Am I right? Faustus is not about the church?
Ok, I joined a book club...yes, I know, pretty dorky huh?
I don't think I would have ever read Marlowe's Dr. Faustus without it. I really enjoyed the play but as a group, we spent much time arguing over its religious implications.
I am the only one who does NOT think that Marlowe was speaking against the church or even that spirituality was his main focus. At least that’s not what came across to me. The fate of Faustus is obvious. Equally obvious is what drove him to this end, lust, specifically for knowledge and power, among other things.
But The BK president disagrees. She says Marlowe may be telling us, in a subtle way, of the ineffectiveness of the Church in protecting man's soul. She said that if I analyzed Marlowe's portrayal of Faustus' conflict with the Papacy I would see that. I still don't. Maybe I'm not looking at it the right way? I’m a new member and I felt kind of like an idiot not being able to join in this perspective. Can someone explain what she meant?
Does thinking make it so?
This is for "ennoidyam" and anyone else interested in Faustus (including "arabian night" who posted in 2006 -- probably won't see this, but who knows?): It's not dorky at all to join a book club! Never let anybody tell you it's "dorky" to improve your mind. More of that greatly needed today. On to Marlowe: his biography is FULL of contradictions (I've been researching his life and works since 1966 -- really! -- so I know some of the problems, at least, quite well. Perhaps the biggest problem with Marlowe studies is that we still do not have definitive dates for the known plays. If Dr. Faustus turned out to be a very early play, most critics would assume it was wholly traditional, before the young author became exposed to the more problematic and contradictory aspects of Protestant/Catholic/Puritan conflicts and the social pressures of Elizabethan society. If it could be proved, however, to be a very late play (just before or after Edward II), critics would have a real headache to deal with, because the whole nature of this play is to identify (in traditional, medieval, historically Christian terms) what happens to a man who consciously and repeatedly rejects that salvation which he knows Christ offers. If you look at the language carefully, as the play unfolds, Faustus tosses away option after option to take the road to enlightenment: he makes fun of certain kinds of study; he seeks for riches; he values glory over real accomplishment: every good talent he has is subsumed in an almost frantic search for immediate gratification and pleasure. It's very important to note that the great "love passage" to Helen of Troy that begins "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships" is entirely deceptive, on the surface, both to Faustus himself and to us, if we are unwary audience members. The great beauty, Helen, he is supposedly addressing, raised by wicked powers who are supposedly obeying him, for Marlowe to enjoy a sexual fantasy with, is actually a succubus, a diabolical (fallen) spirit who only looks like Helen. Faustus, his mind and desires firmly occupied with lust, not love, is not at all in control of the situation, but is being, at that moment, led to mortal sin. Thus the line "Her lips suck forth my soul -- see where it flies!" is not a passionate lover's praise of his beloved, but the truly terrible irony of a man who does not realize how effectively he is participating in his own damnation. Now, I agree with anyone who wishes to point out that we have many editions of the play, of which the 1604 and 1616 show perhaps the most distinct variations, and that these complicate any effort to rightly interpret what Marlowe originally meant. But I would caution anyone against assuming that Marlowe was consciously "telling us, in a subtle way, of the ineffectiveness of the Church in protecting man's soul," as your book club moderator apparently thinks. Whatever the textual corruptions and changes that occurred in productions after Marlowe's death, the heartline of the play remains clear: unlike others of his plays which do show powerfully ironic and iconoclastic elements, in Dr. Faustus we have a direct link between eternal damnation and mortal choice: Faustus is damned not because of a capricious, uncaring or unjust God, but because every appeal to his good (write that "godly") nature is rejected by Faustus himself in favor of the quick, the sensational and the shoddy (look at what he chooses to do with his years provided under the devilish contract). Contrary to the statement of the person who wrote the Marlowe biography for the Literature Forum ("In the moral play Doctor Faustus (1589), after a deal with the devil turns hollow, the hero turns to Christ for salvation") -- and I can assure you this biographer does NOT know for certain that the play was written in 1589 -- the hero may have turned to Christ in the last 60 seconds of the play (representing the last 60 minutes of Faustus's life), but Christ cannot save him, because he, Faustus, has already placed himself within the power of Satan -- he has already denied Christ, out loud and to others, and praised the power of Mephistopheles as greater. He has steeped himself in the habits of corruption, and made himself unfit for heaven: thus, he cannot be lifted to heaven. He has always had his free agency, and God and Christ honor that at the end of the play, because Faustus' own choices force them to abide by spiritual law. If you count the number of times he is offered the chance to repent you can see why Marlowe chooses to let the imps carry him away to hell instead of the angels carry him away to heaven. But I believe it is important to this play to note the sorrow and regret with which Marlowe ends the play: "Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight...", etc. This truly is a morality play, in which Marlowe points out the danger of being a human being: there ARE consequences to our actions; and sometimes if we persist in those actions, nothing in heaven or earth can prevent us from reaping those consequences. The question for all Marlowe scholars becomes, then, how seriously do we, the supposedly liberated thinkers, want to address the fact that he, the supposed iconoclast, the supposed rebel, the supposed flamingly irreverent homosexual celebrant, the supposed anti-establishment bad boy, wrote a play that just as vibrantly claims that wickedness never was happiness and that persistent wickedness will result not only in the loss of mortal joys, but in the loss of one's eternal soul. We will never do justice to Marlowe as modern critics and commentators until we do sufficient research to put Dr. Faustus accurately into the canon which includes all his plays, not just ones we deign to call "representative." I hope my soapboxing helps in some way!
