New Mermaids

Christopher Marlowe

Edited by Roma Gill

 ♦

A BENN STUDY-DRAMA

THE NEW MERMAIDS

Doctor Faustus
 THE- NEW MERMAIDS

General Editors

BRIAN MORRIS
Professor of English Literature in the University of Sheffield

BRIAN GIBBONS
Senior Lecturer in English in the University of York

ROMA GILL
Senior Lecturer in English Literature in the University of Sheffield
 Doctor Faustus

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

Edited by
ROMA GILL
Senior Lecturer in English Literature / ...'

University of Sheffield /

LONDON/ERNEST BENN LIMITED

NEW YORK/W. W. NORTON AND COMPANY INC.

 First published in this form 1965
by Ernest Benn Limited
25 New Street Square • London • ECAA 3JA &
Sovereign Way • Tonbridge • Kent • TN9 1RW
Second {corrected) impression 1967
Third impression 1969
Fourth impression 1971
Fifth impression 1973
Sixth impression 1975
Seventh impression 1978
© Ernest Benn Limited 1965
Distributed in Canada by
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Printed in Great Britain
isbn 0 510-33821-6 (Paperback)
isbn 0-393-90019 3 (u.s.a.)

IN MEMORY OF
MY MOTHER

i
 »

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vi
Abbreviations vii
Introduction ix
The Author ix
The Play xi
Further Reading xxviii
DOCTOR FAUSTUS 1
Dramatis Personae 3
Prologue 4
The Text 6
Appendix 90
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The greatest debt is to Sir Walter Greg for the massive achieve¬
ment of his Parallel Texts. I am grateful to other modern editors for
the examples they have set; to friends and colleagues who listened
to me with constructive sympathy and patience; and to Professor
Brockbank for his understanding and encouragement, as well as for
his own work on the play. An allowance from the Sheffield University
Research Fund enabled me to work from the original quartos in the
British Museum and Bodleian Libraries.
Sheffield 1965 ROMA GILL
 ABBREVIATIONS
I have followed the usual practice in referring to the seventeenth-
century editions of Dr. Faustus. ‘A’ indicates substantial agreement
among all the A texts which are referred to separately on occasion
as A1 (1604), A2 (1609), and A3 (1611); the six B texts (1616, 1619,
1620, 1624, 1628, and 1631) are similarly distinguished. Modern
editions consulted are referred to as follows:
Boas The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, edited
by F. S. Boas (1923)
Bullen The Works of Christopher Marlowe, edited by
A. H. Bullen (1885)
Greg Marlowe's ‘Dr. Faustus’ 1604-1616: Parallel
Texts, edited by W. W. Greg (1950)
Jump Doctor Faustus, edited by John D. Jump (1962)

Other works frequently referred to are:

EFB The English Faust Book, the name often given to
Marlowe’^ source [The Historie of the damnable
life, and deserved death of Doctor Iohn Faustus,
translated by P. F. (1592)]
Kocher P. H. Kocher, Christopher Marlowe (Chapel Hill,
1946)
Tilley M. P. Tilley, A Dictionary of the Proverbs in
England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
(Ann Arbor, 1950)

Names of periodicals are abbreviated:

E.L.H. English Literary History
E.S. English Studies
E <Sf S Essays and Studies
M.L.N. Modern Language Notes
M.L.Q. Modern Language Quarterly
M.L.R. Modern Language Review
N & Q Notes and Queries
P.O. Philological Quarterly
R,E.S. Review of English Studies
T.L.S. Times Literary Supplement

Quotations from other plays by Marlowe are taken from the

edition of R. H. Case et al. (1930—33); those from Shakespeare’s
plays are from the London edition [edited by John Munro (1958)].

Vll
\
 INTRODUCTION

THE AUTHOR

At the age of twenty-nine Marlowe was murdered. His death was

welcomed by Her Majesty’s Privy Council, which later pardoned the
murderer, and by those popular moralists who hailed it as ‘a manifest
sign of God’s judgement’1 on a life of impietj' and debauchery.
Marlowe was born into a turbulent Canterbury family. His father
was a shoemaker of moderate means and excessive pugnacity, while
two of his sisters, Dorothy and Ann, were notorious in the town-the
former for various trade and matrimonial intrigues, the latter a
noted ‘scold, common swearer and blasphemer of the name of God’.2
Marlowe escaped from the family’s environment-though not, it
would seem, from its characteristics-with the aid of those pious
Elizabethans who had endowed scholarships for the encouragement
of good learning in poor boys. The first scholarship, of a year,
took him to the King’s School, Canterbury, from where he proceeded
to Cambridge as a Matthew Parker scholar at Corpus Christi
College. The Parker scholarship was awarded for three years in the
first instance, and might be extended for a further three on evidence
that the holder intended to take Holy Orders. Marlowe held his for
the full six years. The College’s Buttery Book shows him as an
undergraduate whose expenditure easily exceeded his income but
who from time to time spent nothing at all. There were, evidently,
frequent and prolonged absences from Cambridge, and these gave
the University cause to question his activities and to threaten, in
1587, to withhold his final degree. But Marlowe had strings to pull.
A letter from the Privy Council with the overruling authority of,
among others, Archbishop Whitgift, Sir Christopher Hatton, and
Lord Burghley, explained in veiled hints the reason for these ab¬
sences: Marlowe ‘had done Her Majestie good service, and deserved
to be rewarded for his faithfull dealinge’3. He probably went abroad
-perhaps to visit the English Catholics at Rheims. Amidst much
speculation one thing is clear: this ‘good service’ was not of the kind
that is officially recorded and recognised.
1 Thomas Beard, Theatre of God’s Judgements (1597), ch. xxv
2 See William Urry, ‘Marlowe and Canterbury’, T.L.S. (13th February 1964)
3 Privy Council Register, xxix° Junij 1587; for a full documentation of
Marlowe’s life and death see J. Leslie Hotson, The Death of Christopher
Marlowe (1925) and John Bakeless, The Tragicall History of Christopher
Marlowe (Harvard, 1945)
IX
X CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

A secret agent with an M.A. degree, Marlowe left Cambridge for

London. There he consorted with playwrights, at one time sharing
a room with Thomas Kyd, author of The Spanish Tragedy, quite
possibly he associated also with the group of young intellectuals led
by Sir Walter Raleigh. Although the facts of his life are largely un¬
known, its tenor is certain. Arrested once on a charge of homicide,
bound over at another time to keep the peace, Marlowe emerges from
contemporary legal documents as a rash and fearless quarreller.
Mario Praz calls him a libertin, using the word to mean both ‘free¬
thinker’ and, with its accumulated secondary meaning, ‘man of loose
morals’1. For the free-thinking there is ample evidence of surprising
consistency. Richard Baines libelled Marlowe only a few days after
the murder. The now famous libel accuses the dramatist of blas¬
pheming the Bible and mocking the state, reporting him as having
said:
.. . That the first beginning of Religion was only to keep men in
awe . . .
. . . That Christ was a bastard and his mother dishonest . . .
. . . that all the new testament is filthily written . . .
Whatever the company he came into, Baines continued, Marlowe
persuaded its members to atheism,
willing them not to be afeard of bugbears and hobgoblins, and
utterly scorning both god and his ministers2.
Marlowe sounds alternately like a perky undergraduate and like a
man of plain common sense. But this is a twentieth-century view. To
the Elizabethans, fearing for the sanctity of their church and the
security of their state, these were ‘monstruous opinions’, menacing
heresies. A warrant was issued for Marlowe’s arrest, on evidence
supplied perhaps by his former friend Kyd. Kyd himself had been
arrested, accused of inciting mob violence and race riots against the
Flemish protestants who were then settling in England. Under
torture he broke down, and in two letters to Sir John Puckering, the
Lord Keeper, he charged Marlowe with heresy and blasphemy.
Before the warrant could be executed Marlowe was killed. The
inquest report tells of a squalid encounter in a Deptford tavern on
30 May 1593. Marlowe spent the day there with three ‘gentlemen’,
talking and walking in the garden. But in the evening a quarrel was
struck up over who should pay the bill, Te recknynge’, and in the
scuffle that-followed Marlowe drew his dagger and wounded one of
his companions. The man, Ingram Frizar, snatched the weapon and
in defence of his life, with the dagger aforesaid of the value of
12d. gave the said Christopher then & there a mortal wound
1 ‘Christopher Marlowe’, E.S., XIII (1931)
2 MS Harley 6648, ff. 185-6
 INTRODUCTION xi

over his right eye of the depth of two inches & of the width of
one inch; of which mortal wound the aforesaid Christopher
Morley then & there instantly died.1

The coroner’s account puts a good face on the matter. Yet Ingram
Frizar and one, if not both, of his accomplices had connections in
some uncertain way with the secret service. Their past histories, and
the speed with which, one month later, Frizar was granted a free
pardon for the murder, suggest that the ‘recknynge’ settled in the
Deptford tavern was an old score, dating perhaps as far back as
Marlowe’s Cambridge and Secret Service days.
Marlowe’s contemporaries accepted the story of the brawl, but
only one seems to have known its ostensible cause. Shakespeare’s
reference to Marlowe’s death serves as an epitaph on his life, the
brief life of his most brilliant colleague whose achievement, in five
years, is second only to Shakespeare’s own:
A great reckoning in a little room
As You Like It, Ill.iii, 11.

THE PLAY

THE DATE

Marlowe’s reputation rests on four great plays: Tamburlaine (in two

parts), 1587-8; The Jew of Malta, 1590; Edward II, 1592; and Dr.
Faustus. At Cambridge Marlowe wrote a few translations of Latin
poets and perhaps also the early play Dido Queen of Carthage which
has only recently received2 the attention it merits for its compound
of high tragedy and wry comedy. The later (1590-93) Massacre at
Paris, journalistic and popular, has been justly neglected. Unfinished
at Marlowe’s death was Hero and Leander, an epic poem of great
delight, promising for its author, had he lived, certainty of success
in a new field.
The proud-paced verse of Tamburlaine stormed the English stage.
For his first public theme Marlowe took the story of a peasant warrior
whose aspiring mind impelled him to conquest. Over a map of the
world, drawn with detailed accuracy from Ortelius’ Theatrum Orbis
Terrarum, Marlowe played ‘a great game of chess, with kings and
conquerors for pieces’.3 Barabas, protagonist of The Jew of Malta, is
the reverse of Tamburlaine; schemes of grandeur delight him less

1 Chancery Miscellanea, Bundle 64, File 8, No. 2416 (translated from the
Latin)
2 from J. B. Steane, Marlowe: a critical study (1964)
2 Ethel Seaton, ‘Marlowe’s Map’, E & S,~X (1924), p. 35
xii CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

than grotesquely comic revenge plots to poison a whole convent of

nuns. Far from striding across the known world in the majesty of
power, he huddles in his counting-house, accumulating from all
quarters of the globe ‘Infinite riches in a little room’. King Edward
lacks even this ambition, longing only for the ‘nook or corner’ which
all England cannot afford where he may indulge his love for Gaveston.
‘Marlowe’s mighty line’ (the description is Ben Jonson’s1) is res¬
trained in Edward II, but what seems like a loss in energy is com¬
pensated by a gain in human feeling.
Not one of Marlowe’s plays can be dated with any precision, but
none presents so great a problem here as Dr. Faustus. The critic’s
immediate impulse is to place it between Tamburlaine and The Jew
of Malta-i.e. about 1589. The soaring splendour of the verse strongly
resembles that of Tamburlaine but marks an advance on the early
play in its irony, its more critical detachment. The fragmentary text
of Dr. Faustus bears no signs of the firmer grasp of construction and
characterization that is felt in Edward II; apart from Mephosto-
philis’ one moment (I.iii) the spotlight focuses on the single figure
of Faustus, leaving the rest of the dramatis personae in the shadows.
Faustus too, in his aspect of Renaissance superman bent on subduing
the world to his will, is more closely akin to Tamburlaine than to
either of the smaller natures, Barabas and Edward. Taken in this
order, the four plays have an intrinsic coherence, illustrating (though
Marlowe’s conscious mind probably admitted no such intention)
‘the progressive stages in the downfall of the humanist ideal’2.
Against this internal evidence for an early date must be balanced
one external fact. There is no edition, record, or specific mention of
Marlowe’s source (see below) before 1592. Dr. Faustus must be
Marlowe’s last play, the successor to Edward II, unless the dramatist
had access, somehow or other, to EFB either in manuscript or else
in an unrecorded edition prior to the one late in 1592. That there
was such an edition, now wholly lost, is generally accepted: two
publishers disputed ownership of the copyright in December 1592,
and the extant text claims to contain ‘imperfect matter amended’.
Greg, however, is fairly certain that the first edition antedates the
second by a matter of months only3.
In the battle to fix an early date for the play, further ammunition
has been brought from otfier writings, both dramatic and non-
dramatic. Kocher, firing at the base of the late-date argument, claims
an edition of EFB before 15 90.4 Muir and Zimansky both hear

1 line 30 of his memorial verses to Shakespeare, published in the First Folio

2 M. M. Mahood, ‘Marlowe’s Heroes’, Poetry and Humanism (1950), p. 85
8 Greg, pp. 1-6
4 ‘The English Faust Book and the Date of Marlowe’s Faustus', M.L.N., LV
(1940); and ‘The Early Date for Marlowe’s Faustus’, M.L.N., LVIII (1943)
 INTRODUCTION xiii

echoes of Dr. Faustus in other plays. The former points out simi¬
larities between Faustus* lhst soliloquy and a passage in Looking
Glass for London by Lodge and Greene which must have been
written before August 1591,1 while the latter offers similar evidence
from A Knack to Know A Knave, acted in June 1592.2
The witness of the play itself, backed by the circumstantial '
evidence brought by scholars, seems to me to outweigh the solitary
fact in the opposite scale. But the verdict is by no means conclusive,
and the case is still proceeding.

THE SOURCE

THE
HISTORIE
of the damnable
life, and deserved death of
Doctor Iohn Faustus,
Newly imprinted, and in conveni¬
ent places imperfect matter amended:
according to the true Copie printed
at Franckfort, and translated into
English by P. F. Gent?

Stories of witchcraft and enchantment, wandering loose in men’s

minds, attached themselves in the early sixteenth century to a real-
life Georg or Johannes Faustus, scholar and reputed magician of no
fixed abode. After this man’s death-which gave rise to the most
fantastic story of all-his fabled doings were assembled in a ‘bio¬
graphy’ published in Frankfurt in 1587. The book caught the eye of
an Englishman and, translated, was an immediate success. Nothing,
not even the name, is known of the translator, P. F. Gent. Whoever
he was, P. F. shared the German author’s staunchly protestant out¬
look. At some time, however, he must have toured Italy, and because
of his efforts to turn the pious jestbook into a Blue Guide we can be
certain that Marlowe used the English translation and not the German
original. The German, for instance, makes only passing reference to
Venice, whereas P. F. remarks the Piazza San Marco and ‘the sump¬
tuous Church standing therein called Saint Markes\ how all the
pavement was set with coloured stones, and all the Roode or loft of

1 ‘The Chronology of Marlowe’s Plays’, Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical

and Literary Society, V (1943); and see below p. xvii
2 ‘Marlowe’s Faustus: the Date Again’, P.Q., XLI (1962)
8 British Museum, C.27.b.43.
xiv CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

the Church double gilded over’ (ch. xxii), Marlowe copies - and adds
a further detail:
In midst of which a ,Sumptuous temple stands.
That threats the stars with her aspiring top,
Whose frame is paved with sundry coloured stones,
And roofed aloft with curious work in gold.
Ilia, 17-20

But the ‘aspiring top’-unless Marlowe can be thinking of the

adjacent campanile - exists only in the dramatist’s imagination.
More intelligent than either of his predecessors, Marlowe had
more respect for his hero. No longer the conjuror and calendar-
maker of the source, this Faustus is a scholar of distinction. Marlowe’s
own learning went to the creation of his protagonist, and the verse
of the play is heavily encrusted with references to texts that the
Cambridge undergraduate must have studied. Professor Brockbank
has noted the similarity, not only in name, of Marlowe’s Faustus and
the Manichean bishop who appeared to St Augustine.1
In the comic pope and anti-pope scene (Ill.i) can be traced the
vestiges of history, and for these John Foxe’s Actes and Monumentsa
was the source. Alexander III, pope from 1159 until 1181, encoun¬
tered a rival in Victor IV who was installed by the Emperor Frederick
Barbarossa; after long disputes Alexander won his cause and com¬
pelled Frederick to kneel at his feet:
The proud pope setting his foot upon the emperors necke, said
the verse of the psalms: Super aspidem et basilicum ambulabis, et
conculcabis leonem et draconem ... To whome the emperor
answering again, said: Non tibi sed Petro . . . The pope again:
Et mihi et Petro.
5th ed. (1596), p. 183
Historical fact has been confused, even violated. But this is of small
importance.

THE TEXT

Two early texts, published within a few years of each other yet
differing widely, make Dr. Faustus a most complicated editorial
problem. The version now referred to as the A Text appeared in
1604 and was reprinted, each time with a few minor changes, in 1609
and 1611. In 1616 another version, the B Text, was published; this
was reprinted five times before 1633. The second (1619) edition of
this text tells us that it is ‘With new Additions’—a piece of informa-
1 J. P. Brockbank, Marlowe: 'Dr Faustus,’ (1962), pp. 13-15
2 popularly known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (first English version 1563)
 INTRODUCTION xv

tion that ought to have been given three years earlier. For a long time
it was thought that A was the more original and that the new parts
of B (Ill.i, 90 ff.; ii; IV.i-vi; vii, 32 ff.; V.ii, 1-23,85-130 ; iii) were the
‘adicyones’ for which Henslowe paid £4 to a couple of his hack
writers, Bird and Rowley, in 1602.1 Modern bibliographical study,
however, has worked to reverse these views. Leo Kirschbaum in
1946 demonstrated that A bears all the stigmata of a reported text - a
text assembled by an actor, perhaps, from memory.2 * Greg, already
at work on his Parallel Texts, followed up this line of thought to
argue that A is indeed a reported, shortened version of the play
represented by B; that B was set up in different parts from a copy of
A3 (1611) alone, from A3 corrected by the author’s manuscript, and
from MS. alone; and that the additional writing had been there from
the beginning. To account for the occasional superiority of A (most
notably at V.i, 25-33) he postulated a revision of the play by Marlowe
which found its way into the theatrical prompt-book but not into
the original MS.
The monumental structure of Greg’s argument commands ad¬
miration but inhibits further building on the same site. My own view
is that the MS. behind the B Text came from the playhouse and in¬
corporated the Bird-Rowley additions in its third and fourth acts at
least. The extra lines in V.ii may have been part of this later revision
or, since they demand more elaborate staging (a balcony, the gaping
hell-mouth, and a celestial throne) they may have been dropped
from the production reported by A, which was in every way less
spectacular. Such a theory gives less weight than Greg attributes to
the B Text, while still maintaining its general authority.
Some kind of MS., certainly, was used in preparing the B Text,
but the detailed stage directions which this apparently provided
suggest rather a theatrical book than the author’s foul papers.
Embedded in the Latin of Faustus’ invocation (I.iii, 19) is the English
word Dragon; its position in the text suggests that the word must
have been scrawled in the margin and misunderstood by an already
bemused compositor who printed it into the text. Restoring it as a
stage direction Boas, followed by Greg, looks to EFB for an explana¬
tion and finds that, while Faustus was conjuring, ‘over his head
hanged hovering in the ayre a mighty Dragon’ (ch. ii). The same,
they infer, must have happened on the stage. But what sort of pro¬
ducer would draw the attention away from Faustus at such a
moment? That which is effective in a narrative is not always dramati¬
cally viable. An alternative suggestion was put forward by Kirsch¬
baum8 who saw the direction as anticipatory, a warning to the props

1 Henslowe’s Diary, ed. Foakes and Rickert (1961), p. 206

2 ‘The Good and Bad Quartos of Dr. Faustus’, The Library, XXVI (1945-6)
8 ‘Mephostophilis and the lost “Dragon” ’, R.E.S., XVIII (1942)
xvi CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

man to have his dragon ready so that it could pop up through the
trapdoor a few lines later. In his' haste, Faustus forgets to stipulate
that the devil should appear to him in some pleasing shape, and the
titlepages of all the B quartos carry a woodcut showing a genial
Faustus looking askance at what is surely an emergent dragon.1 A
stage direction of this kind would never appear in an author s MS.
Similarly the direction Enter faustus with the false head (IV.iii, 37)
suggests, by the use of the definite article, a writer familiar with the
company’s property resources. Greg admits that this, like the direc¬
tion Enter Piramus with the Asse Head2 reads as though it were
written by some theatrical hand. Again, Robin in the comic scenes
is consistently referred to in directions and speech headings as Cloztm;
Lancelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice is treated in the same
way, and this is usually ascribed to a stage book-keeper. These
directions in Dr. Faustus, incidentally, seem to have led Greg to
think of Robin as the Clown of I.iv. Probably the same actor played
both parts, but Robin is as different from the earlier Clown as the
smart-alec comedian of the television is from the red-nosed comic
man of the old Music Hall.
Greg detects the hand of an ‘editor’ preparing B’s text for publica¬
tion, censoring anything that might be accounted blasphemous under
the 1606 Act of Abuses. Thus Faustus’ line ‘O I’ll leap up to my
God’ (V.ii, 143) becomes ‘O I’ll leap up to heaven’, and the following
line, ‘See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament’, is
omitted completely. Censorship of this kind would be more appro¬
priate for a stage performance, since the text could be printed at any
time after the acting version had been ‘allowed’. Minor variants in
the B Text become suspect once the hand of an ‘editor’ is admitted,
and I view this man with more suspicion than Greg does. At I.i, 131
A reads ‘That yearly stuffs old Phillip’s treasury’; B alters stuffs to
stuff’d. Greg sees a compositor’s error, but I agree with Boas in sug¬
gesting an editor’s dutiful correction to the past tense after Philip of
Spain’s death in 1S98. More substantial is the variance between A
and B at the end of I.ii where I detect an amateur poet turning prose
into verse (see note p. 14).
The theory of prompt-book revision is most suspicious. I find it
hard to believe that Marlowe wrote so very badly when drafting the
Scholars’ reactions to Helen (see note p. 77). These lines in A’s
version must be considered along with another passage, again found
only in A. Greg rejects certain parts of A as being actors’ interpola¬
tions which would inevitably creep into a reported text. I agree with
the principle but disagree over the choice of passages to be consigned
1The titlepage of Q 1624 has been used for this edition since the other
quartos are in some way mutilated.
2 In the Folio text of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Ill.i.
 INTRODUCTION xvn

to the oblivion of an appendix. Act I scene iv needs closer examina¬

tion. I have, to begin with, rfetained the ‘French crowns’ joke which
Greg discarded on false historical grounds (see lines 26-9 and note),
but I have followed his example in throwing out two mildly obscene
passages for which I can find no justification (see note p. 20). The
‘kill devil’ lines (35-9) are another matter. Greg refuses to allow
them into his text because, he argues, they were filched from A
Looking Glass for London whose Clown boasts
Then may I count myselfe I thinke a tall man, that am able to
kill a divell. Now who dare deale with me in the parish, or what
wench in Ninivie will not love me, when they say, there goes he
that beate the divell.
1732-5
Muir pointed out resemblances between Faustus’ last soliloquy and
the Usurer’s despair in this play1; in fact A Looking Glass and its
relationship to Dr. Faustus will bear closer inspection than either
Muir or Greg has been able to give it. In the A Text the First
Scholar remarks:
Since we have seen the pride of Nature’s works,
And only paragon of excellence . . . V.i, 30-31
In A Looking Glass we find the phrases ‘pride of nature’s excellence’
(line 433) and ‘gratious paragon of excellence’ (line 1521). Either,
even both, of these might have been arrived at independently, but
taken in conjunction with the echoes of the last soliloquy and a few other
minor resemblances to Dr. Faustus, they add up to fairly weighty
evidence, not only for an early date to the play but also, more rele¬
vantly here, for the originality of some hitherto rejected parts of the
A Text. We cannot discard the ‘kill devil’ lines and retain the First
Scholar’s comment unless we allow two-way traffic along this road.
Finally, what of the additional writing in the B Text? Greg’s
argument for the originality of the Bruno and Benvolio scenes hinges
on one verbal parallel and one allusion. Echoes of Dr. Faustus are
frequent in the anonymous Taming of a Shrew (printed 1594) and
the lines from scene xv
This angrie sword should rip thy hatefull chest,
And hewd thee smaller then the Libian sands2
Greg takes as a repetition of Faustus’ words
And had you cut my body with your swords,
Or hewed this flesh and bones as small as sand
IV.iii, 73—4

1 Vid. sup. p. xiii. 2 The line derives directly from Catullus vii. 3: ‘quam
magnus numerus Libyssae harena’.
xviii CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
V

It is, he freely admits, ‘one of the least convincing of the parallels’,1

but he claims further substantiation for the case from a reference in
The Merry Wives of Windsor: ,

so soon as I came beyond Eton, they threw me off, from behind

one of them, in a slough of mire; and set spurs and away, like
three German devils, three Doctor Faustuses.
IV.v, 53-6

This is tricky. The passage may refer to the action of IV.iv -

though even here a certain doubt is permissible. It appears in one of
the textually most bewildering scenes of Merry Wives2 and is found
in the Folio text of the play but not in the Bad Quarto of 1602. For
this to be received as evidence Greg’s hypothesis about the text of
Shakespeare’s play must also be accepted. Greg argues a revision of
the play before the performance reported in Ql, but Pollard and
Wilson suggest multiple revisions including one in 1604. On their
hypothesis the passage might have got into the text between 1602
and 1604. Certainly the manuscript for IV. i-iv must have been
written by a different hand from the rest of the play: the abbreviated
form I’ll is consistently spelt I'le except in this section (ff. E2V-F3)
where IVe is used.
The additions to Act V are less easy to discuss objectively; and in
the absence of any external evidence the only criterion is in the ear
of the reader. Boas and Greg can both hear Marlowe’s voice in the
first twenty-three lines of V.ii. There is one minor point. Instances
of a regular verse line divided between two speakers, a striking
feature of Edward II, are rare in Dr. Faustus; of the nine, five occur in
obviously non-Marlovian scenes (Ill.i, 90, 123; IV.iii, 38; IV.iv, 12,
14) and the other four in these doubtful portions of V.ii (lines 7, 21,
99, 102). The whole nature of the play is changed by this addition.
Without it we have the tragedy of an individual who wilfully seeks
his own destruction; with it, Dr. Faustus is a more medieval play
where man is a puppet manipulated by external powers.
The authorship of the play is as much in doubt as its text. The
Bruno scenes, with their glibly versified violation of historical fact,
show some of the characteristics of Rowley’s work - and Rowley,
moreover, had used the same source for his When You See Me You
Know Me. Nashe has been convincingly presented as Marlowe’s col¬
laborator on the comic scenes.3 But the man who wrote the Robin and
Ralph scenes did not, I am sure, write the earlier comedy scenes with
Wagner (I.ii and iv). Here the parody of the main plot is satirical,
1 Greg, p. 28
2 See E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare (1930), i.425-8
8 By Kocher, ‘Nashe’s Authorship of the Prose Scenes in Faustus', M.L.Q.,

III (1942)
 INTRODUCTION xix

not farcical; an intelligence is at work, and I suspect it is Marlowe’s

own. ' *
Whoever wrote the comic scenes, no one but Marlowe can take
credit for the tragedy.

THE TRAGEDY

The Tragicall History

of
the life and death
of
DR. FAUSTUS
Boundless in its aspirations, unceasing in its compulsions, the
Renaissance mind is the theme of all Marlowe’s plays:
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world,
And measure every wandering planet’s course.
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Will us to wear ourselves and never rest. . .
i Tamburlaine, Il.vii, 21-6
Dr. Faustus, although he is the first figure on the English stage who
deserves to be called a character, is still less an individual than the
epitome of Renaissance aspiration. He has all the divine discontent,
the unwearied and unsatisfied striving after knowledge that marked
the age in which Marlowe wrote. An age of exploration, its adventurers
were not only the merchants and seamen who sailed round the world,
but also the scientists, astronomers who surveyed the heavens with
their ‘optic glass’, and those scholars who travelled in the realms of
gold to bring back tales of a mighty race of gods and heroes in ancient
Greece and Rome. The first soliloquy is ‘no mere reckoning of
accounts but an inventory of the Renaissance mind’1. Faustus is one
of the new men. For him, as for Marlowe, lowly birth was no bar to
a university education, and as he sits alone in his study reading from
the Latin text books he is linked in a common language with scholars
from Oxford, Cambridge and all over the civilized world. Rhetoric,
jurisprudence and medicine have trained a mind apt for questioning,
eager for learning, and reluctant to take on trust even the most
elementary facts, let alone those hypotheses incapable of empirical
proof. The Faustus who refuses to accept from Mephostophilis the
evidence for hell’s existence is true to type. His pitiful shortsighted¬
ness is all too evident, but there is also a determination to believe
1 Harry Levin, Christopher Marlowe: the Overreacher (1954, 2nd ed. 1965),
p. 134
XX CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
only what he himself can prove. This has made him the distinguished
scholar he is, the man whose triumphant cry ‘sic probo’ has echoed his
fame through the German universities. Men of Faustus’ calibre were
not unknown to Marlowe’s age. They were valuable and they were
dangerous. Sir Walter Raleigh' and his friends, meeting together to
discuss philosophy, to debate religion, and to gaze at the stars
through Thomas Heriot’s new telescope, attracted much popular
and unwanted attention. They were accused of witchcraft and devil-
worship. James VI, piously warning his Scottish subjects against the
deceits of the devil, observed that those attracted to black magic were,
more often than not, men

having attained to a great perfection in learning, & yet remaining

overbare (alas) of the spirit of regeneration and frutes thereof:
finding all naturall things common, aswell to the stupid pedants
as unto them, they assaie to vendicate unto them a greater name,
by not onlie knowing the course of things heavenlie, but likewise
to dim to the knowledge of things to come thereby.
Daemonologie (Edinburgh, 1597), p. 10

The more man discovered about the universe and his place in it, the
more imperative it became for Authority to stress the dangers in¬
herent in the pursuit of knowledge. The wrath of the Almighty and
the threat of eternal damnation were powerful deterrents.
When the play opens Faustus stands at the frontiers of knowledge.
The whole of Renaissance learning is within his grasp, but on closer
scrutiny of the parts the whole crumbles away and he is left with
nothing but a handful of dust. Nothing in the great university
curriculum can overcome the melancholy fact - ‘Yet art thou still but
Faustus, and a man’ (I.i, 23). Faustus shares with Hamlet, equally a
product of Wittenberg scepticism, this perception of man’s para¬
doxical nature:

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite

in faculties! . . . the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
Hamlet, Il.ii, 293-7

It is this that gives rise to the irony that is the characteristic mode of
the play: Faustus begins by longing to be more than human; he ends
by imploring metamorphosis into the sub-human. Incidental ironies
have a sharp impact within this structure - as when Faustus seals his
deed of blood with the last words of Christ on the cross: ‘Consumma-
tum est’ (ILi, 74). The impassioned appeal

O Christ my saviour, my saviour.

Help to save distressed Faustus’ soul
Il.ii, 83-4
 INTRODUCTION xxi

is answered by the emergence of the infernal trinity looking, as

Steane comments, like ‘the party bosses in a totalitarian state before
one guilty of thought-crime.’1 Certain words, frequently reiterated,
carry an ambivalence that points to this initial paradox. Both
cunning and conceit were at a semantic crossroads when Marlowe
wrote. The translator of the Psalms could write, for the Authorized
Version, ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her
cunning’ (Ps. 137) at much the same time as Bacon gave the defini¬
tion ‘We take cunning for a sinister and crooked wisdom’.2 Marlowe
plays delicately with both meanings, often balancing the older usage
against the newer:
Till, swollen with cunning, of a self-conceit.
Prologue, line 20

Neither cunning nor conceit, however, has the force Marlowe can
give to the simple word man. Faustus envisages a world of power and
delight which ‘Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man’ (I.i, 60).
Human potential is set against human limitation in a single word. It
is to redeem himself, by his own efforts, from this paradox that
Faustus turns longing eyes on the magic books that will make him
a ‘mighty god’ and ultimately damn him for ever.
Dr. Faustus is a tragedy of damnation. In his source Marlowe
found the story of a scholar who gave his soul to the devil in return
for twenty-four years of knowledge and pleasure. The rewards were
miserably inadequate, and seem even more so in the play, where
Faustus is shown as an approving spectator at a conventional masque
of the Deadly Sins; as an astronaut circling the world; as a common
illusionist entertaining at a Royal Command performance; and as a
mystical greengrocer contenting a pregnant duchess with out-of¬
season grapes. An immortal soul is a heavy price to pay for such
delights. There are some critics, most recently Warren D. Smith,3
who claim that the trivialities of the middle parts of the play were
planned by Marlowe, that the dramatist was bent on ‘establishing
evil, though terrible in consequence, as actually petty in nature.’1
On such a reading one can trace the gradual deterioration in the
character of the protagonist:
From a proud philosopher, master of all human knowledge, to
a trickster, to a slave of phantoms, to a cowering wretch: that is a
brief sketch of the progress of Dr. Faustus.4 5

1 Marlowe, p. 141
2 Essays, ‘Of Cunning’
2 ‘The Nature of Evil in Dr. Faustus’, M.L.R., LX (April, 1965)
4 P-171.
5 Helen Gardner, ‘The Tragedy of Damnation’, Elizabethan Drama, ed. R. J.
Kaufmann (New York, 1961), p. 321
XXII CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

But I am not at all convinced that the coherence which such a view
demands is there in the play. What Marlowe wrote is easy enough to
detect; what he planned, either to write himself or to be added by a
collaborator, is mere conjecture.
In those parts of the play where Marlowe’s hand is unmistakable,
there is more than enough evidence for Faustus’ damnation. To read
it properly, however, we must Concentrate on an aspect of the drama¬
tist that is usually neglected.
Quarrelsome, violent, homosexual, a mocking atheist - this is the
Marlowe of contemporary scandal and the one who is best known
today. But before this came the holder of the Archbishop Parker
scholarship, the Cambridge student of divinity. Whatever the older
Marlowe made of his reading, the younger Marlowe (and a very few
years separate the two) studied the theological texts in the library of
Corpus Christi as avidly and earnestly as his Faustus promises to
read Lucifer’s presentation volume. Evidence of this is in Mephosto-
philis’ account of the torments of deprivation:

Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God,

And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells.
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
' I.iii, 77-80

The words are not those of EFB, nor do they come from Marlowe’s
imagination; they are directly translated from the Latin of St. John
Chrysostom (see note p. 19). Just before this Faustus, refusing to
distinguish between the Christian hell and the pagan Elysium,
proposes for himself an eternity among the Greek philosophers in
the words of Averroes (see note p. 18). Marlowe the theologian has
as great a part in this play as Marlowe the rebel. The theology is
orthodox, but Marlowe’s God is more long-suffering than the God
of the Elizabethan church and continues to extend mercy and for¬
giveness to Faustus long after the traditional God would have
turned away.
Faustus takes his first step along the primrose path when he sets
material benefits before spiritual blessings. Contemplating magic,
anticipating its rewards with Valdes and Cornelius, he promises him¬
self all the glory and riches of the Renaissance world. From Mepho-
stophilis he demands to ‘live in all voluptuousness’ (I.iii, 92). Even
before he succumbs to the lure of magic, his mind has been tempted
by thoughts’ of wealth: ‘Be a physician Faustus, heap up gold’ (I.i,
14). Yet although this obsession with luxury is a flaw in the nature
of one dedicated to the search for knowledge, its seriousness must
not be magnified until it obscures the real issues. In the first soliloquy
Faustus rejects the study of law, leaving it to the ‘mercenary drudge,
 INTRODUCTION xxm
Who aims at nothing but external trash’ (I.i, 34-5); all the gold that
the doctor can heap up will not reconcile him to the limitations of
medical skill, through whose aid he can restore only health, not
life. And when, in an early agony of indecision, he weighs the profit
and the loss, it is not riches that he puts into the opposite scale:
Have not I made blind Homer sing to me
Of Alexander’s love, and Oenon’s death?
And hath not he, that built the walls of Thebes
With ravishing sound of his melodious harp,
Made music with my Mephostophilis?
Il.ii, 26-30
With the help of magic he has gained entry into another world, a
world, later to be incarnate in Helen of Troy, whose value far exceeds
the riches of all the Venetian argosies, Indian gold and Orient pearl.
The process of damnation begins with the signing of the pact.
Greg1 noted that critics have paid strangely little attention to the
first article of the infernal contract: ‘that Faustus may be a spirit in
form and substance’ (II.i, 96). To the Elizabethans, spirit used in
this way could mean only ‘devil’, and by assuming diabolic nature
Faustus, in the eyes of the orthodox, would be instantly damned.
Lucifer and all the fallen angels were beyond the reach of God’s
mercy; although God still had power to forgive, they lacked the
capacity to repent. Aquinas is the chief authority here, and his
doctrine, expounded in Summa Theologica i, 64, is echoed to the
letter in one of Donne’s sermons:
To those that fell, can appertain no reconciliation; no more then
to those that die in their sins; for Quod homini mors, Angelis
casus; The fall of the Angels wrought upon them, as the death of
a man does upon him.
LXXX Sermons (1640), p.9
To Lucifer, with his legalistic turn of mind, the contract is binding:
Christ cannot save thy soul, for he is just;
There’s none but I have interest in the same.
Il.ii, 85-6

The Bad Angel is similarly insistent, telling Faustus flatly

Thou art a spirit, God cannot pity thee.
Il.ii, 13

The play would have stopped at this point, so far as the tragic part is
concerned, had Faustus, the Good Angel, and Marlowe himself
shared Lucifer’s opinion as to the irrevocability of the compact. But
there is still hope in the Good Angel’s comforting ‘Faustus repent,
1 ‘The Damnation of Faustus’, M.L.R., XLI (1946)
XXIV CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

yet God will pity thee’ (II.ii, 12). By signing the bond with its
ominous first clause Faustus is not cut off from forgiveness. Yet the
effects of his sin, in turning away from God, make it virtually impos¬
sible for him to accept the offered mercy. Repentance is all that is
needed, yet to his dismay he finds ‘My heart’s so hardened I cannot
repent’ (II.ii, 18).
The devils are adept at pricking the bubbles of human self-glori¬
fication, and Faustus’ pride is punctured in his first encounter with
Mephostophilis. Soaring, as he thinks, to the height of his powers as
‘conjuror laureate’, he is jolted sharply back to earth by the fiend’s
casual admission that the conjuring was of no real import: ‘I came
now hither of mine own accord’ (I.iii, 44). Hell’s rewards are as the
dead sea apples to Milton’s fallen angels: mere ashes in his mouth.
Repeated questioning of Mephostophilis brings no satisfaction; the
devil can tell him only what he already knows and, forbidden to
speak the praise of God, cannot give him the answer he wants to
hear:
faustus Now tell me who made the world?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
I will not. Il.ii, 67-8
His pride dashed, Faustus becomes increasingly aware of the empti¬
ness of his bargain and the reality' of damnation. The pride with
which this Renaissance superman scorned his human nature and
aspired to become ‘a mighty god’ leads inevitably to its opposite,
despair. And although God will forgive violation of the decalogue,
will forgive, even, blasphemy against Christ, there are some sins on
which He will have no mercy:
whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be for¬
given him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.
Matthew xii, 32
The precise nature of the sin against the Holy Ghost, not defined in
the Gospel, has always exercised theologians; but Renaissance
thinkers generally agreed that pride and despair, inextricably linked,
must be so called. The ‘Schoolemen’, writes Donne, have noted
certain sins
which they have called sins against the Holy Ghost, because
naturally they shut out those meanes by which the Holy Ghost
might work upon us. The first couple is, presumption and despera¬
tion; for presumption takes away the fear of God, and desperation
the love-of God . . . And truly . . . To presume upon God, that
God cannot damn me eternally in the next world, for a few half-
houres in this ... Or to despair, that God will not save me . .
al these are shrewd and slippery approaches towards the sin
against the Holy Ghost.
LXXX Sermons, pp. 349-50
 INTRODUCTION XXV

The play ends where it began, in the solitude of Faustus’ study.

It is here that Faustus damns himself finally and irrevocably. He is
never closer to repentance than in the moments after the Old Man’s
speech with its reassurance

Yet, yet, thou hast an amiable soul,

If sin by custom grow not into nature.
V.i, 40-41

The man who has abjured the Scriptures, forsaken God, trafficked
with the devil, can still ‘call for mercy, and avoid despair’ (V.i, 61).
But hell’s present physical tortures terrify him more than the thought
of future damnation, and instead of withstanding the momentary
agony (as the Old Man wrill do later) he requests instead the comfort
of

That heavenly Helen, which I saw of late,

Whose sweet embracings may extinguish clear
Those thoughts that do dissuade me from my vow,
V.i, 90-92

Helen of Troy, twice passing over the stage, pausing for one brief
moment yet speaking nothing, is the key figure in Dr. Faustus. For
this Faustus has sold his soul. All the glory that was Greece was em¬
bodied, for the Renaissance, in this woman; her story was the story in
brief of another wTorld, superhuman and immortal. Helen’s first
appearance to the Scholars is no accident, no mere matter of a
dramatist making double use of a bright idea. After their single scene
at the beginning of the play (I.ii) the Scholars seem to have been for¬
gotten ; but this scene has shown them as men of moderate awareness,
eminently sensible and a little humourless. Their comments (V.i,
25-31) on the apparition equip us to judge for ourselves when it is
seen again. Helen is the ‘only paragon of excellence’ in the eyes of
these sober men, and their ordinary understanding is ‘Too simple
... to tell her praise’. The second appearance, attended by two
Cupids and heralded, we must assume, by the music directed for the
earlier entrance, has a ritual solemnity. This, and the formal order¬
ing of Faustus’ speech, marks the episode as what T. S. Eliot would
have called a ‘moment in and out of time’.1 Faustus breaks the silence
with the awed amazement of Marlowe’s finest lines:
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships.
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
V.i, 96-7

Declaring his devotion, he is exalted to heroic stature and promises

1 Four Quartets, ‘Little Gidding’

xxvi CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

vigorous action in verse of soaring energy which comes to rest at last

on Helen’s lips:
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
V.i, 108
The speech is a rapture of applause - for Helen herself, for the eternal
beauty of form, for all the glory that defies and withstands the canker
of Time. But it is more than this. As the delighted verse surges for¬
ward to praise what is lovely and enduring, an undertow drags back
to remind us that this beauty brought destruction: a city was burnt,
topless towers laid in the dust. In the stillness of a single couplet the
two movements are balanced:
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter,
When he appeared to hapless Semele.
V.i, 111-12
Semele, despite repeated warnings, persisted in her demands to see
her lover in all his splendour. But the sight of Jupiter’s divine majesty
was greater than mortal eyes could bear to look upon, and the ‘hapless
Semele’ was consumed by the glory. Helen has all of Jupiter’s
terrible burning beauty - and Faustus is damned by the vision. This
is no mere fancy of Marlowe’s, powerful though such a fancy would
be. That which appears as Helen is no more the woman herself than
the apparition which so pleased the German Emperor was indeed
Alexander. Faustus sees a spirit, a devil, in the form of Helen and,
forgetful of his own admonitions to the Emperor, he speaks to it,
touches it. Helen’s lips ‘suck forth’ his soul in more than metaphor.
The kiss signals the ultimate sin, demoniality, the bodily intercourse
with spirits.1 Now the Old Man gives up hope of saving Faustus;
the Good Angel leaves him. After such knowledge there is no for¬
giveness.
The last soliloquy reverses the first. The proud scholar who had
fretted at the restrictions imposed by the human condition and longed
for the immortality of a god, now seeks to avoid an eternity of
damnation. Like a trapped animal he lashes out against the mesh he
has woven for himself, and becomes more entangled. To be physi¬
cally absorbed by the elements, to be ‘a creature wanting soul’,
‘some brutish beast’, even, at the last, to be no more than ‘little
water drops’-this is the final hope of the pride of Wittenberg. Time
is the dominant in this speech. The measured regularity of the
opening gives way to a frantic tugging in two directions as Faustus
suffers the opposing forces of Christ and Lucifer:
O I’ll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down?
V.ii, 143
1 First pointed out by Greg in the essay referred to above
 INTRODUCTION xxvii

The pace and the passion increase as the clock strikes relentlessly,
and the second half-hour passes more quickly than the first. We are
agonizingly aware of the last minutes of Faustus’ life, trickling
through the hour-glass with what seems like ever-increasing speed.
But as each grain falls, bringing Faustus closer to his terrible end,
we become more and more conscious of the deserts of vast eternity
and damnation that open up beyond death. When Macbeth or Lear
dies the tragedy is ended with a final harmonious chord, but the
discords of Faustus’ last lines cannot be resolved.
The Epilogue, with its cosy smugness, is bitterly inadequate. Leo
Kirschbaum has said that, whatever Marlowe’s own beliefs, ‘there
is no more obvious Christian document in all Elizabethan drama
than Doctor Faustus’.1 Yet Christianity has few positives in this play.
The Good Angel with his celestial throne comes from a child’s
picture-book of heaven, and is nothing like as telling as Mephosto-
philis’ cry of despair and deprivation. Marlowe’s play demonstrates
the fearful consequences of violating the Christian ethic, and for this
it may be called a Christian document. But Marlowe’s sympathies
(if the energy of the verse means anything at all) are for the rebel, the
man who is impeded in his pursuit of science, who is frustrated in
his efforts to assert his individuality. The first three lines of the
Epilogue lamenting Faustus’ fall are in Marlowe’s most assured
manner:
Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
And burned is Apollo’s laurel bough,
That sometime grew within this learned man.
The rest is pious moralizing, lapsing into the alliteration (‘fiendful
fortune’) of a by-gone age, and snapping the book shut with a tidy
rhymed couplet. The vitality is lost, and with it the respect; this is
mere lip-service to a distasteful yet ineluctable morality.
1 ‘Marlowe’s Faustus: A Reconsideration’, R.E.S., XIX (1943), p. 229
 FURTHER READING
\

Bradbrook, M. C., ‘Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus and the Eldritch

Tradition’, Essays on Shakespeare and
Elizabethan Drama in Honour of Hardin
Craig, ed. R. Hosley (1963)
Brockbank, J. P., Marlowe: Dr. Faustus (1962)
Brooke, Nicholas, ‘The Moral Tragedy of Doctor Faustus’,
Cambridge Journal, v.ll (1952)
Ellis Fermor, Una, Christopher Marlowe (1927)
Gardner, Helen, “The Tragedy of Damnation’, Elizabethan
Drama, ed. R. J. Kaufmann (New York,
1961)
Greg, W. W., ‘The Damnation of Faustus’, M.L.R.,
XLI (1946)
Hotson, J. L., The Death of Christopher Marlowe (1925)
Knights, L. C., ‘The Strange Case of Christopher
Marlowe’* Further Explorations (1965)
Kocher, Paul H., Christopher Marlowe (Chapel Hill, 1946)
Levin, Harry, The Overreacher (1954)
Mahood, M. M., ‘Marlowe’s Heroes’, Poetry and Human¬
ism (1950)
Maxwell, J. C., ‘The Sin of Faustus’, The Wind and the
Rain, IV (1947)
Morris, Brian (ed.), Christopher Marlowe, Mermaid Critical
Commentaries (1968)
Piaz, Mario, ‘Christopher Marlowe’, E.S., XIII (1931)
Smith, James, ‘Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus , Scrutiny, VIII.i
(1939)
Steane, J. B., Marlowe: a critical study (1964)
Wilson, F. P., Marlowe and the Early Shakespeare (1953)

xxviii
The Tragical! Hifloi
of the Life and Death
of Dodior Favst vs.

With new Additions.

Written by Cb> Mar.

Printed at London for lohn Wright, and arc to be fold at hit

/hop without Ncy/gate, 1614,
 THE PRESENT EDITION

B1 (1616) has been taken as the basis of this new edition published
in the New Mermaid series, but the authority of the A text is such
that in many cases I have preferred its readings to B’s. Significant
departures from the B text are noted at the foot of the relevant page.
As a general rule these notes are printed above the line, together
with simple explanations of verbal difficulties. More detailed and
leisured notes are printed below the line.
 [DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Chorus
Dr. John Faustus
Wagner, his servant, a student
\ aides, \ /ns friends, magicians
Cornelius, J J °
Three Scholars, students under Faustus
An Old Man

Pope Adrian
Raymond, King of Hungary
Bruno, the rival pope
Cardinals of France and Padua
The Archbishop of Rheims

Charles V, Emperor of Germany

Martino, "l
Frederick, > knights at the Emperor's court
Benvolio, J
Duke of Saxony

Duke of Vanholt
Duchess of Vanholt

Robin, also called the Clown

Dick
A Vintner
A Horse-courser
A Carter
The Hostess at an inn

The Good Angel

The Bad Angel
Mephostophilis
Lucifer
Belzebub
Spirits presenting The Seven Deadly Sins
Alexander the Great
Alexander’s Paramour
Darius, King of Persia
Helen of Troy

Devils, Bishops, Monks, Soldiers and Attendants]

3
 .PROLOGUE

Enter' chorus

chorus
Not marching in the fields of Thrasimene,
Where Mars did mate the warlike Carthagens,
Nor sporting in the dalliance of love
In courts of kings, where state is overturned,
Nor in the pomp of proud audacious deeds, 5
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 judgements we appeal,
And speak for Faustus in his infancy. 10
Now is he born, of parents base of stock,
In Germany, within a town called Rhode:
At riper years to Wittenberg he, went,
Whereas his kinsmen chiefly brought him up;
So much he profits in divinity, 15
The fruitful plot of scholarism graced,
That shortly he was graced with doctor’s name,

12 Rhode ed. (Rhodes Qq) Roda, since 1922 Stadtroda, in central

Germany
14 Whereas where
16 A (not in B) A credit to the rich academic discipline
17 graced At Cambridge a new Doctor of Divinity was enrolled in
the Book of Grace

Prologue 1-6
The Prologue speaks of plays already performed, but it is not clear
whether these were written by Marlowe or, more generally, are part of
the company’s repertoire. In either case there is no trace of the first,
showing the victory of the Carthaginians under Hannibal at Lake
Trasimene (217 B.c.) If Marlowe’s own plays are meant, 11.3-4 must
refer to Edward II and 1.5 to Tamburlaine. A masculine Muse (1.6) is
unusual but not unknown (cf. ‘Lycidas’, 19-21); yet Shakespeare, com¬
paring himself with ‘that Muse Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse’,
(Sonnet XXI), clearly alludes to a rival poet. It seems to me that ‘Muse’
here means simply ‘Poet’ and that the Chorus is speaking on behalf of
the actors.
13 Wittenberg Hamlet’s university, and Luther’s; the home of scepticism.
But this Wittenberg is, in all outward appearances, Marlowe’s Cam¬
bridge.
4
 DOCTOR FAUSTUS 5

Excelling all, whose sweet delight disputes

In th’ 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 swreet as magic is to him,
Which he prefers before his chiefest bliss:
And this the man that in his study sits.
Exit

18 whose sweet delight disputes A (and sweetly can dispute B) whose

great pleasure is in argument
20 cunning knowledge; usually knowledge misapplied;
self-conceit pride in his own abilities
21-2 Icarus flew too near the sun on wings of wax; they melted and
he fell into the sea
27 chiefest bliss i.e. hope of salvation
 Act I, Scene i
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,
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?
Then read no more, thou hast attained that end;
A greater subject fitteth Faustus’ wit.
Bid on kai me on farewell; Galen come:
Seeing, ubi desinit philosophus, ibi incipit medicus.
2 profess specialize in, study and teach
3 commenced graduated; a Cambridge term;
in show in appearance; show that you are indeed a student of theology
4 Consider the purpose of every discipline
12 on kai me on being and not being
13 Since the doctor starts where the philosopher leaves off; Aristotle,
de sensu, 436a

1-36 Jump has pointed out that for the first part of Faustus’ soliloquy
Marlowe seems to owe a debt to Lyly:
Philosophic, Phisicke, Divinitie, shal be my studie. O ye hidden
secrets of Nature, the expresse image of morall vertues, the equall
balaunce of Justice, the medicines to heale all diseases, how they
beginne to delyght me. The Axiomaes of Aristotle, the Maxims of
Justinian, the Aphorismes of Galen, have sodaynelye made such a
breache into my minde that I seeme onely to desire them which did
onely earst detest them.
Euphues (1579), ed. Bond, i,241
5-7 Aristotle had been the dominant figure in the university curriculum
since the thirteenth century, but in Marlowe’s day his supremacy was
challenged by Petrus Ramus (1515-72) whose ideas were defended in
Cambridge by William Temple. Analytics is the name give to two of
Aristotle’s works on the nature of proof in argument, but the definition
of logic in 1.7 comes in fact from Ramus’ Dialecticae. Ramus, his ideas
and his violent death, are displayed in Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris.
12 on kai me on Bullen (Oncaymaeon Aj; Oeconomy A2, 3, B) The later
A texts were trying to make sense out of A/s apparent gibberish which
Bullen recognized as a transliteration of Aristotle’s Greek phrase.
6
scene i] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 7

Be a physician Faustus, heap up gold,

And be eternized for some wondrous cure. 15
Summum bonutn medicinae sanitas:
The end of physic is our body’s health.
Why Faustus, hast thou not attained that end?
Is not thy common talk sound aphorisms?
Are not thy bills hung up as monuments, 20
Whereby whole cities have escaped the plague,
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, 25
Then this profession were to be esteemed.
Physic farewell! Where is Justinian?
Si una eademque res legatur duobus,
Alter rent, alter valorem rei etc.
A petty case of paltry legacies 1 30
Exhereditare filium non potest pater nisi ...
Such is the subject of the Institute,
And universal body of the law.
This study fits a mercenary drudge^
Who aims at nothing but external trash, 35
Too servile and illiberal for me.
When all is done, divinity is best:
Jerome’s Bible Faustus, view it well:
Stipendium peccati mors est: ha! Stipendium, etc
The reward of sin is death? That’s hard. 40

15 eternized immortalized
16 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1094. a. 8
19 aphorisms medical precepts; after the Aphorisms of Hippocrates
20 bills prescriptions
28-9 If one and the same thing is bequeathed to two persons, one
should have the thing itself, the other the value of the thing;
Justinian, Institutes, ii,20
31 A father cannot disinherit his son unless . ..; Justinian, ii,13
38 Jerome's Bible the Vulgate, prepared mainly by St Jerome; but
the texts Faustus quotes are not in the words of the Vulgate
39 Romans, vi, 23

14 heap up gold The association of gold and the medical profession is an

old one; Shakespeare mentions the use of gold for ‘Preserving life in
med’cine potable’ (2 Henry IV, IV.v, 162). Faustus, however, is think¬
ing of the profit to be gained - like Chaucer’s Physician in The Canter¬
bury Tales:
For gold in phisik is a cordial.
Therefore he lovede gold in special
Prologue, 444—5
8 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ac» i

Si peccasse negamus, fallimur, et nulla est in nobis veritas:

If we say that we have no sin, We deceive ourselves, and there
is no truth in us. Why then, belike, we must sin, and so con¬
sequently die.
Ay, we must die an everlasting death. 45
What doctrine call you this? Che sard, sard:
What will be, shall be. Divinity adieu!
These metaphysics of magicians,
And necromantic books are heavenly;
Lines, circles, signs, letters and characters I 50
Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires.
O what a world of profit and delight,
Of power, of honour, of omnipotence,
Is promised to the studious artisan!
All things that move between the quiet poles 55
Shall be at my command: emperors and kings,
Are but obeyed in their several provinces,
Nor can they raise the wind, or rend the clouds;
But his dominion that exceeds in this,
Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man: 60
A sound magician is a mighty god;
Here Faustus, try thy brains to 'gain a deity.

Enter wagner
Wagner, commend me to my dearest friends,
The German Valdes and Cornelius,
Request them earnestly to visit me. 65
WAGNER
I will sir.
Exit
FAUSTUS
Their conference will be a greater help to me,
Than all my labours, plod I ne’er so fast.

Enter the angel and spirit

41 I John, i, 8
48 metaphysics supernatural sciences
50 signs ed. (scenes A; not in B) (see note on I.iii, 8-13)
54 artisan craftsman
55 quiet poles the poles of the universe, quiet because unmoving
57 several respective
58 A (not in B)
59 this this art, magic
61a mighty god A (a demi-god B)
62 Faustus, try thy brains to gain A (tire, my brains, to get B)
68 s.d. Spirit (see note on II.i, 96)
SCENE I] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 9
GOOD ANGEL
O Faustus, lay that damned book aside,
And gaze not on it lest it tempt thy soul, 70
And heap God’s heavy wrath upon thy head:
Read, read the Scriptures; that is blasphemy.
BAD ANGEL
Go forward Faustus in that famous art
Wherein all nature’s treasury is contained:
Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky, 75
Lord and commander of these elements.
Exeunt angels
faustus
How am I glutted with conceit of this!
Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please?
Resolve me of all ambiguities?
Perform what desperate enterprise I will? 80
I’ll have them fly to India for gold;
Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,
And search all corners of the new-found-world
For pleasant fruits, and princely delicates.
I’ll have them read me strange philosophy, 85
And tell the secrets of all foreign kings:
I’ll have them wall all Germany with brass,
And make swift Rhine, circle fair Wittenberg:
I’ll have them fill the public schools with silk,
Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad. 90
I’ll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,
And chase the Prince of Parma from our land,
And reign sole king of all our provinces.
Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war,

77 glutted, with conceit drunk with the thought

84 delicates delicacies
89 public schools university lecture rooms;
silk Dyce (skill Qq). In Marlowe’s day undergraduates were
ordered to dress soberly
90 bravely smartly
92 Prince of Parma Spanish governor-general of the Netherlands,
1579-92
94 engines machines;
brunt assault

75 Jove The names of pagan deities were frequently attributed to the

Christian God; there is special force in this, coming from the Bad
Angel.
87 wall. , . brass Friar Bacon, in Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay
(before 1592) intended to ‘circle England round with brass’ (ii,178)
when his magic schemes reached fruition.
10 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT I

Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp’s bridge, 95

I’ll make my servile spirits to invent.
Come German Valdes and Cornelius,
And make me blest with your sage conference.
Enter valdes and Cornelius

Valdes, sweet Valdes, and Cornelius!

Know that your words have won me at the last 100
To practise magic and concealed arts;
Yet not your words only, but mine own fantasy,
That will receive no object for my head,
But ruminates on necromantic skill.
Philosophy is odious and obscure; 105
Both law and physic are for petty wits;
Divinity is basest of the three,
Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible and vile,
’Tis magic, magic that hath ravished me.
Then gentle friends, aid me in this attempt, 110
And I, that have with concise syllogisms
Gravelled the pastors of the German church
And made the flowering pride of Wittenberg
Swarm to my problems, as th’infernal spirits
On sweet Musaeus when he came to hell, 115
Will be as cunning as Agrippa was,
Whose shadows made all Europe honour him.
VALDES
Faustus, these books, thy wit, and our experience
Shall make all nations to canonise us.

101 concealed occult

102—4 A (not in B) Not your advice alone, but my own imagination has
won me to this, allowing me to think of nothing else while it con¬
templates the possibilities of black magic
107-8 A (not in B)
111 concise syllogisms Alt2 (subtle syllogisms As, B) trenchant argument
112 Gravelled confounded, perplexed
114 problems topics of scholarly debate

95 A bridge across the Scheldt, constructed by the Duke of Parma in the

blockade of Antwerp, was attacked and destroyed by a fire-ship in April
1585.
115 Musaeus A legendary pre-Homeric bard often confused (as perhaps here)
with Orpheus: Aeneid vi,667-8 describes Musaeus in the Elysian fields
and Georgies iv tells of spirits swarming round Orpheus in the Under¬
world.
116-7 Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535), magician
and necromancer, was famous for his reputed power of invoking shades
of the dead.
scene i] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 11

As Indian Moors obey their Spanish lords 120

So shall the spirits of every element
Be always serviceable to us three;
Like lions shall they guard us when we please,
Like Almaine rutters with their horsemen’s staves,
Or Lapland giants trotting by our sides; 125
Sometimes like women or unwedded maids,
Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows,
Than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love.
From Venice shall they drag huge argosies,
And from America the golden fleece, 130
That yearly stuffs old Philip’s treasury,
If learned Faustus will be resolute.
FAUSTUS
Valdes, as resolute am I in this,
As thou to live, therefore object it not.
CORNELIUS
The miracles that magic will perform, 135
Will make thee vow to study nothing else.
He that is grounded in astrology,
Enriched with tongues, wejl seen in minerals,
Hath all the principles magic doth require:
Then doubt not Faustus but to be renowned, 140
And more frequented for this mystery,
Than heretofore the Delphian oracle.
The spirits tell me they can dry the sea,
And fetch the treasure of all foreign wrecks;
Yea, all the wealth that our forefathers hid, 145

120 Moors dark-skinned natives; here specifically American Indians

124 Like German cavalry with lances
129 argosies treasure ships
130—31 America, whose richness is compared to the golden fleece
sought by Jason and the Argonauts, paid annual tribute to Philip
of Spain
134 object it not don’t raise such objections
137 grounded in well schooled in
138 well seen in minerals informed about the properties of minerals
141 More sought after for practising this art
142 Delphian oracle the oracle of Apollo at Delphi

125 Lapland giants On another occasion Marlowe refers to the inhabitants

of the polar regions in this way: ‘tall and sturdy men, Giants as big as
hugy Polypheme’. (2 Tamburlaine, I.i, 37-8)
138 tongues Greek and Hebrew were desirable for those who would converse
with spirits, but Latin was the recognized common language: ‘Thou art
a scholar: speak to it Horatio.’ Hamlet, I.i, 42
12 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT I

Within the massy entrails of the earth:

Then tell me, Faustus, what shall we three want?
FAUSTUS
Nothing Cornelius!-0 this cheers my soul!
Come, show me some demonstrations magical,
That I may conjure in some lusty grove, 150
And have these joys in full possession.
VALDES
Then haste thee to some solitary grove,
And bear wise Bacon’s and Abanus’ works,
The Hebrew Psalter, and New Testament;
And whatsoever else is requisite, 155
We will inform thee ere our conference cease.
CORNELIUS
Valdes, first let him know the words of art,
And then, all other ceremonies learnt,
Faustus may try his cunning by himself.
VALDES
First I’ll instruct thee in the rudiments, 160
And then wilt thou be perfecter than I.
FAUSTUS
Then come and dine with me„and after meat
We’ll canvass every quiddity thereof:
For ere I sleep, I’ll try what I can do:
This night I’ll conjure though I die therefore. 165
Exeunt omnes

146 massy solid

150 lusty Aj (little A2,3; bushy B)
163 canvass every quiddity explore every detail; quiddity is a scholastic
term denoting the essence of a thing, that which makes it what it is

153—4 wise Bacon's and Abanus' works Roger Bacon (1214?—94), protagonist
of Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, was an Oxford philosopher
popularly supposed to have dabbled in black magic. Abanus is perhaps
Pietro d’Abano (?1250-1316), Italian humanist and physician, also
believed to have been a conjuror. As well as the works of these two,
which would supply formulae for incantation, Faustus would need
certain Psalms (especially 22 and 51) and the opening words of St.
John’s Gospel for his conjuring.
160 rudiments ‘all that which is called vulgarly the vertue of worde, herbe, &
stone: which is used by unlawful charmes, without natural causes . ..
such kinde of charmes as commonlie daft wives use’,
James I, Daemonologie (Edinburgh, 1597), p.ll
SCENE nl DOCTOR FAUSTUS 13

Act I, Scene ii

Enter two scholars

1 SCHOLAR
I wonder what’s become of Faustus, that was wont to make
our schools ring with sic probo.
2 SCHOLAR
That shall we presently know; here comes his boy.

Enter wagner

1 SCHOLAR
How now sirra, where’s thy master?
WAGNER
God in heaven knows. 5
2 SCHOLAR
Why, dost not thou know then?
WAGNER
Yes, I know, but that follows not.
1 SCHOLAR
Go to sirra, leave your jesting, and tell us where he is.
WAGNER
That follows not by force of argument, which you, being
licentiates, should stand upon, therefore acknowledge your 10
error, and be attentive.
2 SCHOLAR
Then you will not tell us?
WAGNER
You are deceived, for I will tell you: yet if you were not
dunces, you would never ask me such a question. For is he

2 sic probo I prove it thus; a term from scholastic disputation

3 presently at once
10 licentiates graduates; holders of a degree permitting them to study
for higher (master’s or doctor’s) degrees

14 dunces blockheads. The followers of Duns Scotus were commonly known

as Dunses, but since it is Wagner who indulges in the characteristic
Scotist cavilling it seems likely that he applies the word to the scholars
in its modem sense.
14 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [acti

not corpus naturalei And is not that mobile? Then wherefore 15

should you ask me such a question? But that I am by nature
phlegmatic, slow to wrath, ?md prone to lechery - to love, I
would say - it were not for you to come within forty foot
of the place of execution, although I do not doubt but to
see you both hanged the next sessions. Thus having tri- 20
umphed over you, I will set my countenance like a precisian,
and begin to speak thus: Truly my dear brethren, my master
is within at dinner, with Valdes and Cornelius, as this wine,
if it could speak, would inform your worships: and so the
Lord bless you, preserve you, and keep you, my dear 25
brethren.
Exit
1 SCHOLAR
Nay then, I fear he is fallen into that damned art, for which
they two are infamous through the world.
2 SCHOLAR
Were he a stranger, and not allied to me, yet should I grieve
for him. But come, let us go and inform the Rector, and 30
see if he by his grave counsel can reclaim him.
1 SCHOLAR
I fear me, nothing will reclaim'him now.
2 SCHOLAR
Yet let us see what we can do. Exeunt

19 place of execution the dining room; Wagner continues to make

comic capital out of the phrase
21 precisian Puritan
30 Rector Head of the university

15 corpus . . . mobile a natural body and as such capable of movement.

Aristotle’s corpus naturale seu mobile was the current scholastic definition
of the subject matter of physics.
27-31 B prints these lines as verse, altering the first to read ‘O Faustus, then
I fear that which I have long suspected’. The flatness of the verse,
coming at the end of a scene of fairly pithy prose, casts some doubt on
B’s authenticity; there is, moreover, no reason why the Scholar should
have ‘long suspected’ Faustus of necromantic proclivities. See Intro¬
duction, p. xvi.
SCENE III] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 15

Act I, Scene iii

Thunder. Enter lucifer and four devils above.

faustus to them, with this speech
FAUSTUS
Now that the gloomy shadow of the earth,
Longing to view Orion’s drizzling look,
Leaps from th’antarctic world unto the sky,
And dims the welkin, with her pitchy breath:
Faustus, begin thine incantations, 5
And try if devils will obey thy hest,
Seeing thou hast prayed and sacrificed to them.
Within this circle is Jehovah’s name,
Forward and backward anagrammatised:
Th’abbreviated names of holy saints, 10
Figures of every adjunct to the heavens,
And characters of signs and erring stars,
By which the spirits are enforced to rise:
Then fear not Faustus, but be resolute
And try the uttermost magic can perform. 15

s.d. Thunder . . . above B (not in A)

2 Orion’s drizzling look the rainy constellation of Orion
11 adjunct heavenly body fixed to the firmament (see note on Il.ii,
35-66)
12 characters symbols; signs and erring stars signs of the Zodiac and
planets

1 shadow of the earth A (shadow of the night B) ‘the night also, is no other
thing but the shadow of the earth’, La Primaudaye, The French Academie,
III, xxxvii
3 Marlowe seems to have thought that night advances from the southern
hemisphere.
7 prayed and sacrificed. A period of prayer and sacrifice, a kind of spiritual
preparation, was a pre-requisite for conjuring.
8-13 Before he began his conjuring the magician would draw a circle
round himself, inscribing on the periphery certain signs (of the zodiac,
for instance) and the tetragrammaton, the four Hebrew letters of the
Divine Name. This was not only part of the invocation; so long as the
circle was unbroken and the magician stayed inside it. no evil spirit
could harm him.
16 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT I

(Thunder)
Sint mihi dei Ackerontis propitii, valeat numen triplex Jehovae;
ignei, aerii, aquatici, terreni spiritus salvete! Orientis princeps,
Belzebub inferni ardentis nionarcha, et Demogorgon, propi-
tiamus vos, ut appareat, et surgat Mephostophilis.
(Dragon)
Quid tu moraris? Per Jehovam, Gehennam, et consecratam 20
aquam, quam nunc spargo; signumque crucis quod nunc facio;
et per vota nostra, ipse nunc surgat nobis dicatus Mephostophilis.
Enter a devil

I charge thee to return, and change thy shape,

Thou art too ugly to attend on me:
Go and return an old Franciscan friar, 25
That holy shape becomes a devil best. Exit devil
I see there’s virtue in my heavenly words!
Who would not be proficient in this art?
How pliant is this Mephostophilis,
Full of obedience and humility, 30

17 terreni ed. (not in Qq) Faustus would call the spirits of all four
elements
18 Belzebub Marlowe’s form of the name has been retained because
at certain points (e.g. Il.i, 12) this suits better with the metre than
the more commonly used Hebraic Beelzebub
19 s.d. Dragon (see Introduction, p. xv)
20 Quid tu moraris Ellis (quod tumeraris Qq)

23-4 The wary magician always stipulated from the beginning that
a pleasing shape should be assumed

16-22 ‘May the gods of Acheron look with favour upon me. Away with
the spirit of the three-fold Jehovah. Welcome, spirits of fire, air, water
and earth. We ask your favour, O prince of the East, Belzebub, monarch
of burning hell, and Demogorgon, that Mephostophilis may appear
and rise. Why do you delay? By Jehovah, Gehenna, and the holy water
which I now sprinkle, and the sign of the cross which I now form, and
by our vows, may Mephostophilis himself now rise, compelled to obey
us’.
Rejecting the Christian Trinity, Faustus turns to the infernal counter¬
part (the prince of the East is Lucifer-see Isaiah, xiv, 12) He hails the
spirits of the elements: ‘they make them believe, that at the fall of
Lucifer, some spirits fell in the aire, some in the fire, some in the water,
some in the lande’ (Daemonologie, p.20). The name of Mephostophilis
(Marlowe’s spelling is retained) was not, it seems, known before the
Faustus ^tory; A. E. Taylor, in a letter to T.L.S. (6th December 1917)
suggests it might be glossed as the Greek me faustopheles - no true friend
to Faustus. Many versions of invocations to the devil express similar
surprise and impatience at his delay, after which the conjuror redoubles
his efforts. The sign of the cross had a double function; a powerful
charm to overcome diabolic disobedience, it also protected the conjuror
from injury by any spirit that might appear.
SCENE III] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 17
Such is the force of magic and my spells.
Now Faustus, thou art 'conjuror laureate
That canst command great Mephostophilis,
Quin redis, Mephostophilis, fratris imagine!

Enter mephostophilis

MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Now Faustus, what wouldst thou have me do? 35
FAUSTUS
I charge thee wait upon me whilst I live
To do whatever Faustus shall command:
Be it to make the moon drop from her sphere,
Or the ocean to overwhelm the world.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
I am a servant to great Lucifer, 40
And may not follow thee without his leave;
No more than he commands, must we perform.
FAUSTUS
Did not he charge thee to appear to me?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
No, I came now hither of pine own accord.
FAUSTUS
Did not my conjuring speeches raise thee? Speak! 45
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
That was the cause, but yet per accidens:
For when we hear one rack the name of God,
Abjure the Scriptures, and his saviour Christ,
We fly in hope to get his glorious soul;
Nor will we come unless he use such means, 50
Whereby he is in danger to be damned:
Therefore the shortest cut for conjuring
Is stoutly to abjure the Trinity,
And pray devoutly to the prince of hell.

32-4 A (not in B)
34 Why do you not return, Mephostophilis, in the likeness of a friar
46 per accidens as it appeared; what the conjuring represented was the
real cause
47 rack violate
53 the Trinity A (all godliness B)

38-9 Faustus would share these powers with the enchanters of classical
literature (see Kocher, p. 141).
44 What Kocher (p. 160) calls the ‘doctrine of voluntary ascent’ is fairly
well established in witchcraft.
47 rack Jump notes ‘torment by anagrammatizing’, but Mephostophilis
has just explained that this is not necessary. ‘Take the name of the
Lord in vain’ might be a better interpretation.
18 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [acti

FAUSTUS
So Faustus hath already done, and holds this principle: 55
There is no chief but only Relzebub,
To whom Faustus doth dedicate himself.
This word ‘damnation’ terrifies not him,
For he confounds hell in Elysium:
His ghost be with the old philosophers. 60
But leaving these vain trifles of men’s souls,
Tell me, what is that Lucifer thy lord?
MEPHOSTOPHIL1S
Arch-regent and commander of all spirits.
FAUSTUS
Was not that Lucifer an angel once?
MEPHOSTOPHIUS
Yes Faustus, and most dearly loved of God. 65
FAUSTUS
How comes it then that he is prince of devils?
MEPHOSTOPHIUS
O, by aspiring pride and insolence,
For which God threw him from the face of heaven.
FAUSTUS
And what are you that live with Lucifer?
MEPHOSTOPHIUS
Unhappy spirits that fell with Lucifer, 70
Conspired against our God with Lucifer,
And are for ever damned with Lucifer.
FAUSTUS
Where are you damned?
MEPHOSTOPHIUS
In hell.
FAUSTUS
How comes it then that thou art out of hell? 75

59 confounds hell in Elysium makes no distinction between the Christian

concept of hell and the pagan (Greek) notion of the after-life in Elysium.
Marlowe has already coupled the two: ‘Hell and Elysium swarm with
ghosts -of men’ (1 Tamburlaine, V.ii, 403). Nashe may be referring to
either of these passages when he scorns the writers that ‘thrust Elisium
into hell’ (Preface to Greene’s Menaphon (1589), ed. McKerrow, iii, 316).
60 old philosophers those who shared his disbelief in an eternity of punish¬
ment ; the line seems to come from a saying of Averroes, ‘sit anima mea
cum philosophis’ (cf. J. C. Maxwell, N & Q, CXIV (1949), 334—5; J. M.
Steadman, N & Q, CCVII (1962), 327-9.)
SCENE III] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 19
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Why this is hell, nor ani I* out of it.
Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,
In being deprived of everlasting bliss? 80
O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands,
Which strike a terror to my fainting soul.
FAUSTUS
What, is great Mephostophilis so passionate
For being deprived of the joys of heaven?
Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude, 85
And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess.
Go bear these tidings to great Lucifer,
Seeing Faustus hath incurred eternal death,
By desperate thoughts against Jove’s deity:
Say he surrenders up to him his soul, 90
So he will spare him four and twenty years,
Letting him live in all voluptuousness,
Having thee ever to attend on me,
To give me whatsoever I shall ask;
To tell me whatsoever I demand: 95
To slay mine enemies, and aid my friends,
And always be obedient to my will.
Go, and return to mighty Lucifer,
And meet me in my study, at midnight,
And then resolve me of thy master’s mind. 100
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
I will Faustus. Exit
91 So On condition that

76-80 Caxton, while locating hell ‘in the most lowest place, moste derke,
and mo.st vyle of the erthe’, stressed that it is a state as well as a place;
the sinner is like a man ‘that had a grete maladye, so moche that he
shold deye, and that he were brought in to a fair place and plesaunt
for to have Joye and solace; of so moche shold he be more hevy and
sorowful’ (The Mirrour of the World (1480), ii, 18). Marlowe’s concept
of hell at this point may be compared with Milton’s; like Mephostophilis,
Satan cannot escape.
for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step, no more than from himself can fly
By change of place.
Paradise Lost, iv, 20-23.
Mephostophilis’ account of the torment of deprivation is translated
from St. John Chrysostom: ‘si decern mille gehennas quis dixerit, nihil
tale est quale ah ilia beata visione excidere’ (see John Searle, T.L.S., 15th
February 1936).
20 * CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [act i

FAOSTUS
Had I as many souls as there be stars
I’d give them all for Mephostophilis.
By him, I’ll be great emperor of the world,
And make a bridge through the moving air 105
To pass the ocean with a band of men;
I’ll join the hills that bind the Afric shore,
And make that country continent to Spain,
And both contributory to my crown.
The emperor shall not live, but by my leave, 110
Nor any potentate of Germany.
Now that I have obtained what I desired
I’ll live in speculation of this art
Till Mephostophilis return again. Exit

Act I, Scene iv
Enter wagner and the clown
WAGNER
Come hither sirra boy.
107 hills . . . shore The hills on either side of the straits of Gibraltar
which, if joined, would unite Africa and Europe into a single
continent

Act I, Scene iv. It is not easy to account for all the variants between A and
B in this scene. A’s pickadevants (1.3) is supported against B’s beards
by the imitation of this in the anonymous Taming of A Shrew. The
‘French crowns’ passage (11.26-9) has hitherto been rejected on
historical grounds (but see note below) and Greg discards the ‘kill-
devil’ lines (35-9) with the argument that these are borrowed from
Looking Glass for London (see Introduction p. xvii). Two passages in
the A Text were almost certainly interpolated by the comedians. When
the devils have vanished the Clown comments:

What, are they gone? A vengeance on them, they have vile long
nails; there was a he-devil and a she-devil; I’ll tell you how you
shall know them: all he-devils has horns, and all she-devils has
clifts and cloven feet.

At Wagner’s promise of the power of metamorphosis the Clown is at

first disapproving and then lewdly appreciative:

How? A Christian fellow to a dog, or a cat, a mouse or a rat? No,

no, sir, if you turn me into anything, let it be in the likeness of a
little pretty frisking flea, that I may be here and there and every¬
where. O I’ll tickle the pretty wenches’ plackets, I’ll be amongst
them i’faith.
SCENE IV] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 21
CLOWN
Boy? O disgrace to my person! Zounds, boy in your face!
You have seen many boys with such pickadevants, I am sure.
WAGNER
Sirra, hast thou no comings in?
CLOWN
Yes, and goings out too, you may see sir. 5
WAGNER
Alas poor slave, see how poverty jests in his nakedness. The
villain is bare and out of service, and so hungry, that I know
he would give his soul to the devil, for a shoulder of mutton,
though it were blood-raw.
CLOWN
Not so neither! I had need to have it well roasted, and good 10
sauce to it, if I pay so dear, I can tell you.
WAGNER
Sirra, wilt thou be my man and wait on me? And I will
make thee go, like Qui mihi discipulus.
CLOWN
What, in verse?
WAGNER
No slave, in beaten silk,’ and stavesacre, 15
CLOWN
Stavesacre? That’s good to kill vermin; then, belike, if I
serve you, I shall be lousy.
WAGNER
Why, so thou shalt be, whether thou dost it or no: for sirra,

3 pickadevants A (beards B) beards fashionably cut to a small

point (French pic a devant)
4 comings in earnings, income
5 goings out expenses; but the Clown makes the word serve two
functions, pointing also to his tattered clothing
7 out of service out of a job
13 Qui mihi discipulus You who are my pupil; the opening words of
a didactic Latin poem by the schoolmaster William Lily which
would be familiar to every grammar school boy

15 beaten silk, and stavesacre ‘In effect Wagner promises to dress his servant
(or rather to dress him down) in silk-and adds that plenty of Keating’s
powder will be needed’ (Greg). Gold or silver was hammered into silk
as a kind of embroidery; stavesacre was a preparation from delphinium
seeds used for killing fleas. It has been suggested that the Clown’s
stavesacre is a comic corruption of what Wagner actually said. But the
A Clown interpolates here ‘Knavesacre? Ay, I thought that was all the
land his father left him: do you hear, I would be sorry to rob you of your
living’. Whether this has any authority or not, it shows that Wagner’s
word must have been stavesacre; a script writer would not use the same
kind of joke twice.
22 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT 1

if thou dost not presently bind thyself to me for seven years,

I’ll turn all the lice about thee into familiars, and make them 20
tear thee in pieces. ,
CLOWN
Nay sir, you may save yourself a labour, for they are as
familiar with me, as if they paid for their meat and drink, I
can tell you. '
WAGNER
Well sirra, leave your jesting, and take these guilders. 25
CLOWN
Gridirons, what be they?
WAGNER
Why, French crowns.
CLOWN
Mass, but for the name of French crowns a man were as
good have as many English counters.
WAGNER
So, now thou art to be at an hour’s warning, whensoever, 30
and wheresoever the devil shall fetch thee.
CLOWN
Here, take your guilders again, I’ll none of ’em.
WAGNER *
Not I, thou art pressed, prepare thyself, for I will presently
raise up two devils to carry thee away: Baliol and Belcher!
CLOWN
Let your Balio and your Belcher come here, and I’ll knock 35
20 familiars familiar spirits, diabolic personal attendants
23 they treat me as contemptuously as if they were customers at an
inn who pay for what they consume
29 counters worthless tokens
3 3 pressed enlisted; the taking of money was a token of enrolment for
military service
34 Baliol A (Banio B) probably a corruption of Belial
35 knock thump, beat

26-9 French crowns, legal tender in England in the 16th and early 17th
centuries, were easily counterfeited. Marlowe himself is reported in the
Baines’ Libel as having boasted ‘That he had as good Right to Coine as
the Queen of England and that... he ment, through the help of a
Cunninge stamp maker to Coin ffrench Crownes pistoletes and English
shillinges’. Among government measures to stop the flood of false coins
was a proclamation of 1587 urging all who were offered such pieces to
strike a hole in them (See Ruding, Annals of the Coinage of Britain,
(1817), i, 192 ff); perhaps the Clown refers to the holes in the coins when
he describes them as gridirons. (See H. E. Cain, ‘Marlowe’s “French
Crowns” ’, M.L.N., XLIX (1934), 380-84.) The money market
under James was less troubled by this kind of counterfeiting, and the
passage may have been omitted from B because it was no longer meaning¬
ful.
scene iv] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 23

them, they were never so knocked since they were devils.

Say I should kill one of them, what would folks say? ‘Do ye
see yonder tall fellow in the round slop, he has killed the
devil!’ So I should be called kill-devil all the parish over.

Enter two devils and the clown

runs up and down crying
WAGNER
How now sir, will you serve me now? 40
CLOWN
Ay good Wagner, take away the devil then.
WAGNER
Spirits away! Exeunt [devils]
Now sirra, follow me.
CLOWN
I wall sir; but hark you master, will you teach me this
conjuring occupation?
WAGNER
Ay sirra, I’ll teach thee to turn thyself to a dog, or a cat, or 45
a mouse, or a rat, or anything.
CLOWN
A dog, or a cat, or a mouse,'or a rat? O brave, Wagner.
WAGNER
Villain, call me Master Wagner, and see that you walk
attentively, and let your right eye be always diametrally
fixed upon my left heel, that thou may’st quasi vestigias 50
nostras insistere.
CLOWN
Well sir, I warrant you. Exeunt

Act II, Scene i

Enter faustus in his study

FAUSTUS
Now7 Faustus must thou needs be damned
And canst thou not be saved?
What boots it then to think on God or heaven?

38 tall brave;
round slop baggy trousers
49 diametrally diametrically
50—51 quasi vestigias nostras insistere as it were tread in our footsteps;
the construction is false (for vestigiis nostris) but this may be
intentional
 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT II
24
Away with such vain fancies and despair,
Despair in God, and trust in Belzebub.
Now go not backward: no, Faustus, be resolute,
Why waverest thou? Q, something soundeth in mine ears:
‘Abjure this magic, turn to God again’.
Ay, and Faustus will turn to God again.
To God? He loves thee notr
The God thou servest is thine own appetite
Wherein is fixed the love of Belzebub:
To him, I’ll build an altar and a church,
And offer luke-warm blood of new-born babes.

Enter the two angels

GOOD ANGEL
Sweet Faustus, leave that execrable art. 15
FAUSTUS
Contrition, prayer, repentance - what of these?
GOOD ANGEL
O they are means to bring thee unto heaven.
BAD ANGEL
Rather illusions, fruits of lunacy,
That make men foolish that do trust them most.
GOOD ANGEL
Sweet Faustus, think of heaven, and heavenly things. 20
BAD ANGEL
No Faustus, think of honour and of wealth.
Exeunt angels
FAUSTUS
Wealth!
Why, the signory of Emden shall be mine:
When Mephostophilis shall stand by me
What god can hurt me? Faustus thou art safe. 25
Cast no more doubts; Mephostophilis, come
And bring glad tidings from great Lucifer.

9-10 Ay ... God A (not in B)

23 signory of Emden governorship of Emden-a port on the mouth of
the Ems, at this time trading extensively with England
25 god A (power B)

15 Before this line B inserts:

Evil Angel Go forward Faustus, in that famous art.
The line exactly repeats I.i, 73, and this alone makes it suspect. Further¬
more, the inconsistency of the speech heading {Evil instead of Bad) points
to some kind of tinkering with the text. The same inconsistency is to be
found at II.ii, 17, but here B has borrowed the line and its heading from A.
scene « DOCTOR FAUSTUS 25

Is’t not midnight? Come Mephostophilis,

Veni, veni Mephostophilis.'
Enter mephostophilis

Now tell me what saith Lucifer thy lord? 30

MEPHOSTOPHILIS
That I shall wait on Faustus whilst he lives,
So he will buy my service with his soul.
FAUSTUS
Already Faustus hath hazarded that for thee.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
But now thou must bequeath it solemnly,
And write a deed of gift with thine own blood; 35
For that security craves Lucifer.
If thou deny it I must back to hell.
FAUSTUS
Stay Mephostophilis, and tell me,
What good will my soul do thy lord?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Enlarge his kingdom. 40
FAUSTUS
Is that the reason why he 'tempts us thus?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Solamen miseris, socios habuisse doloris.
FAUSTUS
Why, have you any pain that torture others?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
As great as have the human souls of men.
But tell me Faustus, shall I have thy soul? 45
And I will be thy slave and wait on thee,
And give thee more than thou hast wit to ask.
FAUSTUS
Ay Mephostophilis, I’ll give it him.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Then Faustus, stab thine arm courageously,
And bind thy soul, that at some certain day 50

29 Come, O come Mephostophilis

33 hazarded jeopardized
42 In Chaucer’s version: ‘Men seyn, “to wrecche is consolacioun
To have an-other felawe in his peyne”.’ Troilus and Criseyde, i,
708-9.

40 ‘Satan’s chiefest drift & main point that he aimeth at, is the inlargement
of his owne kingdom, by the eternall destruction of man in the life to
come’, James Mason, The Anatomie of Sorcerie (1612), p. 55.
26 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT II

Great Lucifer may claim it as his own,

And then be thou as great as Lucifer.
FAUSTUS
Lo Mephostophilis, for love of thee
[stabs his arm]
Faustus hath cut his arm, and with his proper blood
Assures his soul to be great Lucifer’s, 55
Chief lord and regent of perpetual night.
View here this blood that trickles from mine arm,
And let it be propitious for my wish.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
But Faustus,
Write it in manner of a deed of gift. 60
FAUSTUS
Ay, so I will.
[writes\
But Mephostophilis,
My blood congeals, and I can write no more.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
I’ll fetch thee fire to dissolve it straight.
Exit
FAUSTUS '
What might the staying of my blood portend?
Is it unwilling I should write this bill? 65
Why streams it not, that I may write afresh?
‘Faustus gives to thee his soul’: ah, there it stayed!
Why should’st thou not? Is not thy soul thine own?
Then write again: ‘Faustus gives to thee his soul’.

Enter mephostophilis with the

Chafer of Fire

mephostophilis
See Faustus here is fire, set it on. 70
FAUSTUS
So, now the blood begins to clear again:
[writes again]
Now will I make an end immediately.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
What will not I do to obtain his soul!

54 proper own
69 s.d. Chafer portable grate
70 set it on ‘set his blood in a saucer on warm ashes’. EFB,vi.
71 Greg observes that no earthly fire will liquefy congealed blood
SCENE I] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 27
FAUSTUS
Consummatum est: this" bill is ended,
And Faustus hath bequeathed his soul to Lucifet 75
But what is this inscription on mine arm?
Homo fuge! Whither should I fly?
If unto God, he’ll throw me down to hell.
My senses are deceived, here’s nothing writ:
O yes, I see it plain, even here is writ 80
Homo fuge! Yet shall not Faustus fly.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
I’ll fetch him somewhat to delight his mind.
Exit
Enter devils, giving crowns and rich apparel
,
to faustus: they dance and then depart:
Enter mephostophilis
FAUSTUS
What means this show? Speak Mephostophilis.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Nothing Faustus, but to delight thy mind,
And let thee see what magic can perform. 85
FAUSTUS !
But may I raise such spirits when I please?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Ay Faustus, and do greater things than these.
FAUSTUS
Then Mephostophilis, receive this scroll.
A deed of gift, of body and of soul:
But yet conditionally, that thou perform 90
All covenants and articles between us both.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Faustus, I swear by hell and Lucifer,
To effect all promises between us made.
FAUSTUS
Then hear me read it Mephostophilis.
On these conditions following: 95
First, that Faustus may be a spirit inform and substance.
74 Consummatum est It is finished; the last words of Christ on the
cross: St. John, xix,30
77 Homo fuge Fly, O man 78 God A (heaven B)
88 A gives Faustus another line before this one: ‘Then there’s
enough for a thousand souls.’

96 spirit A spirit, to the Elizabethans, was usually an evil one, a devil (see
Shakespeare, Sonnet CXLIV); according to some theologians, who
followed Aquinas, God could have no mercy on a devil who was ipso
facto incapable of repenting. See II.ii, 13-15.
28 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [actii

Secondly, that Mephostophilis shall be his servant, and at

his command.
Thirdly, that Mephostophilis shall do for him, and bring
him whatsoever. • 100
Fourthly, that he shall be ih his chamber or house invisible.
Lastly, that he shall appear to the said John Faustus, at all
times, in what form or shape soever he please.
I, John Faustus of Wittenberg doctor, by these presents, do
give both body and soul to Lucifer, Prince of the East, and 105
his minister Mephostophilis, and furthermore grant unto
them, that four and twenty years being expired, the articles
above written inviolate, full power to fetch or carry the said
John Faustus, body and soul, flesh, blood, or goods, into
their habitation wheresoever. 110
By me John Faustus
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Speak Faustus, do you deliver this as your deed?
FAUSTUS
Ay, take it, and the devil give thee good on’t.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Now Faustus, ask what thou wilt.
FAUSTUS '
First will I question with thee about hell: 115
Tell me, where is the place that men call hell?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Under the heavens.
FAUSTUS
Ay, so are all things else; but whereabouts?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Within the bowels of these elements,
Where we are tortured, and remain for ever. 120
Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed
In one self place; but where we are is hell,
And where hell is, there must we ever be.
And to be short, when all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified, 125
All places shall be hell that is not heaven.
FAUSTUS
I think hell’s a fable.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Ay, think so still, till experience change thy mind.

104 these presents the legal articles

119 these elements the four elements below the sphere of the moon
122 one self place one particular place
SCENE I] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 29

FAUSTUS
Why, dost thou think that Faustus shall be damned?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Ay, of necessity, for here’s the scroll 130
In which thou hast given thy soul to Lucifer.
FAUSTUS
Ay, and body too, but what of that?
Think’st thou that Faustus is so fond to imagine,
That after this life there is any pain?
No, these are trifles, and mere old wives’ tales. 135
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
But I am an instance to prove the contrary:
For I tell thee I am damned, and now in hell.
FAUSTUS
Nay, and this be hell, I’ll willingly be damned.
What, sleeping, eating, walking and disputing?
But leaving this, let me have a wife, the fairest maid in 140
Germany, for I am wanton and lascivious, and cannot live
without a wife.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
How, a wife? I prithee Faustus, talk not of a wife.
FAUSTUS
Nay sweet Mephostophilis, fetch me one, for I will have one.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Well, thou wilt have one; sit there till I come; 145
I’ll fetch thee a wife in the devil’s name. [Exit]

Enter with a devil dressed like a woman, with fireworks

MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Tell me Faustus, how dost thou like thy wife?
FAUSTUS
A plague on her for a hot whore! No, I’ll no wife.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Marriage is but a ceremonial toy,
And if thou lovest me think no more of it. 150
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,
Were she as chaste as was Penelope,

133 fond foolish

151 cull pick
154 Penelope wife of Ulysses, renowned for her fidelity to a lost husband

139-47 A gives the fuller text here; the abrupt change to prose, in both
versions, suggests that another author has taken over.
30 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT II

As wise as Saba, or as beautiful 155

As was bright Lucifer before his fall.
Hold, take this book, peruse it thoroughly:
The iterating of theseJines brings gold;
The framing of this circle on the ground
Brings thunder, whirlwinds, storm and lightning: 160
Pronounce this thrice devoutly to thyself,
And men in harness shall appear to thee,
Ready to execute what thou command’st.
FAUSTUS
Thanks Mephostophilis; yet fain would I have a book
wherein I might behold all spells and incantations, that I 165
might raise up spirits when I please.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Here they are in this book. There turn to them
FAUSTUS
Now would I have a book where I might see all characters
and planets of the heavens, that I might know their motions
and dispositions. 170
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Here they are too. Turn to them
FAUSTUS '
Nay, let me have one book more, and then I have done,
wherein I might see all plants, herbs and trees that grow
upon the earth.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Here they be. 175
FAUSTUS
O thou art deceived.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Tut I warrant thee. Turn to them
Exeunt

155 Saba the Queen of Sheba, who confronted Solomon with ‘hard
questions’, I Kings, x
162 harness armour
170 dispositions situations

163-76 B allows no investigation of the magic book, ending the episode

abruptly .with Faustus’ thanks:
Thanks Mephostophilis for this sweet book.
This will I keep as chary as my life.
Although the sudden switch in A from verse to prose suggests another
author, or even an after-thought, B’s anticipation of Il.ii, 172 is equally
suspicious.
SCENE II] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 31

Act II, Scene ii

Enter faustus in his study

and MEPHOSTOPHILIS
FAUSTUS
When I behold the heavens then I repent
And curse thee wicked Mephostophilis,
Because thou hast deprived me of those joys.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
’Twas thine own seeking Faustus, thank thyself:
But think’st thou heaven is such a glorious thing? 5
I tell thee Faustus, it is not half so fair
As thou, or any man that breathes on earth.
FAUSTUS
How prov’st thou that?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
’Twas made for man; then he’s more excellent.
FAUSTUS
If heaven was made for man, ’twas made for me: 10
I will renounce this magic and repent.

Enter the two angels

GOOD ANGEL
Faustus repent, yet God will pity thee.
BAD ANGEL
Thou art a spirit, God cannot pity thee.
FAUSTUS
Who buzzeth in mine ears I am a spirit?
Be I a devil yet God may pity me, 15
Yea, God will pity me if I repent.

4 B (not in A)
13 (see note on II.i, 96)
14 buzzeth whispers
15 Be I This could mean either ‘Even if I am’ or else ‘Even though
I were’

Act II, Scene ii. Both texts seem to have lost a scene here; the Elizabethans
would never take two characters off the stage to bring them on again
immediately. Boas suggests a comic interlude with Wagner, Greg an
episode in preparation for Il.iii, showing the Clown stealing one of
Faustus’ conjuring books and determining to leave Wagner’s service.
But the Clown of I.iv seems to me to be a different kind of comedian
from the Robin of the subsequent comic scenes (see Introduction
p. xvi).
32 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [act n

EVIL ANGEL
Ay, but Faustus never shall repent. Exeunt angels
faustus
My heart’s so hardened I cannot repent!
Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or heaven,
But fearful echoes thunders in mine ears, _ 20
‘Faustus, thou art damned’:'then swords and knives,
Poison, guns, halters and envenomed steel
Are laid before me to dispatch myself:
And long ere this, I should have done the deed,
Had not sweet pleasure conquered deep despair. 25
Have not I made blind Homer sing to me
Of Alexander’s love, and Oenon’s death?
And hath not he, that built the walls of Thebes
With ravishing sound of his melodious harp,
Made music with my Mephostophilis? 30
Why should I die then, or basely despair?
I am resolved! Faustus shall not repent.
Come Mephostophilis let us dispute again,
And reason of divine astrology.
Speak, are there many spheres above the moon? 35
Are all celestial bodies but one globe,
As is the substance of this centric earth?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
As are the elements, such are the heavens,
Even from the moon unto the empyreal orb,
Mutually folded in each other’s spheres, 40

17 (see note on Il.i, 15)

22 halters hangman’s ropes
24 done the deed B (slain myself A)
39 B (not in A)

27 Alexander . . . death Alexander, Homer’s name for Paris son of Priam,

fell in love with Oenone before he encountered Helen; wounded in the
Trojan War, he was carried to Oenone and died at her feet, whereupon
she stabbed herself.
28-9 At the sound of Amphion’s harp the stones were so affected that
they rose of their own accord to form the walls of Thebes.
35-62 The Faustus of Marlowe’s source was an astrologer-a calendar-
maker and weather-forecaster-rather than an astronomer, and although
Mephostophilis promises to teach him about the planets the approach
is unscientific and the information a miscellaneous jumble. Marlowe’s
protagonist has the questioning mind of the Renaissance student, and
the answers he is given accord with the sceptical authorities of the day
(See Kocher, pp. 214-23, and F. R. Johnson, ‘Marlowe’s Astronomy
and Renaissance Skepticism’, E.L.H., XIII (1946), iv). The Ptolemaic
SCENE II] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 33
And jointly move upon one axletree,
Whose termine is termed the world’s wide pole.
Nor are the names of Saturn, Mars or Jupiter,
Feigned, but are erring stars.
FAUSTUS
But have they all one motion, both situ et temporel 45
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
All move from east to west in four and twenty hours, upon
the poles of the world, but differ in their motions upon the
poles of the zodiac.
FAUSTUS
These slender questions Wagner can decide!
Hath Mephostophilis no greater skill? 50
Who knows not the double motion of the planets?
That the first is finished in a natural day, the second thus:
42 termine boundary (astronomical)
45 situ et tempore in direction and in time
49 questions B (trifles A)

system, as yet unshaken by Copernicus, held that the universe was

composed of concentric spheres' with the earth (this centric earth) as
the innermost. Beyond the earth was the sphere of the Moon, and
further out still the spheres of the six other erring stars or planets:
Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. The eighth was the
firmament, or sphere of the fixed stars, which Marlowe, admitting only
nine spheres (1.59) identified with the Primum Mobile, the first moving
thing which imparted movement to all the rest. The ninth sphere
(tenth, if the Primum Mobile was allowed to be separate from the
firmament) was the immoveable empyrean (the empyreal orb).
35-44 Faustus asks first for confirmation of the number of spheres beyond
the Moon and whether in fact these do form a single ball. Mephosto¬
philis replies that just as the four elements enclose each other (earth is
surrounded by water, water by air, and air by fire), so each sphere or
heaven is circled round by the ones beyond it, and all rotate upon a
single axletree. Saturn, Mars and the other planets are individually
recognizable and are called erring or wandering stars to distinguish
them from the fixed stars joined to the firmament.
45-56 ‘Do all the planets move at the same speed and in the same direction?’
is Faustus’ next question. He is told that the planets have two move¬
ments: a daily east to west rotation round the earth governed by the
Primum Mobile, and a slower, individual turning from west to east.
Caxton (Mirrour of the World, (1480), i.13) explains that each planet is
like a fly crawling on a wheel; if the fly crawls in one direction and the
wheel turns in the opposite, the fly may be said to have two movements.
Faustus knows this well enough, and proceeds to detail with reasonable
accuracy the different times taken by the planets in their individual
revolutions-the farthest from the earth, naturally, taking the longest.
The figures usually given are: Saturn 29\ years; Jupiter Ilf years;
Mars 1 year 11 months; Sun 1 year; Venus 1\ months; and Mercury
3 months.
 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT II
34
Saturn in thirty years; Jupiter in twelve; Mars in four; the
Sun, Venus and Mercury in a year; the Moon in twenty-
eight days. These are freshmen’s suppositions. But tell me, 55
hath every sphere a dqminicm or intelligentia?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS '
Ay.
FAUSTUS
How many heavens, or spheres, are there?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Nine: the seven planets, the firmament, and the empyreal
heaven. 60
FAUSTUS
But is there not coelum igneum? et cristallinuml
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
No Faustus, they be but fables.
FAUSTUS
Resolve me then in this one question: why are not con¬
junctions, oppositions, aspects, eclipses, all at one time,
but in some years we have more, in some less? 65
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Per inaequalem motum, respectu totius.
FAUSTUS >
Well, I am answered. Now tell me who made the world?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
I will not.
FAUSTUS
Sweet Mephostophilis, tell me.
55 suppositions A (questions B) elementary facts given to first year
undergraduates for them to build an argument on

56-7 The next question at issue relates to a theory first propounded by

Plato and developed in the Middle Ages, that each planet was guided
by an angelic spirit, commonly called the intelligence:
Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,
The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
Donne, ‘Good Friday, Riding Westwards’
Mephostophilis affirms the intelligence, but the theory was never really
accepted by scientists.
58-62 Faustus seems to return to his earlier query about the number of
spheres or heavens. Aristotle accounted for eight, but another was
added by the early Church Fathers who postulated the empyreal heaven
which was the abode of God, unmoving and shining with a piercing,
stainless light. Mephostophilis contradicts the current belief that there
were still more celestial spheres, the coelum igneum and coelum cristal-
linum (heavens of fire and crystal). Both these were added to the
Aristotelian concept of the universe (the latter by Ptolemy) and Marlowe
was not alone in denying their existence. Pierre de La Primaudaye,
whose French Academic, (vol. Ill) is a possible source for Marlowe’s
astronomical knowledge, shares this doubt.
SCENE n] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 35
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Move me not Faustus. ' » 70
FAUSTUS
Villain, have not I bound thee to tell me anything?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Ay, that is not against our kingdom.
This is: thou art damned, think thou on hell.
FAUSTUS
Think, Faustus, upon God, that made the world.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Remember this! 75
Exit
FAUSTUS
Ay, go accursed spirit to ugly hell:
’Tis thou hast damned distressed Faustus’ soul.
Is’t not too late?

Enter the two angels

BAD ANGEL
Too late.
GOOD ANGEL
Never too late, if Faustus will repent. 80
BAD ANGEL
If thou repent, devils will tear thee in pieces.
GOOD ANGEL
Repent, and they shall never raze thy skin.
Exeunt angels

70 Move Vex
82 raze graze

63-6 Mephostophilis’ answer to the next question sounds like a quotation

from some astronomical textbook. Faustus asks about the behaviour
of the planets, using technical but well-known astronomical terms:
conjunctions are the apparent joinings together of two planets, while
oppositions describes their relationships when most remote:
Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debarrs,
Is the Conjunction of the Mind,
And Opposition of the Stars.
Marvell, ‘The Definition of Love’.
Any position between the two extremes of conjunction and opposition
was termed an aspect. To astrologers the differing situations and
relations of the planets all have some particular significance-hence the
horoscope. Faustus is finally told what he already knows: that the
heavenly bodies do not all move at the same speed, and that for this
reason (‘through an irregular motion so far as the whole is concerned’,
1.66) there are more eclipses etc. in some years than in others.
36 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT 11

FAUSTUS
O Christ my saviour, my saviour,
Help to save distressed Faustus’ soul.
Enter lucifer, belzebub, and mephostopfiilis

LUCIFER
Christ cannot save thy soul, for he is just; 85
There’s none but I have interest in the same.
FAUSTUS
O what art thou that look’st so terribly?
LUCIFER
I am Lucifer, and this is my companion prince in hell.
FAUSTUS
O Faustus, they are come to fetch thy soul!
BELZEBUB
We are come to tell thee thou dost injure us. 90
LUCIFER
Thou call’st on Christ contrary to thy promise.
BELZEBUB
Thou should’st not think on God.
LUCIFER
Think on the devil.
BELZEBUB '
And his dam too.
FAUSTUS
Nor will I henceforth: pardon me in this, 95
And Faustus vows never to look to heaven,
Never to name God, or to pray to him,
To burn his scriptures, slay his ministers,
And make my spirits pull his churches down.
LUCIFER
So shalt thou show thyself an obedient servant, 100
And we will highly gratify thee for it.
BELZEBUB
Faustus, we are come from hell in person to show thee some
pastime: sit down and thou shalt behold the Seven Deadly
Sins appear to thee in their own proper shapes and likeness.
FAUSTUS
That sight will be as pleasing unto me as Paradise was to 105
Adam the first day of his creation.

84 Help B (Seek A)
86 interest in legal claim on
97-9 A (not in B)
SCENE II] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 37
LUCIFER
Talk not of Paradise or'creation, but mark the show.
Go Mephostophilis, fetch them in.

Enter the seven deadly sins

BELZEBUB
Now Faustus, examine them of their several names and
dispositions. 110
FAUSTUS
That shall I soon: what art thou, the first?
PRIDE
I am Pride; I disdain to have any parents: I am like to
Ovid’s flea, I can creep into every corner of a wench: some¬
times, like a periwig, I sit upon her brow; next, like a neck¬
lace, I hang about her neck; then, like a fan of feathers, I 115
kiss her lips; and then, turning myself to a wrought smock,
do what I list. But fie, what a smell is here! I’ll not speak
another word unless the ground be perfumed, and covered
with cloth of arras.
FAUSTUS
Thou art a proud knave indeed: what art thou, the second? 120
COVETOUSNESS
I am Covetousness, begotten of an old churl in a leather
bag; and might I now obtain my wish, this house, you and
all should turn to gold, that I might lock you safe into my
chest. O my sweet gold!
FAUSTUS
And what art thou, the third? 125
ENVY
I am Envy, begotten of a chimney-sweeper, and an oyster-
wife: I cannot read, and therefore wish all books burnt. I
am lean with seeing others eat: O that there would come a
famine over all the world, that all might die, and I live
alone, then thou shouldst see how fat I’d be. But must thou 130
sit, and I stand? Come down, with a vengeance.

113 Ovid's flea The poet of ‘The Song of the Flea’ (probably medieval
but attributed to Ovid) envies the flea for its freedom of movement
over his mistress’ body
116 vjrought embroidered
117 another word A (a word more for a king’s ransom B); B anticipates
the words of Sloth (below, 157-8)
119 cloth of arras tapestry; woven at Arras in Flanders and used for
wall-hangings
121 leather bag the miser’s purse
126—7 begotten... wife ‘and therefore black and malodorous’ (Wheeler)
R—c
38 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT II

FAUSTUS
Out, envious wretch! But what art thou, the fourth?
wrath s
I am Wrath: I had jneither' father nor mother; I leapt out
of a lion’s mouth when I was scarce an hour old, and ever
since have run up and down the world with these case of 135
rapiers, wounding myself n when I could get none to fight
withal: I was born in hell, and look to it, for some of you
shall be my father.
FAUSTUS
And what art thou, the fifth?
GLUTTONY
I am gluttony; my parents are all dead, and the devil a 140
penny they have left me, but a small pension, and that buys
me thirty meals a day, and ten bevers: a small trifle to
suffice nature. I come of a royal pedigree: my father was a
gammon of bacon, and my mother was a hogshead of claret
wine. My godfathers were these: Peter Pickled-Herring and 145
Martin Martlemass-Beef: O but my godmother, she was a
jolly gentlewoman, and well beloved in every good town and
city; her name was Mistress Margery March-Beer. Now
Faustus, thou hast heard all my progeny, wilt thou bid me
to supper? 150
FAUSTUS
No, I’ll see thee hanged, thou wilt eat up all my victuals.
GLUTTONY
Then the devil choke thee.
FAUSTUS
Choke thyself, Glutton; what art thou, the sixth?
SLOTH
Hey ho! I am Sloth: I was begotten on a sunny bank, where
I have lain ever since, and you have done me great injury 155
to bring me from thence; let me be carried thither again by
Gluttony and Lechery. Hey ho, I’ll not speak a word more
for a king’s ransom.

135 these case A case of rapiers is in fact a pair

142 bevers snacks
146 Martlemass-Beef Meat, salted to preserve it for winter, was hung
up to_ Martinmas (November 11th)
147-8 a jolly . . . city A (an ancient gentlewoman B)
148 March-Beer a rich ale, made in March and left to mature for at
least two years
149 progeny lineage (obsolete)
154—7 where ... Lechery A (not in B)
SCENE II] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 39
FAUSTUS
Ana what are you Mistress Minx, the seventh and last?
LECHERY
Who I? I sir? I am one that loves an inch of raw mutton, 160
better than an ell of fried stockfish: and the first letter of
my name begins with Lechery.
LUCIFER
Away to hell, away, on piper. Exeunt the seven sins
FAUSTUS
O how this sight doth delight my soul.
LUCIFER
But Faustus, in hell is all manner of delight. 165
FAUSTUS
O might I see hell, and return again safe, how happy were
I then.
LUCIFER
Faustus, thou shalt, at midnight I will send for thee;
Meanwhile peruse this book, and view it throughly,
And thou shalt turn thyself into what shape thou wilt. 170
FAUSTUS
Thanks mighty Lucifer:
This will I keep as chary as my life.
LUCIFER
Now Faustus, farewell.
FAUSTUS
Farewell, great Lucifer: come Mephostophilis.
Exeunt omnes, several ways

162 begins with Lechery A common form of jest: ‘Her name begins
with Mistress Purge’, Middleton, The Family of Love, Il.iii, 53
169 throughly thoroughly
172 chary carefully
174 s.d. several ways in different directions

160-1 loves ... stockfish Most editors are reticent about the meaning of this
line and content themselves with pointing out that mutton is frequently
used to mean ‘prostitute’. Greg observes that such an interpretation
cannot apply where Lechery is Mistress Minx, and he adds ‘but this
indelicate subject need not be pursued. Ward by omitting the passage
showed that he understood it’. Lechery is saying in effect that she prefers
a small quantity of virility to a large extent of impotence. Stock-fish, a
long dried-up piece of cod, is a common term of abuse, indicating
impotence: ‘he was begot between two stockfishes’, Measure for
Measure, IILii, 98.
40 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT II

Act II, Scene iii

Enter the clown [robin]

clown
What, Dick, look to the horses there till I come again. I have
gotten one of Doctor Faustus’ conjuring books, and now
we’ll have such knavery, as’t passes.
Enter dick

dick
What, Robin, you must come away and walk the horses.
robin
I walk the horses! I scorn’t, ’faith, I have other matters in 5
hand, let the horses walk themselves and they will. \reads\
‘Aper se a; t. h. e. the; oper seo; deny orgon, gorgon’. Keep
further from me, O thou illiterate and unlearned ostler.
DICK
’Snails, what hast thou got there? A book? Why, thou canst
not tell ne’er a word on’t. 10
ROBIN
That thou shalt see presently: keep out of the circle, I say,
lest I send you into the hostry with a vengeance.
DICK
That’s like, ’faith: you had best leave your foolery, for an
my master come, he’ll conjure you, ’faith.
ROBIN
My master conjure me? I’ll tell thee what, an my master 15
come here, I’ll clap as fair a pair of horns on’s head as e’er
thou sawest in thy life.
DICK
Thou needest not do that, for my mistress hath done it.
ROBIN
Ay, there be of us here, that have waded as deep into matters,
as other men, if they were disposed to talk. 20

II.iii. A’s version of this scene is printed in the Appendix (p. 90)
3 as’t passes as beats everything
7 per se by itself; a by itself spells a
deny orgon, gorgon Robin is struggling to read the ‘Demogorgon’
of Faustus’ invocation
9 ’Snails By God’s nails
12 hostry hostelry, inn
13 That’s like A likely chance
19 matters affairs; ‘I meddle with no tradesman’s matters, nor
women’s matters’, Julius Caesar, I.i, 23
SCENE III] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 41
DICK
A plague take you, I thought you did not sneak up and down
after her for nothing. But I prithee tell me, in good sadness,
Robin, is that a conjuring book?
ROBIN
Do but speak what thou’lt have me to do, and I’ll do’t: if
thou’lt dance naked, put off thy clothes, and I’ll conjure thee 25
about presently; or if thou’lt go but to the tavern with me,
I’ll give thee white wine, red wine, claret wine, sack, mus¬
cadine, malmsey and whippincrust, hold belly hold, and we’ll
not pay one penny for it.
DICK
O brave! Prithee, let’s to it presently, for I am as dry as a 30
dog.
ROBIN
Come then, let’s away. Exeunt

CHORUS I

Enter the chorus

CHORUS
Learned Faustus,
To find the secrets of astronomy,
Graven in the book of Jove’s high firmament,
Did mount him up to scale Olympus’ top;
Where sitting in a chariot burning bright, 5
Drawn by the strength of yoked dragons’ necks,
He views the clouds, the planets, and the stars,
The tropics, zones, and quarters of the sky,
From the bright circle of the horned moon,
Even to the height of Primum Mobile: 10

22 in good sadness seriously

27 sack strong, light-coloured wine from Spain
muscadine muscatel; strong sweet wine from the muscat grape
28 malmsey another strong sweet wine
whippincrust a spiced wine; corruption of hippocras
hold belly hold a belly-full
7-19 B (not in A)
8 tropics of Cancer and Capricorn
zones Four circles (the two tropics and two polar circles) divide
the world into five zones; this technical word is used by La Pri-
maudaye (French Academie, III, xvii)
9-10 From the innermost to the outermost sphere; everywhere,
that is, except to the empyrean
10 Primum Mobile (see note on II.ii, 35-62)
42 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE Iactiu

And whirling round with this circumference.

Within the concave compass of the pole,
From east to west his dragons swiftly glide,
And in eight days did bring him home again.
Not long he stayed within his quiet house, 15
To rest his bones after his weary toil,
But new exploits do hale him out again,
And mounted then upon a dragon’s back,
That with his wings did part the subtle air,
He now is gone to prove cosmography, 20
That measures coasts and kingdoms of the earth:
And as I guess will first arrive at Rome,
To see the Pope and manner of his court,
And take some part of holy Peter’s feast,
The which this day is highly solemnized. Exit 25

Act III, Scene i

Enter faustus and mephostophilis

FAUSTUS
Having now, my good Mephostophilis,
Passed with delight the stately town of Trier,
Environed round with airy mountain tops,
With walls of flint, and deep entrenched lakes,
Not to be won by any conquering prince; 5
From Paris next, coasting the realm of France,
We saw the river Main fall into Rhine,
Whose banks are set with groves of fruitful vines.
Then up to Naples, rich Campania,
With buildings fair, and gorgeous to the eye, 10
Whose streets straight forth, and paved with finest brick,
Quarter the town in four equivalents;
There saw we learned Maro’s golden tomb,

11 this circumference i.e. the Primum Mobile

25 this day June 29th is the Feast of St. Peter
9 Campania EFB led Marlowe into this erroneous identification ot
Naples with Campagna
10 With ed. (Whose Qq)
11 Whose ed. (The Qq)
straight forth in straight lines
13-15 Virgil (Publius Virgilius Maro) was buried in Naples in 19 B.C.
and posthumously acquired some reputation as a magician. His
tomb stands at the end of the promontory of Posilippo between
Naples and Pozzuoli and legend ascribes the tunnel running
through this promontory to his magic art.
scenbi] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 43

The way he cut an English mile in length

Thorough a rock of stone in one night’s space: 15
From thence to Venice, Padua and the rest,
In midst of which a sumptuous temple stands,
That threats the stars with her aspiring top,
Whose frame is paved with sundry coloured stones,
And roofed aloft with curious work in gold. 20
Thus hitherto hath Faustus spent his time.
But tell me now, what resting place is this?
Hast thou, as erst I did command,
Conducted me within the walls of Rome?
MFPHOSTOPHILIS
I have my Faustus, and for proof thereof, 25
This is the goodly palace of the Pope:
And ’cause we are no common guests,
I choose his privy chamber for our use.
FAUSTUS
I hope his holiness will bid us welcome.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
All’s one, for we’ll be bold with his venison. 30
But now my Faustus, that thou may’st perceive,
What Rome contains for to delight thine eyes,
Know that this city stands upon seven hills,
That underprop the groundwork of the same:
Just through the midst runs flowing Tiber’s stream, 35
With winding banks that cut it in two parts;
Over the which four stately bridges lean,
That make safe passage to each part of Rome.
Upon the bridge called Ponte Angelo
Erected is a castle passing strong, 40
Where thou shalt see such store of ordinance,
As that the double cannons forged of brass
Do match the number of the days contained
Within the compass of one complete year:

16 rest A (east B)
17 midst A (one B)
23 erst earlier
35-6 B (not in A)
42 double cannons cannons of very high calibre

17-20 St. Mark’s in Venice; details (supplied by EFB) of the mosaics

and the gilded roof are accurate, but unless the nearby campanile is
meant the aspiring top exists only in the dramatist’s imagination. (See
Introduction p. xiv)
39-40 The Ponte Angelo was built in a.d. 135 by Hadrian; his mausoleum
faces the bridge but never stood on it.
 [ACT III
44 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

Besides the gates, and high pyramides 45

That Julius Caesar brought from Africa.
FAUSTUS
Now by the kingdoms of infernal rule,
Of Styx, of Acheron, and the fiery lake
Of ever-burning Phlegethon, I swear,
That I do long to see the tnonuments 50
And situation of bright-splendent Rome.
Come therefore, let’s away.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Nay, stay my Faustus, I know you’d see the Pope,
And take some part of holy Peter’s feast,
The which in state and high solemnity, 55
This day is held through Rome and Italy,
In honour of the Pope’s triumphant victory.
FAUSTUS
Sweet Mephostophilis, thou pleasest me;
Whilst I am here on earth, let me be cloyed
With all things that delight the heart of man. 60
My four and twenty years of liberty
I’ll spend in pleasure and in dalliance,
That Faustus’ name, whilst this bright frame doth stand.
May be admired through the furthest land.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
’Tis well said Faustus, come then stand by me 65
And thou shalt see them come immediately.
FAUSTUS
Nay stay my gentle Mephostophilis,
And grant me my request, and then I go.
Thou knowest within the compass of eight days,
We viewed the face of heaven, of earth and hell: 70

51 situation lay-out
55 in state and. B2 (this day with Bt)
64 admired wondered at

45-6 pyramides . . . Africa the obelisk; in fact this was brought from Helio¬
polis by the Emperor Caligula in the first century a.d. The plural form
pyramides (here stressing the need to pronounce the final syllable) is
also used as a singular by Marlowe in The Massacre at Paris, ii, 43-6.
57 victory This must be the victory over Bruno the usurper; but no addi¬
tional pretext should be needed for a feast on St. Peter’s day. A reads
simply:
Where thou shalt see a troup of bald-pate friars,
Whose summum bonum is in belly-cheer.
There are only the vestiges of a banquet scene in A.
SCENE i] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 45
So high our dragons soared into the air,
That, looking down, the earth appeared to me
No bigger than my hand in quantity.
There did we view the kingdoms of the world,
And what might please mine eye, I there beheld. 75
Then in this show let me an actor be,
That this proud Pope may Faustus’ cunning see.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Let it be so my Faustus, but first stay,
And view their triumphs, as they pass this way;
And then devise what best contents thy mind, 80
By cunning in thine art to cross the Pope,
Or dash the pride of this solemnity;
To make his monks and abbots stand like apes,
And point like antics at his triple crown:
To beat the beads about the friars’ pates, 85
Or clap huge horns upon the cardinals’ heads:
Or any villainy thou canst devise,
And I’ll perform it Faustus: hark, they come:
This day shall make thee be admired in Rome.

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, 90
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 grovelling lie, 95
And crouch before the papal dignity:
Sound trumpets then, for thus Saint Peter’s heir,
From Bruno’s back ascends Saint Peter’s chair.
A Flourish while he ascends

77 cunning B4 (coming B,)

79 triumphs procession
81 cunning B4 (coming B4)
84 antics clowns
89 s.d. pillars Wolsey substituted portable pillars for the silver
maces usually carried by cardinals
procession office sung in a religious procession
46 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT III

Thus, as the gods creep on with feet of wool,

Long ere with iron hands they punish men, 100
So shall our sleeping vengeance now arise,
And smite with death thy hated enterprise.
Lord Cardinals of France and Padua,
Go forthwith to our holy consistory,
And read amongst the statutes decretal, 105
What by the holy council held at Trent,
The sacred synod hath decreed for him
That doth assume the papal government,
Without election and a true consent:
Away, and bring us word with speed. 110
1 CARDINAL
We go my Lord.
' Exeunt cardinals
POPE
Lord Raymond!
[The pope and Raymond converse]
FAUSTUS
Go, haste thee gentle Mephostophilis,
Follow the cardinals to the consistory;
And as they turn their superstitious books, 115
Strike them with sloth, and drowsy idleness;
And make them sleep so sound, that in their shapes,
Thyself and I may parley with this Pope,
This proud confronter of the Emperor,
And in despite of all his holiness 120
Restore this Bruno to his liberty,
And bear him to the states of Germany.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Faustus, I go.
faustus Dispatch it soon:
The Pope shall curse that Faustus came to Rome.
Exeunt faustus and mephostophilis
BRUNO
Pope Adrian, let me have some right of law: 125
I was elected by the Emperor.
POPE
We will depose the Emperor for that deed,

99-100 Proverb: ‘God comes with leaden (woolen) feet but strikes
with iron hands’ (Tilley, G 270)
104 consistory meeting place of the papal senate
106 The Council of Trent met, with interruptions, between 1545 and
1563
107 synod general council
SCENE I] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 47
And curse the people that submit to him;
Both he and thou shalt sthnd excommunicate,
And interdict from Church’s privilege, 130
And all society of holy men:
He grows too proud in his authority,
Lifting his lofty head above the clouds,
And like a steeple overpeers the Church.
But we’ll pull down his haughty insolence; 135
And as Pope Alexander, our progenitor,
Trod on the neck of German Frederick,
Adding this golden sentence to our praise:
That Peter’s heirs should tread on emperors,
And walk upon the dreadful adder’s back, 140
Treading the lion, and the dragon down,
And fearless spurn the killing basilisk:
So will we quell that haughty schismatic,
And by authority apostolical
Depose him from has regal government. 145
BRUNO
Pope Julius swore to princely Sigismund,
For him, and the succeeding popes of Rome,
To hold the emperors their lawful lords.
POPE
Pope Julius did abuse the Church’s rites,
And therefore none of his decrees can stand. 150
Is not all power on earth bestowed on us?
And therefore though we would we cannot err.
Behold this silver belt, whereto is fixed
Seven golden keys fast sealed with seven seals,
In token of our seven-fold power from heaven, 155
To bind or loose, lock fast, condemn, or judge,
Resign, or seal, or whatso pleaseth us.
Then he, and thou, and all the world shall stoop,
Or be assured of our dreadful curse,
To light as heavy as the pains of hell. 160
Enter faustus and mephostophilis
like the cardinals

130 interdict officially debarred

136 progenitor predecessor
136-7 Pope Alexander III (1159-81) compelled the Emperor
Frederick Barbarossa to accept his supremacy
142 basilisk a mythical beast whose glance was fatal
154 keys ed. (seals B) symbolic of St. Peter’s keys
157 Resign Unseal; the word has the force of Latin resignare
 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT III
48

MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Now tell me Faustus, are we'not fitted well?
FAUSTUS
Yes Mephostophilis, end two such cardinals
Ne’er served a holy pope as' we shall do.
But whilst they sleep within the consistory,
Let us salute his reverend Fatherhood. 165
RAYMOND
Behold my Lord, the cardinals are returned.
POPE
Welcome grave fathers, answer presently,
What have our holy council there decreed
Concerning Bruno and the Emperor,
In quittance of their late conspiracy 170
Against our state, and papal dignity?
FAUSTUS
Most sacred patron of the Church of Rome,
By full consent of all the synod
Of priests and prelates, it is thus decreed:
That Bruno and the German Emperor 175
Be held as lollards and bold schismatics,
And proud disturbers of the Church’s peace.
And if that Bruno by his own assent,
Without enforcement of the German peers,
Did seek to wear the triple diadem, 180
And by your death to climb Saint Peter’s chair,
The statutes decretal have thus decreed,
He shall be straight condemned of heresy,
And on a pile of faggots burnt to death.
POPE
It is enough: here, take him to your charge, 185
And bear him straight to Ponte Angelo,
And in the strongest tower enclose him fast.
Tomorrow, sitting in our consistory,
With all our college of grave cardinals,
We will determine of his life or death. 190
Here, take his triple crown along with you,
And leave it in the Church’s treasury.
Make haste again, my good lord cardinals,
And take our blessing apostolical.

176 lollards heretics; originally followers of Wyclif

179 enforcement of compulsion from
189 college official title for the body of cardinals forming the pope’s
council
SCENE II]
DOCTOR FAUSTUS 49
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
So, so, was never devil thus blessed before! 195
FAUSTUS
Away sweet Mephostophilis, be gone,
The cardinals will be plagued for this anon.
Exeunt faustus and mephostophilis [with bruno]
pope
Go presently, and bring a banquet forth,
That we may solemnize Saint Peter’s feast,
And with Lord Raymond, King of Hungary, 200
Drink to our late and happy victory. Exeunt

Act III, Scene ii

A Sennet while the Banquet is brought in; and then enter

faustus and mephostophilis
in their own shapes
mephostophilis
Now Faustus come, prepare thyself for mirth,
The sleepy cardinals are hard at hand,
To censure Bruno, that is posted hence,
And on a proud-paced steed, as swift as thought,
Flies o’er the Alps to fruitful Germany, 5
There to salute the woeful Emperor.
FAUSTUS
The Pope will curse them for their sloth today,
That slept both Bruno and his crown away.
But now, that Faustus may delight his mind,
And by their folly make some merriment, 10
Sweet Mephostophilis, so charm me here,
That I may walk invisible to all,
And do whate’er I please, unseen of any.
mephostophilis
Faustus thou shalt, then kneel down presently:
Whilst on thy head I lay my hand, 15
And charm thee with this magic wand:
First wear this girdle, then appear
Invisible to all are here:
The planets seven, the gloomy air,

s.d. Sennet A flourish on the trumpets, usually heralding a ceremonious

entrance
50 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [act II

Hell, and the Furies' forked hair, 20

Pluto’s blue fire, and Hecat’s tree,
With magic spells so compass thee,
That no eye may thy body see.
So Faustus, now for all their holiness,
Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not be discerned.
FAUSTUS
Thanks Mephostophilis: now friars take heed,
Lest Faustus make your shaven crowns to bleed.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Faustus no more: see where the cardinals come.
Sound a sennet. Enter pope and all the lords
Enter the cardinals with a book
POPE
Welcome Lord Cardinals: come sit down.
Lord Raymond, take your seat. Friars attend, 30
And see that all things be in readiness,
As best beseems this solemn festival.
1 CARDINAL
First, may it please your sacred Holiness,
To view the sentence of the reverend synod,
Concerning Bruno and the Emperor? 35
POPE
What needs this question? Did I not tell you,
Tomorrow we would sit i’th’consistory,
And there determine of his punishment?
You brought us word even now, it was decreed,
That Bruno and the cursed Emperor 40
Were by the holy council both condemned
For loathed lollards and base schismatics:
Then wherefore would you have me view that book?
1 CARDINAL
Your Grace mistakes; you gave us no such charge.
POPE
Deny it not, we all are witnesses 45
That Bruno here was late delivered you
With his rich triple crown to be reserved,
And put into the Church’s treasury.
20 forked hair the forked tongues of the snakes which form the hair of the
Furies
21 Pluto’s blue fire the sulphurous smoke of hell
Hecat’s tree perhaps the gallows tree, since Hecate was also Trivia,
goddess of cross-roads where the gallows was set up. Boas may be
right in thinking that tree ought to be three, in allusion to the triple form
of the deity (Luna in Heaven, Diana on Earth and Hecate or Proserpina
in Hell).
SCENE II] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 51
AMBO CARDINALS
By holy Paul we saw them not.
POPE
By Peter, you shall die, 50
Unless you bring them forth immediately:
Hale them to prison, lade their limbs with gyves:
False prelates, for this hateful treachery,
Cursed be your souls to hellish misery.
[Exeunt cardinals with some friars]
FAUSTUS
So, they are safe: now Faustus, to the feast; 55
The Pope had never such a frolic guest.
POPE
Lord Archbishop of Rheims, sit down with us.
ARCHBISHOP
I thank your Holiness.
FAUSTUS
Fall to! The devil choke you an you spare.
POPE
Who’s that spoke? Friars, look about! 60
Lord Raymond, pray fall,to; I am beholding
To the Bishop of Milan, for this so rare a present.
FAUSTUS
I thank you sir. Snatch it
POPE
How now? Who snatched the meat from me?
Villains, why speak you not? 65
My good Lord Archbishop, here’s a most dainty dish,
Was sent me from a cardinal in France.
FAUSTUS
I’ll have that too. [Snatch it\
POPE
What lollards do attend our Holiness,
That we receive such great indignity? 70
Fetch me some wine.
FAUSTUS
Ay, pray do, for Faustus is a-dry.
POPE
Lord Raymond, I drink unto your grace.
FAUSTUS
I pledge your grace. [Snatch cup\
POPE
My wine gone too! Ye lubbers, look about 75

49 Ambo Both
52 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [act III

And find the man that doth this villainy,

Or by our sanctitude you all shall die.
I pray my lords have patience at this troublesome banquet.
ARCHBISHOP
Please it your Holiness, I think it be some ghost crept out of
purgatory, and now is come unto your Holiness for his 80
pardon. N
POPE
It may be so:
Go then command our priests to sing a dirge,
To lay the fury of this same troublesome ghost.
Once again my lord, fall to. 85
The pope crosseth himself
FAUSTUS
How now? Must every bit be spiced with a cross?
Nay then, take that.
faustus hits him a box of the ear
POPE
O, I am slain 1 Help me my lords!
O come and help to bear my body hence:
Damned be this soul for ever for this deed. 90
Exeunt the pope and his train
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Now Faustus, what will you do now? For I can tell you,
you’ll be cursed with bell, book and candle.
FAUSTUS
Bell, book and candle; candle, book and bell,
Forward and backward, to curse Faustus to hell.
Enter the friars with Bell, Book and Candle for the Dirge

83 dirge corruption of dirige, the antiphon at Matins in the Office for

the dead, hence any requiem mass; correctly used here but not
at line 102 below

86-7 The A pope is allowed to cross himself three times, with a warning
from Faustus on each occasion:
The Pope crosseth himself
What, are you crossing of yourself?
Well, use that trick no more, I would advise you.
Cross again
Well, there’s the second time; aware the third,
I give you fair warning.
Cross again, and faustus hits him a box of the ear
This sounds to me like a comedian’s expansion.
SCENB III] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 53
1 FRIAR
Come brethren, let’s about our business with good devotion. 95
Sing this
Cursed be he that stole his Holiness’ meat from the table.
Maledicat Dominus.
Cursed be he that struck his Holiness a blow on the face.
Maledicat Dominus.
Cursed be he that took Friar Sandelo a blow on the pate. 100
Maledicat Dominus.
Cursed be he that disturbeth our holy dirge.
Maledicat Dominus.
Cursed be he that took away his Holiness’ wine.
Maledicat Dominus 105
[faustus and mephostophilis] beat the friars, fling
fireworks among them, and Exeunt

Act III, Scene iii

Enter CLOWN [robin] and dick, with a Cup
DICK
Sirra Robin, we were best look that your devil can answer
the stealing of this same cup, for the vintner’s boy follows
us at the hard heels.
ROBIN
’Tis no matter, let him come; an he follow us, I’ll so conjure
him, as he was never conjured in his life, I warrant him: let 5
me see the cup.

Enter vintner

dick
Here ’tis-yonder he comes! Now Robin, now or never show
thy cunning.
vintner
O, are you here? I am glad I have found you. You are a
couple of fine companions! Pray, where’s the cup you stole 10
from the tavern?

97 Maledicat Dominus May the Lord curse him

III,iii. A’s version of this scene is printed in the Appendix (p. 91)
3 at the hard heels close on our heels

106 A concludes the scene with the formal ‘Et omnes sancti, Amen’ (and all
the saints. Amen). From lines 100 and 102, however, it seems that
Faustus is making a nuisance of himself; this and the stage direction
suggests that the scene comes to a sharp and undignified end.
54 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT III

ROBIN
How, how? We steal a cup! Take heed what you say; we look
not like cup-stealers, I can tell you.
VINTNER
Never deny’t, for I know you have it, and I’ll search you.
ROBIN
Search me? Ay, and spare not-hold the cup Dick-come, 15
come, search me, search me.
[vintner searches robin]
VINTNER
Come on sirra, let me search you now.
DICK
Ay, ay, do, do-hold the cup Robin-I fear not your search¬
ing; we scorn to steal your cups, I can tell you.
' [vintner searches dick]
VINTNER
Never outface me for the matter, for sure the cup is between 20
you two.
ROBIN
Nay, there you lie, ’tis beyond us both.
VINTNER
A plague take you, I thought ’twas your knavery to take it
away. Come, give it me again.
ROBIN
Ay much! When, can you tell? Dick, make me a circle, and 25
stand close at my back, and stir not for thy life. Vintner,
you shall have your cup anon-say nothing Dickl O per se,
o; Demogorgon, Belcher and Mephostophilis!

Enter mephostophilis
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
You princely legions of infernal rule,
How am I vexed by these villains’ charms! 30
From Constantinople have they brought me now,
Only for pleasure of these damned slaves.
[Exit vintner]
robin
By lady sir, you have had a shrewd journey of it. Will it

20 outface . . . matter brazen it out with me

22 beyond us both out of our hands; the Clowns have succeeded in
juggling with the cup so that neither holds it
25 Ay . . . tell derisive comments
33 shrewd tiresome
SCENE III] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 55
please you to take a shoulder of mutton to supper, and a
tester in your purse, and' go back again? 35
DICK
Ay, I pray you heartily sir, for we called you but in jest, I
promise you.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
To purge the rashness of this cursed deed,
First, be thou turned to this ugly shape,
For apish deeds transformed to an ape. 40
ROBIN
O brave, an ape! I pray sir, let me have the carrying of him
about to show some tricks.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
And so thou shalt: be thou transformed to a dog, and carry
him upon thy back. Away, be gone!
ROBIN
A dog? That’s excellent: let the maids look well to their 45
porridge-pots, for I’ll into the kitchen presently: come
Dick, come.
Exeunt the two clowns
MEPHOSTOPHILIS \

Now with the flames of ever-burning fire,

I’ll wing myself, and forthwith fly amain
Unto my Faustus, to the great Turk’s court. Exit 50

chorus 2

Enter chorus

CHORUS
When Faustus had with pleasure ta’en the view
Of rarest things and royal courts of kings,
He stayed his course, and so returned home,
Where such as bare his absence but with grief—
I mean his friends and near’st companions— 5
Did gratulate his safety with kind words;
And in their conference of what befell,
Touching his journey through the world and air,
They put forth questions of astrology,
Which Faustus answered with such learned skill, 10
As they admired and wondered at his wit.
Now is his fame spread forth in every land:

35 tester sixpence; a slang term

Chorus 2 Not to be found in B, this Chorus preceded the Clowns’ scene
with the goblet in A
56 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE Lact iv

Amongst the rejt, the Emperor is one,

Carolus the fifth, at whose palace now
Faustus is feasted ’mongst his noblemen. 15
What there he did in-trial of his art,
1 leave untold, your eyes shall see performed.

Act IV, Scene i

Enter martino and Frederick at several doors

MARTINO
What ho, officers, gentlemen,
Hie to the presence to attend the Emperor!
Good Frederick, see the rooms be voided straight,
His Majesty is coming to the hall;
Go back, and see the state in readiness. 5
FREDERICK
But where is Bruno, our elected Pope,
That on a fury’s back came post from Rome?
Will not his grace consort the Emperor?
MARTINO x
O yes, and with him comes the German conjuror,
The learned Faustus, fame of Wittenberg, 10
The wonder of the world for magic art;
And he intends to show great Carolus,
The race of all his stout progenitors;
And bring in presence of his Majesty,
The royal shapes and warlike semblances 15
Of Alexander and his beauteous paramour.
FREDERICK
Where is Benvolio?
MARTINO
Fast asleep I warrant you.
He took his rouse with stoups of Rhenish wine
So kindly yesternight to Bruno’s health, 20
That all this day the sluggard keeps his bed.
FREDERICK
See, see, his window’s ope; we’ll call to him.

14 Carolus Charles V, Emperor 1519-56

2 presence audience chamber
3 voided straight cleared instantly
5 state throne
15 warlike heroic
19 took his rouse had a heavy drinking session; cf. Hamlet, I.iv, 8-10
stoups measures
SCENE I] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 57
MARTINO
What ho, Benvolio! '
Enter benvolio above at a window, in his nightcap;
buttoning
BENVOLIO
What a devil ail you two?
MARTINO
Speak softly sir, lest the devil hear you: 25
For Faustus at the court is late arrived,
And at his heels a thousand furies wait,
To accomplish whatsoever the doctor please.
BENVOLIO
What of this?
MARTINO
Come, leave thy chamber first, and thou shalt see 30
This conjuror perform such rare exploits,
Before the Pope and royal Emperor,
As never yet was seen in Germany.
BENVOLIO
Has not the Pope enough, of conjuring yet?
He was upon the devil’s back late enough; 35
And if he be so far in love with him
I would he would post with him to Rome again.
FREDERICK
Speak, wilt thou come and see this sport?
BENVOLIO
Not I.
MARTINO
Wilt thou stand in thy window, and see it then? 40
BENVOLIO
Ay, and I fall not asleep i’th’meantime.
MARTINO
The Emperor is at hand, who comes to see
What wonders by black spells may compassed be.
BENVOLIO
Well, go you attend the Emperor; I am content for this
once to thrust my head out at a window: for they say, if a 45
man be drunk overnight, the devil cannot hurt him in the
morning: if that be true, I have a charm in my head, shall
control him as well as the conjuror, I warrant you.
[.Exeunt Frederick and martino]

23 s. d. buttoning buttoning up his clothes; the intransitive use of

the verb is rare
58 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [act rv

Act IV, Scene ii

A Sennet. Charles1 the german emperor, bruno,

SAXONY, FAUSTUS, MEPHOSTOPHILIS, FREDERICK, MARTINO,
and. ATTENDANTS
[benvolio remains in the window]

EMPEROR
Wonder of men, renowned magician,
Thrice-learned Faustus, welcome to our court.
This deed of thine, in setting Bruno free
From his and our professed enemy,
Shall add more excellence unto thine art, 5
Than if by powerful necromantic spells,
Thou could’st command the world’s obedience:
For ever be beloved of Carolus.
And if this Bruno thou hast late redeemed,
In peace possess the triple diadem, 10
And sit in Peter’s chair, despite of chance,
Thou shalt be famous through all Italy,
And honoured of the German JEmperor.
FAUSTUS
These gracious words, most royal Carolus,
Shall make poor Faustus to his utmost power, 15
Both love and serve the German Emperor,
And lay his life at holy Bruno’s feet.
For proof whereof, if so your grace be pleased,
The doctor stands prepared, by power of art,
To cast his magic charms, that shall pierce through 20
The ebon gates of ever-burning hell,
And hale the stubborn furies from their caves,
To compass whatsoe’er your grace commands.
BENVOLIO
‘Blood, he speaks terribly; but for all that, I do not greatly
believe him; he looks as like a conjuror as the Pope to a 25
costermonger.
EMPEROR
Then Faustus, as thou late didst promise us,
We would behold that famous conqueror,
Great Alexander, and his paramour,
In their true shapes, and state majestical, 30
That we may wonder at their excellence.

IV.ii. A’s version of this scene is printed in the Appendix (p. 93)
29 paramour Alexander’s wife, Roxana
SCENE n] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 59
FAUSTUS
Your Majesty shall see them presently.
Mephostophilis, away!
And with a solemn noise of trumpets’ sound,
Present before this royal Emperor, 35
Great Alexander and his beauteous paramour.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Faustus I will.
Exit
BENVOLIO
Well master doctor, an your devils come not away quickly,
you shall have me asleep presently: zounds, I could eat
myself for anger, to think I have been such an ass all this 40
while, to stand gaping after the devil’s governor, and can
see nothing.
FAUSTUS
I’ll make you feel something anon, if my art fail me not.
My lord, I must forewarn your Majesty,
That when my spirits present the royal shapes 45
Of Alexander and his paramour,
Your grace demand no questions of the king,
But in dumb silence let them come and go.
EMPEROR
Be it as Faustus please, we are content.
BENVOLIO
Ay, ay, and I am content too: and thou bring Alexander and 50
his paramour before the Emperor, I’ll be Actaeon, and turn
my self to a stag.
FAUSTUS
And I’ll play Diana, and send you the horns presently.
Sennet. Enter at one door the emperor Alexander, at the other
darius : they meet, darius is thrown down, Alexander kills him;
takes off his crown, and offering to go out, his paramour meets
him, he embraceth her, and sets darius’ crown upon her head; and
coming back, both salute the emperor, who leaving his state,
offers to embrace them, which faustus seeing, suddenly stays him.
Then trumpets cease, and music sounds
My gracious lord, you do forget yourself;
These are but shadows, not substantial. 55

44-8 The A Text (see Appendix p. 94) makes it plain that the Emperor is
to be shown spirits in the forms of Alexander and his paramour-hence
the need for silence.
51 Actaeon As punishment for coming upon Diana and her nymphs
bathing, Actaeon was turned into a stag, and his own hounds tore
him to pieces.
60 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT IV

EMPEROR
O pardon me, my thoughts are so ravished
With sight of this renowned emperor,
That in mine arms f would have compassed him.
But Faustus, since I may not speak to them,
To satisfy my longing thoughts at full, 60
Let me this tell thee: I have heard it said,
That this fair lady, whilst she lived on earth,
Had on her neck a little wart or mole;
How may I prove that saying to be true?
FAUSTUS
Your Majesty may boldly go and see. 65
EMPEROR
Faustus I see it plain,
And in this sight thou better pleasest me,
Than if I gained another monarchy.
FAUSTUS
Away, be gone. Exit show
See, see, my gracious lord, what strange beast is yon, that 70
thrusts his head out at window?
EMPEROR
O wondrous sight! See, Duke pf Saxony,
Two spreading horns most strangely fastened
Upon the head of young Benvolio.
SAXONY
What, is he asleep, or dead? 75
FAUSTUS
He sleeps my lord, but dreams not of his horns.
EMPEROR
This sport is excellent: we’ll call and wake him.
What ho, Benvolio!
BENVOLIO
A plague upon you, let me sleep awhile.
EMPEROR
I blame thee not to sleep much, having such a head of thine 80
own.
SAXONY
Look up Benvolio, ’tis the Emperor calls.
BENVOLIO
The Emperor? Where? O zounds my head!
EMPEROR -
Nay, and thy horns hold, ’tis no matter for thy head, for
that’s armed sufficiently. 85
FAUSTUS
Why, how now sir knight? What, hanged by the horns? This
SCENE 11] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 61

is most horrible! Fie, fie, pull in your head for shame, let
not all the world wonder at you.
BENVOLIO
Zounds doctor, is this your villainy?
FAUSTUS
O say not so sir: the doctor has no skill, 90
No art, no cunning, to present these lords,
Or bring before this royal Emperor
The mighty monarch, warlike Alexander.
If Faustus do it, you are straight resolved
In bold Actaeon’s shape to turn a stag. 95
And therefore my lord, so please your Majesty,
I’ll raise a kennel of hounds shall hunt him so,
As all his footmanship shall scarce prevail
To keep his carcase from their bloody fangs.
Ho, Belimote, Argiron, Asterote! 100
BENVOLIO
Hold, hold! Zounds, he’ll raise up a kennel of devils, I
think, anon: good my lord, entreat for me: ’sblood, I am
never able to endure these torments.
EMPEROR
Then good master doctor,
Let me entreat you to remove his horns, 105
He has done penance now sufficiently.
FAUSTUS
My gracious lord, not so much for injury done to me, as
to delight your Majesty with some mirth, hath Faustus
justly requited this injurious knight; which being all I
desire, I am content to remove his horns. Mephostophilis, 110
transform him-and hereafter sir, look you speak well of
scholars.
BENVOLIO
Speak well of ye! ’Sblood, and scholars be such cuckold-
makers to clap horns of honest men’s heads o’ this order,
I’ll ne’er trust smooth faces and small ruffs more. But an I be 115
not revenged for this, would I might be turned to a gaping
oyster, and drink nothing but salt water.
EMPEROR
Come Faustus, while the Emperor lives,
In recompense of this thy high desert,
Thou shalt command the state of Germany, 120
And live beloved of mighty Carolus.
Exeunt omnes
98 footmanship skill in running
115 smooth ... ruffs beardless scholars in academic dress
62 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [act rv

Act IV> Scene iii

Enter benvolio, martimo, Frederick, and soldiers

MARTINO
Nay sweet Benvolio, let us sway thy thoughts
From this attempt against the conjuror.
BENVOLIO
Away, you love me not, to urge me thus.
Shall I let slip so great an injury,
When every servile groom jests at my wrongs, 5
And in their rustic gambols proudly say,
‘Benvolio’s head was graced with horns today’?
O may these eyelids never close again,
Till with my sword I have that conjuror slain.
If you will aid me in this enterprise, 10
Then draw your weapons, and be resolute:
If not, depart: here will Benvolio die,
But Faustus’ death shall quit ihy infamy.
FREDERICK
Nay, we will stay with thee, betide what may,
And kill that doctor if he come this way. 15
BENVOLIO
Then gentle Frederick, hie thee to the grove,
And place our servants and our followers
Close in an ambush there behind the trees.
By this (I know) the conjuror is near,
I saw him kneel and kiss the Emperor’s hand, 20
And take his leave, laden with rich rewards.
Then soldiers boldly fight; if Faustus die,
Take you the wealth, leave us the victory.
FREDERICK
Come soldiers, follow me unto the grove;
Who kills him shall have gold and endless love. 25
Exit FREDERICK with the SOLDIERS
BENVOLIO
My head is lighter than it was by th’horns,

6 proudly insolently
13 But Unless
18 Close Hidden
19 By this By this time
scene m] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 63

But yet my heart’s more ponderous than my head,

And pants until I see that conjuror dead.
MARTINO
Where shall we place ourselves Benvolio?
BENVOLIO
Here will we stay to bide the first assault. 30
O were that damned hell-hound but in place,
Thou soon should’st see me quit my foul disgrace.
Enter Frederick
FREDERICK
Close, close, the conjuror is at hand,
And all alone, comes walking in his gown.
Be ready then, and strike the peasant down. 35
BENVOLIO
Mine be that honour then: now sword strike home,
For horns he gave, I’ll have his head anon.

Enter faustus with the false head

MARTINO
See, see, he comes.
benvolio No words; this blow ends all,
Hell take his soul, his body thus must fall.
[Strikes faustus]
faustus
O! 40
FREDERICK
Groan you master doctor?
BENVOLIO
Break may his heart with groans: dear Frederick see,
Thus will I end his griefs immediately.
[Cuts off his head]
MARTINO
Strike with a willing hand; his head is off.
BENVOLIO
The devil’s dead, the furies now may laugh. 45
FREDERICK
Was this that stern aspect, that awful frown,
Made the grim monarch of infernal spirits,
Tremble and quake at his commanding charms?
MARTINO
Was this that damned head, whose heart conspired
Benvolio’s shame before the Emperor? 50

31 in place on the spot

64 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT TV

BENVOLIO
Ay, that’s the head, and here the body lies,
Justly rewarded for his villainies.
FREDERICK
Come, let’s devise how we may add more shame
To the black scandal of his hated name.
BENVOLIO
First, on his head, in quittance of my wrongs, 55
I’ll nail huge forked horns, and let them hang
Within the window where he yoked me first,
That all the world may see my just revenge.
MARTINO
What use shall we put his beard to?
BENVOLIO
We’ll sell it to a chimney-sweeper; it will wear out 60
ten birchen brooms, I warrant you.
FREDERICK
What shall eyes do?
BENVOLIO
We’ll put out his eyes, and they shall serve for buttons to
his lips, to keep his tongue from catching cold.
MARTINO '
An excellent policy: and now sirs, having divided him, 65
what shall the body do? [faustus stands up\
BENVOLIO
Zounds, the devil’s alive again!
FREDERICK
Give him his head for God’s sake.
FAUSTUS
Nay keep it: Faustus will have heads and hands,
Ay, all your hearts to recompense this deed. 70
Knew you not, traitors, I was limited
For four and twenty years to breathe on earth?
And had you cut my body with your swords,
Or hewed this flesh and bones as small as sand,
Yet in a minute had my spirit returned, 75
And I had breathed a man made free from harm.
But wherefore do I dally my revenge?
Asteroth, Belimoth, Mephostophilis!

■ Enter mephostophilis and other devils

Go, horse these traitors on your fiery backs,

And mount aloft with them as high as heaven, 80

70 Ay, all ed. (I call B)

SCENE III] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 65

Thence pitch them headlong to the lowest hell:

Yet stay, the world shall gee their misery,
And hell shall after plague their treachery.
Go Belimoth, and take this caitiff hence,
And hurl him in some lake of mud and dirt: 85
Take thou this other, drag him through the woods,
Amongst the pricking thorns and sharpest briers,
Whilst with my gentle Mephostophilis,
This traitor flies unto some steepy rock,
That, rolling down, may break the villain’s bones, 90
As he intended to dismember me.
Fly hence, dispatch my charge immediately.
FREDERICK
Pity us gentle Faustus, save our lives.
FAUSTUS
Away!
FREDERICK
He must needs go that the devil drives. 95
Exeunt spirits with the knights

Enter the ambushed soldiers

\

1 SOLDIER
Come sirs, prepare yourselves in readiness,
Make haste to help these noble gentlemen;
I heard them parley with the conjuror.
2 SOLDIER
See where he comes, dispatch, and kill the slave.
FAUSTUS
What’s here? An ambush to betray my life! 100
Then Faustus try thy skill: base peasants stand!
For lo, these trees remove at my command,
And stand as bulwarks ’twixt yourselves and me,
To shield me from your hated treachery:
Yet to encounter this your weak attempt, 105
Behold an army comes incontinent.
faustus strikes the door, and enter a devil playing on a drum,
after him another bearing an ensign: and divers with weapons,
mephostophilis with fireworks; they set upon the soldiers
and drive them out
[Exit faustus]

95 A well known proverb (Tilley, D 278)

106 incontinent without delay
 66 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT IV

Act IV, Scene iv

Enter at several doors4 benvdlio, Frederick, and martino,

their heads and faces bloody, and besmeared with mud and dirt;
all having horns on their heads

MARTINO
What ho, Benvolio!
BENVOLIO
Here, what Frederick, ho!
FREDERICK
O help me gentle friend; where is Martino?
MARTINO
Dear Frederick here,,
Half smothered in a lake of mud and dirt, 5
Through which the furies dragged me by the heels.
FREDERICK
Martino see, Benvolio’s horns again!
MARTINO
O misery! How now, Benvolio?
BENVOLIO
Defend me heaven! Shall I be' haunted still?
MARTINO
Nay, fear not man, we have no power to kill. 10
BENVOLIO
My friends transformed thus! O hellish spite,
Your heads are all set with horns.
FREDERICK You hit it right,
It is your own you mean; feel on your head.
BENVOLIO
Zounds, horns again!
martino Nay, chafe not man, we all are sped.
BENVOLIO
What devil attends this damned magician, 15
That spite of spite, our wrongs are doubled?
FREDERICK
♦ What may we do, that we may hide our shame?
BENVOLIO
If we should follow him to work revenge,
He’d join long asses’ ears to these huge horns,
And make us laughing-stocks to all the world. 20
MARTINO
What shall we do then dear Benvolio?

10 kill This suggests a pun on haunted/hunted in the preceding line

SCENE IVj DOCTOR FAUSTUS 67
BENVOLIO
I have a castle joining hear these woods,
And thither we’ll repair and live obscure,
Till time shall alter these our brutish shapes:
Sith black disgrace hath thus eclipsed our fame, 25
We’ll rather die with grief, than live with shame.
Exeunt omnes

Act IV, Scene v

Enter faustus and the horse-courser

HORSE-COURSER
I beseech your worship accept of these forty dollars.
FAUSTUS
Friend, thou canst not buy so good a horse for so small a
price: I have no great need to sell him, but if thou likest
him for ten dollars more, take him, because I can see thou
hast a good mind to him. 5
HORSE-COURSER
I beseech you sir, accept of this; I am a very poor man, and
have lost very much of late by horse-flesh, and this bargain
will set me up again.
FAUSTUS
Well, I will not stand with thee; give me the money. Now,
sirra, I must tell you, that you may ride him o’er hedge and 10
ditch, and spare him not; but: do you hear, in any case ride
him not into the water.
HORSE-COURSER
How sir, not into the water? Why, will he not drink of all
waters?
FAUSTUS
Yes, he will drink of all waters, but ride him not into the 15

24 Till time shall alter EFB explains that the knights were condemned
to wear the horns for a month
26 ‘It is better to die with honour than live with shame’ (Tilley,
H 576)
IV.v. A’s version of this scene is printed in the Appendix (p. 96)
s.d. Horse-courser Horse-dealer; a reputation for dishonesty has always
attached to such traders
9 stand with thee haggle over it
11 in any case whatever happens
12 not into the water Running water (but not the stagnant water of a
ditch) dissolves a witch’s spell
13-14 drink of all waters go anywhere; ‘I am for all waters’, Twelfth
Night, IV.ii, 57
68 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT IV

water; o’er hedge and ditch, or where thou wilt, but not
into the water. Go bid the,'ostler deliver him unto you, and
remember what I say. <
HORSE-COURSER
I warrant you sir; O joyful day! Now am I a made man for
ever. Exit 20
FAUSTUS
What art thou, Faustus, but a man condemned to die?
Thy fatal time draws to a final end;
Despair doth drive distrust into my thoughts.
Confound these passions with a quiet sleep:
Tush, Christ did call the thief upon the cross; 25
Then rest thee, Faustus, quiet in conceit.
He sits to sleep
v

Enter the horse-courser, wet

HORSE-COURSER
O what a cozening doctor was this! I riding my horse into
the water, thinking some hidden mystery had been in the
horse, I had nothing under me but a little straw, and had
much ado to escape drowning. Well, I’ll go rouse him, and 30
make him give me my forty dollars again. Ho, sirra doctor,
you cozening scab! Maister doctor awake, and rise, and give
me my money again, for your horse is turned to a bottle of
hay. Maister doctor—
He pulls off his leg
Alas, I am undone, what shall I do? I have pulled off his leg! 35
FAUSTUS
O help, help, the villain hath murdered mel
HORSE-COURSER
Murder or not murder, now he has but one leg, I’ll out-run
him, and cast this leg into some ditch or other. [.Exit\
FAUSTUS
Stop him, stop him, stop him!-ha, ha, ha, Faustus hath
his leg again, and the horse-courser a bundle of hay for his 40
forty dollars.

Enter wagner
How now Wagner, what news with thee?

26 in conceit in this thought

27 cozening cheating
32 Maister Here, and in the succeeding comic scenes, the author
attempts to indicate dialectal pronunciation
33 bottle truss
SCENE VI] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 69
WAGNER
If it please you, the Duke of Vanholt doth earnestly en¬
treat your company, and hath sent some of his men to
attend you with provision fit for your journey. 45
FAUSTUS
The Duke of Vanholt’s an honourable gentleman, and one
to whom I must be no niggard of my cunning. Come away.
Exeunt

Act IV, Scene vi

Enter clown [robin], dick,

HORSE-COURSER, and a CARTER

CARTER
Come my masters, I’ll bring you to the best beer in Europe.
What ho hostess! Where be these whores?

Enter hostess
hostess
How now, what lack you? What, my old guests, welcome.
ROBIN
Sirra Dick, dost thou know why I stand so mute?
DICK
No Robin, why is’t? 5
ROBIN
I am eighteenpence on the score; but say nothing, see if she
have forgotten me.
HOSTESS
Who’s this, that stands so solemnly by himself? What, my
old guest!
ROBIN
O hostess, how do you? I hope my score stands still. 10
HOSTESS
Ay, there’s no doubt of that, for methinks you make no
haste to wipe it out.
DICK
Why hostess, I say, fetch us some beer.
HOSTESS
You shall presently. Look up into th’hall there, ho! Exit

2 whores ‘A cup of ale without a wench, why alas, ’tis like an egg
without salt, or a red herring without mustard’. Looking Glass for Lon¬
don, 11,278-80
14 Look ... ho The Hostess calls to her servants
70 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT IV

DICK
Come sirs, what shall we do now till mine hostess comes? IS
CARTER <
Marry sir, I’ll tell you the bravest tale how a conjuror
served me; you know Dobtor Fauster?
HORSE-COURSER
Ay, a plague take him. Here’s some on’s have cause to know
him. Did he conjure thee too?
CARTER
I’ll tell you how he served me. As I was going to Wittenberg 20
t’other day, with a load of hay, he met me, and asked me
what he should give me for as much hay as he could eat.
Now, sir, I, thinking that a little would serve his turn, bade
him take as much as he would for three farthings. So he
presently gave me my money, and fell to eating, and as I am 25
a cursen man, he never left eating, till he had eat up all my
load of hay.
ALL
O monstrous, eat a whole load of hay!
ROBIN
Yes, yes, that may be; for I have heard of one, that h’as eat
a load of logs. ' 30
HORSE-COURSER
Now sirs, you shall hear how villainously he served me: I
went to him yesterday to buy a horse of him, and he would
by no means sell him under forty dollars; so sir, because I
knew him to be such a horse, as would run over hedge and
ditch, and never tire, I gave him his money. So when I had 35
my horse, Doctor Fauster bade me ride him night and day,
and spare him no time; ‘But’, quoth he, ‘in any case ride
him not into the water’. Now sir, I, thinking the horse had
had some quality that he would not have me know of, what
did I but rid him into a great river, and when I came just in 40
the midst, my horse vanished away, and I sat straddling
upon a bottle of hay.
ALL
O brave doctor!
HORSE-COURSER
But you shall hear how bravely I served him for it. I went
me home to his house, and there I found him asleep; I kept 45
a-hallowing and whooping in his ears, but all could not
wake him. I, seeing that, took him by the leg, and never

26 cursen Christian; the dialectal form of christened

29 h’as he has
SCENE VI]
DOCTOR FAUSTUS 71
rested pulling, till I had pulled me his leg quite off, and
now ’tis at home in mine hostry.
ROBIN
And has the doctor but one leg then? That’s excellent, for 50
one of his devils turned me into the likeness of an ape’s face.
CARTER
Some more drink hostess!
ROBIN
Hark you, we’ll into another room and drink awhile, and
then we’ll go seek out the doctor.
Exeunt omnes
f

Act IV, Scene vii

Enter the duke of vanholt, his duchess,

faustus, and mephostophilis
DUKE
Thanks master doctor, for these pleasant sights. Nor know
I how sufficiently to recompense your great deserts in erect¬
ing that enchanted castle in the air; the sight whereof so
delighted me, as nothing in the world could please me more.
faustus
I do think myself, my good lord, highly recompensed in 5
that it pleaseth your grace to think but well of that which
Faustus hath performed. But gracious lady, it may be that
you have taken no pleasure in those sights; therefore I pray
you tell me, what is the thing you most desire to have: be
it in the world, it shall be yours. I have heard that great- 10
bellied women do long for things are rare and dainty.
LADY
True, master doctor, and since I find you so kind, I will
make known unto you what my heart desires to have; and
were it now summer, as it is January, a dead time of the
winter, I would request no better meat, than a dish of ripe 15
grapes.
FAUSTUS
This is but a small matter: go Mephostophilis, away.
Exit MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Madam, I will do more than this for your content.

Enter mephostophilis again with the grapes

IV.vii. A’s version of this scene does not include the intrusion of the
Clowns (32 ff)
72 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [act iv

Here, now taste ye these.; they should be good for they

come from a far country, I can tell you. 20
duke ?
This makes me wonder more than all the rest, that at this
time of the year, when every tree is barren of his fruits,
from whence you had these ripe grapes.
FAUSTUS
Please it your grace, the year is divided into two circles over
the whole world, so that when it is winter with us, in the 25
contrary circle it is likewise summer with them, as in
India, Saba, and such countries that lie far east, where they
have fruit twice a year. From whence, by means of a swift
spirit that I have, I had these grapes brought as you see.
LADY
And trust me, they are the sweetest grapes that e’er I 30
tasted.
The clowns bounce at the gate, within
DUKE
What rude disturbers have we at the gate?
Go pacify their fury, set it ope,
And then demand of them, what they would have.
They knock again, and, call out to talk with faustus
A SERVANT
Why, how now masters? What a coil is there! What is 35
the reason you disturb the Duke?
DICK
We have no reason for it, therefore a fig for him.
SERVANT
Why saucy varlets, dare you be so bold?
HORSE-COURSER
I hope sir, we have wit enough to be more bold than
welcome. 40
SERVANT
It appears so; pray be bold elsewhere, and trouble not the
Duke.
DUKE
What would they have?

24-8 The relevant circles would be the northern and southern hemi¬
spheres, but the author appears to be thinking in terms of east
and west; EFB evades the matter while providing the detail of
the twice-yearly fruit
27 Saba Sheba
31 s.d. bounce beat
35 coil din
37 reason .. .fig Dick makes the not uncommon pun on reason/raisin
SCENE VII] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 73
SERVANT
They all cry out to speak with Doctor Faustus.
CARTER
Ay, and we will speak with him. 45
DUKE
Will you sir? Commit the rascals.
DICK
Commit with us! He were as good commit with his father,
as commit with us.
FAUSTUS
I do beseech your grace let them come in,
They are good subject for a merriment. 50
DUKE
Do as thou wilt Faustus, I give thee leave.
FAUSTUS
I thank your grace.

Enter the clown [robin], dick, carter, and horse-courser

Why, how now my good friends?

’Faith, you are too outrageous, but come near,
I have procured your pardons: welcome all.
robin
Nay sir, we will be welcome for our money, and we will 55
pay for what we take: what ho! Give’s half a dozen of beer
here, and be hanged.
FAUSTUS
Nay, hark you, can you tell me where you are?
CARTER
Ay, marry can I, we are under heaven.
SERVANT
Ay, but sir sauce-box, know you in what place? 60
HORSE-COURSER
Ay, ay, the house is good enough to drink in. Zounds, fill
us some beer, or we’ll break all the barrels in the house, and
dash out all your brains with your bottles.
FAUSTUS
Be not so furious: come, you shall have beer.

46 Commit Take to prison; through frequent collocations such as ‘commit

adultery’ the word came to have the sense of ‘fornicate’, which Dick
assumes in the next line.
55ff The Clowns believe that, as they promised at the end of IV.vi, they
have simply stepped into ‘another room’, whereas it would appear that
Faustus, by his magic spells, has brought them unawares to the court
of Vanholt.
74 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [activ

My lord, beseech you give me leave awhile, 65

I’ll gage my credit, ’twill content your grace.
DUKE
With all my heart,-kind doctor, please thyself:
Our servants, and our court’s at thy command.
FAUSTUS
I humbly thank your grace: then fetch some beer.
HORSE-COURSER
Ay, marry, there spake a doctor indeed, and ’faith I’ll drink 70
a health to thy wooden leg for that word.
FAUSTUS
My wooden leg? What dost thou mean by that?
CARTER
Ha, ha, ha, dost thou hear him Dick? He has forgot his leg.
HORSE-COURSER
Ay, ay, he does not stand much upon that.
FAUSTUS
No ’faith, not much upon a wooden leg. 75
CARTER
Good Lord, that flesh and blood should be so frail with
your worship! Do not you remember a horse-courser you
sold a horse to? '
FAUSTUS
Yes, I remember one I sold a horse.
CARTER
And do you remember you bid he should not ride into the 80
water?
FAUSTUS
Yes, I do very well remember that.
CARTER
And do you remember nothing of your leg?
FAUSTUS
No, in good sooth.
CARTER
Then I pray remember your curtsy. 85
FAUSTUS
I thank you sir. [He bows to the company]

66 gage stake

73 ff The writer plays on the literal and metaphorical (=bow) uses of leg.
In line 74 the Horse-courser says, in effect, that Faustusi does not
stand much upon ceremony.
85 curtsy (curtesie B) One of B’s meanings is lost in modernizing the word
either as ‘courtesy’ or as ‘curtsy’; the latter seems preferable since
it sustains the joke.
SCENE VII] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 75
CARTER
’Tis not so much worth; I pray you tell me one thing.
FAUSTUS
What’s that?
CARTER
Be both your legs bedfellows every night together?
FAUSTUS
Would’st thou make a colossus of me, that thou askest me 90
such questions?
CARTER
No truly sir, I would make nothing of you, but I would fain
know that.

Enter hostess with drink

FAUSTUS
Then I assure thee certainly they are.
CARTER
I thank you, I am fully satisfied. 95
FAUSTUS
But wherefore dost thou ask?
CARTER t
For nothing sir-but methinks you should have a wooden
bedfellow of one of ’em.
HORSE-COURSER
Why, do you hear sir, did not I pull off one of your legs
when you were asleep? 100
FAUSTUS
But I have it again now I am awake: look you here sir.
ALL
O horrible! Had the doctor three legs?
CARTER
Do you remember sir, how you cozened me and eat up my
load of—
faustus charms him dumb
DICK
Do you remember how you made me wear an ape’s— 105
HORSE-COURSER
You whoreson conjuring scab, do you remember how you
cozened me with a ho—

87 ’Tis not so much worth Faustus’ bow is not worth much as an

indication of whether or not he has a wooden leg
90 colossus gigantic statue; the Colossus at Rhodes straddled the
entrance to the harbour; cf. Julius Caesar, I.ii, 135-6
76 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT V

ROBIN
Ha’ you forgotten me? You think to carry it away with your
hey-pass and re-pass: do you remember the dog’s fa—
. Exeunt clowns
HOSTESS s
Who pays for the ale? Hear you maister doctor, now you 110
have sent away my guests, I pray who shall pay me for my
a—
Exit HOSTESS
LADY
My lord,
We are much beholding to this learned man.
DUKE
So are we, madam, which we will recompense 115
With all the love and kindness that we may;
His artful sport drives all sad thoughts away.
Exeunt

Act V, Scene i

Thunder and lightning: Enter,devils with covered dishes:

mephostophilis leads them into faustus’ study. Then
enter wagner

WAGNER
I think my master means to die shortly,
For he hath given to me all his goods;
And yet, methinks, if that death were near,
He would not banquet, and carouse, and swill
Amongst the students, as even now he doth, 5
Who are at supper with such belly-cheer,
As Wagner ne’er beheld in all his life.
See where they come: belike the feast is ended. Exit

109 hey-pass and re-pass abracadabra

1-8 At this point B gives Wagner a prose speech containing the gist of
A’s verse but adding:

He hath made his will, and given me his wealth, his house, his
goods, and store of golden plate; besides two thousand duckets
ready coined.

Most editors conflate the two, but it seems to me that a choice must
be made; A’s version, I think, is preferable, if only because by omitting
mention of the will it avoids repetition at V.ii, 18#.
SCENE I] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 77
Enter faustus, mephostophilis, and two or three scholars
1 SCHOLAR
Master Doctor Faustus, since our conference about fair
ladies, which was the beautifullest in all the world, we have 10
determined with ourselves, that Helen of Greece was the
admirablest lady that ever lived: therefore, master doctor,
if you will do us so much favour, as to let us see that peerless
dame of Greece, we should think ourselves much beholding
unto you. 15
FAUSTUS
Gentlemen,
For that I know your friendship is unfeigned,
And Faustus’ custom is not to deny
The just requests of those that wish him well:
You shall behold that peerless dame of Greece, 20
No otherways for pomp and majesty,
Than when Sir Paris crossed the seas with her,
And brought the spoils to rich Dardania:
Be silent then, for danger is in words.
Music sound: mephostophilis brings in Helen; she
passeth' over the stage
2 SCHOLAR
Too simple is my wit to tell her praise, 25
Whom all the world admires for majesty.
3 SCHOLAR
No marvel though the angry Greeks pursued
With ten years’ war the rape of such a queen,
Whose heavenly beauty passeth all compare.

23 Dardania Troy; in fact the city built by Dardanus on the Helles¬

pont, but the name is often transferred to Troy

13-14 peerless dame of Greece Here both texts anticipate Faustus at 1.20, and
then both add ‘whom all the world admires for majesty’, thereby
anticipating the Second Scholar’s remark at 1.26. Greg, who detects
revision in prompt-book at this point, suggests that the speech was
written as part of this revision and copied by B from A. The revision
must have been very careless. To my mind it seems more likely that
the confusion is due to the A reporter.
24 s.d. passeth over It would appear that the character was instructed to
move from one side of the yard, across the stage, and out at the other
side of the yard, instead of entering by the stage doors (cf. Allardyce
Nicoll, ‘Passing Over the Stage’, Shakespeare Survey, XII (1959),
pp. 47-55).
78 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [actv
*x

1 SCHOLAR
Since we have seen the pride of Nature’s works, 30
And only paragon of excellence,
Let us depart, and for this glorious deed
Happy and blest be Faustus evermore.
FAUSTUS
Gentlemen farewell; the same I wish to you.
Exeunt scholars

Enter an old man

OLD MAN
O gentle Faustus, leave this damned art, 35
This magic, that will charm thy soul to hell,
And quite bereave thee of salvation.
Though thou hast now offended like a man,
Do not persever in it like a devil;
Yet, yet, thou hast an amiable soul, 40
If sin by custom grow not into nature:
Then, Faustus, will repentance come too late,
Then thou art banished from the sight of heaven;
No mortal can express the pains of hell.
It may be this my exhortation' 45
Seems harsh, and all unpleasant; let it not,
For, gentle son, I speak it not in wrath,
Or envy of thee, but in tender love,

35-51 A’s version of the Old Man’s speech is printed in the Appen¬
dix (p. 100)
39 persever Accented on the second syllable
40-41 Your soul is still capable of being loved, so long as sin does
not become habitual and thus part of your nature

25-33 In the B Text the Scholars’ comments are as follows:

2 SCHOLAR
Was this fair Helen, whose admired worth
Made Greece with ten years’ war afflict poor Troy?
3 SCHOLAR
Too simple is my wit to tell her worth,
Whom all the world admires for majesty.
1 SCHOLAR
Now we have seen the pride of Nature’s work
We’ll take our leaves, and for this blessed sight,
Happy and blest be Faustus evermore.

Greg attributes the superiority of A’s version to Marlowe’s having

revised the lines. I doubt this; the multiple repetitions and other
weaknesses sound more like very bad reporting-although I confess I
cannot see how this fits in with any theory about the nature of the
B text.
SCENE I] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 79
And pity of thy future misery;
And so have hope, that this my kind rebuke, 50
Checking thy body, may amend thy soul.
FAUSTUS
Where art thou Faustus, wretch, what hast thou done?
Damned art thou Faustus, damned; despair and die!
mephostophilis gives him a dagger
Hell claims his right, and with a roaring voice
Says ‘Faustus come, thine hour is almost come’, 55
And Faustus now will come to do thee right.
[faustus goes to use the dagger]
OLD MAN
O stay, good Faustus, stay thy desperate steps!
I see an angel hover o’er thy head,
And with a vial full of precious grace,
Offers to pour the same into thy soul; 60
Then call for mercy, and avoid despair.
FAUSTUS
O friend, I feel
Thy words to comfort my distressed soul:
Leave me awhile, to ponder on my sins.
OLD MAN
Faustus I leave thee, but with grief of heart. 65
Fearing the enemy of thy hapless s'oul. Exit
FAUSTUS
Accursed Faustus, where is mercy now?
I do repent, and yet I do despair;
Hell strives with grace for conquest in my breast:
What shall I do to shun the snares of death? 70
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Thou traitor Faustus, I arrest thy soul
For disobedience to my sovereign lord.
Revolt, or I’ll in piecemeal tear thy flesh.
FAUSTUS
I do repent I e’er offended him;
Sweet Mephostophilis, entreat thy lord 75
To pardon my unjust presumption,
And with my blood again I will confirm
The former vow I made to Lucifer.

53 A (not in B)
66 enemy B (ruin A);
hapless B (hopeless A)
67 where is mercy now A (wretch, what hast thou done B)
73 Revolt Turn again to your allegiance
74 B (not in A)
80 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [act v

MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Do it then quickly with unfeigned heart,
Lest greater dangers do attend thy drift. 80
FAUSTUS
Torment, sweet friend, that base and crooked age,
That durst dissuade me from thy Lucifer,
With greatest torment that our hell affords.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
His faith is great, I cannot touch his soul;
But what I may afflict his body with, 85
I will attempt, which is but little worth.
FAUSTUS
One thing, good servant, let me crave of thee,
To glut the longing of my heart’s desire,
That I may have unto my paramour,
That heavenly Helen, which I saw of late, 90
Whose sweet embracings may extinguish clear
Those thoughts that do dissuade me from my vow,
And keep mine oath I made to Lucifer.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
This, or what else my Faustus shall desire,
Shall be performed in twinklihg of an eye. 95
Enter HELEN again, passing over between two CUPIDS

FAUSTUS
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss:
Her lips suck forth my soul, see where it flies 1

79 quickly A (Faustus B)
80 drift drifting; also purpose
81 base and crooked age A (base and aged man B)
91 embracings A (embraces B)
93 mine oath A (my vow B)
97 Ilium Troy

96-104 In these lines Marlowe is repeating his own memorable phrases:

Helen, whose beauty summoned Greece to arms,
And drew a thousand ships to Tenedos.
2 Tamburlaine, II.iv, 87-8
And he’ll make me immortal with a kiss.
Dido, IV.iv, 123
So thou wouldst prove as true as Paris did,
Would, as fair Troy was, Carthage might be sacked,
And I be called a second Helena.
Dido, V.i, 146-8
SCENE I] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 81
Come Helen, come, give me my soul again. 100
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.

Enter old man

I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy shall Wittenberg be sacked;
And I will combat with weak Menelaus, 105
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
O, thou art fairer than the evening’s air,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars: 110
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter,
When he appeared to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa’s azured arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour. 115
Exeunt [faustus and Helen]
OLD MAN
Accursed Faustus, miserable man,
That from thy soul exclud’st the grace of heaven,
And fliest the throne of His tribunal seat!

Enter the devils

Satan begins to sift me with his pride,
As in this furnace God shall try my faith: 120
My faith, vile hell, shall triumph over thee!
Ambitious fiends, see how the heavens smiles
At your repulse, and laughs your state to scorn!
Hence hell, for hence I fly unto my God. Exeunt

102 s.d. This direction, and the Old Man’s final speech (116-24) are
missing from B
111-12 The sight of Jupiter in all his divine splendour was too much for
mortal eyes, and Semele was consumed by the fire of his brightness.
113-14 No myth has been traced linking the sun-god with Arethusa; the
nymph was changed into a fountain, and perhaps Marlowe is referring
to the reflection of the sun in blue waters.
 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT V
82

Act V, Scene ii
Thunder. Enter lucifer, Belzebub, and mephostophilis
LUCIFER
Thus from infernal Dis dQ we ascend
To view the subjects of our monarchy,
Those souls which sin seals the black sons of hell,
’Mong which as chief, Faustus, we come to thee,
Bringing with us lasting damnation, 5
To wait upon thy soul; the time is come
Which makes it forfeit.
mephostophilis And this gloomy night,
Here in this room will wretched Faustus be.
BELZEBUB
And here we’ll stay,
To mark him how he doth demean himself. 10
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
How should he, but in desperate lunacy?
Fond worldling, now his heart-blood dries with grief,
His conscience kills it, and his ^labouring brain,
Begets a world of idle fantasies,
To overreach the devil; but all in vain: 15
His store of pleasures must be sauced with pain.
He and his servant Wagner are at hand,
Both come from drawing Faustus’ latest will.
See where they come.
Enter faustus and wagner
faustus
Say Wagner, thou hast perused my will, 20
How dost thou like it?
Wagner Sir, so wondrous well,
As in all humble duty, I do yield
My life and lasting service for your love.
FAUSTUS
Gramercies Wagner. [Exit wagner]

1 Dis The Underworld; an alternative name for Pluto and extended

to his kingdom

Act V, Scene ii. Textually the most vexed portion of the play. The infernal
conclave (11. 1-23), the interview with Mephostophilis (11.85-96), and
the visions of heaven and hell (11.97-130) are found only in the B Text.
If the first two are indeed Marlowe’s, the play takes on a quite different
nature from that indicated by the first and last soliloquies. See
Introduction, p. xviii.
SCENE II] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 83

Enter the scholars

Welcome gentlemen.
1 SCHOLAR
Now worthy Faustus, methinks your looks are changed. 25
FAUSTUS
Ah, gentlemen!
2 SCHOLAR
What ails Faustus?
FAUSTUS
Ah my sweet chamber-fellow, had I lived with thee, then
had I lived still, but now must die eternally. Look sirs,
comes he not, comes he not? 30
1 SCHOLAR
O my dear Faustus, what imports this fear?
2 SCHOLAR
Is all our pleasure turned to melancholy?
3 SCHOLAR
He is not well with being over-solitary.
2 SCHOLAR
If it be so, we’ll have physicians, and Faustus shall be cured.
3 SCHOLAR
’Tis but a surfeit sir, fear nothing. 35
FAUSTUS
A surfeit of deadly sin, that hath damned both body and
soul.
2 SCHOLAR
Yet Faustus, look up to heaven, and remember God’s mercy
is infinite.
FAUSTUS
But Faustus’ offence can ne’er be pardoned. The serpent 40
that tempted Eve may be saved, but not Faustus. Ah gentle¬
men, hear with patience, and tremble not at my speeches;
though my heart pants and quivers to remember that I
have been a student here these thirty years-O would I had
never seen Wittenberg, never read book-and what wonders 45
I have done, all Germany can witness, yea, all the world -
for which Faustus hath lost both Germany and the world
-yea, heaven itself-heaven, the seat of God, the throne of
the blessed, the kingdom of joy; and must remain in hell

38-39 God's mercy is infinite ed. (God’s mercies are infinite A; mercy is
infinite B) B’s reading, with the addition of A’s God’s (omitted, perhaps,
by the censoring editor) is the more appropriate; Faustus is being
reminded that God’s power of forgiveness is boundless, not that hi3
blessings are without number
84 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE [ACT V

for ever. Hell, ah hell, for -ever! Sweet friends, what shall 50
become of Faustus, being in hell for ever?
2 SCHOLAR
Yet Faustus, call on God.^
FAUSTUS
On God, whom Faustus hath abjured? On God, whom
Faustus hath blasphemed? Ah my God-I would weep,
but the devil draws in my tears. Gush forth blood instead 55
of tears, yea, life and soul. O, he stays my tongue! I would
lift up my hands, but see, they hold ’em, they hold ’em.
ALL
Who Faustus?
FAUSTUS
Why, Lucifer and Mephostophilis: ah gentlemen, I gave
them my soul for my cunning. 60
ALL
God forbid!
FAUSTUS
God forbade it indeed, but Faustus hath done it. For the
vain pleasure of four and twenty years hath Faustus lost
eternal joy and felicity. I writ them a bill with mine own
blood: the date is expired, this is the time, and he will fetch 65
me.
1 SCHOLAR
Why did not Faustus tell us of this before, that divines
might have prayed for thee?
FAUSTUS
Oft have I thought to have done so, but the devil threatened
to tear me in pieces if I named God, to fetch me body and 70
soul if I once gave ear to divinity; and now ’tis too late.
Gentlemen, away: lest you perish with me.
2 SCHOLAR
O what may we do to save Faustus?
FAUSTUS
Talk not of me, but save yourselves and depart.
3 SCHOLAR
God will strengthen me. I will stay with Faustus. 75
1 SCHOLAR
Tempt not God, sweet friend, but let us into the next room,
and there pray for him.

54-5 ‘No not so much as their eyes are able to shed teares (thretten and
torture them as ye please) while first they repent (God not permitting
them to dissemble their obstinacie in so horrible a crime)’. Daemonologie,
p. 81.
SCENE II] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 85
FAUSTUS
Ay, pray for me, pray for me; and what noise soever you
hear, come not unto me, for nothing can rescue me.
2 SCHOLAR
Pray thou, and we will pray, that God may have mercy upon 80
thee.
FAUSTUS
Gentlemen, farewell. If I live till morning, I’ll visit you:
if not, Faustus is gone to hell.
ALL
Faustus, farewell. Exeunt scholars
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Ay Faustus, now thou hast no hope of heaven, 85
Therefore despair, think only upon hell;
For that must be thy mansion, there to dwell.
FAUSTUS
O thou bewitching fiend, ’twas thy temptation,
Hath robbed me of eternal happiness.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
I do confess it Faustus, and rejoice: 90
‘Twas I that, when thou’ wert.i’the way to heaven,
Damned up thy passage; when thou took’st the book,
To view the Scriptures, then I turned the leaves
And led thine eye.
What, weep’st thou? ’Tis too late, despair, farewell: 95
Fools that will laugh on earth, must weep in hell. Exit
Enter the good angel, and the bad angel at several doors

GOOD ANGEL
O Faustus, if thou hadst given ear to me.
Innumerable joys had followed thee.
But thou didst love the world.
bad angel Gave ear to me,
And now must taste hell’s pains perpetually. 100
GOOD ANGEL
O what will all thy riches, pleasures, pomps,
Avail thee now?
bad angel Nothing but vex thee more,
To want in hell, that had on earth such store.
Music while the throne descends
GOOD ANGEL
O thou hast lost celestial happiness,
Pleasures unspeakable, bliss without end. 105
Hadst thou affected sweet divinity,
Hell, or the devil, had had no power on thee.
 ACT V]
86 CHRISTOPHER.MARLOWE

Hadst thou kept on that way, Faustus, behold,

In what resplendent glory thou hadst sat
In yonder throne, like those bright shining saints, HO
And triumphed ovfer hell ^ that hast thou lost,
And now, poor soul, must thy good angel leave thee :
The jaws of hell are open to receive thee.
Exit [the throne ascends]
Hell is discovered
BAD ANGEL
Now Faustus, let thine eyes with horror stare
Into that vast perpetual torture-house. 115
There are the furies tossing damned souls
On burning forks; there bodies boil in lead;
There are live quarters broiling on the coals,
That ne’er can die; this ever-burning chair,
Is for o’er-tortured souls to rest them in; 120
These, that are fed with sops of flaming fire,
Were gluttons, and loved only delicates,
And laughed to see the poor starve at their gates:
But yet all these are nothing: thou shalt see
Ten thousand tortures that more horrid be. 125
FAUSTUS '
O, I have seen enough to torture me.
BAD ANGEL
Nay, thou must feel them, taste the smart of all:
He that loves pleasure, must for pleasure fall.
And so I leave thee Faustus, till anon,
Then wilt thou tumble in confusion. Exit 130
The clock strikes eleven
FAUSTUS
Ah Faustus,
Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damned perpetually.
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come. 135
Fair nature’s eye, rise, rise again and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,

134-7 Cf:Edward II, V.i, 64-8:

Continue ever, thou celestial sun;
Let never silent night possess this clime:
Stand still you watches of the element;
All times and seasons, rest you at a stay,
That Edward may be still fair England’s king.
SCENE n] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 87

That Faustus may repent, and save his soul.

O lente, lente currite noctis equi! 140
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.
O I’ll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down?
See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul, half a drop. Ah my Christ— 145
Rend not my heart for naming of my Christ;
Yet will I call on him: O spare me Lucifer!
Where is it now? ’Tis gone, and see where God
Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows:
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me, 150
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God.
No, no!
Then will I headlong run into the earth:
Earth, gape! O no, it will not harbour me.
You stars that reigned at my nativity, 155
Whose influence hath allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist
Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud,
That when you vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths, 160
So that my soul may but ascend to heaven.
The watch strikes
Ah, half the hour is past; ’twill all be past anon!
O God,

140 Gallop slowly, slowly, you horses of the night

143 my God A (heaven B)
144 A {not in B)
148 it the vision of God; the momentary yielding to terror and the
devil banishes even this remote vision of mercy
148-9 see where . . . brows A (see a threatening arm, an angry brow B)
151 God A (heaven B)

140 The final and most famous irony of the play. The line is from Ovid’s
Amores, I.xiii, 40, where the poet longs for never-ending night in the
arms of his mistress.
150-51 ‘And they shall say to the mountains, Cover us; and to the hills,
Fall on us’, Hosea, x,8 (See also Revelations, vi,16 and Luke, xxiii,3);
Looking Glass for London has the same idea:
Hell gapes for me, heaven will not hold my soule,
You mountaines shroude me from the God of truth . . .
Cover me hills, and shroude me from the Lord. 11.2054-5,9.
155-61 Faustus prays the stars, whose positions at his birth ordained this
fate, to suck him up into a cloud as a fog or mist is drawn up, and then
in a storm expel his body in order that his soul may be saved. Instead of
So that at 1.61 B reads ‘But let’; Greg suggests that the B editor ‘felt
that A’s text smacked too much of a bargain with heaven’.
88 CHRISTOPHER-MARLOWE [actv

If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul,

Yet for Christ’s sake, whose blood hath ransomed me, 165
Impose some end to my incessant pain:
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,
A hundred thousand, and at last be saved.
O, no end is limited to damned souls!
Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul? 170
Or why is this immortal that thou hast?
Ah, Pythagoras’ metempsychosis-were that true,
This soul should fly from me, and I be changed
Unto some brutish beast.
All beasts are happy, for when they die, 175
Their souls are soon dissolved in elements;
But mine must live still to be plagued in hell.
Cursed be the parents that engendered me!
No Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer,
That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven. 180
The clock striketh twelve
It strikes, it strikes! Now body turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.
s Thunder and lightning
O soul, be changed into little water drops,
And fall into the ocean, ne’er be found.
Enter the devils
My God, my God! Look not so fierce on me! 185
Adders, and serpents, let me breathe awhile!
Ugly hell gape not! Come not Lucifer;
I’ll burn my books-ah Mephostophilis! Exeunt with him

Act V, Scene iii

Enter the scholars
1 SCHOLAR
Come gentlemen, let us go visit Faustus,
For such a dreadful night was never seen

163-4 O God... soul A (O, if my soul must suffer for my sin B)

182 quick living
183 little A (small B)
V.iii. This scene is not in the A Text

172 Pythagoras’ metempsychosis The theory of the transmigration of souls,

attributed to Pythagoras, whereby the human soul at the death of the
body took on some other form of life.
188 I’ll burn my books All magicians who renounced their art made a solemn
act of disposing of their books of magic; cf. The Tempest, V.i, 56-7.
SCENE III] DOCTOR FAUSTUS 89

Since first the world’s creation did begin;

Such fearful shrieks, and cries were never heard.
Pray heaven the doctor have escaped the danger. 5
2 SCHOLAR
O help us heaven! See, here are Faustus’ limbs,
All torn asunder by the hand of death.
3 SCHOLAR
The devils whom Faustus served have tom him thus:
For ’twixt the hours of twelve and one, methought
I heard him shriek and call aloud for help: 10
At which self time the house seemed all on fire,
With dreadful horror of these damned fiends.
2 SCHOLAR
Well Gentlemen, though Faustus’ end be such
As every Christian heart laments to think on;
Yet for he was a scholar, once admired 15
For wondrous knowledge in our German schools,
We’ll give his mangled limbs due burial,
And all the students clothed in mourning black,
Shall wait upon his heavy funeral. Exeunt

EPILOGUE

Enter chorus

CHORUS
Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
And burned is Apollo’s laurel bough,
That sometime grew within this learned man.
Faustus is gone: regard his hellish fall,
Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise 5
Only to wonder at unlawful things:
Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits,
To practise more than heavenly power permits.
[Exit]
Terminat hora diem, terminat author opus

FINIS

16 schools universities
19 heavy sorrowful

Terminat . . . opus The hour ends the day, the author ends his work.
The origin is unknown, and it seems likely that the line was appended
to the play by the printer and not by Marlowe.
 APPENDIX

Major variants in the A Text

Act II, Scene iii

\

Enter robin the Ostler with a book in his hand

ROBIN
O this is admirable 1 Here I ha’ stolen one of Doctor Faustus’
conjuring books and, ’faith, I mean to search some circles
for my own use. No,w will I make all the maidens in our
parish dance at my pleasure stark naked before me, and so
by that means I shall see more than e’er I felt or saw yet. 5

Enter Ralph, calling robin

RALPH
Robin, prithee come away. There’s a gentleman tarries to
have his horse, and he would have his things rubbed and
made clean; he keeps such a chafing with my mistress about
it, and she has sent me to look thee out. Prithee come away.
robin
Keep out, keep out, or else you are blown up, you are dis¬ 10
membered, Ralph; keep out, for I am about a roaring piece
of work.
RALPH
Come, what dost thou with that same book? Thou canst not
read.
robin
Yes, my master and mistress shall find that I can read, he 15
for his forehead, she for her private study; she’s born to
bear with me, or else my art fails.
RALPH
Why Robin, what book is that?
robin
What book? Why, the most intolerable book for conjuring
that e’er was invented by any brimstone devil. 20
RALPH
Canst thou conjure with it?

2 circles magicians’ circles; but the sexual overtones are obvious

11 roaring wild and dangerous
19 intolerable Robin probably means incomparable
90
 APPENDIX 91
ROBIN
I can do all these things easily with it: first, I can make thee
drunk with hippocras at any tavern in Europe for nothing
-that’s one of my conjuring works.
RALPH
Our master parson says that’s nothing. 25
ROBIN
True Ralph, and more Ralph, if thou hast any mind to
Nan Spit our kitchen maid, then turn her and wind her
to thy own use, as often as thou wilt, and at midnight.
RALPH
O brave, Robin, shall I have Nan Spit, and to mine own use?
On that condition I’ll feed thy devil with horse-bread as 30
long as he lives, of free cost.
ROBIN
No more, sweet Ralph; let’s go and make clean our boots
which lie foul upon our hands, and then to our conjuring,
in the devil’s name. Exeunt

Act D3, Scene iii

Enter robin and Ralph with a silver goblet

ROBIN
Come Ralph, did not I tell thee we were made for ever by
this Doctor Faustus’ book? Ecce signum, here’s a simple
purchase for horse-keepers; our horses shall eat no hay
as long as this lasts.
RALPH
But Robin, here comes the vintner. 5
ROBIN
Hush, I’ll gull him supernaturally. Drawer, I hope all is
paid. God be with you. Come, Ralph.
VINTNER
Soft, sir, a word with you. I must yet have a goblet paid
from you ere you go.
ROBIN
I, a goblet, Ralph! I, a goblet! I scorn you; and you are 10
but a etc. I, a goblet! Search me.

2 Ecce signum Behold the proof; a catchword fairly frequent among

the Clowns; cf. I Henry IV, Il.iv, 149
simple purchase piece of clear profit
6 gull trick
11 etc. This probably indicated that the Clown was to fill in with any
comic terms of abuse that came to his mind
92 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

VINTNER
I mean so, sir, with your favour. [Searches him]
robin ‘
How say you now? *
VINTNER
I must say somewhat to your fellow. You sir!
RALPH
Me, sir! Me, sir! Search your fill, [vintner searches him] 15
Now sir, you may be ashamed to burden honest men with
a matter of truth.
VINTNER
Well, t’one of you hath this goblet about you.
ROBIN
You lie, drawer, ’tis afore me. Sirra, you, I’ll teach ye to
impeach honest men'. Stand by. I’ll scour you for a goblet. 20
Stand aside, you had best. I charge you in the name of
Belzebub - look to the goblet Ralph.
VINTNER
What mean you sirra?
ROBIN
I’ll tell you what I mean. He reads
Sanctobulorum Periphrasticon nay, I’ll tickle you, vintner - 25
look to the goblet Ralph- Polypragmos,Belseboramsframanto
pacostiphos tostu Mephostophilis etc.
Enter mephostophilis : sets squibs at their backs:
they run about
VINTNER
O nomine Domine, what meanest thou Robin? thou hast no
goblet.
RALPH
Peccatum peccatorum, here’s thy goblet, good Vintner. 30
ROBIN
Misericordia pro nobis, what shall I do? Good devil, forgive
me now, and I’ll never rob thy library more.
Enter to them mephostophilis
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Vanish villains, th’one like an ape, another like a bear, the
third an ass, for doing this enterprise.
Monarch of hell, under whose black survey 35
20 scour-you settle you, polish you off

28-32 The dog-Latin marks the Clowns’ attempts to protect themselves

from the devil; ‘Nominus patrus, I bless me from thee’ Looking Glass
for London, line 1698.
33-49 These lines must constitute an alternative ending to the scene.
 APPENDIX 93
Great potentates do kneel with awful fear,
Upon whose altars thousand souls do lie,
How am I vexed with these villains’ charms!
From Constantinople am I hither come,
Only for pleasure of these damned slaves 40
ROBIN
How, from Constantinople? You have had a great journey.
Will you take sixpence in your purse to pay for your supper
and be gone?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Well, villains, for your presumption, I transform thee into
an ape, and thee into a dog, and so be gone. Exit 45
ROBIN
How, into an ape? That’s brave! I’ll have fine sport with
the boys, I’ll get nuts and apples enow.
RALPH
And I must be a dog.
ROBIN
I’faith, thy head will never be out of the potage pot.
Exeunt

Act IV, Scene ii

Enter emperor, faustus, and a knight with attendants

EMPEROR
Master Doctor Faustus, I have heard strange report of thy
knowledge in the black art, how that none in my empire,
nor in the whole world can compare with thee for the rare
effects of magic. They say thou hast a familiar spirit by
whom thou canst accomplish what thou list. This therefore 5
is my request: that thou let me see some proof of thy skill,
that mine eyes may be witnesses to confirm what mine ears
have heard reported; and here I swear to thee, by the honour
of mine imperial crown, that whatever thou dost, thou shalt
be no ways prejudiced or endamaged. 10
knight
I’faith, he looks much like a conjuror. Aside
FAUSTUS
My gracious sovereign, though I must confess myself far
inferior to the report men have published and nothing
answerable to the honour of your imperial Majesty, yet for

13-14 nothing answerable to in no way worthy of

94 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

that love and duty binds me thereunto, I am content to do 15

whatsoever your majesty shall command me.
EMPEROR
Then Doctor Faustus, mark what I shall say.
As I was sometime solitary set
Within my closet, sundry thoughts arose
About the honour of mine ancestors; 20
How they had won by prowess such exploits,
Got such riches, subdued so many kingdoms,
As we that do succeed, or they that shall
Hereafter possess our throne, shall,
I fear me, never attain to that degree 25
Of high renown and great authority;
Amongst which kings is Alexander the Great,
Chief spectacle of the'world’s pre-eminence,
The bright shining of whose glorious acts
Lightens the world with his reflecting beams; 30
As when I hear but motion made of him,
It grieves my soul I never saw the man.
If, therefore, thou, by cunning of thine art,
Canst raise this man from hollow vaults below,
Where lies entombed this famous conqueror, 35
And bring with him his beauteous paramour,
Both in their right shapes, gesture and attire
They used to wear during their time of life,
Thou shalt both satisfy my just desire,
And give me cause to praise thee whilst I live. 40
FAUSTUS
My gracious lord, I am ready to accomplish your request
so far forth as by art and power of my spirit I am able to
perform.
KNIGHT
I’faith, that’s just nothing at all. Aside
FAUSTUS
But if it like your Grace, it is not in my ability to present 45
before your eyes the true substantial bodies of those two
deceased princes, which long since are consumed to dust.
KNIGHT
Ay, marry master doctor, now there’s a sign of grace in you,
when you will confess the truth. Aside
FAUSTUS
But such spirits as can lively resemble Alexander and his 50

28 pre-eminence pre-eminent men; cf. the two uses of ‘nobility’

31 motion mention
37 gesture maimer
 APPENDIX 95
paramour shall appear before your Grace, in that manner
that they best lived in, in their most flourishing estate; which
I doubt not shall sufficiently content your imperial Majesty.
EMPEROR
Go to, master doctor, let me see them presently.
KNIGHT
Do you hear, master doctor? You bring Alexander and his 55
paramour before the Emperor.
FAUSTUS
How then sir?
KNIGHT
I’faith, that’s as true as Diana turned me to a stag.
FAUSTUS
No sir, but when Actaeon died, he left the horns for you.
Mephostophilis, begone! 60
Exit MEPHOSTOPHILIS
KNIGHT
Nay, and you go to conjuring, I’ll be gone.
Exit KNIGHT
FAUSTUS
I’ll meet with you anon,for interrupting me so-Here they
are, my gracious lord.
Enter mephostophilis with Alexander and his paramour

EMPEROR
Master doctor, I heard this lady, while she lived, had a wart
or mole in her neck. How shall I know whether it be so or no? 65
FAUSTUS
Your Highness may boldly go and see.
EMPEROR
Sure these are no spirits but the true substantial bodies of
those two deceased princes.
Exit ALEXANDER [and paramour]
FAUSTUS
Will’t please your Highness now to send for the knight that
was so pleasant with me here of late? 70
emperor
One of you call him forth.
Enter the knight with a pair of horns on his head
EMPEROR
How now sir knight? Why, I had thought thou hadst been
58 Diana . . . stag (see note on IV.ii, 51)
62 meet with you anon get even with you soon
70 pleasant facetious
96 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

a bachelor, but now I see thou hast wife, that not only gives
thee horns, but makes thee wear them. Feel on thy head.
KNIGHT
Thou damned wretch and execrable dog, 75
Bred in the concave of some monstrous rock!
How dar’st thou thus abuse a gentleman?
Villain, I say, undo what thou hast done.
FAUSTUS
O, not so fast sir, there’s no haste but good. Are you
remembered how you crossed me in my conference with 80
the Emperor? I think I have met with you for it.
EMPEROR
Good master doctor, at my entreaty release him; he hath
done penance sufficient.
FAUSTUS
My gracious lord, not so much for the injury he offered me
here in your presence, as to delight you with some mirth, 85
hath Faustus worthily requited this injurious knight; which
being all I desire, I am content to release him of his horns:
and, sir knight, hereafter speak well of scholars. Mephosto-
philis, transform him straight. Now my good lord, having
done my duty, I humbly take, my leave. 90
EMPEROR
Farewell master doctor; yet ere you go, expect from me a
bounteous reward.
Exit emperor [knight and attendants]

Act IV, Scene v

FAUSTUS
Now, Mephostophilis, the restless course
That time doth run with calm and silent foot,
Shortening my days and thread of vital life,
Calls for the payment of my latest years.
Therefore sweet Mephostophilis, let us 5
Make haste to Wittenberg.
mephostophilis What, will you go
On horseback, or on foot?

76 concave hollow; the same expression is in2 Tamburlaine, II.ii, 89

79 no haste but good Proverb (Tilley, H 199)
84 injury insult
IV.v. At the end of the court scene Faustus and Mephostophilis
apparently remain on stage for the scene that follows
 APPENDIX 97
faustus , , Nay, till I am past
This fair and pleasant green, I’ll walk on foot.

Enter a horse-courser
HORSE-COURSER
I have been all this day seeking one maister Fustian. Mass,
see where he is! God save you, maister doctor. 10
FAUSTUS
What, horse-courser, you are well met.
HORSE-COURSER
Do you hear sir, I have brought you forty dollars for your
horse.
FAUSTUS
I cannot sell him so. If thou likest him for fifty, take him.
HORSE-COURSER
Alas, sir, I have no more. [To mephostophilis] I pray you 15
speak for me.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
I pray you, let him have him; he is an honest fellow and he
has a great charge, neither wife nor child.
FAUSTUS 1
Well, come, give me your money; my boy will deliver him
to you. But I must tell you one thing before you have him; 20
ride him not into the water at any hand.
HORSE-COURSER
Why, sir, will he not drink of all waters?
FAUSTUS
O yes, he will drink of all waters, but ride him not into the
water; ride him over hedge or ditch or where thou wilt, but
not into the water. 25
HORSE-COURSER
Well, sir. Now am I a made man for ever. I’ll not leave my
horse for forty: if he had but the quality of hey-ding-
ding, hey-ding-ding, I’d make a brave living on him; he has
a buttock as slick as an eel. Well, God b’wi’ye, sir, your boy
will deliver him me. But hark ye sir, if my horse be sick, or 30
ill at ease, if I bring his water to you, you’ll tell me what is?

21 at any hand on any account

22 drink of all waters (see note on IV.v, 13-14)
27 for forty for anything; forty is often used to indicate a large and
imprecise number; cf. Coriolanus, Ill.i, 242
27-8 the quality of hey-ding-ding ‘the Horse-courser must mean
something by this. I suspect he means a complete horse, not a
gelding’ (Greg)
98 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

FAUSTUS
Away you villain! What, dost think I am a horse-doctor?
Exit HORSE-COURSER
What art thou, Faustus, but a man condemned to die?
Thy fatal time doth draw to final end;
Despair doth drive distrust unto my thoughts. 35
Confound these passions with a quiet sleep:
Tush, Christ did call the thief upon the cross;
Then rest thee, Faustus, quiet in conceit.
Sleep in his chair
Enter horse-courser all wet, crying
HORSE-COURSER
Alas, alas! Doctor Fustian, quotha? Mass, Doctor Lopus
was never such a doctor. Has given me a purgation, has 40
purged me of forty dollars; I shall never see them more. But
yet, like an ass as I was, I would not be ruled by him, for he
bade me I should ride him into no water. Now I, thinking
my horse had had some rare quality that he would not have
had me known of, I, like a venturous youth, rid him into the 45
deep pond at the town’s end. I was no sooner in the middle
of the pond, but my horse vanished away, and I sat upon a
bottle of hay, never so near drowning in my life. But I’ll
seek out my doctor, and have my forty dollars again, or I’ll
make it the dearest horse. O, yonder is his snipper-snapper. 50
Do you hear? You, hey-pass, where’s your maister?
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Why sir, what would you? You cannot speak with him.
HORSE-COURSER
But I will speak with him.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Why, he’s fast asleep. Come some other time.
HORSE-COURSER
I’ll speak with him now, or I’ll break his glass-windows 55
about his ears.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
I tell thee he has not slept this eight nights.

50 snipper-snapper conceited young fellow

51 hey-pass- mumbo-jumbo
55 glass-windows spectacles

39 Doctor Lopus Dr. Lopez, personal physician to Elizabeth, was executed

in 1594 for his supposed part in a plot to poison the Queen. This is
the most obvious instance of an actor’s interpolation - Marlowe cannot
possibly have known about the Lopez scandal.
 APPENDIX 99
HORSE-COURSER ,
And he have not slept this eight weeks I’ll speak with him,
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
See where he is fast asleep.
HORSE-COURSER
Ay, this is he. God save ye, maister doctor. Maister doctor, 60
maister Doctor Fustian! Forty dollars, forty dollars for a
bottle of hay!
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Why, thou seest he hears thee not.
HORSE-COURSER
So, ho, ho: so, ho, ho.
Holloa in his ear
No, will you not wake? I’ll make you wake ere I go. 65
Pull him by the leg, and pull it away
Alas, I am undone! What shall I do?
FAUSTUS
O my leg, my leg! Help Mephostophilis! Call the officers!
My leg, my leg!
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Come, villain, to the constable.
HORSE-COURSER
O Lord, sir, let me go, and I’ll give you forty dollars more. 70
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Where be they?
HORSE-COURSER
I have none about me. Come to my hostry and I’ll give
them you.
MEPHOSTOPHILIS
Be gone quickly. horse-courser runs away
FAUSTUS
What, is he gone? Farewell he! Faustus has his leg again, 75
and the horse-courser, I take it, a bottle of hay for his
labour. Well, this trick shall cost him forty dollars more.

Enter wagner

How now, Wagner, what’s the news with thee?

WAGNER
Sir, the Duke of Vanholt doth earnestly entreat your
company. 80
FAUSTUS
The Duke of Vanholt! An honourable gentleman to whom

64 So, ho, ho, huntsman’s cry to direct hounds to the hare

100 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

I must be no niggard of my cunning. Come Mephostophilis,

let’s away to him. Exeunt

Act V, Scene i, 35-51

The Old Man’s speech.

OLD MAN
Ah, Doctor Faustus, that I might prevail
To guide thy steps unto the way of life,
By which sweet path thou may’st attain the goal
That shall conduct thee to celestial rest.
Break heart, drop blood, and mingle it with tears,
Tears falling from repentant heaviness
Of thy most vile and loathsome filthiness,
The stench whereof corrupts the inward soul
With such flagitious crimes of heinous sins,
As no commiseration may expel,
But mercy, Faustus, of thy saviour sweet,
Whose blood alone must waph away thy guilt.

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