Doctor Faustus

The first Marlowe I read was Edward II, and it fundamentally influenced the way I saw him. I completely bought into the idea that he was a dramatist who could have outshone Shakespeare, and may have been the truly brilliant mind of his generation. I've read Edward II many times since, and my opinion of that play has never wavered ... but then there's Faustus.

This is Marlowe at his most maddening. Clunky "low" scenes (that may not actually be his work), wooden blank verse, and theatrical forms that seem like they are centuries before Shakespeare's best, instead of decades. The introduction is quick and dirty, then we plow through episode after episode where Faustus uses his powers to mock the powerful and satiate his own gluttony. There's no development of character, plot, or theme until perhaps the last monologues as Faustus must confront his fate.

But then there are these pieces of magic, of pure rock-and-roll that stick out from the text like a blaring beacon. Here is a playwright boldly exposing himself on stage far before it was accepted.

FAUST. How comes it then that thou art out of hell?

MEPH. Why this is hell, nor am I out of it:

Think'st thou that I, that saw the face of God,

And tasted the eternal joys of Heaven,

Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,

In being depriv'd of everlasting bliss?

---

FAUST. Tell me, where is the place that men call hell?

MEPH. Under the Heavens.

FAUST. Aye, so are all things else, but wherabouts?

MEPH. Within the bowels of these elements,

Where we are tortur'd and remain for ever:

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib'd

In one self place; but where we are is hell,

And where hell is, there must we ever be

And, to be short, when all the world dissolves,

And every creature shall be purified,

All places shall be hell that is not heaven.

It's electrifying and alarming and exciting. I don't know how you stage the rest of the play to match that cold modernity.

.... As a side not, as thinking about this, I came up with the following: let's compare Elizabethan playwrights to classic rock. So ... Shakespeare's the Beatles, right? Then Marlowe is Jim Morrison. I need to figure out John Webster and Ben Johnson.