Doctor Faustus Research Articles

The Devil in the Machine: The Doctor Travels through Time in Chris Bush’s Faustus: That Damned Woman

Chris Bush’s Faustus: That Damned Woman (first performed in 2020) is a feminist and contemporary adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. The magus is a woman who travels through time from the seventeenth century to the far distant future. In the process, Johanna Faustus becomes a brilliant scientist who attempts to create digital immortality by uploading the minds of billions of human beings to the Cloud. When a power failure destroys almost all of humanity, it is uncertain whether the universal outage is caused by Mephistopheles (in accordance with the expectations of Faustian fantasy) or is simply an unforeseen but predictable accident (in accordance with the expectations of technophobic versions of science fiction). I argue that Bush’s play traces the chronological and generic arc from magic/fantasy to science/science fiction, blending the two so that the age-old monster, the Devil, enabled by Faustian arrogance, is reimagined as an avatar for an unreliable technology that destroys what it is designed to preserve.

Marlowe and Company in Barnfield’s Greene’s Funeralls (1594)

The accomplished and daring but minor poet Richard Barnfield (1574-1620) was among the first poets to engage creatively with the works of Greene, Marlowe, and Shakespeare. This article argues that Sonnet 9 in Barnfield’s Greene’s Funeralls (1594) reveals not only his admiration for these literary innovators, but also his difficult manoeuvres on the fringes of the group of poetic rivals. Barnfield’s often-quoted, but not fully understood “sonnet” reflects the young poet’s attempts to accost his more famous contemporaries and also sheds light on the date of composition of Doctor Faustus (B) and the early circulation of Shakespeare’s “sugred sonnets”.

The Conjuring Girdles of King Solomon and Doctor Faustus in Early Modern Material Magic

Abstract The article concerns conjuring girdles in early modern material magic, particularly in Central Europe during the long eighteenth century (c. 1660–c. 1820). Magicians in ritual circles could wear such girdles on the body as belts or sashes to conjure and command angels, spirits, and demons. Emphasis in the article is on anonymous German manuscript books of learned magic dating from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, with pseudepigraphal attributions to King Solomon and Doctor Faustus. These manuscripts explain the design, text, imagery, materials, measurements, production, and applications of conjuring girdles. The article also discusses what is known about their compilers, end-users, and readers during a period marked by hybridizing, variability, and democratization in material magic. The article includes three illustrations in books of learned magic with designs for conjuring girdles (Göttingen, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Ms. Hist. Nat. 80; Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Mag. 6 [no. 51]; Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Mag. 133 [no. 27]); and two conjuring scenes from the legends of Doctor Faustus and his apprentice Christoph Wagner.

Hyperbole as a Strategy of Creating Effects: A Comparative Analysis of Hamlet and Doctor Faustus

Hyperbole as a Strategy of Creating Effects: A Comparative Analysis of Hamlet and Doctor Faustus

‘A Voice Amidst Mine Ears’: Silent Angels on the Early Modern Stage

AbstractUnlike the carts that crawled with angels in the medieval pageant plays, angels of the early modern stage were a rare breed. Eventually they disappeared from the stage altogether; they did not, however, disappear all at once in a puff of celestial smoke. This article reveals a pattern of suppression in the representation of angels on the English stage, ranging from Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus in 1592 until 1645, three years after the closure of the theatres in England. This study examines plays that present angels as characters who contribute to the play's action and denouement; however, by noting plays that include allegorical and decorative angels too, it comprises the most comprehensive survey of angels within plays from the period to date. Angels do not appear in many plays performed at the commercial playhouses of Elizabethan and Jacobean England; but when they do, it becomes clear that early modern playwrights gradually developed more calculated ways of staging these controversial creatures. As stage angels assume more silent roles, but before angels leave the stage entirely, human characters begin to communicate with these celestial figures differently and encounters with angels become a far more intimate experience.

"In this show let me an actor be": Joining in with Doctor Faustus

"In this show let me an actor be": Joining in with Doctor Faustus

Two Doctors as Self-Fashioned Overreachers: Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Only a few themes in English literature may have the same profound symbolic significance such as the pursuit of human potential and the quest to surpass the human capability as employed Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus. Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus presents the perilous exploration of knowledge and power within the context of Renaissance, the era that is brave and fertile in terms of intellectual rebirth while challenging of the long-held truth about individualism. Similarly, Shelley’s Frankenstein reflects the Romantic period’s preoccupation with individualism and the breaking of societal and natural norms centered around an academic’s hubristic struggle to conquer the mysteries of life and death. Both narratives not only stand out more than horror stories, but also turn out to be an exploration of self-identity, morality, societal norms and the inextricable link between science and the notion of the self. Thus, both protagonists, Faustus and Victor Frankenstein, embody their eras’s ethos, with the former reveling in the Renaissance’s celebration of human potential and the latter mirroring the Romantic fascination with the sublime and the transgressive. Taking these perspectives into account, this article delves into how Doctor Faustus and Frankenstein critically engage with their characters’s attempts to transcend social, cultural and scientific barriers through their process of self-fashioning. Both works not only encapsulate the social atmosphere of their respective times but also serve as cautionary tales about the ramifications of overreaching ambition.

Knowledge, Love and Epistemic Uncertainty in Marlowe's Dido, Faustus and Edward II

In Disowning knowledge in Seven Plays of Shakespeare (CUP, 1987), Stanley Cavell insists on works of art being read in « the company of philosophy » - even if, he continues, such company can sometimes be « restive, difficult, occasionally impossible » (Cavell, 2). The book’s main issue is « that of the communication between philosophy and literature ». Cavell’s intuition, he says, is « that the advent of skepticism as manifested in Descartes’s Meditations is already in full existence in Shakespeare ». What is particularly striking about Cavell’s analysis is how the notion of skepticism is ultimately bound up with desire : « the issue posed is no longer, or not alone, as with earlier skepticism, how to conduct oneself best in an uncertain world. Our skepticism is a function of our now illimitable desire » (Cavell, 3). What is true of Shakespeare’s tragedies appears to be even truer of Marlowe’s works. Yet Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta, Edward II, or – even more surprisingly – Doctor Faustus have only too rarely been submitted to a similar epistemic or philosophical probing. With a few notable exceptions, most critical readings and interpretations of Marlowe’s drama tend to engage with politics, religion or identity, thus foregrounding the way the Marlovian protagonist – or the Marlovian text – strives to interact with the cultural and social environment they belong to, while leaving the epistemic question in the background : Patrick Cheney’s Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe (2004) is a case in point, containing as it does many references to politics, sexuality and religion but none to either knowledge or science. This is all the more surprising as (epistemic) desire and knowledge are themes which are just as prominent in Marlowe’s plays as they are in Shakespeare’s. By drawing on Stanley Cavell’s philosophy, this paper will aim at exploring how Marlowe’s plays abound in epistemic « tensions, clashes and oxymora » addressing, or perhaps springing from, the desire/knowledge nexus. It will be my contention that these tensions and clashes can be read as so many sites of a fruitful, if restive, conversation between early modern drama and philosophy – a conversation that seems to further validate the advent of skepticism within early modern philosophy and literature, while also testifying to Marlowe’s philosophical relevance and topicality. Responding to Ruth Lunney's suggestion that more attention should be paid to such a issues as "identity, memory and place in Dido", this essay will also aim at analysing the knowledge / love nexus in light of Cavell’s twofold hypothesis that skepticism amounts to the position that the world is fundamentally unknowable and that love is often presented as one of the possible remedies to uncertainty, in so far as it constitutes what Cavell calls a “return of the world”, that is to say a possible way of acquiring at least a modicum of certainty. In Marlowe’s dramatic universe, however, love often proves to be more of a trompe-l’oeil solution than a real and solid escape out of skepticism, as the absence of certainty can only be resolved by the destruction of the loving subject.

"From god astraye went": William Forrest's Contra-Reformation "Legend of Theophilus"

Abstract: This is a study of William Forrest's "Legend of Theophilus." In the history of devil-compact literature, Theophilus was the ur-Faustus, the preeminent example all across medieval Europe of the foolish man who, for worldly gain, abandoned his soul to the devil. Finished on 27 October 1572, Forrest's version of this tale is a rare example of an English Theophilus legend written in the aftermath of the Reformation rather than in advance of it. This novel context permits Forrest to treat the legend as a critique of Reformation and a defense of Catholic devotion, particularly to the Virgin Mary. Furthermore, as an Elizabethan study in damnation and redemption, Forrest's poem is comparable to Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus , though the two are products of fundamentally different religious milieus. This study ends by reading Forrest's atypical Elizabethan poem alongside Marlowe's more quintessentially Elizabethan play in order to draw out what is most distinctive about both works and the divine economies that animate them.

Cut is the Branch: Faustus's C-Text

This article, which will include some summary and explanation of textual differences between the 1631 and 1663 editions of Doctor Faustus, is primarily concerned with the paratextual differences between the editions, which help inform the play’s resurgence into print, as well as with the financial incentives behind its publication. The 1663 Restoration-era 'C-text,' which was conceived by a theatrical producer for stage production and procured by a stationer for publication, was a politico-religiously neutered version of the text which attempted to better connect with its audience by use of similarly revised paratextual materials; however, these para/textual revisions were not enough to return the play to success, either financially or socially, as the C-text was the last of the seventeenth century Faustus editions, and it has since been largely overlooked in being distinct from the B-text.

Intertextual elements of “The Tragicall History of Doctor Faustus” by Christopher Marlowe

Intertextual elements of “The Tragicall History of Doctor Faustus” by Christopher Marlowe

Methodological observations concerning word rankings and z-score refinements

Abstract This article evaluates word rankings suggested by Ary L. Goldberger, Albert C. Yang, and C. Peng as a means of establishing the authorship of texts in the light of Delta, developed by John Burrows at about the same time. The tests carried out with high ranking function words and results established with the more modern approaches of Rolling Delta, Rolling Classify, and the General Imposters method give clear evidence that word rankings only return crude and unreliable results that cannot keep up with non-traditional modern methods. Even though the stylistic difference between Marlowe and Shakespeare plays could be stated, word rankings failed to recognize Shakespearean stylistics in The Jew of Malta, Edward II, and Doctor Faustus. It was only through the use of z-scores that a wider vocabulary provided a larger degree of differentiation.

Leonora Carrington: Alchemy, the Underworld, and the Goddess

Leonora Carrington’s novels—Down Below, The Hearing Trumpet, and The Stone Door—offer extraordinary revisionings of the myth most central to the modernist movement of the 20th century: that of the nekyia, or descent to the underworld. In her surrealist memoir, Down Below, the descent to the underworld catalyzes the revelation of alchemical configurations of mythical archetypes. This little surrealist classic of 1943 has much in common with late works of modernism produced during the Second World War, such as Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges, Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot, The Death of Virgil by Herman Broch, Joseph and His Brothers and Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry, or Trilogy by H. D. In all of these works, the descent to the underworld leads to the revelation of those archetypal forms of the imagination that give them “shape and significance.” For Carrington, the forms revealed by the psychotic breakdown recorded in the novel are alchemical as well as mythical.

Voracious Desires, Illusions, and Decline Presented in the Elizabethan Chef-D’oeuvre of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus

This research explores the character’s decline in Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus. It tells the story of an intellect entitled Dr. Faustus who, after becoming dissatisfied with every piece of the experience he has accumulated, goes to see the devils to satisfy his ambition of becoming a supreme being. Evaluating the reasons behind his demise is the focus of this research. This research is qualitative in nature. The Baum proposal for this type of study serves as the foundation for the investigation’s methodology used in this analysis. The fall from grace concept is based on Sinclair’s argument that a specific individual or system’s collapse or catastrophe occurs after they have recently achieved happiness or influence. The conclusion reveals that Faustus’s failure to discriminate between the real world and his fantasies, uncontrolled necromantic action, and overwhelming yearning is what ultimately lead to his disaster and condemnation. In the end, it is revealed that while Faustus initially appears to be the unfortunate protagonist of the narrative, he encounters the death he deserves.

Chronotopes of Hell in Two Film Adaptations of Macbeth

Representations of Hell and the journey to and from it in literature and film tend to follow the katabatic scheme, i.e. they present narratives of a descent and return made by a living human being. In the present paper, I discuss another technique: the presentation of Hell on a horizontal plane. I focus on images and structures of evil space in two film adaptations of Macbeth (Welles 1948 and Goold 2010) that both rely on juxtapositions of images of Heaven and Hell, light and dark, confined vs. open spaces, and vertical vs. horizontal crossings. My contention is that, similarly to the existential Hell in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Hell in Macbeth (both in the play-text and in the selected film adaptations) is a state of mind: it is within us. Crossing the threshold on a horizontal plane is different from taking a deliberate downward turn, such as taking an elevator to the basement or wilfully sinking to the level of beasts. A horizontal trespass can materialise almost imperceptibly, “stealthily,” so gradually that one almost does not notice that one has transgressed, as numerous examples from the films will testify. Using horizontal images of Hell in these adaptations is, therefore, a more refined, albeit perhaps less spectacular, means to underline the basic theme of the drama: the gradual process of self-damnation.

Doctor Faustus Redux: Deepfake Technology, Sociological Disruption of True Knowledge, and the Moral Crisis Facing Our Generation

The development of deepfake technology resulted in a new era of societal disruption, which has sparked significant challenges regarding the nature of genuine knowledge and the ethical predicament that our generation is currently confronting. This article explores the ramifications of deepfake in contemporary society and draws its motivation from the well-known novel of Doctor Faustus. Deepfake, also known as artificial intelligence-generated altered media, present a substantial risk to the veracity of information, as well as an opportunity to warp perceptions of reality and erode trust. This article sheds light on the ethical conundrums that result from the manipulation of information by investigating the influence that deepfake has had on a variety of disciplines. The paper highlights the critical need for ethical awareness, legislative frameworks, media literacy, and technology breakthroughs to offset the detrimental consequences of deepfakes. We will only be able to successfully negotiate the treacherous junction of technology, knowledge, and morality if we work together to do so. Then only will we be able to safeguard the veracity of knowledge and preserve the foundations of an equitable and enlightened society.

Musical lives: Portraits of composers in biographical novels

The biographical novel, currently so popular among readers and authors alike, only recently acquired its status as an emerging literary genre: the process of its separation from the historical novel as more broadly conceived can be dated to the second half of the twentieth century. It is also worth remembering that the biography itself, as one of the types of scholarly text belonging to the field of history, only became the subject of more serious theoretical considerations during the first decades of the twentieth century. The biographical novel, combining – in various ways – historical reality with the author’s creativity, affords a unique opportunity to get inside the lives of its protagonists. Relatively few of the most outstanding works in the genre are devoted to composers, but a number of them open up fascinating vistas for study. In my reading of Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus, Julian Barnes’s The Noise of Time, Josef Škvorecký’s Scherzo capriccioso. Veselý sen o Dvořákovi and Jean Echenoz’s Ravel, I endeavour to show how the authors build a credible image of their characters. The present study forms an anacrusis to further reflection.

Christopher Marlowe’s Faustus as a Supreme Archetype of Renaissance Man

The paper assumes that the character of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus represents most of the characteristics of the Renaissance. After a short introduction, the paper starts reviewing some features of the Renaissance which are applicable to the character of Doctor Faustus, just like the revolt against religion and medieval standards; then, the researcher shifts to other essential features of Renaissance which are: spirit of adventure, geographical exploration and colonialism. Later, he continues exploring other properties of the Renaissance man which can be applied to the character of Faustus such as the lust for knowledge, the interest of Classic culture and the appearance of the earlier thoughts of nationalism and individualism.

:Common Understandings, Poetic Confusion: Playhouses and Playgoers in Elizabethan England

:<i>Common Understandings, Poetic Confusion: Playhouses and Playgoers in Elizabethan England</i>

In the Service of Magic

Wagner and Miles, the primary servants in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Robert Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, derive their function and identity from their masters. Since both Faustus and Bacon are magicians, their servants are influenced by contact with magic. Although they are less significant figures than the protagonists, the servants help to determine the outcome of their respective plays. By examining Wagner and Miles as servants of both their masters and of magic itself, we can see how Faustus and Bacon fail as magicians, as masters of magic. In comparing the “good” servant, Wagner, whose master is overcome by magic, to the “bad” servant, Miles, whose master renounces magic, we can arrive at an understanding of true service and its relationship to magic.