is faced with having to present Edward as deeply unsympathetic in the first half of the play, yet somehow has to gain our sympathy in the second, again without showing how he progresses from one to the other. Also, even today, some audiences seem to find it hard to take the overt exchanges of passion between Edward and Gaveston.
Dr. Faustus
, however, was a different matter altogether. The legend of Faust was an old one but a new translation of
The Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Dr. Faustus
was published in 1592 and it immediately grabbed Marlowe’s imagination. Marlowe, amoral, intellectually brilliant, fascinated by the ‘new learning’, driven by demons of his own and loving to shock, had found the perfect theme. The boast he gives to Faustus that ‘this word damnation terrifies not me’ might have applied just as well to the character’s creator. The concept that man will do literally anything, including selling his own soul for power and forbidden knowledge, remains as potent as ever even in an age when there is no longer any widespread belief in Heaven and Hell. People who have never seen or read the play still know the meaning of the term ‘Faustian bargain’.
Audiences were thrilled to the core. Here was the overreacher to end them all, a man prepared to sell his soul to Satan through his messenger, Mephistopheles, and sign the bargain in his own blood. Already they knew how it would end, of course – the excitement was in the anticipation. ‘How comes it then that thou art out of hell?’, enquires Faustus, to which his tempter responds, ‘Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it’. It was obvious where Faustus was bound. So as well as following Faustus’s progress to damnation and seeing him try out his supernatural powers, not least ordering up Helen of Troy as a tasty dish, the drama enabled the theatre to show off its most spectacular special effects. Turning to Henslowe once again, we know that the Rose Theatre boasted a huge ‘Hell Mouth’, and that at the end of the play Faustus was dragged down to Hell by a host of howling demons, most likely in a cloud of red smoke and to the rattle of thunder sheets.
Because of its subject matter, not to mention what soon befell its author,
Dr. Faustus
acquired something of the reputation that still attaches to
Macbeth
today. So awful was the scale of Faustus’s sin that we are told that when Alleyn played the role he always wore a cross around his neck and a surplice under his costume, just in case. There are also tales of performances during which audiences were convinced that they had seen ‘the visible appearance of the Devil on the stage’. A widely recorded account from Exeter states that:
certain players acting upon the stage the tragical story of Dr. Faustus the Conjuror, as a certain number of devils kept everyone his circle there, and as Faustus was busy in his magical invocations, on a sudden they were all dashed, everyone harkening the other in the ear, for they were all persuaded that there was one devil too many among them. And so after a little pause desired the people to pardon them, they could go no further in this matter: the people also understanding the thing as it was, every man hastened to be first out of the doors. The players, as I heard it, contrary to their custom of spending the night in reading and in prayer, got them out of town the next morning. 1
Meanwhile Shakespeare was rapidly becoming established as a popular dramatist. Here too there is tremendous disagreement among the experts as to what was written when but almost certainly
Titus Andronicus, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew
and
Richard III
were written and performed between the years 1589 and 1594. Indeed opinion is divided into two camps over
Comedy of Errors
, one putting its first performance some time in 1589, the other in 1594. There is no doubt that the play was in Burbage’s repertoire by 1594 because of a somewhat
Dr. Faustus
, however, was a different matter altogether. The legend of Faust was an old one but a new translation of
The Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Dr. Faustus
was published in 1592 and it immediately grabbed Marlowe’s imagination. Marlowe, amoral, intellectually brilliant, fascinated by the ‘new learning’, driven by demons of his own and loving to shock, had found the perfect theme. The boast he gives to Faustus that ‘this word damnation terrifies not me’ might have applied just as well to the character’s creator. The concept that man will do literally anything, including selling his own soul for power and forbidden knowledge, remains as potent as ever even in an age when there is no longer any widespread belief in Heaven and Hell. People who have never seen or read the play still know the meaning of the term ‘Faustian bargain’.
Audiences were thrilled to the core. Here was the overreacher to end them all, a man prepared to sell his soul to Satan through his messenger, Mephistopheles, and sign the bargain in his own blood. Already they knew how it would end, of course – the excitement was in the anticipation. ‘How comes it then that thou art out of hell?’, enquires Faustus, to which his tempter responds, ‘Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it’. It was obvious where Faustus was bound. So as well as following Faustus’s progress to damnation and seeing him try out his supernatural powers, not least ordering up Helen of Troy as a tasty dish, the drama enabled the theatre to show off its most spectacular special effects. Turning to Henslowe once again, we know that the Rose Theatre boasted a huge ‘Hell Mouth’, and that at the end of the play Faustus was dragged down to Hell by a host of howling demons, most likely in a cloud of red smoke and to the rattle of thunder sheets.
Because of its subject matter, not to mention what soon befell its author,
Dr. Faustus
acquired something of the reputation that still attaches to
Macbeth
today. So awful was the scale of Faustus’s sin that we are told that when Alleyn played the role he always wore a cross around his neck and a surplice under his costume, just in case. There are also tales of performances during which audiences were convinced that they had seen ‘the visible appearance of the Devil on the stage’. A widely recorded account from Exeter states that:
certain players acting upon the stage the tragical story of Dr. Faustus the Conjuror, as a certain number of devils kept everyone his circle there, and as Faustus was busy in his magical invocations, on a sudden they were all dashed, everyone harkening the other in the ear, for they were all persuaded that there was one devil too many among them. And so after a little pause desired the people to pardon them, they could go no further in this matter: the people also understanding the thing as it was, every man hastened to be first out of the doors. The players, as I heard it, contrary to their custom of spending the night in reading and in prayer, got them out of town the next morning. 1
Meanwhile Shakespeare was rapidly becoming established as a popular dramatist. Here too there is tremendous disagreement among the experts as to what was written when but almost certainly
Titus Andronicus, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew
and
Richard III
were written and performed between the years 1589 and 1594. Indeed opinion is divided into two camps over
Comedy of Errors
, one putting its first performance some time in 1589, the other in 1594. There is no doubt that the play was in Burbage’s repertoire by 1594 because of a somewhat
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