Witnesses said he died blaspheming.
LONDON, 1593 – Christopher Marlowe, gentleman, met his death accidentally on the evening of May 30 during an affray at the Widow Bull’s tavern and lodging house in Deptford near the river, authorities determined.
The 29-year-old playwright had been drinking with three companions in an upstairs room when a dispute arose about the “reckoning,” witnesses testified at the inquest. Reportedly Mr. Marlowe seized hold of a poignard belonging to one of the others. As the two struggled, the dagger point entered Mr. Marlowe’s eye, causing a fatal hemorrhage.
Interment took place directly following the inquest in nearby St. Nicholas’s churchyard, where a common grave lay open due to the present plague. Mr. Marlowe’s adversary, who expressed regret for the outcome, received a personal pardon from Her Majesty the Queen.
Mr. Marlowe was an author of highly successful plays including “Tamburlaine,” “Edward II,” and “Doctor Faustus,” as well as the beloved lyric, “The Passionate Shepherd To His Love.” Previously he served Her Majesty’s government. He was a graduate of Benet College, Cambridge, where he received the M.A. degree in 1587.
A witty proponent of unusual opinions, Mr. Marlowe earlier in the month was summoned for questioning as part of a Privy Council probe into suspected heresy.
His family, residing in Canterbury, declined comment.
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Young Marlowe? Conjecturally. Portrait of an unidentified man, found in Marlowe’s former lodgings, Cambridge. Dates fit. The Latin motto means, “That which nourishes me, destroys me.” What was “that”? Love? Time? Pleasure? Ambition? The vocation of a poet? electricliterature.com/...
Marlowe’s shade was to walk in motley forms: spy, closet Catholic, secret schismatic, drunk, sorcerer, deadbeat, counterfeiter, practical joker, hotheaded duellist, tobacco addict (horrors!), atheist, sodomite. While evidence is slender--much of it from biased sources--some of these no doubt had truth in them. For example, most biographers agree that Marlowe was gay—perhaps, in fact, the first “out” gay author in the English language.
Barely older than Shakespeare, Marlowe precociously attained celebrity. Just before his death, however, something landed Marlowe in the sights of government investigators.
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Giambattista della Porta, “De furtivis literarum notis” [On Secret Writings], 1591. Folger Shakespeare Library. As a sometime government agent, Marlowe probably knew of such codes, and may have used them. Borrowed from hyperallergic.com/
England was going through one of its frequent panics over religious deviance. Her Majesty’s government officially tolerated Roman Catholics, dissenters, and critics within the Church of England – up to a point. Appear disloyal to the State, and a nonconformist could face a gruesome death for treason.
(Such horrors later motivated our First Amendment clause against “an establishment of religion,” likewise the prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment.”)
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A dangerous place and time for a poet of whom a friend (Thomas Nashe) later wrote:
“His life he contemn’d [despised] in comparison of liberty of speech.”
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Of Marlowe’s six known plays, the recognized masterpiece is “The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus.”
The text has come to us only in mutilated form, however.
Mephostophilis rises through a stage trap. Later in the play he will take fully human form. Typo in title (“Histoy”) !
The original playscript apparently caused some sort of trouble and was censored. A few years later, after Marlowe’s death, a London producer paid for insertions. A printed version appeared in 1604; twelve years later another edition appeared, different, lengthier. Some scholars judge that the 1616 text might be closer to the original. The earlier one looks to them like a dumbed-down version—as it might have played on tour–yet possibly preserves some parts omitted from the later one.
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“Faustus” married two sources: the medieval tradition of religious “mystery” plays and a freshly imported, sensational tale.
In mystery plays, "...Hellmouths...would be built over the trap doors and when the mouth would open actors dressed as demons would climb out...From under the stage they would also set off fireworks... and smoke that would fill the side of the stage. Some directors would...have a tar like smell emit from the Hellmouth...into which leather-costumed devils dragged screaming sinners.” “Doctor Faustus" also used special efffects. More at fascinating site: medievaltimestheatre.weebly.com/...
A pamphlet called “The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus,” translated from German, appeared in London around 1590. It told of a scholar who signed away his soul for 24 years of wish fulfillment, provided by a devil-servant: Mephostophiles.
The Faust legend had a murky background, but apparently was based on one or more historical persons. Marlowe elevated Faust into an archetype.
The young playwright had first tasted fame with “Tamburlaine.” His Faustus play would offer another leading character with outsize ambition; showcase the playwright’s erudition; startle with blasphemies, onstage necromancy, demon parades, fireworks, magic tricks, gruesome dismemberment; yet recall the religious pageants of homegrown English tradition.
It was also topical: various types of wonder-workers were perennially "in the news": crystal-gazers, alchemists, treasure-dowsers, astrologers, "cunning men," "possessed" persons, exorcists, reputed witches.
The Conjuror, by Hieronymus Bosch, ca. 1502. Note the purse-stealer. Wikimedia Commons.
Doctor John Dee --geographer, bibliophile, alchemist, astrologer, psychic investigator and confidant of code-talking angels--enjoyed the patronage of Queen Elizabeth.
Dr. John Dee as imagined by Henry Gillard Glindoni (1852-1913), conjuring for Queen Elizabeth I. www.theguardian.com/...
At the same time Reginald Scot’s Discoverie [Exposure] of Witchcraft revealed conjurors’ ruses and argued that “witches” were simply deluded persons, with no magic powers.
Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584. Scot was a skeptic who doubted the existence of witchcraft and revealed tricks used to fool the gullible.
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Marlowe’s character, Faustus, has exhausted every academic subject. None satisfy the scope of his imagination. He decides to master magic. Two fellow professors teach him a spell to fetch a devil.
Marlowe’s college at Cambridge. His play placed Faustus at the University of Wittenburg, where Shakespeare’s Hamlet would later study. Borrowed from electricliterature.com/...
Mephostophilis appears. He arranges a contract between Faustus and the prince of all devils, Lucifer, which Faustus writes in blood. Mephostophilis will serve Faustus for the contractual term of 24 years.
St. Augustine and the Devil by Michael Pascher, ca. 1471-75. Retrieved from Pinterest.
Faustus zigzags continually between euphoria and terror. As if direct from a religious play, a “Good Angel” and a “Bad Angel” personify excruciating inner tension.
In the contract-signing scene, his very mind and body are at war:
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Mephostophilis: But Faustus,
Write it in the manner of a deed of gift.
Faustus: Ay, so I do. -–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?
Why streams it not that I may write afresh:
“Faustus gives thee his soul”? O there it stayed.
--Why shoulds’t thou not? Is not thy soul thine own?
Then write again: “Faustus gives thee his soul.”
[Enter Mephostophilis with a chafer of fire]
Mephostophilis: See Faustus, here is fire....
Faustus: So, now the blood begins to clear again…
Consummatum est! [“It is finished”–in context, dreadful blasphemy]
This bill is ended:
And Faustus hath bequeathed his soul to Lucifer.
–-But what is this inscription on mine arm?
Homo, fuge ! [Man, flee!] 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
Homo, fuge ! --Yet shall not Faustus fly !
Mephostophilis: [aside] I’ll fetch him somewhat to delight his mind.
Enter Devils giving crowns and rich apparel to Faustus. They dance and then depart.
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Elizabethan miniature portrait, subject unknown, could stand in for Mephostophilis in his human appearance. (The flames probably represent passion; the subject wears a locket that may contain a matching portrait.)
Faustus continually flirts with repentance. Mephostophilis distracts him with magic books, diverts him with humor, threatens violence when he tries to pray: carrot and stick.
Some scenes must raise questions in an audience’s mind about the nature of free will and the extent of divine mercy—in one version, Mephostophilis claims to have invaded Faustus' mind before the scholar ever thought of magic. Such explorations of theology might easily fall foul of officialdom.
Never too late to reconcile with God? Angelic rescuer...Miniature from the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.945, f. 107r; public domain. Retrieved from Pinterest.
Faustus asks about theology. His devil-servant will not touch certain topics, claiming the contract cannot require anything “against our kingdom” (treason). For the same reason, Faustus is refused a wife.
Episodes see Faustus’s expansive horizons shrink. He takes a survey of the whole universe in a dragon-drawn chariot. Descending, he goes on a world tour.
The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V (reigned 1519-1558). Wikipedia.
At the Vatican Faustus meddles in international politics-–saving a life---but also enjoys a practical joke on the Pope. Next stop is the court of Emperor Charles V. There Faustus fetches up the shades of Alexander the Great and his consort—but also humiliates a courtier, inciting an attack on his own life. Visiting later the Duke of Anholt, Faustus fetches grapes in January for the pregnant Duchess. He plays silly tricks on a horse-dealer and a carter.
In counterpoint, Faustus’s facetious young servant copies his necromancy. Other ignorant characters follow the servant’s lead. Lower-class victims of Faustus’s humor raise a small riot at the Duke’s.
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Faustus toys with suicide. Finally, he hopes only for oblivion in the arms of Helen of Troy. But the devil comes for his due.
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Helen, the ideal of beauty. Zeuxis (a painter of the 5th Century B.C.E.) auditions models for his painting of Helen of Troy, as envisioned by the French painter, Angelica Kauffman, about 1778.
utpictura18.univ-montp3.fr/...
The play’s last soliloquy differs completely from the German book (where Faustus gives a strangely gracious sermon at the end). To get the full impact, it must be read aloud.
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Faustus: O 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;
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–-
That Faustus may repent and save his soul.
O lente, lente, currite noctis equi !
(Slowly, slowly gallop,
you horses of the night!--Ovid)
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike:
The devil 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 of blood will save me. O, my Christ!
--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. [The clock strikes]
O half the hour is passed. ’Twill all be passed anon!…
[The clock strikes twelve] It strikes, it strikes!
Now body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell!
O soul, be changed into small water-drops,
And fall into the ocean, ne’er be found.
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Devils appear and drag Faustus into Hell. His friends next morning find his dismembered body.
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Another tragic hero, on the pin’s point of indecision, one day will echo:
“O that this too, too solid flesh might melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!”
--Shakespeare, “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark”
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Shakespeare owed much to Marlowe altogether.
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The reckoning is too complex to tally,
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but as a sample: some see Marlowe as the inspiration for Mercutio in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.”
Jokester, fantasist, reckless, a compulsive wit, Mercutio plays with tropes involving magic and dies stabbed in a brawl that he incites.
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And there is this:
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Marlowe
Faustus: Is this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burned the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul. See where it flies!
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
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Shakespeare
Romeo: [Kissing Juliet.] Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.
Juliet: Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
Romeo: Sin from my lips? Oh, trespass sweetly urged.
Give me my sin again….
AND THIS
Marlowe
Robin [a simple fellow]: ...But hark you, master, will you teach me this conjuring occupation?
Wagner [servant to Faustus]: Ay, sirrah, I’ll teach you to turn yourself to a dog or a cat or a mouse or a rat or anything.
Robin: A dog or a cat or a mouse or a rat? O brave Wagner!
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Shakespeare
Benvolio: What, art thou hurt?
Mercutio [dying]: Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch. -–Marry, ‘tis enough… –-A plague o’ both your houses!…
-–Zounds! A dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death!…
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Were these deliberate signals to underline Mercutio’s inspiration?
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“Doctor Faustus” is also an interesting early attempt to dramatize a character’s complex, subjective state of mind in all its evolutions, contradictions and perfervid turns of imagination.
Unlike later authors, who would employ nuance and the unspoken, Marlowe conveyed inner conflict through jagged alternations of mood and intention. Shakespeare would do the same in “Hamlet.”
And Shakespeare’s Prospero in “The Tempest” would embody something like an anti-Faustus.
Marlowe also deserves the credit for perhaps the first devil ever shown as an individual personality.
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Faustus: How comes it then that thou art out of hell?
Mephostophilis:
Why this is hell, nor am 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?
O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands,
Which strikes 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.…
Tell me, where is the place that men call hell?...
Mephostophilis: Within the bowels of these elements
Where we are tortured and remain forever.
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....
Faustus: I think hell’s a fable.
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And a successor:
“The mind is its own place and in itself
Can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven…
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell.”
— Satan, John Milton’s “Paradise Lost”
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In all, Marlowe’s Mephostophilis fathered a legion, too vast to more than sample, but a list of some is here.
One more example, though--this video runs about 8 minutes; and well worth the view:
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Marlowe’s drama crossed back overseas to become popular in Germany, the story surviving in folk tradition long after the play itself became old-fashioned. In this way “Doctor Faustus” contributed indirectly to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s reimagined, monumental Faust, first appearing in 1808 — and, drawing on that, the well-known 1859 opera by Charles Gounod.
The play closes—like some ancient Greek tragedies--with what seems an over-simple moral:
Gold laurel wreath, Cyprus, 3rd to 4th Century B.C.E. Wikipedia.
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CHORUS: Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
And burnéd is Apollo’s laurel bough
That sometime grew within this learnéd man.
Faustus is gone: regard his hellish fall,
Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise
Only to wonder at unlawful things,
Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits
To practice more than heavenly power permits.
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Many have noted a certain congruence between Faustus’s and Marlowe’s fates.
There is, moreover, something archetypal connecting the figure of Faust with the vocation of the poet-artist in general. Goethe’s labor on his Faustus two-part play, for example, occupied the consciousness of that greatest of German poets for most of his life.
And with both Faust and Marlowe, some have wished to change their fate.
Goethe, in Faust, The Second Part of the Tragedy, did just that, and had Faust prayed into heaven by three holy women. Marlowe has lived again in fictionalizations, while some would like to believe that his death was a sham, and he survived to ”write Shakespeare.”
The ripples of Marlowe’s signature achievement still expand.
”And thou in this shall find thy monument
When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.”
--William Shakespeare, Sonnet 107
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Additional Marlowe Diaries:
Classic Poetry Group: LGBT Artists-"The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus" by Christopher Marlowe (Angmar, Apr. 28, 2018)
CLASSIC POETRY: "The Passionate Shepherd To His Love" by Christopher Marlowe, R.I.P. May 30, 1593 (May 30, 2017)
In Memoriam, Ch. M, 1563-30 May 1593 (May 30, 2015)
More on DKos:
Classic Poetry Group
FreeWriters
Readers and Book Lovers (with full schedule of literary diaries)
Something analogous to this might even be made to work as a backdrop in a three-story theatre like the Globe, with balconies on two levels at the back of the stage. (Elizabethan actors called the structure over the stage, containing machinery, “Heaven” and the space below stage “Hell”—isn’t all this coincidental?) Just a stray idea. The Hours of Catherine of Cleves,1440. Borrowed from metalonmetalblog.blogspot.com.ar/
References:
Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. Ed. and with an introduction by Sylvan Barnet. Signet Classics, New American Library (Times Mirror), 1969. This is the version quoted (with some liberties in punctuation).
The Works of Christopher Marlowe. Ed. by C.F. Tucker Brooke, Oxford University Press, 1910.
Christopher Marlowe (Five Plays). Ed. by Havelock Ellis, with an introduction by John Addington Symonds, Hill and Wang Inc., New York, 1956.Based on a version originally published by T. Unwin Ltd., London, 1887. Editorial consultant on The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, S.F.Johnson; text of that play, edited Dr. Frederick S. Boas and originally published by Methuen & Co. Ltd.
