“Thou shalt knowen of oure privetee / Moore than a maister of dyvynytee”: Devils and Damnation in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus

Abstract

“Thou shalt knowen of oure privetee / Moore than a maister of dyvynytee”: Devils and Damnation in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus Darragh Greene (bio) Now this Doctor Faustus had somewhat in it that was beyond itself and attached to Kit as it were a nimbus that was more than atheistic, being truly devilish or demonic.—Anthony Burgess, A Dead Man in Deptford1 In Shakespeare and the Medieval World, Helen Cooper makes the case that “the world in which Shakespeare lived was a medieval one,” and “the culture [he] inherited was still grounded in the medieval, however conflicted that culture was becoming.”2 Naturally, the same is true of Shakespeare’s contemporary, Christopher Marlowe. One salient aspect of this culture was the tradition of late-medieval English narrative and poetry, including in particular the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer. While there is no doubt that Shakespeare read Chaucer, it has been less obvious whether Marlowe did. Yet it would be surprising indeed if he did not read the English author considered in his day to be the pre-eminent poet in the language.3 Moreover, it is possible that Marlowe’s mighty line, his mastery of iambic pentameter verse, owes something to the dramatic speeches Chaucer puts into the mouth of the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner, and other loquacious pilgrim characters of The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer’s works were in print throughout the sixteenth century, and the folio edition that Shakespeare likely first read, John Stow’s 1561 revised [End Page 166] version of William Thynne’s The Workes of Geoffrey Chaucer, is equally likely to have been the same one Marlowe would have read, possibly as a schoolboy. Marlowe was enrolled in the King’s School, Canterbury, around Christmas 1578, and his first headmaster was John Gresshop. As Charles Nicholl writes: “An inventory of Gresshop’s library, drawn up on his death in 1580 . . . offers a glimpse of the intellectual world opening up to the cobbler’s son. Among its 350 volumes were editions of Ovid, Petrarch, Chaucer, and Boccaccio.”4 Chaucer’s enduring fascination with Ovid’s poetry as well as his persistent return to the tragedy of Dido seem to have resonated with Marlowe, who was also interested in these works, having translated Ovid’s Amores and written Dido, Queene of Carthage during his student years at Cambridge. Indeed, a recent article by Loren Cressler makes a detailed case for Marlowe’s knowledge of Chaucer by exploring the late-medieval English vernacular tradition as a probable source for his first play; he argues that Dido, Queene of Carthage “structurally” quotes Chaucer’s sympathetic treatment of Dido—at the expense of Aeneas’s reputation—as presented in both The House of Fame and The Legend of Good Women.5 This raises the question as to what else in Chaucer’s oeuvre might have caught Marlowe’s attention. This article will demonstrate that Chaucer’s treatment of devils, damnation, and hell in The Canterbury Tales resonates in Doctor Faustus. Based on a medieval folktale, Doctor Faustus in some regards harkens back to the morality plays of the late Middle Ages. However, Marlowe’s representation of the devil Mephistopheles bears little resemblance to the devils of medieval drama; as Douglas Cole points out, Mephistopheles “has a seriousness and intensity which is unparalleled in any previous theatrical representation of the diabolic, and unmatched in the Faust-Book as well.”6 Yet, if one looks at English literary history beyond the domain of drama, such seriousness and intensity can be found in Chaucer’s representation of the yeoman-devil of The Friar’s Tale. This Chaucerian devil’s manner is friendly, yet just like Mephistopheles, he is an exploiter of words who takes a special interest in the force and binding implications of illocutionary acts—that is, speech that performs an action—for promises and curses. In addition, David Lawton has noted that Faustus’s resolute questioning of Mephistopheles resembles that of Chaucer’s fictive summoner, who insistently questions the devil in The Friar’s Tale.7 In both cases, heedless curiosity leads to perdition. [End Page 167] Aside from matters infernal, there are other possible echoes...