The Tragical History of
Christopher Marlowe
February 1564-May 30, 1593
Of “Common Stock”
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Parents John and Katherine Marlowe
Father shoemaker
Canterbury, England
Scholarship to
Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge University
Education & Religion
 B. A. in 1584; M. A. in 1587
 Scholarships were with understanding that he
would take holy orders in Anglican church
 Cambridge battlefield for Calvinists and antiCalvinists in 1580s;
difference was damnation
 Religious convictions?
 Anglican? Catholic? Atheist?
Arrests for Fights & Religion
• Arrested 1589, brawl resulted in homicide;
poet Thomas Watson self-defense; both
released
• 1593 his roommate, dramatist Thomas Kyd
arrested for inciting riots against Flemish
Protestants; officers found papers denying
deity of Christ; Kyd said they were Marlowe’s;
Marlowe had to report daily to Privy Council-like house arrest
More on Marlowe’s “Reputation”
• Kyd reported on Marlowe’s “monstrous
opinions,” saying he would “gybe at praiers, &
stryve in argument to frustrate & confute
what hath byn spoke or wrytt by prophets &
such holie men.”
• Bains, a former fellow prisoner and possible
informer, accused Marlowe of “Damnable
Judgement of Religion, and scorn of gods
word” and of saying “the first beginning of
Religion was only to keep men in awe.”
More on Reputation
• Bains also accused Marlowe of
saying that if there is “any god
or religion, then it is in the
papistes. . . . [A]ll protestantes
are Hypocritical asses. . . .”
• Why would this be alarming in 1593?
• What reasons would Kyd and Bains
have had for lying about Marlowe’s
beliefs?
Work History
• 1587 Cambridge first refused to grant his
master’s because of Marlowe’s absences
from college, but Queen Elizabeth’s Privy
Council sent a letter stating “that in all his
accions he had behaved him selfe orderlie
and discreetlie wherebie he had done her
Majestie good service, & deserved to be
rewarded for his faithful dealinge. . . .”
• Frequent trips to Rheims, France--to visit or
spy on Catholics?
Work History, cont.
• Other unexplained absences
• Espionage for Sir Thomas
Walsingham, head of
Elizabeth’s secret service?
• 1592 letter from prison
governor describes Marlowe
as “by his profession a
scholar.”
Performance of Plays
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Dido Queen of Carthage (1586)
Tamburlaine, I and II (1587-88)
The Jew of Malta (1590)
The Massacre at Paris
(1590)
• Edward II (1592-93)
• Dr. Faustus (1594)
Translations of Latin Poetry &
Writing English Lyric Poetry
• Certain of Ovid’s Elegies & Amores
(1595 with John Davies)
• Lucan’s First Booke (1600)
• “Hero and Leander”
(1598; unfinished)
• “Passionate Shepherd
to His Love” (1600)
Importance to Poetry
• A. C. Swinburne, critic: Marlowe was “the
father of English tragedy and the creator of
English blank verse.”
• Tamburlaine Prologue shows Marlowe’s
contempt for stage verse of the period:
“jygging vaines of riming mother wits”
presented the “conceits [which] clownage
keepes in pay.”
• Dramatic poets of 16th c followed where
Marlowe led; lyric poets of 17th c imitated him.
Importance to Tragedy
• Episodic treatment of events
• Multi-dimensional protagonists
• Humorous subplots
that parallel larger themes
• Poetic language
• Blank verse
Death as Reported at Inquest
• Died May 30, 1593 at age of 29, before
all reports got to authorities.
• Spent day with 3 men in a house leased
for meetings
• Fight over “le recknynge”; Marlowe
pulled his dagger, Ingram Frazir got it
away and stabbed Marlowe over right
eye 2” deep and 1” wide; died instantly.
Cover up or not?
• Some scholars argue that the Earl of Essex
ordered murder of Marlowe because he was an
associate of Sir Walter Raleigh, Essex’s rival.
• Walsingham ordered murder because Marlowe
was becoming a liability to the privy Council?
• Just typical Marlowe “rashness in attempting
sudden privy injuries to men”?
Wacko Theory
• Marlovians assert that
Marlowe didn’t really die in
1593 but lived to write
Shakespeare’s plays, which
couldn’t have been written by
someone who wasn’t
university-educated!!
• Or that Marlowe was a nom
de guerre assumed by
Shakespeare during the “lost
years”!
Changes in Dramatic Productions
• Professional actors who attached to
powerful patron for protection from
vagrancy laws
• Professional theatres move outside
London to avoid official sanctions
• Universities produce Latinate comedies:
Ralph Roister Doister, Grammar
Gurton’s Needle (1550s)
Humor & Subplots
• Parts modeled on Roman comedies of
Terence and Plautus.
• Puns, slapstick, irony—it’s got it all!
• Action of the comic characters parallels the
action in the main plot.
• Example: Faustus gets a servant; Wagner
gets a servant. Faustus learns to conjure;
Wagner learns to conjure and teaches his
servant. This also develops the themes of
power and submission and knowledge.
Attitudes toward Witchcraft
• To Elizabethans,
witchcraft was very real.
• Malleus Maleficarum
• Plague
• Burnings; religious
persecutions
• What replaces scientific
cause and effect when
disease and natural
disaster strike?
http://virtual.park.uga.edu/cdesmet/tiffany/faustus.htm
Humanism
• Included study of classics and
theology
• Interest in education for public
service
• Distrust of vernacular languages
because wanted eternal fame
for writings; English too
changeable—who could read in
200 years? Latin and Greek
eternal(?!)
• National pride eventually
legitimizes vernacular English.
Erasmus
Reformation
• Martin Luther originally intended simply
to pose questions for discussion (1517).
• Issue: Bible translated into vernacular so people
could decide for themselves.
• Issue: individual should believe and do what his
personal reading of Bible and personal enlightened
conscience tell him to—not what church leaders say.
• English Reformation was forced by dynastic
concerns not religious ones.
English Protestantism
• Henry VIII executed Wm. Tyndale
for translating the Bible into English.
• After splitting with the Catholic church to get
a divorce and remarry for an heir, he
authorizes an English translation of the Bible!
• Queen Mary-Bloody Mary, Spanish Catholic
• Queen Elizabeth I – the Politique, middle
ground; beliefs ambiguous to accommodate
individual conscience. Prohibited controversial
preaching.
Medieval
• The Great Chain of
Being
• Universal
Catholicism
• Agriculture
• Anointed Kings
• Preparing for
Imminent Death
• Nobility
Renaissance
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The Individual
Reformation
Humanism
Manufacturing
Queen Elizabeth-the
Politique
• Living for worldly
accomplishments
• Rise of Middle Class
Medieval or Renaissance?
1. London cultural
center
2. Scientific
experimentation
3. Change social class
4. Some religious
freedom
5. Land/feudal
obligations
6. Writers had to have
noble patrons or be
nobles themselves
7. Challenge; ask
questions
8. Could not change
social status
9. Professional writers
10.Follow tradition and
authority completely
Theatres and Free-thinking
• Avoidance of authority, discuss anything
that could escape censors
• QE I seeing Richard II after Essex revolt:
“I am Richard II, know ye not that?”
• Marlowe’s view of man: “. . .But his
dominion that exceeds in this / Stretcheth
as far as doth the mind of man”
(Faustus.1.1.57-58).
• Act of 1545 classed any person not a member
of a guild as a vagabond and subject to arrest
• Patronage of an important person, a servant
and not charged with being a vagabond.
• QE1 gave permission to perform in London in
spite of local rules if met the approval of the
Master of the Revels
• Highly operatic with flamboyant expressions
stylized according to certain rhetorical
traditions
Themes
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Individualism
Ambition, power
Good and evil
Knowledge and ignorance
Choices and consequences
Appearance and reality
Success and failure
The human condition or meaning of life
Manipulation/Machiavellian action
Marlowe’s Over-reachers
• “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed
his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?”
--Robert Browning (1812–1889)
Renaissance Attitudes
Towards Faustus as a Magician
• Elizabethan Perspective on the Occult
• Lawrence Stone said the Elizabethan age was "the
greatest age of religious difference before the 20th
century."
• During Faustus' time there were an estimated
900,000 atheists in a population of four to five
million, although the estimate was made by a
Spanish ambassador. Puritans felt that even the
litany was a "conjuring" of God and the Pope and
priests were magicians. Modern magic possibly
dates from the publishing of Giambattista della
Porta's Natural Magic in 1558.
Elizabethan Perspective on the Occult
Elizabethan Perspective on the Occult
• Nature was thought to be a secondary cause of
occurences, God always being the first cause. The
study of Nature bypassed God, causing suspicion of
atheism.
• Magic changed from medieval times when magicians
tried to stop or reverse natural processes and began
a more scientific approach of finding ways to work in
harmony with Nature.
• Many students of traditional academia turned to
scientific research during Marlowe's time as a student
at Cambridge. Sir Walter Raleigh typified the 'new
man,' whose pursuit for knowledge included both the
rational and the occult. Faustus recognizes Hell and
the Devil's personal pervasiveness, and he wants the
powers of Nature even with its limitations.
Faustus' Form of Magic
• Faustus originally intends for his magic to do good:
to increase his intellect and his power so he may
help others and possibly ease his finding a mate so
he may start a family.
• Thus, he aspires to be a "white" magician or
magus, a rare wise man who could connect with
God in order to manipulate objects or events. Yet
when he performs his conjuring in Act 1 Scene 3,
he does not pray willingly to God but to devils, for
they will move willingly and quickly to bring him
the same end--power.
Faustus' Form of Magic (cont’d)
• Does he then truly become a demonic or
"black" magician in this act?
• Hardly, for Mephistopheles arrives of his
own free will, and their relationship
continues in the same dynamic, with
Mephistopheles as the magician and Faustus
as the pawn who has given up what small
power he previously has for the pretense of
that of another.
Faustus' Form of Magic (cont’d)
• The Renaissance audience, according to Traister,
would have recognized this relationship and
known that Faustus was not either a white or black
magician, or either a true or ceremonial (a
distinction made by Eugenio Garin in which
ceremonial magic leads to chaos and sin). The
type of magician Faustus is allowed to imitate is
limited by Mephistopheles as well as what kind of
magic he is permitted to perform. Mephistopheles
refuses to conjure a wife for Faustus; rather he
insists on a lusty paramour, Helen.
Faustus' Form of Magic (cont’d)
• The only magic Faustus does perform are
childish tricks against the Pope,
unquestionably demonic or "black", for he
acts consciously against God, and only
because Mephistopheles allows him to be a
magician for one fleeting moment. Faustus,
of course, pays for this type of magic with
his own demise and damnation to Hell.
Faustus as a Subversive Criticism
on Religion
• Marlowe himself has been accused of
being an atheist, and if this is true, it
casts a great deal of doubt on his ability
to moralize from a Christian stance.
Additionally, there are nagging
inconsistencies within the text that
might point to a more unconventional
reading.
Faustus as a Subversive Criticism
on Religion (cont’d)
• Faustus is not damned because he sells his soul; he
sells his soul because he is damned, and this is the
only avenue left open to him. The lines in the
prologue of the play, "And melting heavens
conspired his overthrow," suggest that God
himself is aligned against Faustus.
• Is it not almost perverse to assume the guilt of a
man whom God himself has damned?
Faustus as a Subversive Criticism
on Religion (cont’d)
• Faustus is guilty of many sins, pride being the
greatest, but perhaps it is his desire for knowledge
and power beyond the scope of man that causes God
to damn him. It is simply Faustus' audacity in daring
to question his place in the universe which turns God
against him.
• What solace can anyone take in such an authoritarian,
judgmental deity? In light of this admittedly extreme
stance, what possible lesson does Marlowe intend
for his audience? Is it anti-Christian? Marlowe is
quite the radical.
The "Real Faust"
• It is now clear to us that the real Dr. Faust, on
whom Marlowe based his play, was not a
magician at all but rather an incredible braggart
and trickster. His stories were bred in the German
inns of the sixteenth century, an environment
described by E. M. Butler as a place where
"jugglers, charlatans, and quacks of all kinds
thrived. . ., the ideal breeding ground for those
crass deceptions and knavish tricks associated
with the real Faust" (121). Dr. Faust was known to
publicize himself as chief of all atrologers, the
most learned chemist of all times, a palmist, a
crystal gazer, and a man who could perform
miracles greater than Christ (121).
The "Real Faust"
• Unfortunately for Faust, he was never able to bring about
any of these miracles (unless one wants to argue that such
a man achieving a good theological degree is a miracle in
itself). The only documented facts that might have given
him credibility as a wizard, among his bar-mates, were
things that now seem trivial. These include such
occurences as his keeping a dog with him at meals (some
of the sixteenth century general public considered demons
to disguise themselves as dogs), his ability to occasionally
obtain out-of-season game, and his threatening a group of
monks with a poltergiest because they gave him bad wine.
Whenever he would claim to bring someone back from the
dead, he always needed a couple of days to prepare, no
doubt to hire the right actors and create an eager audience.
The "Real Faust"
• Dr. Faust was not made famous and immortalized
in literature by such authors as Marlowe because
of amazing acts, but rather because his amazing
amount of bragging caused false stories to become
exaggerated over time. In truth, the real Faust
sounds more like Shakespeare's comically boastful
Falstaff than the respectable man unable to avoid
temptation that Marlowe creates.
The Renaissance Audience
• The common man of the sixteenth
century still believed that the devil and
his accomplices could be real physical
beings. They believed that one could
become a magician with an association
of the devil. Wizards and magicians
were considered men who had made a
pact with Satan and, in return for their
pledge of allegiance, were given evil
aid in performing superhuman acts.
Also, Marlowe was regarded as an
atheist.
The Renaissance Audience
• Certainly this would cause Marlowe's peers
to view him as hazardous both intellectually
and morally. These facts surely caused the
audience of the sixteenth century to view
Doctor Faustus in a much more serious
light than that of today's audiences. This
was not a play of fantasy or make-believe to
a Renaissance audience but one with
genuine fears and possibilities.
The Renaissance Audience
• The sixteenth century saw a shift in Christian ideals that
added significance to Marlowe's play.
• No longer did people believe that God would always be
there to protect them from Satan. The sixteenth century
brought about a high level of paranoia that Satan was
everywhere and that day to day life was an individual duel
with the devil, and the individual was left to fend for himself.
• This way of thinking is far less comforting than the previous
view that God acted as a "guardian angel" working to protect
Christians from Satan's attacks.
• It is important to note that the devil does not show up to
tempt Faustus; he makes his own decision to call for Satan.
He destroys his own life. Throughout his play, Marlowe is
depicting the Christian ideal of his time, that the individual is
responsible for his own fate.
White Magic vs. Black Magic
• The distinction between white magic and black
magic was very unstable during the Renaissance.
Christian doctrine accepted both versions of magic
but scholars argued as to the differences between
the two. White magic was seen as a natural
science when used for legitimate ends. Also called
"natural magic," white magic flourished during the
Renaissance and was used as a means of acquiring
access to the divine through nature. In the New
Testament there is a favorable view of the Magi,
or magician. These people used white magic to
worship Christ.
White Magic vs. Black Magic
• Black magic also used nature but included the
invocation of demons. This was the magic that Dr.
Faustus used in Marlowe's great work. Black magic,
or witchcraft, implied the use of supernatural powers
for a wicked purpose.
• In early Christian history, black magic was seen as
idolatry. Paganism was seen as a sin in the Old
Testament but this form of black magic was still
acknowledged. This exercise of evil was seen as
demonic to Christians but, nevertheless, both forms
of magic flourished during this time period.
Works Cited
• Butler, E. M. The Myth of the Magus. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1948. 121-143.
• Marlowe, Christopher. Doctor Faustus and Other Plays. Ed.
David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995. 137-246.
• Marshall, Richard. Witchcraft: The History and Mythology. New
York: Crescent, 1995.
• McAlindon, T. Doctor Faustus, Divine in Show. Ed. Robert
Lecker. New York: Twayne, 1994. 4-7, 33-35.
• Russell, Jeffrey Burton. The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil
and the Power of Good in History. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1988.
• Traister, Barbara. Heavenly Necromancers: Magicians in
English Renaissance Drama. Columbia: University of Missouri
Press, 1984.
Sources
Barnet, Sylvan, ed. “Introduction.” Doctor Faustus. Christopher Marlowe. New York: Signet, 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,
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>.