Tragedy

From Aristotle’s Poetics and

Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex to Marlowe’s Doctor

Faustus & Shakespeare’s Romeo and

Juliet

Classical Tragedy 5th c BCE• Chorus (15 men)• Tragic hero (hamartia, hubris; high

station and moral worth)• Catastrophe/reversal; unities• Loses material things but has

epiphany/anagnorisis• Catharsis; audiences

experience pity & relief

Senecan Tragedy Roman

4th c BCE-65• Knew in Medieval• 5 acts• Revenge; bloody • No catharsis• Fortuna turns wheel

to bring high low

Miracle & Mystery Plays(10th – 14th centuries)

• Miracle plays: lives of saints• Mystery plays: stories from Old

and New Testaments• Performed in church as part of holy

days• Moved outside onto wagons; guilds

performed

Morality Plays (15th c)

• 1 plot• About common people; characters

often allegories• Dramatized allegories representing

a Christian’s life and his quest for salvation

• Show audience that fortune is unpredictable

Medieval Staging

• Plays performed in church then moved to courtyard

• Mobile, no stage • Used wagons, move

episodes from one location to another

• Guilds put them on• Symbolic props

Renaissance & Restoration Tragedy

• Hero starts good/turns evil• Hero usually important if not ruler• Fall from grace marked by

reversals and discoveries• Audience experiences fear and

pity; catharsis• Added comic relief and subplots

Traits from Morality Plays in Doctor Faustus

• Good and Bad Angel• 7 Deadly Sins• Presence of Lucifer

and his cohorts• Vision of Hell• Chorus (1 person) to open the play• Allegory

Origins of Story

• Johann Faust (1488) bragged he’d sold his soul to the devil for magical powers.

• Wandered Germany until death in 1541• 1587 story about him appeared in

Germany: The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus

• Translation in English 1592• 1592 first performance of Doctor Faustus

Influences on Authorship

• Written between 1588-1592?• Perkins, don at Cambridge,

preached about witchcraft because of popular interest in discovery and detection of witches; witchcraft is like “desiring to become a god, longing to win reputation, dissatisfaction with inward gifts received such as knowledge, wit, understanding, memory, and suchlike.”

Problems with Authorship

• Faustus entered official records in 1601 but not as new work.

• In 1602 at least 2 others paid for work on Faustus

• First published in 1604• 1616 another version printed• Today’s version based on work of

Sir Walter Gregg

Problems with Authorship, cont.• Quality not consistent.• Most believe that

Marlowe wrote tragic beginning and end; some that he did most of Acts 1, 3 & 5.

• Collaborators wrote much of comical middle sections.

Renaissance authorship

• Patrons; sold to printer or bookseller• No royalties; no copyright; pay poor• Censored by government and church• Printing legal only in London,

Cambridge & Oxford UP after passed censorship

• 1579 John Stubbs lost his right hand as penalty for attempting to publish pamphlet against proposed French marriage

Patronage

• First professional writers; University wits tried to make a living with their writing

• Who will be offended? Who will pay?• Theatrical manager Philip Henslowe’s

diary is full of entry after entry about university graduates in prison for debt or eking out a miserable existence writing plays.

Authorship/Ownership

• 60 % literacy by 1530• Writing passed by hand, copied pieces they

liked in their own commonbooks, often no original author given.

• Plays belonged to acting companies, not the playwright. Text changed with actors and situation; dramatists collaborated/changed.

• Plays evolved with no printed copy to stabilize the correct text. Ben Jonson first to print play texts--after Marlowe’s death.

Additions to Faust Legend

• Connections to witchcraft and Perkins’s motivations for witchcraft from sermons

• Ambivalence of Faustus• Thematic elements

Allusions

• References to literature, art, music, historical events and people

• Why put Faustus in Wittenberg? What famous medieval person is connected with the university in Wittenberg?

• Burning chair in Hell; Hungarian peasant rebel Gyorgy Dozsa (1514)

• Icarus and Daedalus

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (1560) by Peter Breughel the Elder. Musée Royaux des Beaux Arts de Belgique, Brussels.

Allegory• Form of extended metaphor• Characters in a narrative have symbolic

meaning as well as literal meaning• Personification of abstract qualities• Example: Everyman is the name of a

character in a medieval narrative who goes through the conflicts of the plot, but he also is a symbol for all Christians who struggle through life to find salvation.

Why authors use allegory

To teach moral lessons To explain universal truths Marlowe uses these allegorical

characters in Faustus: the Good Angel and the Bad Angel. Why?

What function do they serve? Are they symbols? Of what? How would they have been

presented on stage then? Now?

Another Allegory: The 7 Deadly Sins

• Pride• Covetousness• Envy• Wrath• Gluttony • Sloth• Lechery

Which sins does Faustus commit?

Why does Marlowe include the 7 Deadlies?

Which characters possess these traits?

Why Faustus abandons learning

• Philosophy: “…though it has attained that end” (I.i.10).

• Medicine: “Could’st thou make men to live eternally / Or being dead raise them to life again” (I. i. 22-24).

• Law: “Too servile and illiberal for me” (I.i.34).

Why give up on religion just as he gets his doctorate in theology?• “. . .we must sin, and so

consequently die. / Ay, we must die an everlasting death” (I.i.4043).

• Syllogism: 2 statements which, if true, make a 3rd statement true.

• Example: Socrates is a man; all men are mortal; therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Faustus’s Syllogism

• He has created a syllogism. Is it logical?

• “. . .we must sin, and so consequently die. / Ay, we must die an everlasting death” (1.1.40-43).

• What is wrong with his thinking? Why is it ironic?

Logical Fallacy?

• Faustus has taken the quote out of context and ignores the rest of the quote which promises mercy for those sinners willing to repent.

• The world’s greatest scholar comes to ruin because of faulty research and reasoning; he misreads an important quote from an untrustworthy source.

What to look for as you read

Chorus: What functions does it serve?Appears 4 times: to introduce heroic nature of the play, to foreshadow, to provide exposition, and to identify the setting.

Irony: Look at Faustus’s arguments and thinking. What logical mistakes does the great scholar make?

What else to look for

• Allegory• Allusions• Comic relief; parallel subplots• Ideals/beliefs from Reformation,

Medieval Period, and Renaissance;• Beliefs about witchcraft and the devil• Antithesis/contrast

Ask yourself

• Is Faustus’s fate predestined or does he have free will?• What is knowledge?• Does Faustus ever find knowledge?• What does Faustus really want?• Can Faustus be both hero and villain?

Bad and good? What evidence can you find in the play?

Sources Barnet, Sylvan, ed. “Introduction.” Doctor Faustus. Christopher Marlowe. New York: Signet Books, 1969. vii-xix.

Bevington, David. “General Introduction.” The Complete Works of Shakespeare. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. Rpt. in Doctor Faustus: Divine in Show. Ed. McAlindon, T. Twayne’s Masterworks Studies. New York: Twayne, 1994. 152-170.

Duncan-Jones, Katherine. “Devil May Care.” New Statesman 131 (1996): 42-44.McAlindon, T. Doctor Faustus: Divine in Show. Twayne’s Masterworks Studies. New York: Twayne, 994.

Gounod, Charles. “Alerte, Alerte! – Sauvée!” Faust. Performed by Chor und Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. New York: Philips Classic Compilation, 1994.

“The Sixteenth Century I1485-1603): Introduction.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Ed. M. H. Abrams. New York: W. W. Norton,1996. 253-273.

Stenning, Rodney. “The ‘Burning Chair’ in the B-text of Doctor Faustus.” Notes and Queries 43 (1996): 144-145.

Stumpf, Thomas A. “Images and Music.” Freshman Seminar: Visits to Hell. (2001). 29 Sept. 2004.<http://www.unc.edu/courses/2001fall/engl/006m/005/thumbnails.html.>

Walton, Brenda. Lessons for Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Orlando, FL: Network for Instructional TV, 1998. 12 Oct. 2004. <http://www.teachersfirst.com/lessons/marl.htm>.