Dr Faustus Research Articles

The Tragedy of Dr Faustus in Modern Times —An Attempt to Interpret the Characters in The Chaser from the Perspective of Intertextuality

The Tragedy of Dr Faustus in Modern Times —An Attempt to Interpret the Characters in The Chaser from the Perspective of Intertextuality

The Devil's Promise to Doctor Faustus

In this research (Devil promises only ink on paper ) we will discuss the promises of the devil for the human and it's actually the promises will be just ink on paper . there are attempts from the devil to fall down the human in sins . the result of these attempts and promises in fact just illusion, nothing real in the hand and it will be big lose in life and damn in the life after the death. the goal of Dr Faustus was want to be supernatural, but he failed , because the supernatural human was still far from the current existence, also the nature of human being on refused the absolute ability.

Goethe’s “Welt” poet in Bengal: The Influence of World Literature on Jibanananda Das and other Bengali Poets of the 1930s-40s

This study aims to establish a link between the concept of “Weltliteratur” or World Literature, in terms of the free movement of literary themes and ideas between nations in original form or translation, and the Bengali poets of the thirties and forties who actively translated French and German poets. It identifies Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's (1749-1832) concept of World Literature as a vehicle for the Kallol Jug poets. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe introduced the concept of “Weltliteratur” in a few of his essays in the first half of the nineteenth century to describe the international circulation and reception of literary works in Europe, including works of non-Western origin. My emphasis will be on Jibanananda Das (1899-1954) arguably the most celebrated poet in Bengali literature who was well versed in the contemporary Western Canons of Poetry. Jibanananda’s defamiliarization of the rural Bengal Landscape, his use of exotic foreign images owe a debt to contemporary European poets. Interestingly, Jibanananda had reviewed an English translation of German author Thomas Mann’s novel “Dr Faustus’ for a Bengali magazine “Chaturanga”. In the Bengali review he states that despite prevalent misconceptions (some critics considering the novel to be superior to the original Faust epic by Goethe) Goethe’s Faust was the first text to capture the hope, despair and crisis in the modern world and articulate it in such a manner that “true” literature of the age was created in its new light. In Jibanananda’s estimation, Thomas Mann deserves credit for treating the Faust legend in a unique and creative way.

The feasting table as the gateway to hell on the early modern stage and page

AbstractWhen banquets are performed on the early modern stage, devils can be seen beside the eaters. This is notably the case when grace has not been said properly before the meal. This article focuses on a group of four texts: Thomas Dekker's If This Be Not a Good Play, The Devil Is In It (1611), Thomas Heywood and Richard Brome's The Late Lancashire Witches (1634), William Winstanley's The Essex Champion (1690?), and Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus (c.1592). These texts contain particularly striking examples of an early modern anxiety about the importance of saying grace and eating piously rather than greedily for maintaining hierarchies within the state and the household. They also show the ways in which debates about the Eucharist underlie, and can be mapped on to, representations of saying grace. The article demonstrates that the theatre makes visible early modern concerns about souls imperilled and household hierarchies destabilised by improper eating practices.

Text Analysis of Role of Satan in 'The Tragical History of Life and Death of Dr Faustus' by Christopher Marlow and Muslims’ Perception of Satan in Pakistani Society

The paper analyzes the role of Satan in the play ‘The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus” by Christopher Marlow. Moreover, it is designed to investigate Muslims’ perception of Satan and his chief characteristics like pride, confidence, anger, lying, temptation and disobedience to God portrayed in the text. The purpose of this study is to focus on the role and characteristics of Satan portrayed in the play through text analysis and to analyze up to what extent this role is similar to the perception of Satan by Muslim participants in Pakistani society. The study was designed on quantitative as well as qualitative method. The analysis of qualitative content formed a base for the questionnaire which was formulated and conducted without referring to the story, to gain maximum objectivity. The results of the qualitative analysis pointed out that the Satan’s role principally is to mislead and tempt humankind to do evil and sin with pride and lying as his chief characteristics. The analysis of the questionnaire further confirmed that the majority of participants consider pride, disobedience to God as satanic characteristics and that Satan’s main role is to lure human beings to commit sins. The paper concludes that the participants’ views about the role of Satan in Muslim Society are somewhat compatible with Satan’s role in “The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus.”

Disknowledge: Literature, Alchemy, and the End of Humanism in Renaissance England by Eggert, Katherine

Reviewed by: Disknowledge: Literature, Alchemy, and the End of Humanism in Renaissance England by Eggert, Katherine Carole M. Cusack Eggert, Katherine, Disknowledge: Literature, Alchemy, and the End of Humanism in Renaissance England, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015; cloth; pp. 368; 11 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US$55.00, £36.00; ISBN 9780812247510. Katherine Eggert’s book is a contribution to the study of how at particular times and under certain conditions humans have consciously chosen to not know what they know, or to avow that which they know is not so. Her term ‘disknowledge’ refers ‘the conscious and deliberate setting aside of one compelling mode of understanding the world — one discipline, one theory — in favour of another’ (p. 3). Phrased this way, it appears innocuous enough, but the argument of the book is that the promise of Renaissance Humanism rapidly disappeared and during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the language, strategies, and imagery of alchemy, a discredited and discreditable ‘occult science’, was increasingly used to signal the failure of Humanism in the absence of a better, subsequent system. Eggert claims the humanistic ideal that classical learning could be integrated into ‘a Christian knowledge base’ (p. 15) is the second of a three-pronged view of Humanism that also espouses mastery of the Ciceronian rhetorical style, and the commitment to self-betterment and the betterment of society. She notes the anti-humanist sentiments of many humanist-trained figures, such as Luther and Macchiavelli. The next intellectual framework, Baconian empirical science, does not emerge immediately, and Eggert argues that the rhetoric of alchemy fills the gap between Humanism and the rise of Enlightenment science. This is a large claim, and the book is only a partial success. Three case studies and three associated methods of disknowledge are investigated to demonstrate how alchemical rhetoric facilitated the deliberate business of not knowing. First, the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation (which exemplifies forgetting); then Christian readings of Kabbalah (which shows skimming); and last gynaecology (which exemplifies avoiding). The primary method of Eggert’s investigation is literary criticism: in Chapter 2, ‘How to Forget Transubstantiation’, she analyses the poetry of John Donne, concluding that for Donne alchemy is ‘an all-purpose disknowledge system […]. Handy for forgetting about the disputes that were at the heart of the Reformation […] it is also handy for not allowing the new science to challenge cherished humanist presuppositions, however erroneous they may be’ (p. 91). The oeuvre of George Herbert, similarly, wrestles with contemporary matter theory. Whereas Donne is fascinated by ‘exceptional matter’, Herbert’s focus is ‘the ordinary things of this world’ (p. 101). Chapter 3, ‘How to Skim Kabbalah’, traces how Christian writers used alchemy with ‘other esoteric disciplines to rewrite Kabbalah as having been Christian all along’ (p. 115). Figures including Martin Luther, Pico della Mirandola, John Dee, Johann Reuchlin, Cornelius Agrippa, and others [End Page 169] ‘skimmed’ Kabbalah (taking the useful things and discarding everything else). The literary reflections of this practice that Eggert considers include Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest as a Jewish figure, more specifically, a golem, and Christopher Marlowe’s Dr Faustus. Chapter 4, ‘How to Avoid Gynecology’, examines how sexual reproduction became entangled with alchemy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This led to the notion that the ultimate achievement of alchemy ‘was the creation of the homunculus; a true human, perhaps one that even resembled its maker and was infused with a soul […] grown from heated male semen alone’ (p. 167). Eggert focuses on anatomy books to argue that the reality of female reproductive organs was systematically avoided. This contention is then traced in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost. Chapter 5, ‘How to Make Fiction’, argues that as alchemy became separated from Humanism and is linked to fiction, ‘both fiction and alchemy garner, quite paradoxically, more legitimacy and more unqualified endorsement, losing their shared reputation for simply being a bad idea’ (p. 208). The proof texts here are Hamlet, Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist, and Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World. For humanists, literature could change the world; Eggert asserts that Jonson posits literature as a sort of parallel universe alongside...

The Evolution and Popularity of Science Play with Specific Reference to Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, Brecht’s Galileo and Frayn’s Copenhagen

This paper traces theatrically and statistically the evolution and popularity of science play from 1604, the publication of Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, to 2005 revealing reasons behind this popularity in particular within the last few decades. It also presents a brief classification of playwrights employed science in their works, and does analysis for major works that contributed much not only in the development and popularity of science drama, but also in the drastic change they have brought to this genre. Actually, from Marlowe to now, scientists and science have held a fascination for writers and audience on equal terms. In our genetic, atomic and tech-savvy climate, drama contains science of any kind will head directly to spotlight. The pivotal year of 1998, when Copenhagen was first premiered, has led to unprecedented wave of science plays. Science has become the vogue and science play has gone beyond using science as a sort of ornament to integrate it into the fabric of drama. Everything from Newton's Principia to Greene's books on String Theory has passed across the stage. Consequently, this wave of science plays has not only softened the earth for a permanent shift in our perception of science as a fundamental part of our culture and a legitimate and compelling subject for theatre, but also has brought the vision of ‘‘a third culture’’ into reality.

Review of Marlowe's Dr Faustus (directed by Charlotte Conquest for Creation Theatre), Blackwell's Bookshop, Oxford, 12 March 2011

As that famous woodcut for the 1616 edition of Dr Faustus realized, the book is at the heart of this play. Its discussion of damnation is repeatedly materialised in books, as a trapped Faustus ackn...

A Sound Magician is a Mighty God''- Marlowe's Dr Faustus in Perspective

The spirit of humanism prevalent during Renaissance caused human beings, with their potential and limitation, to become the centre of interest. Marlowe as a major playwright of the age is not an exception to this. Most of his protagonists very powerfully reflect the spirit of the Renaissance and Machiavellian ideals. Dr Faustus, the hero of the play with the same title is torn between his over ambition and limitation as an ordinary mortal being during the course of the play. An eternal damnation is certain on the part of the tragic protagonist for human existence is nothing but a constant interplay between ‘glorification’ and ‘nullification’ of mankind.

Christopher Marlowe the craftsman: lives, stage and page

Contents: Introduction: Christopher Marlowe the craftsman: lives, stage, and page, Sarah K. Scott and M.L. Stapleton Part I Lives: Scholarship and Biography: Marlowe scholarship and criticism: the current scene, Robert A. Logan Marlowe thinking globally, Richard F. Hardin Reviewing what we think we know about Christopher Marlowe, again, J.A. Downie Was Marlowe a violent man?, Rosalind Barber. Part II Stage: Theater, Dramaturgy: Edward II and residual allegory, Alan C. Dessen What Shakespeare did to Marlowe in private: Dido, Faustus and Bottom, Meredith Skura The Jew of Malta and the development of city comedy: 'the mean passage of a history', Sarah K. Scott Speaking to the audience: direct address in the plays of Marlowe and his contemporaries, Ruth Lunney. Part III Pages: Texts and Interpretations: Marlowe the Ovidian: On the eventfulness of Hero and Leander, Stephen Booth Marlowe's first Ovid: Certaine of Ovids Elegies, M.L. Stapleton Marlowe and Marston's Cursus, Robert Darcy Marlowe's last poem: elegiac aesthetics and the epitaph on Sir Roger Manwood, Dympna Callaghan. Marlowe's Reach: Hell is Discovered: the Roman destination of Dr Faustus, Brett Foster Consuming sorrow: conversion and consumption in Tamburlaine: Part One, Carolyn Scott Fractional Faustus: Edward Alleyn's part in the printing of the A-text, Paul Menzer Bibliography Index.

Climate change, nutrient pollution and the bargain of Dr Faustus

Summary1. The legend of Dr Faustus crops up repeatedly in European literature, drama and music, suggesting that it has profound meaning. In our relationship with the biosphere we have perhaps made a Faustian bargain. In return for unrestrained use of the Earth’s resources, we may have mortgaged a long‐term future. Currently we are hoping to renegotiate the bargain, but there is detail in the small‐print‐clauses about climate change, destruction of ecosystems and consequent release of nutrients to waterways that we have ignored. Natural biomes determine that the biosphere is maintained in a state favourable to our particular biochemistry. Part of the mechanism is regulation of atmospheric gas composition through storage of carbon as biological deposits.2. Shallow lakes and wetlands, and the tundras and forests of wet soil, store carbon at a much greater rate than the global ocean. The influence, on shallow lake systems, of warming coupled with degrees of eutrophication has been studied in replicated experimental ponds. The first experiment used modest nutrient addition and a 3 °C rise in temperature. Such warming led to some increase in phosphorus availability, takeover by an introduced warm‐water species, Lagarosiphon major of the submerged plant community, and an increase in the frequency of severe deoxygenation, with occasional fish kills.3. The second experiment used a rise of 4 °C against a similar ambient background to that of the first experiment, but a nutrient environment much closer to that of lowland eutrophicated waters. Especially with moderate nitrogen loading, floating duckweeds became very abundant, though submerged plants persisted. Oxygen concentrations fell markedly. Final fish biomass fell by 60% on warming and 80% at the highest nutrient loading used, but the combination of warming and even modest nutrients brought oxygen frequently to zero overnight and killed all the fish. Because the fish used (Gasterosteus aculeatus) were extremely resilient, there are severe implications for many other European fish species.4. Analysis of oxygen curves allowed calculation of metabolic parameters of the tank systems. Both warming and nutrient addition substantially increased community respiration compared with photosynthesis. Extrapolation suggests that if this phenomenon is widespread, an increase of about 1.8 Gt over the 1990’s net annual atmospheric accumulation rate of 3.2 Gt might result. Since the IPCC models of future climate change do not include such biological feedbacks, they may thus seriously underestimate the future rise in temperature and its consequences.5. Thematic implications: we do not know if our Faustian bargain can be renegotiated; our political and social institutions are poorly equipped in knowledge and barely accept the importance of biosphere processes, and our scientific establishment is reductionist and conforms to the values of the rest of society. Current approaches to mitigation of climate change attend only to carbon release from human institutions, with little or no reference to natural systems. The future is exceptionally uncertain.

Helen of Troy: from Homer to Hollywood

List of Illustrations Preface Source Acknowledgments Conventions Introduction: Ab ovo Beginnings Stories and Contexts 1. Narrating Myth Whose Story? Absence Fragments and Narrative Closure The Textual Shudder Myth and Repetition Origins Myth and Meaning Causes (En)Closure 2. Beauty Excess and Deficiency Narrating the Absolute Staging the Absolute Detailing Helen The Beauty Effect Helen's Breasts Androgyny Helen's Scar Relativizng the Absolute Helen and Old Age Beauty: Subjectivity and Objectivity Beauty and Nostalgia 3. Abducting Helen Missing Moments Homer, the Iliad Herodotus, the Histories Chaucer and Narrative Gaps Helen and Cressida The Law's Resolution of Women's Rights (1632) Statute Change in 1597 The Rape of Lucrece (1594) Helen (of Troy) Rape as Revenge 4. Blame Accounts Casting Blame: Helen, Paris, and the Gods Sidestepping Blame: Sympathy in the Iliad Competing Narratives: the Odyssey Twisting Eulogy/And Censure Both Together Voicing Helen: Euripides Helen Among the Sophists Agency (1): Joseph of Exeter Agency (2): Middle English Troy Books George Peele, The Tale of Troy (1589) Deifying Helen: John Ogle, The Lamentation of Troy (1594) Mimetic Desire, the Scapegoat, and Blasphemy Naming and Shaming 5. Helen and the Faust Tradition Form and Appearance in the English Faust Book Helen in the English Faust Book Dr Faustus and Language Dr Faustus and Boundaries Goethe (1749-1832) Goethe and Representation Goethe and the Beauty of Language The Face that Launched a Thousand Ships Jo Clifford (1950- ) Clifford's Helen and Gender Politics 6. Parodying Helen Comedy The Novel Caribbean Helen: Derek Walcott, Omeros (1990) Notes References Index

Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire

One can hardly envy the temptations confronting an alchemist in the early modern Holy Roman Empire. As Tara Nummedal shows in her fascinating Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire, practitioners of the art hoped to use their knowledge to generate precious minerals and gain spectacular wealth. Chasing such ambitions carried considerable risk. The proclaimed ability to elicit valuable metals from baser materials rendered the alchemist suspect in the eyes of his (or her) contemporaries. But the danger was not, as Nummedal reveals, a public perception that only diabolic intervention could transform valueless dross into gold and silver. Rather, the princes who patronized alchemists gambled their own resources and credit on the projects, and the practitioner's failure to meet expectations could precipitate earthly punishments hardly less gruesome than that which met Dr Faustus.

`If Adorno isn't the Devil, it's because he's a Jew'

In this article, I explore the relationship between the philosophy of Theodor Adorno and the Bilderverbot, or biblical Second Commandment against images. My starting point is J. F. Lyotard's construction of the melancholic sublime in his essay `What is the Postmodern?', which I argue he uses to critique Adorno's aesthetics, and, more generally, his position as a `modern' thinker. To prove that Lyotard had Adorno in mind when he constructed the category of the melancholic sublime, I return to an earlier piece by Lyotard — `Adorno as the Devil' — which is a reading of Thomas Mann's Dr Faustus, in which Adorno is said to be one of the faces of the Devil. My argument is that Lyotard's understanding of Adorno is flawed because he does not recognize the distinctly Jewish, albeit secularized, character of his thought. I set out to challenge Lyotard by demonstrating the central importance that the Bilderverbot plays in Adorno's work, which should not be understood as melancholic because the Jewish Messianism associated with the Bilderverbot is profoundly future-oriented. In short, I argue that Lyotard's depiction of Adorno is flawed because he reads him as a Christian, while he should be approaching him as a secularized Jew.

WITCHCRAFT, POLITICS, AND MEMORY IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

This article weaves together two episodes separated by a generation. The inciting event is the trial in 1653 of Anne Bodenham, an elderly cunning woman in Salisbury, who found herself embroiled in a feud in a gentry household, set against the turbulent backdrop of a divided city. Her arrest and examination evoked painful memories of an earlier scandal, the fateful association of the duke of Buckingham with Dr John Lambe, a sorcerer whom Bodenham claimed to have served in the 1620s. These tales, in turn, echoed an even older awareness of the perils of the diabolic, most prominently the pact of Dr Faustus. Together these narrative strands demonstrate how feelings of public disgust at Stuart corruption were revived in the commonwealth era and used as a polemical device by puritan activists. Both stories are rich in gossip, rumour, rhymes, libels, anonymous notes, and the practical uses of printed works, not to mention spells and curses, visions and dreams. As such, this article also shows just how complex a witch-trial could be, and serves as a reminder of the sophistication, ingenuity, and ebullience of seventeenth-century communications and consciousness across the social order.

Two Occult Philosophers in the Elizabethan Age

‘And I … will be as cunning as Agrippa was, Whose shadows made all Europe honour him’ Christopher Marlowe, Dr Faustus

Framing Faust: twentieth-century cultural struggles

Revealing the myth's contributions to structures of power and hegemony. In this interdisciplinary cultural history that encompasses film, literature, music, and drama, Inez Hedges follows the thread of the Faustian rebel in the major intellectual currents of the last hundred years. She presents and his counterpart Mephistopheles as antagonistic - yet complementary - figures whose productive conflict was integral to such phenomena as the birth of narrative cinema, the rise of modernist avant-gardes before World War II, and feminist critiques of Western cultural traditions. Framing Faust: Twentieth-Century Cultural Struggles pursues a dialectical approach to cultural history. Using the probing lens of cultural studies, Hedges shows how claims to the Faustian legacy permeated the struggle against Nazism in the 1930s while infusing not only the search for socialist utopias in Russia, France, and Germany, but also the quest for legitimacy on both sides of the Cold War divide after 1945. Hedges balances new perspectives on such well-known works as Thomas Mann's Dr Faustus and Jack Kerouac's Dr Sax with discussions of previously over-looked twentieth-century expressions of the myth, including American film noir and the films of Stan Brakhage. She evaluates musical compositions - Hanns Eisler's libretto, the opera Votre by Henri Pousseur and Michel Butor, and Alfred Schnittke's Cantata - as well as works of fiction and drama in French and German, many of which have heretofore never been discussed outside narrow disciplinary confines. Enhanced by twenty-four illustrations, Framing Faust provides a fascinating and focused narrative of some of the major cultural struggles of the past century as seen through the Faustian prism and establishes as an important present-day frame of reference.

Memory and forgetting in English Renaissance drama: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Webster

Engaging debates over the nature of subjectivity in early modern England, this fascinating and original study examines sixteenth- and seventeenth-century conceptions of memory and forgetting, and their importance to the drama and culture of the time. Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr discusses memory and forgetting as categories in terms of which a variety of behaviours - from seeking salvation to pursuing vengeance to succumbing to desire - are conceptualized. Drawing upon a range of literary and non-literary discourses, represented by treatises on the passions, sermons, anti-theatrical tracts, epic poems and more, Shakespeare, Marlowe and Webster stage 'self-recollection' and, more commonly, 'self-forgetting', the latter providing a powerful model for dramatic subjectivity. Focusing on works such as Macbeth, Hamlet, Dr Faustus and The Duchess of Malfi, Sullivan reveals memory and forgetting to be dynamic cultural forces central to early modern understandings of embodiment, selfhood and social practice.

Marlowe's Empery: Expanding His Critical Contexts by Sara Munson Deats , Robert A. Logan (review)

764 Reviews knights Spenser forces his readers to continually question what they are reading, to remain alert for suggestions that the likes of Guyon, Satyrane, Marinell, or Calidore might be more than they at firstappear' (p. 87). 'Deconstructing' is a characteristic touch: on the one hand, Woodcock ascribes agency to Spenser as the writer of the poem; on the other, the word seems to betoken theoretical ambitions which the study does not completely fulfil. A deeper concern is Woodcock's overall conceptualization of The Faerie Queene. He relies throughout on the 'Letter to Raleigh', yet only seldom does its problematic status emerge. Though Woodcock wisely eschews conjecture about what a twelvebook Faerie Queene might have looked like, it is equally hazardous to ground the excavation of Spenser's intention on a document which at best represents a sketchy outline written at the time of the publication of the first quarter of the projected poem. Though Woodcock writes illuminatingly about the complexity of Spensersian allegory, it is puzzling that he never uses the most suggestive phrase in the 'Letter', which describes the poem as a 'darke conceit'. Though this image has been considered by older scholars like Edwin Honig, it nevertheless remains crucial to understanding what Woodcock rightlycalls 'The inchoate nature of the poem as a whole' (p. 82). In this context, I suggest, the difficultyof reading Spenser's fairy is also a difficultyin reading the poem as we have it and in coming to terms with the readerly implications of its unfinished condition and the factthat the poem, like its readers, never ultimately arrives at the fairycity of Cleopolis. Though the 'Letter' is not a clear enough guide to Spenser's intentions, 'darke conceit' continues to be the most pithy and suggestive way of describing the poem's effects. Fairy in 'The Faerie Queene' is an intriguing addition to Spenser studies. Through its detailed contextualization of early modern fairy lore and its valiant reconceptualization of how we should read that lore in The Faerie Queene, it offers new and generous ways into the poem. Inevitably, it fails to answer every question about the ways in which Spenser adapted his sources, and does not fullyengage with the poem's murkyprofile as fantasywriting. Yet itis a readable way into the poem, which, through its informed sense of the reception history of fairyland, insists both on its folkloric contexts and on its literary and rhetorical grounding. The Open University Richard Danson Brown Marlowe'sEmpery: Expandinghis Critical Contexts. Ed. by Sara Munson DEATSand Robert A. Logan. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2002. 210 pp. $40; ?20.93. ISBN 0-87413-787-x. These nine essays originated at the fourth international Marlowe Society of America Conference at Cambridge University in 1998. They reflecta good deal of the openness and diversity that characterize those convivial events, held every five years. As I discovered in 1998 and again in 2003, the poet continues to attract a wide variety of admirers to his alma mater, from celebrity scholars to secondary-school teachers, under the care ofdedicated and congenial organizers such as the editors ofthis volume. The firstpart features three essays on performance. Roslyn L. Knutson's 'Marlowe Reruns: Repertorial Commerce and Marlowe's Plays in Revival' examines perfor? mance dates between 1592 and 1597, when Marlowe's plays were in almost constant production. Orchestrating a welter of information with her usual blend of caution and insight, Knutson hypothesizes that The Jew of Malta, The Massacre at Paris, 1 and 2 Tamburlaine, and Dr Faustus were at the core of marketing strategies that spawned the production of a series of imitative or responsive plays. All the companies sought to benefit from producing and scheduling plays to complement or compete MLRy 100.3, 2005 765 with Marlowe's Machiavel, revenger, weak king surrounded by turmoil, irresistible warrior, magician, balcony scene, ete. Knutson's account thereby comprises a par? tial checklist of Marlowe's influence on his contemporaries, especially Shakespeare. David Bevington in 'Staging the A- and B-Texts of Doctor Faustus' also emphasizes commercial considerations, ones that led to the B-text's later, more elaborate pro? duction. Insightfully inferringthe staging requirements for each version, Bevington...

Selling your soul to the devil: an autoethnography of pain, pleasure and the quest for a child

In this article I present an autoethnography in the form of a quest narrative linked as a self‐reflexive text to my continuing research of children and adults with spina bifida. My story centers on the themes of chronic illness, pain and sexuality, highlighting gaps in the literature related to these topics. I narrate my story as a manifesto for women with physical impairments to break their silence and talk about their sexuality. I recommend autoethnography as a method of understanding disability as embodied. Faustus: Now tell me, what says Lucifer thy lord? Mephistopheles: That I shall wait on Faustus whilst he lives, So he will buy my service with his soul. (Christopher Marlowe, Dr Faustus)