Notes and Questions on Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus
1. Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and the English Renaissance Stage or Playhouse
As the ancient Greek playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes wrote their plays -- texts that were also scripts -- they had in mind the particular stage, the ancient Greek stage, for which they were writing: its physical aspects, which are still evident today both in archeological remnants and in some instances, remodelings or recreations. They had in mind how the text or script would interact with physical aspects of the stage for production and communication (themes, symbolism, characterization). Likewise, Marlowe, Shakespeare, and the other English dramatists of his era, when writing their plays -- texts that were also scripts -- had in mind the particular stage, the English Renaissance stage, for which they were writing: its physical aspects and how their texts or scripts could make use of these for production and communication (themes, symbolism, characterization). The English Renaissance stage and playhouse developed from a combination of stages:
** the plain planks-on-barrels "booth stage" of the Middle Ages, which lasted into the eighteenth century because of its utility for producing plays in the countryside and small towns or even villages (Shakespeare alludes in 2.2 [Act 2, Scene 2] of Hamlet to this sort of touring enforced on adult acting companies because of competition from the privileged company of child actors, who were being favored by aristocratic audiences at the time to the annoyance of Shakespeare and other members of the professional adult acting community)
** the planks-on-barrels or "booth stage" that was moved into an inn-yard (Middle Ages onward), or bull-baiting or bear-baiting ring (Renaissance era: lots of fun from tethering a bull or bear to a post in the middle of the ring and then setting other wild animals, often dogs, on it to see how much physical damage could be done to the animals -- cock-fighting and dog-fighting go on in twentieth-century and twenty-first-century America, incidentally, for those who find this activity "entertaining")
** the architectural features of the typical aristocratic hall in one of the great houses or even a palace belonging to a member of the nobility
The planks-on-barrels booth stage in the countryside had the advantage of being portable and easily set up; its disadvantage is that collecting money for the performance was more difficult than a restricted space entrance into which required an admission fee.
The planks-on-barrels booth stage was easily set up in an inn-yard or bull-baiting (or bear-baiting) ring, and had the advantage of a location associated with "entertainment" and, most importantly, a restricted space entrance into which required an admission fee.
The great houses of the aristocracy probably helped to contribute, along with the inn-yard, the idea of two doors at opposite ends of the stage, along with a balcony, for an elevated staging level.
What finally resulted was recorded by a visitor to England in 1596,
Johannes De Witt, a Dutch priest, and is one of the few, precious contemporary
drawings of what the public outdoors English Renaissance stage looked like
(the picture is usually referred to as "the De Witt Swan drawing," since
it was a cartoon of the Swan playhouse):
In 1576, just outside London, and not so incidentally just outside the jurisdiction of the litigious and somewhat malevolent City Council, whose Puritan members disapproved of drama and theaters (and indeed closed them down when the Puritans came to power in 1641-42), James Burbage built the first English playhouse, which he named with an inspired sense of descriptive simplicity The Theater. After The Theater, there followed a succession of public playhouses, including The Curtain (1577), The Rose (1586), The Swan (1595), The Globe (1599), The Fortune (1600), The Red Bull (1605), and The Hope (1614). Also following The Theater, though eschewing its rather unsavory and disreputable neighborhood of Shoreditch, were the private playhouses, so-called, in part, because the sponsors of the first one sought privileges not granted to public playhouses, and in part because they charged a higher admission fee and attracted a more aristocratic audience. These included Blackfriars (1576 and 1600), St. Paul's or Paul's School (1599), The Cockpit (also called The Phoenix), The Cockpit-in-Court (1632), Rutland House, Salisbury Court, Whitefriars, and Whitehall. Most of these theaters were on Royal property and thus, like the public theaters built outside the city limits, exempt from City Council jurisdiction. The combined catalogue of all these playhouses, public and private, helps to underline an important point: that English playhouses in the Renaissance were many and different. As articles and books (some of the latter, multivolumed) on the English Renaissance playhouse have steadily multiplied to a sum of seventy or more since the crucial publication of Henslowe's Diary and Papers (1904-1908) and C.W. Wallace's momentous discovery in the Public Record Office in London of legal documents connected with Burbage's Theater (1910), an increasing number of critics have attempted to attack, qualify, or modify the concept of a "typical Elizabethan stage." Not only does the open-roofed, naturally-lighted public playhouse (such as Shakespeare's early theater, The Globe) differ from the enclosed, artificially illuminated private playhouse (such as Shakespeare's later theater, Blackfriars), but as a relatively recent essay such as "Staging at the Globe, 1599-1613" by J.W. Saunders (Shakespeare Quarterly, 11 [1960], 402-25) makes clear, so does public playhouse from public playhouse and even the same playhouse at one time from itself at another time. The facts that there were differences of size and proportion, that some playhouses were polygonal (or round) while others were square, that some had rectangular stages while others had trapezoidal ones, and that some had three stories while others two, provide a counterweight to the efforts of synthesizing critics and scholars.
Of such critics, the one usually considered to be the most authoritative is John Cranford Adams. It is the information, extrapolation, and diagrams from his book The Globe Playhouse: Its Design and Equipment (1942, 1964) that the majority of other critics use in their discussion of British Renaissance drama. The evidence for such reconstructions, in Cranford's book and others, is meager. It consists of (1) contemporary maps, engravings, and drawings (the latter often bearing the descriptive title of "panorama of London"), (2) a drawing made of the Swan Theater by a Dutch traveler named Johannes De Witt (1596) that rivals J.C. Adams' diagrams and reconstructions in the frequency of its publication, (3) the Diary of Philip Henslowe, manager of the Rose and Fortune theaters, and such other builders' contracts and business records that have been accidentally preserved in bureaucratic or historical alluvia, (4) references in contemporary nondramatic writings (often satirical, Puritanical, or both), and finally (5) casual references and stage directions in the dramas themselves.
The results of J.C. Adams' laboriously documented
and rigorously considered conclusions (together with some additional information
from other sources) may be briefly summarized. Adams expounds his view
in the very first paragraph of his book that "the Globe was a three-story,
octagonal structure surrounding an unroofed, octagonal yard . . . . The
playhouse measured 83 feet between outside walls, 34 feet high to the eaves-line,
and 58 feet across the interior yard" (1). Actually there are five levels
that make up the stage as Adams conceives it. The bottom level is the cellar
underneath the stage, called "Hell" (which with the technical term for
the roof that partly covered the platform stage, "Heaven," serves as a
reminder of the medieval religious origins of the British Renaissance drama
and stage). Excavated a little to reach a depth of eight feet, the cellar
area was large enough to receive or send anything through the trapdoors
in the platform-stage up to and including a bedstead, Roman chariot, or
troop of soldiers. "Hell" was also useful as a point for the origination
of the sound of distant trumpets, cries, moans, or any of the other variegated
off-stage noises that clamor for attention in English Renaissance drama.
At the top level were the "huts," where a windlass, two trapdoors, and,
most important to the actor portraying the dead Antony being hauled up
by Cleopatra and her maids, in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra,
as well as a group of strong, experienced stagehands. The ascent and descent of a
heavenly throne in the 1616 version of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (V.ii), of a dragon-drawn
chariot, or gods and goddesses from Classically-oriented dramas, was through
the floor (corresponding on the other side to the stage-roof or "Heaven")
of a large rearward hut, which had a trapdoor no less than four feet wide
and twenty feet long. Through a much smaller circular trapdoor a few feet
in diameter in a hut toward the front of the stage came the fireworks through
the stage-roof or "Heaven" that were the triple moons, blazing suns, comets,
and similar fearsome portents in plays. In addition to these uses of the
huts, says Adams: "There the trumpeter stood who 'sounded' thrice before
the play began; there the cannon were shot off during battle and coronation
scenes . . ; there hung the great alarum bell the dreadful midnight clamor
of which roused the citizens . . ; [and] there the heavy 'bullet' was rolled
to make thunder . . ." (366). Naturally, these huts had to incorporate
enough storage space for this multiplicity of items. A side view
of a diagram of a different playhouse, the Swan, gives the idea about the
use of the "Huts":
In between the top and bottom levels were three stories, called collectively
the "tiring-house," after the original medieval function of the curtained
alcove, functioning as a dressing room, that could be put to a remarkable
range of uses. The highest or third story was called alternatively the
"high gallery" or "music gallery." About eight feet deep and twelve and
one-half feet long, it normally housed the musicians. It could also become
the high gallery of a castle, a turret, tower, keep, or masthead. The function
of music and of the musicians had more pragmatic theatrical value than
a critical reading of a dramatic text is likely to reveal. For in addition
to the two trapdoors located in the huts already mentioned, there are seven
more in the first and second stories yet to be discussed, and the potential
of these and all the other props and machinery for producing a distracting
cumulative creaking, groaning, squeaking, and clatter was great. It is
for this reason, consequently, and not only for dramatic effect and meaning,
that music accompanies the sudden appearance of fairies, "spirits," and
other such apparitions. The thunder and general racket that attend on witches,
devils, demons, and other unnatural monsters also has this twin purpose.
With its complement of four separate dramatic areas or spaces, the two
window-stages, the "Tarras" and "The Chamber," the second story is one
of the more complex and diversified of the Elizabethan playwright's tools.
The overall dimensions of the central room on the second floor when the
curtains are drawn are 23 feet (length) by 10 feet (depth) by 11 feet (height).
"The Chamber" in this situation may be used for all those purposes assigned
earlier to the "gallery" and, in addition, as a living room, bedroom, dressing
room, private room in a tavern, the second level of any of these, or of
a palace or prison, or in conclusion simply an elevated vantage point.
The ironic use of the Chamber for the latter, a trope in so many Elizabethan
plays and signaled by the stage directions "enter X above," may be even
further accentuated by means of the trapdoor through which the character
or characters above may be seen looking or listening by most of the audience.
Adams notes that his specificity, new because the second story appeared
only in the last decade of the sixteenth century, added a new verisimilitude
to the drama. But beyond this, he says:
Whereas previously dramatists had been forced to interpolate an exterior between a pair of interior scenes, particularly when the second interior differed in locality and setting from the first, they were now able to devise an action involving two adjacent interiors . . ; or an action involving two separated interiors in sharp dramatic contrast . . ; or an action which flows logically from one interior to another in the same building. (275-76)
Here, too, there is the significant use of the curtain as part of the
setting. While above in the music gallery the curtain serves mainly as
a screen for the musicians in order to make the music seem nonlocalized
or localized where the play requires, below, when the curtains are drawn
in front of the Chamber, a "tarras" or projecting balcony, is created.
About three-feet deep and about twenty feet long, the "tarras" may serve
either as an anteroom, hallway, or more usually the walls of a besieged
city from which the defenders parley with their assailants. Because the
"tarras projected far enough to conceal actors standing under it on the
lower stage[from those above on the 'tarras'] (or at least to give the
effect of such concealment) [249], it can create a dramatic effect ironic
or otherwise exactly the reverse of that created by the revelation of the
Chamber to the central lower stage. Characters standing under the "tarras"
also appear to be hidden from those at the window stages, a fact which
also can be exploited for comic, ironic, satiric, or even tragic purposes.
The window-stages are probably the most localized component of the three
stories. According to W.J. Lawrence in The Elizabethan Playhouse and
Other Studies (1912): "The supreme gracefulness of the casement as
a permanent stage adjunct lay in the degree of illusion its employment
lent to scenes of gallantry and intrigue. This is evidenced by the remarkable
number of upper-window scenes in Elizabethan drama" (2:33-34). Adams adds
that the windows "were provided with thin but opaque curtains installed
primarily with a view to making the window-stages available for musicians
to play or sing unseen during the progress of some inner-stage [first floor]
scene" (269). As an adjunct to the Chamber, the window-stage can provide
a good deal of suspense and action. Adams demonstrates this use in an analysis
of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, III.iv, where the lovers part
just as Lady Capulet appears in Juliet's chamber or bedroom. Juliet's delaying
tactics give her just enough time to pull up and in the window the rope
ladder by which Romeo has taken his leave.
By far the most complicated of the three stories in its dramaturgical
possibilities is the first story, which is composed of twin pillars supporting
the "Heavens" (or stage cover, or simply "shadow," as it is sometimes called),
the large (942 square feet) stage-platform (replete with as many as five
trapdoors), the twin stage doors, and study or inner stage (with its own
trapdoor), Practically all the elements of this story can be used for some
function, mimetic or symbolic. The posts or pillars, for example, might
be used as "trees" or ships' masts, which could be easily climbed part
way because of their square base. The doors, however, might become symbolic
as they do in the first scene of Romeo and Juliet, where the opposing
families sally out of opposite doors--opposite sides helping to establish
with visual symbolism their distinctive antagonism--while Prince Escalus
(the mediator here and later) enters from the center or "study."
The "study" or inner stage (also called the "alcove" or "curtained recess")
of course is capable of being used for more than merely the place where
Barabas, Faustus, or Ferdinand and Miranda, are "discovered" (the first
two instances being those that helped determine the pattern). With the
curtains of the study drawn, it becomes necessary, finally, to engage the
question of whether or not there was scenery (in a modern sense) in the
public playhouses. Most critics and scholars agree there was not. Lily
B. Campbell in her book Scenes and Machines on the English Stage During
the Renaissance (1923) makes a fairly strong case for movable scenery
and painted backdrops, using perspective to create street scenes--in the
academic and private theaters. But, she says in her chapter entitled "Scenery
in the Public Theaters": "The consideration of the public stage is, it
is evident, a matter of secondary importance in the history of Renaissance
stage scenery, for stage decoration had its rise in the imitation of the
classical stage through the careful research of scholars devoted to the
revival of the art and learning of the ancients, and their theories found
early embodiment in luxurious dramatic representations [i.e., the masques]
before courtly circles prepared by the greatest artists of the time" (116).
But though the use of painted backdrops on the stage of the public theater
is highly questionable, the popular dramatist's masterful use of the curtain,
traverse, and arras is not; nor is the use of props (some of them quite
large), or striking and expensive costumes (which necessitated the sprinkling
of rushes at strategic points on the stage to prevent the costumes,
not the actors, from being hurt).
In the diagram of a later scholar, C. Walter Hodges, following up on Adams' work, the whole Globe theater may very well have looked like this:
As indicated in my Notes and Questions about Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, below, the special components of drama include not only the set (not much scenery in either ancient Greek or English Renaissance drama, but imaginative use of the sets), but also props. A fair sample of the variety possible in props emerges from a listing of the property-maker John Carow's estate in 1574-75 and a complete inventory of the properties belonging to the Admiral's Company in 1598 (both preserved in original legal and business documents). The first is comprised of:
properteyes videlicet Monsters, Mountaynes, fforestes, Beastes, Serpentes, Weapons for warr [such] as gunnes, dagges, bowes, ar[r]owes, Bills, holberdes, borespeares, fawchions[,] daggers, Targettes, poll-axes[,] Clubbes[,] headdes and headpeeces[,] Armor[;] counterfet Mosse, holly Ivye, Bayes, flowers quarters, glew, past[e], paper, and such lyke with Nayles[,] hoopes[,] hors[e] tails[,] dishes for devells eyes[,] heaven, hell, and the devell . . . . (L.B. Campbell, Scenes and Machines 111-112)
The second list, from Philip Henslowe's Papers (mentioned earlier) is even more impressive. In the items that follow, "i tomb of Dido," "Tamberlaine's bridle," and "i cauldron for the Jew," and "i dragon in Faustus," there are obvious references to Marlowe's plays The Tragedy of Dido, Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta, and Dr. Faustus, respectively:
i rock, i cage, i tomb, i Hell mouth. i tomb of Guido, i tomb of Dido, i bedstead. viii lances, i pair of stairs for Phaeton. ii steeples, i chime of bells, and i beacon. i heifer for the play of Phaeton, the limbs dead. i globe, and i golden sceptre; iii clubs. ii marchpanes [elaborate kinds of cakes] , and the City of Rome. i golden fleece; ii rackets; i bay tree. i wooden hatchet; i leather hatchet. i wooden canopy; old Mahomet's head. i lion skin; i bear's skin; and Phaeton's limbs and Phaeton's chariot; and Argus' head. Neptune's fork and garland. i 'crosers' staff; Kent's wooden leg. Iris head and rainbow; i little altar. viii vizards; Tamberlain's bridle; i wooden mattock. Cupid's bow and quiver; the cloth of the Sun and Moon. i boar's head and Cerberus' iii heads. i Caduceus; ii moss banks; i snake. ii fans of feathers; Bellendon stable; i tree of golden apples; Tantalus' tree; ix iron targets. i copper target and xvii foils. iv wooden targets; i greeve [governor's] armor. i sign for Mother Redcap; i buckler. Mercury's wings; Tasso's picture; i helmet with a dragon; i shield with iii lions; i elm bowl. i chain of dragons; i gilt spear. ii coffins; i bull's head; and i 'vylter.' iii timbrels; i dragon in Faustus. i lion; ii lions heads; i great horse with his legs; i sackbut. i wheel and frame in the Siege of London. i pair of wrought gloves. i Pope's mitre. iii Imperial crowns; i plain crown. i ghost's crown; i crown with sun. i frame for the heading in Black Joan [a piece of stage machienry to produce the illusion of beheading]. i black dog. i cauldron for the Jew. (G.B. Harrison, Introducing Shakespeare 101-02)
Although its precise uses on the Elizabethan stage are still unsettled, the curtain seems to have been one of the most serviceable of all props. According to one much debated theory, curtains were stretched over wooden poles to form booths, which were in turn moved forward toward the front of the stage so that several more dramatic "spaces" might be created. The curtains could be drawn on one side of the booth, and with as many as eight or ten of these booths arranged in two stories, an effect similar to that of "rapid cutting" in the movies might have been produced. However this may be, curtains were almost certainly used for wall-hangings, arrases, and traverses. The wall-hangings, in harmony with the strong emphasis on generic appropriateness and decorum in the Renaissance, may well have indicated the kind of play being presented. Various areas of the stage may have been draped in black, for instance, in order to denote a tragedy. The arras is familiar to all readers of Shakespeare's Hamlet as the locus of concealment, deception, and a rather unfortunate mistake the title character makes with respect (or disrespect) to Polonius, for whom the results are equally disagreeable. Actually, there could be as many as three arrases hanging in the "study" or inner stage, one on each side and one on the rear. Finally, the curtain was in all probability used as a traverse--a screen placed crosswise in the "study" or inner stage to create additional dramatic spaces. Such spaces might represent separate rooms, compartments, or tents for opposing armies. In this way the dramatist had available extra parallelism and contrast as conveyed by visual imagery and symbolism. Hanging curtains in front of the doors and other entrances on stage would allow very swift entrances and exits, sometimes necessary in plays, like Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, which have rapid cutting back and forth between Egypt and Rome. Any play with staccato scenes would obviously benefit from this use of the curtains.
The indoor theaters or stages of the time, including the theater that
Shakespeare and his company used, Blackfriars, was similar to the outdoor
public theaters in construction, as well as to one of their ancestors,
the great hall of a noble house:
While there was a good deal of paraphernalia involved in the staging of British Renaissance plays, the drama and dramatist still mainly depended on the audience's imagination to supply many lacking details, on visual imagery and symbolism (gesture, stage grouping, movement, setting, and occasionally costume) and preeminently, of course, on language. There was no attempt to secure, nor even much concern to attain "realism" in any modern sense. The stage was extremely fluid and flexible, as it was relatively unencumbered, offering manifold visual possibilities both vertically and horizontally to convey movement, stasis, rapid or slow pace or tempo (e.g., change of setting or scene), symmetry, asymmetry, parallelism, and contrast. Counting the cellar, from which ghosts, devils, or a magical tree might arise, and the "huts," from which a god or throne might descend, an actor might appear at five levels, these levels being consonant obviously with the concept of hierarchy central in the Renaissance. Including trapdoors, there were as many as twenty-two points of "discovery" or entrance (Salingar 66-68).
For all this, it was still an intimate theater, in
which even from the worst vantage points minute visual and auditory details
might be apprehended by the audience. As one critic notes, "Front stage,
the actor stood next to the groundlings; rear stage, in the Globe, he was
no more . . . than eighty-five feet away from the farthest spectator. There
was thus no necessity to drop the old convention of direct address to the
audience, in soliloquy or aside; it was a theatre for eloquence as much
as for pageantry" (Salingar 68).
2. The State of the Texts of Marlowe's and Shakespeare's Plays
Shakespeare was unquestionably the author of the
plays usually attributed to him: the actors who put together the first
collected edition, called the "First Folio" (1623) knew him and
had been actors with him; likewise, the other actors in the various acting
companies in which Shakespeare participated, and even a famous, younger
rival dramatist, Ben Jonson. It is true, however, that Shakespeare and Marlowe, like
most other dramatists of his time (with the notable exception of Ben Jonson),
took little care over the printing of their plays, for two main reasons.
First, drama was considered a lowerclass or less prestigious literary form
than poetry; Shakespeare did take more care for his two main long poems
(Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece), written when the
theaters in London were closed, as they were periodically, for an outbreak
of bubonic plague; Shakespeare hoped to secure a reputation among the aristocracy
from these poems. Second, the publication of a play was disadvantageous
to the acting company producing it because then other acting companies
would have access to the script and could put on productions that would
take away money from the acting company for which the play had been written. The
publication of the plays sometimes happened because one of the actors of the
theater company -- sometimes not a principal in the company -- needed money and
turned over a "memorial reconstruction" to a publisher: that is, the
actor wrote down his part, which he generally remembered perfectly, and
reconstructed the other parts as well as he could remember them. One result of these conditions was the sometimes confusing differences
between published versions of the same play. Another difference that could
occur, as in the case of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, might be a result of a
cut "touring" version of a play (e.g., the 1604 version) which relied
on the minimal stage -- perhaps just the planks, barrel, and staves plus curtain
stage, shown above, this version differing markedly from the full-blown version
meant for the established and much more elaborate playhouses in the London area
(e.g., the 1616 version of the Marlowe play).
3. Notes and Questions on Marlowe's Doctor Faustus
The textual situation of the 1604 version (A text) and 1616 version (B text) of Marlowe's Dr. Faustus is much more complicated than indicated in either NAEL6 or NAEL7. Many fine collections of British Renaissance drama and Marlowe's plays are in print and worth adding to a personal library--and these, along with fine separate editions of this Marlowe play, are divided pretty evenly between the 1604 and 1616 versions; even the editor upon whom the NAEL editors have based their edition, Roma Gill, has changed her mind in the three editions she has done of the play:
General Anthologies of British Renaissance Drama
Baskerville, Charles, V.B. Heltzel, and A.H. Nethercot, eds. Elizabethan and Stuart Plays. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1934; rpt. 1963. [1660 pp.; 28 authors or combinations; 42 plays.] Mainly 1604 version.
Bevington, David, Lars Engle, Katharine Maus, Eric Rasmussen, eds. English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002. [1997 pp.; 19 authors or combinations; 27 plays] Mainly 1604 version.
Brooke, C.F. Tucker, and Nathaniel Paradise, eds. English Drama, 1580-1642. Boston, MA: D.C. Heath, 1933.[1044 pp.; 21 authors or combinations; 30 plays.] Mainly 1604 version.
Fraser, Russell, and Norman Rabkin, eds. Drama of the English Renaissance. 2 vols. [Vol. 1: The Tudor Period; Vol. 2: The Stuart Period.] New York: Macmillan, 1976. [Vo. 1: 16 authors or combinations; 20 plays; 536 pp.; Vol 2.: 14 authors or combinations, 21 plays, 770 pp.] Vol. 1 has the play: mainly 1616 version.
Neilson, William, ed. The Chief Elizabethan Dramatists, Excluding Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1911. [880 pp.; 18 authors or combinations; 30 plays] Mainly 1604 version.
Nethercot, Arthur, C.R. Baskerville, and V.B. Heltzel, eds., Elizabethan Plays and Stuart Plays. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1971. (2-volume revision of Baskerville-Heltzel-Nethercot, above). [Vol. 1: 18 authors or combinations, 22 plays, 845 pp.; Vol. 2: 8 authors or combinations, 21 plays, 1038 pp..] Vol. 1 has the play: mainly 1616 version.
Oliphant, E.H., ed. Shakespeare and His Fellow Dramatists. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1929. 2 vols. [Vol. 1: 1177 pp.; Vol. 2: 1173 pp.; 13 + 11 authors; 23 plays (10 by Shakespeare) + 22 plays (5 by Shakespeare)]. Vol. 1 has the play: mainly the 1604 version.
Parks, Edd, and Richard Beatty, eds. The English Drama: An Anthology, 900-1642. New York: W.W. Norton, 1935. [1494 pp.; 28 authors or combinations; 33 plays.] Mainly 1604 version.
Schelling, Felix, and Matthew Black, eds. Typical Elizabethan Plays. 3rd ed. 1926, 1931; New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949. [1065 pp.; 20 authors or combinations; 25 plays.] Mainly 1604 version.
Spencer, Hazelton, ed., Elizabethan Plays: Written by Shakespeare's Friends, Colleagues, Rivals, and Successors . . . Boston: D.C. Heath, 1933. [19 authors or combinations, 28 plays, 1173 pp.] Mainly 1604 version
Collected Editions of Marlowe's Plays (all in paperback)
Bevington, David, and Eric Rasmussen, eds. Christopher Marlowe: Tamburlaine, Parts I and II; Doctor Faustus, A- and B-Texts; The Jew of Malta; Edward II. New York: World's Classics - Oxford UP, 1995. As indicated in the long title: both 1604 and 1616 versions.
Gill, Roma, ed. The Plays of Christopher Marlowe. London: Oxford UP, 1971. Mainly the 1616 version.
Kirschbaum, Leo, ed. The Plays of Christopher Marlowe. Cleveland, OH: Meridian Books - World Publishing Company, 1962. Mainly the 1616 version.
Ribner, Irving, ed. The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe. New York: Odyssey Press, 1963. Mainly the 1616 version.
Romany, Frank, and Robert Lindsey, eds. [Christopher Marlowe:] The Complete Plays. London: Penguin, 2003. Mainly the 1604 version.
Steane, J.B., ed. Christopher Marlowe: The Complete Plays. [Penguin Classics.] Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1969; rpt. 1980. Mainly the 1616 version.
Individual Editions (all in paperback) of Dr. Faustus
Barnet, Sylvan, ed. Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. New York: Signet Classics - Penguin Books, 1969. 2nd ed., 2001. Mainly 1616 version.
Gill, Roma, ed. Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. [New Mermaid editions.] New York: Hill and Wang - Farrar Straus, and Giroux, 1965. Mainly 1616 version.
---. Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. [New Mermaid editions.] Second Edition Based on the A Text. London: A and C Black, 1989; rpt. 1996. Mainly 1604 version.
Jump, John D., ed. Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. London: Methuen and Company, 1965. [Based on Jump's authoritative Revels Plays edition.] Mainly 1616 version.
Kocher, Paul H., ed. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1950. Mainly 1604 version.
Neilson, William A., and Thomas Crofts, eds. Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. 1911; rpt. New York: Dover Thrift Editions - Dover Publications, 1994. Mainly 1604 version.
Wright, Louis, and Virginia LaMar, eds. The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus. New York: Washington Square Press - Simon and Schuster, 1959. Mainly 1604 version.
As if the two-version situation is not complicated enough, the scene numbering varies between the 1604 and 1616 versions, and sometimes different editions of the same version (1604, say) have different numbering. The 1616 version is usually divided into acts and scenes, but Jump divides his edition into scenes--twenty of them!, the most of any editor just using scenes. The 1604 version is usually divided into scenes, but the Bevington-Rasmussen edition uses act and scene for both 1604 and 1616 versions, and Hazleton Spencer likewise uses act and scene for his edition of the 1604 version. There is some material found only in the 1616 version and not in the 1604 version, and vice versa--but more of such material in the 1616 version (that is, the 1616 has more lines and scenes than the 1604 version). See the articles "bibliography" and "textual criticism" in Harmon's and Holman's A Handbook to Literature. If you have Barnet's Signet Classics edition of the play, read Barnet's comments in his "Textual Note" (pp. 103-09) on differences and an editor's (and a reader's) dilemma. Similar editorial problems occur with many of Shakespeare's plays, and have occurred respecting literary works from ancient times to the present.
Following are some
approximate equivalences between the two versions of the play; an asterisk
indicates much material in this version not in the other version:
| 1604 version (2nd Roma Gill edition) | 1616 version |
| Scene 1 | I.i |
| Scene 2* | I.ii |
| Scene 3 | I.iii |
| Scene 4 | I.iv |
| Scene 5 | II.i |
| Scene 5 | II.ii |
| Scene 6 | II.iii |
| Chorus 2 | Chorus |
| Scene 7 | III.i |
| Scene 7 | III.ii* |
| Scene 8* | III.iii |
| Scene 9* | III.iii |
| Chorus 3 | Chorus |
| Scene 10 | IV.i* |
| Scene 10 | IV.ii* |
| Scene 10 | IV.iii* |
| Scene 10 | IV.iv* |
| Scene 11 | IV.v |
| Scene 11 | IV.vi* |
| Scene 12 | IV.vii* |
| Scene 13 | V.i |
| Scene 14 | V.ii |
| Scene 14 | V.iii* |
As pointed out by Barnet and others, beginning with Walter W. Greg's scholarly edition in the 1950's, and unfortunately omitted in the NAEL note to the play, the ampleness of the 1616 version could be viewed as reflecting: (a) it being the version used for staging in the theaters of London, as opposed to makeshift theaters of a touring company in the provinces, and (b) the fullness lacking in a memorial reconstruction (= the 1604 version), sometimes published for a quick buck (or, in those days, shilling) by one of the (often minor) actors in the company. Compare the asterisked scenes and note what material is omitted. How does the included or omitted material affect each version, respectively?
A further
complication in scene numbering is that Roma Gill's second edition, the basis
for the NAEL6 and NAEL7 text (her first edition was based on the
1616 version; editors are divided about which version to use, and at least one
paperback collection of Marlowe's plays includes both versions, just as the new Norton
Shakespeare and Oxford Shakespeare include substantially differing
versions of some Shakespeare plays) differs somewhat in scene numbering from
other paperback editions based on the 1604 version (by David Bevington and Eric
Rasmussen: who also buck the trend of using just scene numbers for the 1604
version; Paul Kocher; Neilson and Crofts; and Louis B. Wright and Virginia La
Mar). A further difference between older editions and newer editions of English
Renaissance plays has to do with the addition of stage directions not in the
original text specifying the place of the scene; older editions tend to do it,
whereas newer editions of plays do not:
| Gill (2) | Bevington & Rasumussen | Kocher | Neilson & Crofts | Romany & Lindsey | Wright & LaMar |
| Prologue | Prologue | Chorus | Chorus | Chorus | |
| Scene 1 | 1.1 | Scene 1 | Scene 1 | Scene 1 | |
| Scene 2 | 1.2 | Scene 2 | Scene 2 | Scene 2 | |
| Scene 3 | 1.3 | Scene 3 | Scene 3 | Scene 3 | |
| Scene 4 | 1.4 | Scene 4 | Scene 4 | Scene 4 | |
| Scene 5 | 2.1, 2.3 | Scenes 5-6 | Scenes 5-6 | Scenes 5-6 | |
| Scene 6 | 2.2 | Scene 8 | Scene 8 | Scene 8 | |
| Chorus 2 | 3: Chorus | Scene 7 | End of Sc. 6 | Scene 7 | |
| Scene 7 | 3.1 | Scene 7 | Scene 7 | Scene 7 | |
| Scene 8 | 3.2 | Scene 9 | Scene 9 | Scene 9 | |
| Chorus 3 | 4: Chorus | Scene 10 | omitted | Scene 10 | |
| Scene 9 | 4.1 | Sc. 10-11 | Scenes 10-11 | Scenes 10-11 | |
| Scene 10 | 4.1 | Scene 11 | Scene 11 | Scene 11 | |
| Scene 11 | 4.2 | Scene 12 | Scene 12 | Scene 12 | |
| Chorus 4 | 5.1 | Scene 13 | Scene 13 | Scene 13 | |
| Scene 12 | 5.1 | Scene 13 | Scene 13 | Scene 13 | |
| Scene 13 | 5.2 | Scene 14 | Scene 14 | Scene 14 | |
| Epilogue | Epilogue | Scene 14 | Scene 14 | Scene 14 | |
A careful inspection of the above chart will indicate Gill's flip-flop of one scene, in contrast to other editions, and will also reveal disagreements about where to cut off or begin one scene and other scene.
Similarly, for the
comparison with other editions of the 1604 version:
| Gill (2) | Baskerville, et al. | Brooke & Paradise | Neilson | Oliphant | Schelling & Black | Spencer |
| Prologue | Chorus | Chorus | 1: Chorus | |||
| Scene 1 | Scene 1 | Scene 1 | 1.1 | |||
| Scene 2 | Scene 2 | Scene 2 | 1.2 | |||
| Scene 3 | Scene 3 | Scene 3 | 1.3 | |||
| Scene 4 | Scene 4 | Scene 4 | 1.4 | |||
| Scene 5 | Scs. 5-6 (+ Chorus) | Scs. 5-6 | 2.1, 2.2 | |||
| Scene 6 | Scene 8 | Scene 8 | 2.3 | |||
| Chorus 2 | Sc. 6, end | Sc. 6, end | 3: Chorus | |||
| Scene 7 | Scene 7 | Scene 7 | 3.1 | |||
| Scene 8 | Scene 9 | Scene 9 | 3.2 | |||
| Chorus 3 | Sc. 9, end | Sc. 9, end | 4: Chorus | |||
| Scene 9 | Scene 10 | Scene 10 | 4.1 | |||
| Scene 10 | Scs. 11-12 | Scene 11 | 4.1, 4.2 | |||
| Scene 11 | Scene 13 | Scene 12 | 4.3 | |||
| Chorus 4 | Scene 14 | Scene 13 | 5.1 | |||
| Scene 12 | Scene 14 | Scene 13 | 5.1 | |||
| Scene 13 | Scene 15 | Scene 14 | 5.2 | |||
| Epilogue | Scene 15 | Scene 14 | 5.2 | |||
General; Background on Drama, Generally
Drama or theater is usually covered somewhat meagerly in introduction to literature classes, introduction to literature textbooks, and sometimes in Humanities classes and textbooks. A principal reason is this genre's complexity, which is indicated by its usually being placed last in introductory textbooks (prose fiction, poetry, and finally drama is the usual order for such textbooks, arranged from lesser to greater in complexity and difficulty). A play is not only a written piece of literature, and consequently possessed of all potential literary components of fiction, poetry, and essay, but also a script, which should require something physical of a particular theater or stage (setting, props, etc.) as well as of its actors (gestures, actions, blocking or grouping or composition on the stage). The word drama comes from Greek dran 'to do [something], perform a physical action,' which is indicative of its action orientation. If a literary author composes a work which does not mandate physical uses of setting, props, action, or other dramaturgical components, then the author might have more properly written a short story, novel, poem, or essay, none of which obliges us to go to a theater (or movie theater) to watch it: we could simply and only have read it. Reading drama, consequently, is more difficult than the other genres, because the production must be staged in the reader's mind, adding all of these special dramatic components, some of them only specified in later editors' stage directions, many of them not so specified but definitely implied by the text-script. Stage directions have usually been added to plays by later editors, while few of them are supplied by the dramatists themselves. The first of two main reasons for this reticence is that the playwright has usually been a professional, writing for professionals, knowing that they would know what to do from the language of the script. Second, adding all stage directions for actions, props, setting, sound effects, and so on, clearly implied by the text, the script, would balloon the script monstrously, to some degree obscuring the lines the actors have to memorize. To read the text or script, we must imaginatively become drama professionals ourselves. In meritorious literary works, such nonverbal components of the play will not only be engaging to the audience (sometimes more engaging to an audience than to a reader, since they are in clearer view for a longer time to the former than to the latter) but also will be meaningful or significant thematically or symbolically as well.
The particular elements of drama, its unique dramaturgical components, are as follows (for the first three, I use the terminology of Alan S. Downer, a brilliant literary scholar and student of drama, in his essay "The Life of Our Design: The Function of Imagery in the Poetic Drama" [Hudson Review 2 (1949): 242-260; reprinted in many anthologies of critical essays on the drama and on Shakespeare, such as Shakespeare: Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. Leonard F. Dean [1957; rpt. New York: Galaxy Books - Oxford UP, 1961, pp. 19-36; revised edition, New York: Galaxy Books - Oxford UP, 1967, pp. 19-36], and Perspectives on Drama, eds. James Calderwood and Harold Toliver [New York: Oxford UP, 1968, pp. 406-22] [my mentors and two-thirds of my dissertation committee at the University of California at Irvine], as well as Downer's text-anthology of drama, The Art of the Play: An Anthology of Nine Plays [New York: Henry Holt, 1955]):
-- nonverbal "language" of action (physical motion, gesture, composition or blocking)
-- nonverbal "language" of setting (actual, physical scenic elements of the stage, theater, or, in later drama, set design [e.g., tables, chairs, sofas])
-- nonverbal "language" of props (actual, physical objects, which the props master or props mistress must furnish for the dramatic performance and are seen on stage)
-- sound effects (e.g., screams, thunder, music)
[-- lighting effects (available only later in drama, when indoor theaters developed; also in film)]
[-- for film, a particular kind of drama, and covered by the screenplay of Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion, reprinted in volume 2 of the Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, 5th ed. or the screenplay of Marguerite Duras' Hiroshima Mon Amour in volume 2 of the Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, 6th ed., and available for rental at some video rental stores, the following elements: (a) camera distance (long shot, medium shot, closeup); (b) camera angle (horizontal, up angle, down angle -- or aerial or crane shot, from a height); (c) camera framing (where the image is put in the frame; cf. composition in painting and still photography); (d) camera motion (camera stationary and objects or people move into its view; camera moving and objects or people static -- a "pan" or dolly shot; camera moving and objects or people moving, as in every "B" Western from the 1940's, with a camera on the back of a pickup, in front of the galloping hero or villain out in the wilds of Burbank or Northridge, California; or the grandaddy of all car chase movies, Steve McQueen's Bullett); (e) camera or film speed (normal motion, fast motion, slow motion); (e) special effects, the abbreviation "F/X" now immortalized in two (more to come?) films of this name]
To get or reinforce backgrounds on drama and drama in the English Renaissance relevant to Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, read the following entries in Harmon's and Holman's A Handbook to Literature or Cudden's Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms (listed in logical order, but within general areas, alphabetically, for ease of reference in HTL): (1) Drama; (2) Medieval drama; (3) folk drama; interlude; liturgical drama; miracle play; morality play; mystery play; (4) Elizabethan drama; Elizabethan theatres; (5) dumb show; school plays; university wits; (6) private theatres; public theatres; war of the theatres; (7) tragedy; catharsis; classical tragedy; domestic tragedy; hamartia; hubris; revenge tragedy; romantic tragedy; senecan tragedy; tragedy of blood; tragic force; (8) poetic drama; dramatic poetry; (9) act; anagnorisis; antagonist; balance; catastasis; catastrophe; characterization; chorus; climax; comic relief; complication; confidante; conflict; contrast; convention; counterplayers; coup de theatre; crisis; denouement; deus ex machina; dialogue; digression; discovery; dramatic irony; dramatic monologue; dramatic structure; dynamic character; epilogue; episode; episodic structure; epitasis; exciting force; exposition; falling action; final suspense; flashback; hero; induction; mise en scene; monologue; motivation; movement; peripety; plot; poetic justice; prolepsis; prologue; protagonist; protasis; recognition plot; relief scene; reversal; rising action; scenario; scenes; setting; situation; soliloquy; solution; static character; stichomythia; stock characters; stock situation; structure; subplot.
G1. "Language" of action isn't a character's
exclusively verbal reference to some action, gesture, or motion. If a character
on stage simply says "yesterday I cut myself," this reference does not
constitute the language of action. However, a genuine or authentic dramatist or
playwright instinctively writes words that mandate actions or gestures from the
actor or actors. An authentic or genuine dramatist, instinctively writing for
the correct literary genre, will write words that demand physical embodiment on
stage. (Note the spelling of the word playwright, which uses the
suffix wright, meaning, like the suffix smith, "a
maker"; cf. the names Wheelwright or Arrowsmith. Remember Sir Philip
Sidney's derivation for poet in his "Apology for
Poetry"/"Defense of Poesy.") (G1a.) For example, in
Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, what physical, onstage action is mandated by
Faustus's lines to Mephistopheles, "View here this blood that trickles from
mine arm/ And let it be propitious for my wish" (Sc. 5, ll. 57-58;
II.i.58-59)? Although not noted in editions of the play, clearly the actor must
point to and hold up the arm, complete probably with fake blood on his arm with
the sleeve rolled up. (The Elizabethans could get fake blood easily enough: they
knew about butcher shops in those days, too, not just in our era of Demi Moore
and George Dzundza in the film The Butcher's Wife. The fake blood would
be a detail helping to engage an actual theater audience, as well as make a
symbolic point.) Dramatists or playwrights, from ancient Greek literature to
today, are intuitively fond of certain locational adverbs (here, there)
and the demonstrative pronouns (this, that, these, those)
because the grammar makes things happen on stage, makes the actor or actress do
something. Note how both of these grammatical elements are used dramaturgically
and meaningfully in Faustus's "View here this blood that
trickles from mine arm/ And let it be propitious for my wish"(Sc. 5,
ll. 57-58; II.i.58-59). (G1b.) Since literature is the maximum meaning in
the words and literary components used, any example of the "language"
of action will also be revealing about character, personality, human nature, or
theme. What, then, is revealed, both in a visual sense, as well as in
theme or characterization, in Faustus's lines in Sc. 5, ll. 57-58/II.i.58-59?
These lines (actually, there is a a great deal going on in the
"languages" of action and props in the whole passage of Sc. 5, ll.
48-80/II.i.49-81) suggest Faustus's unhesitating determination and
imperiousness. He uses, unruffled, the imperative verb, "View here .
. . ," and his intellectual's vocabulary in "propitious," despite
his having stabbed himself and unconcernedly bleeding while he speaks and
demonstrates. The audience (and, more distantly, the reader) has a visual
demonstration that Faustus is bravely and lamentably heedless of pain and
consequences as shown by his stabbing himself and standing there bleeding.
Remember, most times stage directions for plays are printed in square brackets,
indicating that they have been supplied not by the author but by the translator
or editor. Dramatists often have not bothered indicating where and when a
certain physical action should take place on stage, first, because the dramatist
feels that the script or text "speaks" for itself; second, because the
dramatist or playwright is usually writing for professionals who, he knows, will
understand what to do; and, third, supplying all such references would
probably expand the script or text to twice its length or even more. Therefore,
alert readers, who do not have the opportunity to see a drama on stage, must
read the text like a director for a middle school play, realizing that the
director is going to have to specify for the youngsters almost all motions,
actions, gestures, etc., that are expected of them from the text. (G1c.)
What other language of action and props are used with thematic vividness by
Marlowe in Sc. 5, ll. 48-112?/II.i.49-113? (G1d.) What anti-Catholic joke
(related to the Reformation in Renaissance England) is conveyed by the language
of action in the costume change that Faustus demands and gets from
Mephistopheles in Sc. 3 / I.iii? (G1e). How does the Pope's physical
action (and the action demanded of Bruno), relative to Bruno in III.i.90 ff.,
exemplify the thematic use of the "language" of action in drama? (This
is material not in the 1604 version, which is hardly "comic" botching
by other hands than Marlowe's):
[Enter the Cardinals and Bishops, some bearing crosiers, some the pillars; Monks and Friars singing their procession; then the Pope and Raymond King of Hungary, with Bruno led in chains.]
Pope. Cast down our footstool.
Raymond.
Saxon Bruno, stoop,
Whilst on thy back his Holiness ascends
Saint Peter's chair and state pontifical.
Bruno. Proud Lucifer, that state belongs to me--
But thus I fall to Peter, not to thee.
Pope. To me and Peter shalt thou grov'lling 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!)
(III.i.90 ff.; 1616 version only)
How does this passage incorporate the "languages" of action, props, setting, and sound effects? How does this passage set up, motivate, and justify Faustus's and Mephistopheles' "language" of action relative to the papal banquet, in Scene 5, ll. 59-78 / III.ii?
G2. The "language" of setting is not simply a character's reference to a place or locus, unless that place or locus must be embodied onstage and seen by the audience. The "language" of setting can be extremely important, since the setting remains in view of the audience for an entire scene, act, or perhaps the whole play. Though the audience may not be paying attention to details or aspects of the set, nevertheless they are seeing them all the time, and these details and their potential meaning or symbolism are registering on the audience's subconscious (perhaps conscious, for the more literarily experienced) for the whole scene, act, or play. The reader may very well forget details or aspects of setting while reading, but the audience would and could not; and the set may well be experienced more forcefully by the audience than the reader. (G2a.) The opening of Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, like that of Marlowe's The Jew of Malta and that of Ben Jonson's Volpone (the latter play which we'll read later in the course), makes effective use of a part of the Elizabethan stage called "the alcove." See letter C in the drawing of "A London Playhouse of Shakespeare's Time" at the back of NAEL6 or letter B in NAEL7 (7th ed.: p. 2962; 6th ed.: p. 2573). When the curtain is drawn back to reveal Faustus among his books (a scene with great poignance to your bibliophilic, bibliomaniacal Eng. 3002/6315 professor), several subliminal ideas are conveyed. (Such subliminal messages are banked on, in more than one sense, by television commercials and print advertising with "art.") One suggestion is secretiveness: the secretiveness and inwardness of Faustus's almost supernatural accomplishment in learning (the awe of advanced education is exemplified in the etymology of the word glamour from the word grammar), and the foreshadowed secretiveness and selfishness of Faustus's decision to delve into the secret or hidden area of black magic to overcome his sense of deficit or lack in the human condition. (G2b). With reference to the drawing of "A London Playhouse of Shakespeare's Time" in NAEL (7th ed., p. 2962; 6th ed.: p. 2573), how would you stage the appearance of the Good Angel and Bad Angel in Sc. 1 / I.i, Sc. 5, ll. 188 ff. / II.i, and Sc. 5, ll.253 ff. / II.ii of Dr. Faustus? Since they are supposed to be supernatural, outside the human sphere as implied by the prefix super in supernatural, we might very well put them on the upper stage ("B" in the NAEL6 drawing, "A" in NAEL7) to represent this plane outside of ordinary human existence; further, we'll put them at opposite ends of the upper stage to represent their antipodal, oppositional natures. All these ideas are derived from the text but would be or will be in part nonverbally suggested through the nonverbal language of setting. (G2c). With reference to the drawing of "A London Playhouse of Shakespeare's Time" in NAEL, how would you stage the climactic first entrance of the infernal (that's a hint) Mephistopheles in Sc. 3 / I.iii, besides using gunpowder for thunder and smoke? (Remember that the English Renaissance playwrights were quite conscious of keeping the paying customers happy; concern with the audience impact of such theatrical or special effects as laser lights and fancy staging didn't originate with Rock stars.) How might you achieve language of setting that would help convey Mephistopheles' downside (so to speak, as it were, in a manner of speaking)? (G2d). Some of these effects of the language of setting could be managed, though seriously diluted, when the play was taken on tour in the countryside and produced on a makeshift stage of boards on barrels and a frame that held up a long divided curtain that produced two spaces on the stage: before the curtain and behind the curtain. However, two of the scenes in the 1616 version could not be managed in this rural environment, and since they are in the 1616 version and not the 1604 version, they become evidence that the 1604 version was a cut, "touring" version of the play. These scenes in the 1616 version are IV.i.23 ff. (omitted from Sc. 10; Benvolio at an upper window overlooking Faustus's performance for the Emperor) and the descending and re-ascending throne in V.ii.110 ff. (omitted from Sc. 13 and the Epilogue). In IV.i.23 ff., how does Benvolio's literally elevated stage position express or communicate something about his attitude toward himself and Faustus? What subliminal symbolism might a window have that bears, ironically, on Benvolio in this episode? (G2e). The spectacular stage business of the lowering and raising of the heavenly throne in V.ii of the 1616 version, a combination of the languages of setting and props, again depends on the formal stage of the English Renaissance rather than of a rural production. As mentioned in "A London Playhouse of Shakespeare's Time" in NAEL, the area called "the Heavens" had a windlass for the raising and lowering of heavy objects, which could be stored in this area--like the heavenly throne of the 1616 version of Dr. Faustus. What symbolism does the lowering and raising of the throne have by itself in the scene, apart from any words of Faustus talking about it or his situation? How might the drama company have constructed or decorated or painted the chair to indicate immediately and nonverbally to the audience that it represented a "heavenly throne"? (These are problems a dramatist or playwright has to deal with that the fiction writer, poet, or essayist does not have to confront.) (G2f). How is language of setting handled, practically and symbolically, in Envy's words to Faustus "But must thou sit and I stand? Come down, with a vengeance!" (Scene 5, ll. 308-09 / II.ii.141-2).
G3. (G3a). How the language of props (as well as language of action) differentiates viewing the play versus reading it is exemplified in a confusion that may occur to an inexperienced reader of drama that would not to a viewer in the Good Angel's words to Faustus:
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.
(Sc. 1, ll. 70-73; I.i.67-70)
In many editions of the play, there is no annotation for "that is blasphemy" (Sc. 1/line 73; I.i.70) and the inexperienced reader may misread the line as saying, inconsistently and contradictorily, that the Scriptures are blasphemy, though the Good Angel is telling Faustus to reject his book of black magic and turn instead to the Bible. The stage production, actor, director, and demonstrative pronoun that would all combine to make clear to an audience that the Good Angel (actually, the actor playing him) would point to the book of black magic, his gesture opposing this book to the Bible that the Good Angel gestures to in contrast to the black magic book. The language of action interacts with the language of props (the books) to contrast good with evil, visually leaving the symbolism of this conflict as it divides Faustus's impulses, in the audience's mind or subconscious. (G3b). How does the language of props in Sc. 10 / IV.iii and Sc. 11 / IV.v (the dismemberment of Faustus) thematically and symbolically anticipate and connect to the language of props implied by the first speech of the second scholar in V.iii (lines 6-7; cf. line 17; not in the 1604 version):
2 Scholar. O, help us heaven, see here are Faustus' limbs
All torn asunder by the hand of death!
. . . . . . .
Yet for he was a scholar once admired
For wondrous knowledge in our German schools,
We'll give his limbs due burial.
G4. Sound effects and music are also effectively, thematically, used by the wonderfully theatrical Marlowe in Dr. Faustus. (G4a). Music in the drama is mentioned as early as Aristotle's Poetics, and in modern times has had a profound emotional and thematic impact in drama (e.g., the "Glass Menagerie" theme or the "Blue Piano" theme that Tennessee Williams repeatedly calls for in The Glass Menagerie or A Streetcar Named Desire, respectively) or in film (e.g., the lead song, "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling," sung by Tex Ritter as a refrain in Fred Zinnemann's High Noon [1952] or the breath-taking opening sequence including the expressive music of the New Age group Tangerine Dream [the group mentioned in Jerzy Kosinski's wonderful novel about the worlds of Rock and Classical music performers, Pinball] in the film Thief [1981], starring James Caan). Dr. Faustus has the aspect of a kind of Broadway musical in Sc. 5 / II.i;II.ii, with dancing and music accompanying some of the action. The function of the music in these episodes is partly entertainment, but it is also thematic, setting up a contrast between demonic pleasantness or pleasure and the gravity of the surrounding circumstances from a theological point of view. How does the theological environment, what's at stake for Faustus, represent the antithesis of music in these scenes? (G4b). To represent thunder, a repeated thematic sound effect in this play, gunpowder has its limitations as a fire hazard (indeed an effect calling for a canon blast in Shakespeare's Henry VIII burned down the Globe theater). Instead, canonballs were used, rolled, appropriately enough, on the floor of "the Heavens" part of the English Renaissance theater, whose underside was called "the sky" (clouds and stars were painted on it, visible as the ceiling from the stage), as depicted in "A London Playhouse of Shakespeare's Time" in NAEL. Where, and expressing what ideas, is the sound effect of thunder used? (G4c). Where, in the second half of the play is screaming used as a sound effect, expressing what themes or ideas?
G5. (G5a). Though Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, as you will recall (see the excerpt from his translation of the Aeneid in NAEL), pioneered blank verse in English poetry, Marlowe, as the NAEL intro and many others have pointed out, pioneered it in English Renaissance drama. (Some scholars have identified Marlowe as the rival poet that Shakespeare, or the Shakespearean speaker, expresses jealousy about in the sonnets.) What examples in Dr. Faustus can be found of Marlowe's "mighty line," paralleling the example cited from Marlowe's play Tamburlaine (Part 1), cited in the NAEL intro? (G5b). A typographical convention in the printing of poetry and poetic drama (for some unaccountable reason rarely if ever discussed in intro. to lit. textbooks or classes, or in World Literature or English literature anthologies or upper division classes for majors) is called "echeloned lines." A single poetic line is broken up into smaller units, each with its own new margin, to indicate that the unit is part of a single line. (Examples can be found in Robert Fitzgerald's standard English translation of Homer's Odyssey, which are misnumbered by the printers and proofreaders unaware of this convention and Fitzgerald's poetic practice in his translation.) Both the drama and poetry use this typographical convention of "echeloned lines" to either divide a single line of poetry between two (or more) speakers, in drama, or to show thought units or verse paragraphs, in poetry. For example, III.i.90 (in the passage from the 1616 version quoted above in these Notes and Questions) is divided between the Pope and Raymond; count the number of syllables from the Pope's "Cast down" to Raymond's "stoop," and you will find the ten syllables of the iambic pentameter line that is the norm of English blank verse. Typesetters and proofreading editors sometimes err with echeloned lines, as shown in III.i.124 ff. of the Signet Classics edition. What is the error in the printing? (G5c). Marlowe uses a thematically significant mixture of blank verse and prose in his drama, again providing a model for Shakespeare and others. (G5c1). In Scenes 1-4 / Act I, where does Marlowe use poetry or verse, and where does he use prose, and for what thematic or characterizational reasons? How does Marlowe use the contrast of poetry/verse and prose for plot, thematic, or characterizational ideas? (G5c2). As if there weren't enough problems with establishing the text, an additional one for Marlowe's plays, and Shakespeare's, and others', is deciding which passages should be printed as poetry (or verse), and which ones as prose. The problem here is that either the authors did not supervise the printing of the work or themselves overlooked misprints if they were occasionally involved in the printing. Consequently, sometimes editors have to resort to counting syllables to decide if a passage was intended to be blank verse (decasyllabic, iambic pentameter norm) or prose. (Oy vey! to use the exclamation of my ethnic group; oh brother! is the approximate gentile equivalent.)
G6. Like many plays (of the Renaissance, earlier, and later times), Dr. Faustus has a subplot as well as a main plot. (G6a). The subplot, dealing with the servant, or Wagner, could be said to provide "comic relief," the entry on which should be read in Harmon's and Holman's A Handbook to Literature or Cuddon's and Preston's Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Theory; however, as Harmon and Holman point out, and I would certainly concur, in a genuinely good literary work, there should be thematic or expressive functions of such material, not just some sort of psychological release mechanism. How do the scenes involving the "clowns" (Renaissance term for rustics or yokels, as well as a designation of what members of the acting company would portray these characters) in the subplot parallel, parody, and comment on preceding scenes (or following ones) in the main plot, involving Faustus? How does the subplot function as a censure or moral criticism of Faustus in the main plot? (G6b). Since the play deals with Marlowe's favorite topic of the overreacher, it naturally enough has the recurrent imagery (both verbal and in the nonverbal "languages" of action, props, and setting) of rising and falling (a motif*, also, in Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost). In what passages does this imagery or motif occur, and how does it show a pattern of first rising and then falling, suggesting Faustus's mental, emotional, and moral decline? How is there a kind of pattern, related to rising and falling, in the types or kinds of "victims" or targets of Faustus's magic, from the Pope (Sc. 7 / Act III) to the Old Man (Scenes 13-14 / Act V)?
G7. (G7a.) A verbal motif in this play and
other literary works of the Renaissance involving the Devil (e.g., Thomas
Nashe's Pierce Penniless, His Supplication to the Devil or Ben Jonson's The
Devil Is an Ass) is ringing all the changes possible on proverbial
expressions with the word devil in them (e.g., "the devil, you
say!", "go to the devil!", "devilish hard") which in
the circumstances, creates a pun based on these expressions' usual strictly
metaphoric meaning connecting with their "actual" or reified meaning
with a Devil or Demon "actually" present in the plot of the literary
work. Where do such passages occur in Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, and what
specific themes in the particular passage or cumulative themes overall are
expressed? (G7b.) How does a banquet or eating motif occur in Scenes 1,
2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 12, and 13? What themes or ideas are expressed by this motif? (G7c.)
Where in the play are the following key words repeated to become motifs: life,
grace, sweet? What ideas or themes are suggested by any of these
motifs?