, with its fantastical mix of high-minded theology and low-brow slapstick, has allured generations of readers and playgoers in the ensuing centuries.

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[CHORUS 1]

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Enter CHORUS

CHORUS

Not marching in the fields of Trasimene

Where Mars did mate the warlike Carthagins,

Nor sporting in the dalliance of love

In courts of kings where state is overturned,

5 Nor in the pomp of proud audacious deeds

Intends our Muse to vaunt his heavenly verse.

Only this, gentles: we must now perform

The form of Faustus’ fortunes, good or bad.

And now to patient judgments we appeal

10 And speak for Faustus in his infancy.

Now is he born of parents base of stock

In Germany, within a town called Rhodes.

At riper years, to Wittenberg he went,

Whereas his kinsmen chiefly brought him up.

15 So much he profits in divinity

That shortly he was graced with doctor’s name,

Excelling all, and sweetly can dispute

In heavenly matters of theology,

Till, swollen with cunning of a self-conceit,

20 His waxen wings did mount above his reach,

And, melting, heavens conspired his overthrow.

For falling to a devilish exercise

And glutted now with learning’s golden gifts

He surfeits upon cursed necromancy.

25 Nothing so sweet as magic is to him,

Which he prefers before his chiefest bliss.

And this the man that in his study sits. [Exit]

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[SCENE 1]

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Enter FAUSTUS in his study

FAUSTUS

Settle thy studies Faustus and begin

To sound the depth of that thou wilt profess.

Having commenced, be a divine in show

Yet level at the end of every art

5 And live and die in Aristotle’s works.

Sweet Analytics, ’tis thou hast ravished me.

‘Bene disserere est finis logices’.

Is to dispute well logic’s chiefest end?

Affords this art no greater miracle?

10 Then read no more; thou hast attained that end.

A greater subject fitteth Faustus’ wit.

Bid ‘on kai me on’ farewell, and Galen come.

Be a physician, Faustus; heap up gold,

And be eternized for some wondrous cure.

15 ‘Summum bonum medicinae sanitas’,

The end of physic is our body’s health.

Why Faustus, hast thou not attained that end?

Are not thy bills hung up as monuments

Whereby whole cities have escaped the plague

20 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.

25 Physic, farewell. Where is Justinian?

‘Si una eademque ...