Dr Faustus: Pacts with the Devil

Summary

Podcast Summary: Not Just the Tudors – "Dr Faustus: Pacts with the Devil"

Episode Release Date: March 24, 2025
Host: Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Guest: Professor Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford

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Introduction

In the "Dr Faustus: Pacts with the Devil" episode of Not Just the Tudors, host Professor Susannah Lipscomb delves deep into the intricate world of Christopher Marlowe's seminal play, Doctor Faustus. Joined by esteemed Shakespeare scholar Professor Emma Smith, the episode explores the historical context, thematic richness, and enduring legacy of this cornerstone of early modern drama.

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Origins and Initial Reception of Dr Faustus

Professor Smith begins by shedding light on the early performances of Faustus. The play debuted on October 2, 1594, at London's Rose Theatre, shortly after Marlowe's untimely death. Despite the challenges of the era's theatrical landscape—where plays typically enjoyed only a single run—the sustained documentation suggests that Faustus was a significant hit. Professor Emma Smith notes:

“[04:37] ...the very fact that in 1594 it can't have been a new play and that the best guess probably right now puts it maybe four or five years earlier than that already tells us this was a hit.”

The play's spectacular elements, including fireworks and mystical performances, captivated audiences, cementing its status as a popular and mystique-laden production. Anecdotes from the time, such as actors encountering inexplicable presences during rehearsals, added to the play's enigmatic allure.

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Sources and the Faust Legend

Marlowe's Faustus draws inspiration from the Germanic folklore surrounding the Faustian legend—a tale of a scholar's pact with the devil. Professor Smith explains that Marlowe likely adapted the story from a now-lost pamphlet detailing the necromantic exploits of Faust:

“[06:01] ...Marlowe takes the play from a pamphlet account of this necromantic figure in the German tradition.”

This adaptation reflects the broader Renaissance trend of playwrights sourcing material from existing stories and folklore, blending them into original narratives that resonated with contemporary audiences.

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The Supernatural in Early Modern Drama

The supernatural was a pervasive theme in early modern plays, with Faustus being a prime example. Professor Smith attributes this popularity to the era's fascination with the boundary between the natural and the supernatural, a boundary often explored through prominent figures like the Elizabethan magician John Dee:

“[07:09] ...the supernatural is perhaps at one end of a spectrum rather than being a completely separate kind of activity.”

This blend of scientific inquiry and occult practices created a tantalizing backdrop for dramas, allowing playwrights like Marlowe to probe the limits of human knowledge and ambition through supernatural elements.

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Themes of Ambition and Humanism in Dr Faustus

Faustus serves as a profound commentary on the humanist pursuit of knowledge and self-improvement. Professor Smith highlights Faustus as the "limit case" of the humanist intellectual hero, embodying both the era's aspirations and its inherent risks:

“[09:08] ...Faustus is the limit case, in a way, for the humanist intellectual hero.”

Set against the backdrop of Elizabethan educational fervor—marked by the proliferation of grammar schools and the expansion of universities—Faustus reflects the period's ambivalence towards unbridled ambition. Faustus's dissatisfaction with conventional scholarly pursuits leads him to seek greater power and knowledge through a diabolical pact, illustrating the potential perils of excessive ambition.

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Agency vs. Predestination: The Nature of Faustus’s Damnation

A central debate within Faustus revolves around the protagonist's agency in his own damnation. Is Faustus entirely responsible for his fate, or are external forces at play? Professor Smith delves into this complexity, comparing the play's tragic dimensions to broader theological debates of the time:

“[15:23] ...the question of whether he chooses this, whether he is active and a tragic agent, is really, really fascinating.”

The discussion extends to the play's two distinct texts—the A and B versions—each offering varying perspectives on Faustus's control over his destiny. The B text, in particular, introduces more definitive elements of damnation, potentially reflecting evolving audience expectations for clear moral resolutions.

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Parallel with Execution and Seeking Forgiveness

Professor Lipscomb draws a parallel between Faustus and contemporary accounts of figures like Anne Boleyn, who awaited forgiveness before execution:

“[17:07] ...the pardon, either, you know, human or divine, is going to come. And that actually, you know, Faustus is sort of temporizing, waiting for that.”

This comparison underscores the play's exploration of salvation and damnation, questioning whether redemption is attainable or irrevocably lost once a pact is made with the devil.

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Differing Texts of Dr Faustus: A and B Texts

The existence of two primary texts of Faustus—the A text (1604) and the B text (1616)—has fueled scholarly debate regarding Marlowe's original intentions. Professor Smith explains that the B text includes additional material, such as enhanced comic elements and a more definitive portrayal of Faustus's downfall:

“[29:00] ...the B text, the later text is much longer. And what it does, interestingly, is maybe show us what was and wasn't popular or what needed tweaking.”

The addition of slapstick humor and clearer condemnation of Faustus's choices suggest an attempt to cater to audience preferences and reinforce the play's moral lessons.

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Staging the Supernatural in Early Modern Theatre

The supernatural aspects of Faustus were brought to life through innovative staging techniques, including props and sound effects that required sophisticated craftsmanship and posed significant risks. Professor Smith details how elements like the "hell mouth" prop and early fireworks created an immersive and terrifying experience for audiences:

“[36:00] ...there was probably quite a bit of that. And back to your idea about audience testing. One of the things they may have been saying would be more spectacle and that the wonderful, too, special effects budget blown on.”

These technical feats not only enhanced the play's dramatic impact but also contributed to its reputation as a thrilling and visually spectacular production.

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Artistic Legacy of Dr Faustus

Faustus has left an indelible mark on English drama and literature. Professor Smith emphasizes Marlowe's pioneering use of blank verse and his influence on contemporaries, notably William Shakespeare:

“[41:37] ...the beginning, the first 15 or 20 minutes of the play establish this aural world, which I think is really quite decisive for how English drama develops.”

The play's exploration of complex themes such as ambition, knowledge, and damnation also prefigures elements of Gothic fiction, influencing genres and works centuries later, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula.

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Modern Performances and Continued Relevance

Despite being over four centuries old, Faustus remains a staple of modern theatre, continually reinterpreted to reflect contemporary societal concerns. Professor Smith attributes its enduring relevance to its flexible themes, which can be adapted to various cultural contexts:

“[47:18] ...the play's meaning has altered from a primarily, if confusedly religious, sphere of human existence into many, but not all, contexts. A more secular or more human-centered view.”

This adaptability ensures that Faustus resonates with new audiences, allowing each generation to find fresh meaning in Faustus's tragic quest for power and knowledge.

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Conclusion

In this enlightening episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professors Susannah Lipscomb and Emma Smith intricately unpack the multifaceted layers of Doctor Faustus. From its initial reception and supernatural staging to its profound thematic explorations and lasting legacy, the discussion offers listeners a comprehensive understanding of why Marlowe's masterpiece continues to captivate and provoke thought centuries after its creation.

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Transcript

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. If you'd like Not Just the Tudors ad free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to historyhit with a historyhit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my own recent two part series, A World Torn, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais. Relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. On 2 October, 1594, a group of men and women bustled into the Rose Theatre on London's south bank, eager to escape their lives for a few hours within the walls. They would hear the tale of a man who, for the price of his soul, bargained with the devil for 24 years of knowledge, power and pleasure. As the man's desire turns to regret and teased with the possibility of redemption, they would witness what had always been promised his terrible, inevitable damnation. A Tale of morality with the heart of political conflict. The play would go on to untold success, cementing its writer, Christopher Marlowe, as one of the most important figures in the history of drama. This is the story of Dr. Faustus. To talk about it today, I'm delighted to welcome back Emma Smith, professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford. Professor Smith's contribution to the field of early modern drama is immeasurable. With books like this Is Shakespeare and the Making of Shakespeare's First Folio and an ongoing role as editor of the Shakespeare Survey Journal, as editor of the Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe, there is perhaps no one better equipped to discuss this remarkable story. I'm Professor Suzanne Lipscomb, and you are listening to not just the Tudors from history hit. Professor Smith, welcome back to the podcast.

[Professor Emma Smith]

It's great to be back. Thank you.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So, let's start at the beginning. The first performance records we have for Faustus from 1594, not long after Marlowe's death, in fact. Do we know much about how it was initially received?

[Professor Emma Smith]

I think the fact that we've got those records after, as you say, dating from after Mahler's death, suggests that it was well received because most plays in this period really have one go, they have one run. They're not being revived. This is not a theatre of revivals or old plays. It's a theatre which is absolutely avid for new things. So the very fact that in 1594 it can't have been a new play and that the best guess probably right now puts it maybe four or five years earlier than that already tells us this was a hit. And we've got lots of other information too, particularly about the sort of spectacular aspect of it. There was clearly some great devilish play with fireworks and so on. And there are some wonderful uncanny stories about. There's a one story about actors rehearsing it and going through the incantation to the devil and suddenly realizing there was an extra person in the room with them and running away. So it's got a mystique around it, which is about spectacle, I think, and the extent to which the play could be true could really happen.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Okay, so perhaps the fact that it was seems to have been inspired by a real life Faust is one of the reasons why it could have been popular. What is the link to this alchemist and necromancer?

[Professor Emma Smith]

We think that Marlowe takes the play from a pamphlet account of this, as you say, necromantic figure in the German tradition. So that in that way, like all the Playwrights of the period. He is building a play out of pre existing material. So he's looking for a source. This is a relatively topical source. In fact, we don't have an extant copy of this pamphlet which predates the play, although we're pretty sure it must be the source. But there's also a whole range of folklore type stories about bargains with the devil, which actually have a very, you know, some very interesting. Maybe they create some expectations of this play which I think the play avoids fulfilling. And that may be part of its appeal. You began by saying it's a morality play and it's sort of inevitable what happens. And there's definitely an element of that, isn't there? But I think there may also have been just a sort of hint perhaps that the end could be different. And that's one of the brilliant tensions of the play.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And why was the supernatural such a popular subject for early modern drama?

[Professor Emma Smith]

Yeah, that's a great question, isn't it? The extent of belief in the supernatural is a really. A really interesting topic. How far supernatural activity or investigation is absolutely distinguishable from natural science, for instance. So a figure like John Dee, the Elizabethan magician John Dee must be, I think, also somewhere behind Dr. Faustus. And Dee is an absolute polymath who is both developing highly mathematical formulae to understand navigation and so on and astronomy. And he has this famous highly polished stone mirror, you know, to commune with the dead and all kinds of sort of necromantic activity as well. So in his case and a little bit in Dr. Faustus, in Marlowe's play, the supernatural is perhaps at one end of a spectrum rather than being a completely separate kind of activity. And that may have just been very sort of tantalizing about it. At what point does learning and investigation, at what point does religion, particularly perhaps Catholicism, butt up against this forbidden fruit of the supernatural?

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Okay, so let's try and pull some of those things out and talk about them. Because if we think about art reflecting the world in which it's made, and this idea of advancing oneself as much as anything, this is a tale in part about ambition and personal desire. And of course, that's what Dee's doing, among other things. How true is it to say that Marlowe's play is reflecting a kind of a world in which there is that desire and that capacity for stretching oneself?

[Professor Emma Smith]

I think it's a really interesting way to think about the play as a sort of document of some of the ambivalences about the whole humanist project of self improvement. Through knowledge, through study, through education. I mean, we see that in the English Tudor context. With all those King Edward schools and the grammar schools that are such a part of Elizabethan culture, aren't they? And then, you know, the growth in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the expansion in the activities of the Inns of Court and so on. So this is a world which is inherited from, I guess, from Erasmus and from European humanism. A sense that to be learned, to be knowledgeable, is to be more godly. And Faustus really beautifully turns that on its head. That we encounter Faustus right at the beginning in his study. The stage direction is very clear. So he's in this sequestered place of education and learning, and he is bored. He's picking up books and throwing them down and saying, you know, I've done that, been there, done that. You know, what's the next thing? And in order to go further, he goes into this infernal pact. So he is the limit case, in a way, for the humanist hero. The humanist intellectual hero. And I think a lot about how audiences would have taken it. Your audiences up the rose. Are they like modern audiences or modern, you know, readers of hello. Magazine or something. Who think, well, you know, poor little rich girl, you know, how sorry. How sorry I am for these people. I will never be like that. You know, whatever my problems, it's never going to be, in our case, having too much money. Or in their case is never being so clever and so learned that I fall into a pact with the devil. You know, whatever my life is like, this isn't what I'm going to do. So how far. Faustus is a kind of everyman figure in the morality play tradition. That's to say, he represents all of us. And how far he is constructed as a figure rather unlike audience members. It's quite fascinating for that sense of what he's saying about education and ambition in the period.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

That's really interesting. And I suppose it goes back to the question that you raised or the point that you raised about the outcome. Would they have expected him to escape his own fate? To escape his fate by God's salvation or through his own ingenuity? Can it be seen as a warning? As a play?

[Professor Emma Smith]

It's so interesting, I think, that the play has the reputation for staging a highly transgressive hero. And yet an outline of the play in its simplest form would be, man makes pact with devil. This is a bad idea. It does not turn out well for him. You know, it's a very, very simple. You know, there doesn't seem to be any nuance in that. And it's even worse because poor Faustus doesn't really get anything, any of the things that he wants out of the pact. There's a lovely moment where he's talking to Mephistopheles, the devil, who is the intermediary between him and Satan, I suppose, and Lucifer. And he says he goes through some of the questions he has about knowledge. And Mephistopheles gives these sort of not great answers. And then Faustus says, you know, fetch me a wife. And you think, man, you are an amateur at this. You know, you've already sold your soul. What is this sort of bourgeois ambition that you want a wife? You just look like a sort of university don who can't get a girlfriend. You know, this is not really what the devil has been summoned for. So it's all a little bit under pitched. You know, he doesn't have a whole range of depraved or, you know, forbidden things that he wants to. That he. That he wants to do. But your point about the ending, there's an amazing ending. I think the ending of the play is one of the most brilliant things Marlowe wrote. Because it gives us literally time speeding up. Faustus has had this term of a contract with the devil. And it's coming to an end. And it's the last 24 hours and then it's the last 12 hours and then it's the last hour and then suddenly it's the last minutes and it's all. If not in, it's absolutely not in real time. There's a sense of time speeding up. But one of the things I have thought about is we're used to that genre. And this may seem a kind of mad comparison. But I was thinking about all those James Bond films that we have watched. Where there's a clock ticking down. And we know that the clock is going to be stopped at three seconds or something by some miraculous activity. And I think there probably was some sense in the audience that lots of these packed with the devil stories end with some kind of sort of rather legalistic get out. I think if we just jump very quickly to another play in the Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare in the trial scene. I think Portia's sense, you can't have a pound of flesh without any blood. That's a version of these kind of clever. Ha ha. You missed this bit. You missed this very precise legalistic technicality. And that I escape and the devil is left sort of fuming, saying, ha, Ha. Curses. That's quite a common part of those folklore moments. And so that might have been one possible outcome. And as you say, there is, particularly for people who inherit a culture of Christianity, which is New Testament and perhaps forgiving in its underlying principles, expect perhaps that God will turn out to be more powerful than the devil and will come and save Faustus. So one of the big questions about the play is, is there a point at which Faustus becomes damned beyond redemption? And when is that point? Is it when he kisses the spirit of Helen of Troy, who has been summoned up from hell? Is it when he signs the pact in the first place? You know, when is it?

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Absolutely. And is it then of his own making, or was he tricked?

[Professor Emma Smith]

Yes, that's right. And that's so important for you are so right to say this is the play that shapes a whole narrative of how English drama develops. And part of that question here is, is it a tragedy? And of course, at one level, it's a tragedy. It ends badly. It ends in death and in eternal death for Faustus. But is it a tragedy in that it gives us a sort of human centered drama in which human agency is one of the crucial motors of the plot? Or does it give us a world in which actually the real story is about a Manichean story about good and evil or heaven and hell. And Faustus is really just the kind of patsy who turns out to be the ground on which this particular skirmish is fought out. So the question of whether he chooses this, whether he is active and a tragic agent, is really, really fascinating. And it's slightly different across the two versions of the play, which is another testament to its popularity that it occurs in two printed editions, both after Marlowe's death. We call these the A text and the B text. And they have lots of differences, which are interesting. But one of them, I think, is around this, trying to be a bit clearer maybe, about this question of Faustus own control over his destiny.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

I'm also struck by the parallel with a possible moment of forgiveness, with something that early modern audiences might have seen, which is executions. And you know, the story that's often told about Anne Boleyn, which obviously by this point, 60 years in the past, but is that she died constantly looking over her shoulder as if expecting to see a king's messenger riding up to grant her forgiveness, her pardon. And I wonder if there's a sense of waiting for that moment from the word from the king, the word from God to come. We've got Faustus final speech that sees him Plea to Christ and receive no answer. And I wonder there if Marlowe's playing absolutely with expectations amongst his audience.

[Professor Emma Smith]

Yeah, that's such a great thought, isn't it? That the pardon, either, you know, human or divine, is going to come. And that actually, you know, Faustus is sort of temporizing, waiting for that. I think you're right. Because my reading of the expanded Faustus text, the so called B text that I mentioned. Is that it puts in some elements perhaps to close down alternative possibilities that maybe the play has found not helpful. So, for example, the B text ends with a much more literal view of what happens. It's much more medieval in a way, in its view of hell. That it is sort of dragonish, devilish creatures coming out, ripping your limbs apart. You know, like some of those sort of gruesome hell scenes that you see sometimes on altarpieces. Whereas there's a sense in the earlier version of the play that hell might be something a bit more existential. When Faustus asks Mephistopheles, what is hell? Mephistopheles says, hell is everywhere, nor am I out of it. And it's a moment of, I suppose, a particular theological interpretation of hell, which is out of the vision, out of the comfort, and out of the mercy of God. But it's not drawing on that iconography, that medieval iconography. It's a. A colder and bleaker and in some ways more modern version of what Faustus is going to lose. And at the end of that text, that early text, there aren't any devils who come on and pull him apart. There's just. And there's a theatrical element to this. Isn't that there's just the end of the play, you know, that's the metaphor for. Or maybe the actuality of what it means to lose everything. Yeah.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And how bold and challenging that must have been to ask the audience to suspend disbelief in that literal interpretation of heaven and hell. And to make it that much more amorphous. And it also, I suppose, links back to your point about agency. Because in the 1590s, the questions around agency are questions of theology and predestination. And so I wanted to ask you what you think the play owes to the huge questions of religion that are being debated at the time.

[Professor Emma Smith]

Yes. If you read the scholarship on Dr. Faustus, you can find interpretations of this play which completely and convincingly but incompatibly describe it as, you know, a play which is invested in Calvinism, in the idea of predestination. A play which is Catholic in its sympathies, you know, a play which is trying to follow the sort of middle ground of Elizabethan Protestantism, or a play which is really not by a theologian and is quite sort of confused, cheerfully confused about in what ways these different visions don't. Are not compatible. And over all, that there is that humanist cast, isn't there, about how far humans themselves shape the destiny. And I think tragedy, you know, there's a reason, isn't it, that tragedy becomes a preferred genre at particular times. And we know from the history of tragedy that it's partly about urban life. That's definitely the sort of Greek context. But it also seems to be come to the fore at a moment when there are wider intellectual questions or fault lines that tragedy can't reconcile, but can dramatize and sometimes open up more. And we are in a little Short period of 1590s tragedies where Marlowe is a very significant figure, which I think are. Where I think the genre is precisely apposite because it's all about the questioning of the human role in the cosmos. And that's what Faustus himself does. But I also think that's what his play does. And probably it's that questioning, rather than any particular theological positioning which makes the play for me transgressive, as you're saying, and radical. It's not helped, or it is helped, I don't know which way round, by this extraordinary over documentation of a contemporary idea of Marlowe himself, the writer, as a very transgressive person on religious as well as sexual and political grounds, and right from the end of his life and pretty much ever since the plays have been read back through that lens. I sometimes wonder if we didn't have a sense that maybe Christopher Marlowe was a questioning or skeptical figure, would we be more inclined to see Faustus as a more conventional morality? And is. Is it because of the Marlowe who emerges from the records that the play itself looks more radical?

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

What should we make of the fact that the play is set in Wittenberg, which was famous for its connection to Martin Luther and has scenes making fun of the Pope? How would they have been interpreted?

[Professor Emma Smith]

Yeah, so part of what Faustus does with his great knowledge and great possibility given him by the pact that he signs with Lucifer is he goes sort of around the place in a sort of cloak of invisibility, doing slapstick tricks, taking plates from under people when they're just about to eat, or putting effectively custard pies in their faces. You know, it's a very, very slapstick. The play in both its forms sort of wheels around from high theology to slapstick and back again. It's a very. It's quite a rollercoaster ride, I think. How the audience would react to it. But you're right that one of the great victims of Faustus's merriment in this part of the play is the Pope. And so that seems to suggest that Faustus of Wittenberg is perhaps even a version or an avatar or a parodic version of Luther himself, you know, challenging the Pope in this different way. So there's most definitely. It's steeped in the history of the Reformation. But in ways which I think we've struggled fully to untangle. Marlowe seems to me perfectly capable of having a Wittenberg academic scholar. Encountering and cocking a snook at the Pope. While also slightly undermining the Protestant doctrine at the same time. I think he is. Again, this may be overbiographical. Most people think Marlowe was a double agent. And that there's a double agent ness about his plays. An ability to see both things, I think, at the same time.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And perhaps it's precisely that, that fact that it won't be confined to one doctrine. That makes it irresistible as a play and as a subject for discussion.

[Professor Emma Smith]

I think that's right. And why the Faustian pact, which has come, you know, from that tradition with Marlowe and, you know, Goethe and other people. But why that is still so recognizable? You know, every society or every context has its devils. Whether it's the lure of money. I always rather like that John Grisham novel and film, the Firm, where the hotshot lawyer is completely in hock to the legal firm. It's a Faustian pact. It's a very secularized version of Faustus. But it definitely is a version of Faustus. And I think you're absolutely right that the religious indeterminacy enables this sense of what are you prepared to. What are you prepared to risk about your soul, however you define that, in order to get something that you want. That's a perennial question which has wonderful different versions at different moments.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Can you tell me a bit more about those two texts of the play? Is there any way of knowing what Marlowe himself wrote?

[Professor Emma Smith]

Yeah, there's such a great conundrum. So the earliest one to be published comes out in 1604. So that's more than a decade after Marlowe's death. And then the next one comes out in 1616. And we know because of a joke in the 1604 version. That at least some element, or at least that joke must have post dated Marlowe. It's a joke about Elizabeth's Spanish Jewish physician, Dr. Lopez, which must be after the death of Marlowe. In 1593. So one very clever, witty scholar has said, at best, we have got the B and the C text with a missing A text, which would be what did Marlowe actually write? The B text, the later text is much longer. And what it does, interestingly, is maybe show us what was and wasn't popular or what needed tweaking. And what could be added to. And certainly what could be added to was the slapstick and the humour. So there's a lot more. There's a lot more in the B text where the servants of Faustus go through sort of parallel, but comic engagements with magical texts or sacred texts. They're undermining the seriousness, but they themselves encounter. They're playing tricks where, you know, they pull off someone's leg or they, you know, make magic work in funny ways. So that seems to have been an attractive part of the play rather than as it. For many modern scholars who have been more interested in its serious sort of theology and philosophy. It looks as if contemporary audiences liked that cut with these comic scenes. But there are also ways, I think the B text does some important work in clarifying perhaps, the possibilities or not, for Faustus to repent. So we talked already about that final speech and whether, like Anne Boleyn, Faustus is partly half, three quarters, thinking, something's gonna. Someone's gonna come and stop this in the B text. In the later text, there's a short scene before that where the two angels there have been the good and bad angels. This is a real inheritance from medieval drama. These are almost like parts of Faustus's own psyche. You know, the sort of bad version of Faustus. And the good one on each shoulder, pulling him in one way or another. And the good angel shows him this heavenly throne brought down from the gods, as they're called in the theater. Partly, I think, to show off this amazing new technology. The theater has the ability to lower and then take something up in a controlled way. And the good angel shows him this throne and says, you could have had this, but now it is too late. It absolutely says at that point, there is no going back. So it takes. Maybe takes away that possibility that the audience may still feel at the end that something will come to save Faustus. And so maybe it's closing that down in some, in a way, perhaps because audiences weren't entirely satisfied with the fact that Faustus doesn't get saved at the end. You know, maybe that disrupted a little bit how the ending worked. So there are lots of different elements in the difference between the texts. But one thing they can't really tell us is what did Marlowe himself write? The suggestion is that the B text has additional material by another writer, possibly by Thomas Nash. But these are all, you know, difficult and contested issues. One interesting thing about Marlowe's reputation, both in his own time or at least immediately after his death perhaps, and in more modern times, is we've assumed that he didn't do comedy, that he was a serious, bloodthirsty, you know, epic sort of writer, but that he didn't do comedy. But that's, that's not necessarily the case. I mean, he may have enjoyed actually writing these comic scenes for the A text of Faustus himself.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

It's so interesting to consider that one possibility is that we have a play that has been audience tested and the feedback says we need some more mechanicals, please. You know, we need to be more slapstick.

[Professor Emma Smith]

Exactly. That's it. And there are a couple of occasions in the history of Renaissance drama, English Renaissance drama, where we've got this example of two texts. And at some periods of scholarship, the expectation or the presupposition has been that a shorter version was a cut down version of a longer one. But what Faustus shows us is that the longer one is an expanded version of a shorter one. And the expansions show us something about what went down well with audiences. What could you do well? What would play well now? What could this theatre do that perhaps your previous one couldn't? So there are great barometer really I guess, of what's changing.

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Can we talk about how the play would have first been performed, or at least in its first few years? Because, of course, this is before sound recording, obviously, before, you know, the sophisticated technical effects that we have today. So how do we think the supernatural was staged?

[Professor Emma Smith]

Yeah, so the overlap between the supernatural and the theatre itself, I think, is very interesting. And the way that they. That both of these work with illusion, perhaps with a willingness to believe. You used a bit earlier the phrase suspension of disbelief. And that, in a way, that's an element of the supernatural manifestations as well. They press on. What willing to believe. I think we've got a props list from the theatre that was run by Philip Henslow, the theatre entrepreneur at the beginning, in the 1580s and 1590s. And there are a couple of props that they have which seem relevant. One is described as a cloth of the city of Rome, which must have been a backdrop, I think, for taking us to that scene we've already touched on, where Faustus gives the Pope a bit of knockabout. But the other one is described as one hell mouth, which is rather fine sounding prop. And I think we probably imagine that to have been a surround for the trapdoor in the floor of the theatre that would have recreated that quite simple piece of technology that you could go from the stage into the space below, into something more elaborate, perhaps with smoke or kind of fire underneath. And we do, as I said, have this record of firecrackers, so early fireworks, sometimes using gunpowder, using other chemicals, making a noise, but also a bright light and some kind of smoke. So I think there was probably quite a bit of that. And that spectacle was an important part of the appeal of this play. And back to your idea about audience testing. One of the things they may have been saying would be more spectacle and that the wonderful to them, special effects budget blown on. Having this throne come down, you know, all white and angelic and then taken away again, might also speak to what's popular, what's been popular in the play.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

I'm assuming, correct me if I'm wrong, that the explicit stage direction for Thunder and those firecrackers may have been related to each other. Do we get descriptions like this often in plays or directions like this? Perhaps often in plays, it's interesting that.

[Professor Emma Smith]

Thunder and lightning becomes perhaps a standard, a sort of signature, if you like, of something supernatural rather than of very bad weather. So the thunder and lightning that we get at the beginning of Macbeth for Instance gives us the witches. So I think that these were not primarily meteorological phenomena, but they were sort of moralized or otherworldly ones. So I definitely think the sort of soundscape of the play is and is itself probably quite frightening. Some of the recent work on the soundscape of the Elizabethan theatre reminds us, I suppose, that before you've got amplified noise, some of these noises up close would have been really very, very frightening. And that the. The ways of making thunder, some version of a thunderball that. That booms round or a metal sheet or those kinds of things, they would have been loud, very loud sort of anxiety inducing noises. They might have made the audience quite jittery themselves just because of their impact in, in the moment.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And I'm struck by the fact that the globe burned down precisely because they're trying to make a noise effect like that, something that would have been thunderous and terrifying at the time.

[Professor Emma Smith]

Yeah, these are dangerous. It's a really good reminder actually, isn't it? Because it makes you think what the potential risks of these effects are really serious. So their value to the, to playgoers must have been quite high, you know, to be worth it. To be worth the risk.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Yeah, yes, yeah. And also I suppose it's a good reminder because we are so inured to non human sounds. We hear airplanes going over the head all the time or lorries passing by. And actually these would have been unusual in the soundscape of the time, I would imagine.

[Professor Emma Smith]

You know, church bells and those kinds of things would have been noisy. But most people are not up close to them. So I think the sort of normal decibel level of London life was probably, you know, highish. But these eruptive, unexpected noises must have been adrenaline inducing for audiences. And we know that being adrenaline y makes you more sort of jittery and nervous and inclined to jump and to perhaps more perhaps softens you up for supernatural belief or something. You know, these are this. It's really interesting to me to think about the physiological effects of some of these other sensory. The other sensory input in the theatre.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Absolutely. It makes it the thriller of the day. You keep coming back because you want more.

[Professor Emma Smith]

Yes, yes.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Can we talk about the play's artistic legacy? Because that's been huge. I mean, first of all, in terms of thinking about Marlowe's legacy as one of the most important writers in the English language, how did it cement that legacy for him?

[Professor Emma Smith]

I think it's really crucial in that legacy. And that's partly linguistic. It's partly the, you know, Marlowe is not the only person. He's not the first person, but he is the person who is associated with taking the language of theatre away from what he calls in his preface to Tamburlaine, jigging veins of rhyming mother wits. And that, you know, means the kind of dum dee dum dee dum de Dum Couplety 16ers, as they're called, long lines, which are part and parcel of Tudor, Tudor drama. They're relatively easy for actors to remember and they have their own rhythm. So Marlowe doesn't, as I say, doesn't invent blank verse, but he really does showcase that pentameter verse. Unstressed, stressed, with unrhymed endings and a kind of strong, stressed ending to the line. But it's not rhymed. That's really crucial. And acoustically, that establishes where English drama is going to go. It's hugely influential on the young Shakespeare, who at this point, absolutely is, you know, just wants to be Marlowe. Everybody actually wants to be Marlowe at this point. This is the. He is the playwright, he is the superstar. And that's the sense of that. Later, Johnson, Ben Johnson calls this Marlowe's mighty line. And it is definitely a line of considerable sort of impact and kind of muscularity, somehow these beats that Marlowe puts into it. And he starts with a great long chorus prologue, which establishes that sound, that rhythm. And then we go into a long speech by Dr. Faustus himself, talking about his intellectual satedness. So I think, although we get much more interactive dialogue and other kinds of speech later in the play, the beginning, the first 15 or 20 minutes of the play establish this aural world, which I think is really quite decisive for how English drama develops.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And in the longer term, how much does Goethe's Faust owe to Marlowe's play? How much can we see this as a precursor to Gothic fiction like Bram Stroker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or even more recent films like Nosferatu?

[Professor Emma Smith]

I think that's such an interesting idea. I think that Faustus has many, many of the aspects of Gothic fiction. And in some ways it preempts a really particular 21st century version of that which it kind of preempts. Queer gothic. One of the things that Gothic fiction in the 18th century has in the hands of, oh, Ann Radcliffe. And as you say, you know, Mary Shelley is this heroine drawn sort of inexorably, but also horrifically to the wickedness or the. You know, and that there's a lot of the way in which the Gothic somehow organizes Itself around the psychic field of young women. And one of the things about Faustus, although it does have this mysterious sort of pact with the devil and so on. And this attitude to religion. Which I suppose we could also see in the Gothic. It has no women. Apart from the sort of incubus figure of Helen of Troy herself. You know, such an ambivalent female sort of archetype from classical history. So the relationship. It's one of the really interesting things about Marlowe. That he really hardly does intimate emotional relationships. That's not really part of his canvas. But he sort of does do it between Faustus and Mephistopheles. And when I said earlier, you know, Faustus asked Mephistopheles for a wife, I was kind of sneering at that and saying, come on, you know, surely some sort of ladyboy is popping ping pongs or something. Surely you can think of something more wicked than that. It's already. You've lost it all already. But there is a sense that Faustus is terribly lonely. And that Mephistopheles is a companion. And in some productions, in some very, very affecting productions. Is a kind of. Almost a kind of lover or a partner or somebody who can. Who exchanges, you know, takes Fastus. Blood exchanges blood. Has an intimacy with him which is actually rather, you know, rather touching. So, yeah, I think it's a definite, brilliant precursor.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And then the request for a wife becomes a request for a beard.

[Professor Emma Smith]

I know, it really does. And it makes Faustus a sadder, a more pitiable figure. Although sometimes in production, he does, but doesn't, for me, retain that. Because what he goes on to do with the time that he's given is so freshman, you know, it's so silly. But he does at that point. Yeah.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And finally, then, given that we are now, when we watch the play, seeing something written 400 years ago in a very culturally different space. But it remains one of the most successful, widely performed early modern plays. Why do you think that is? And we've just sort of hinted towards it there. But in what ways has the play's meaning altered over time?

[Professor Emma Smith]

I think the play's meaning has altered from a primarily, if confusedly religious, sphere of. Of human existence. Into many, but not all contexts. A more secular or more human centered view. So I think it's translated its dilemmas into a world, into a modern world. Where the stakes of what's good and what's bad come in different guises. That a modern Mephistopheles might be dressed in a. You know, might present In a quite different. In a quite different way. But as we already said, there still are those moments of. Of choice and there still are moments where to pursue a selfish goal, which is one reading of what Faustus does. You put your lot in with a terrible and ultimately destructive grouping. But I think what's also important is that the play, which could have been very, very simply moralistic, there's a little epilogue at the end which begins cut is the branch that might have grown full straight. It's a very sort of, for such a play, a sort of inner religious world. It's a very unreligious imagery. Piece of imagery. It's kind of classical imagery, I suppose, isn't it? That might have, you know, in what world might it have been? What was the choice that would have made that different? But it's regard. Faustus is hellish fall. So that's a little bit more directive and a little bit more moralizing. But. But on the whole, this play, which is so much about moral issues, is remarkably unmoralising. And I think that's probably given it some of its longevity, as against other products of the period where I think we often find the sort of religious affiliations historically interesting, but not necessarily all that relevant.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Well, Professor Emma Smith, thank you for an intensely enjoyable conversation about Dr. Faustus. It has been a real pleasure and I am now desperate to go back and reread both texts and compare them and think about them in the light of everything you've said. So thank you so much for your time.

[Professor Emma Smith]

Thank you. It was a real pleasure.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Thanks for listening to Not Just the Tudors and to my researcher, Alice Smith and my producer, Rob Weinberg. And do join me, Professor Susannah Lipscomb next time for another episode of Not Just the Tudors from History.

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[Professor Emma Smith]

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

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