‘What book is that?’
Performance, text, and unofficial
speech in Doctor Faustus
Text and performance
Carl Grose, The Dark Philosophers, 2011
Tim Crouch, The Author, 2009
Rebecca Gilman, The Sweetest Swing in Baseball, 2005
Doctor Faustus: A- and B-texts
Doctor Faustus: a textual timeline
1587: German Faustbuch (source for much of Marlowe’s play) published.
c. 1588-93: Doctor Faustus is written and performed for the first time.
c. 1592: Publication of The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor
John Faustus, P. F’s English translation of the German Faustbuch.
1593: Christopher Marlowe stabbed to death in Deptford, 30 May.
1594: First recorded performance by the Lord Admiral’s Men at the Rose
Theatre. Henslowe’s diary lists many more performances between 1594-7.
1601: ‘A booke called the plaie of Doctor Faustus’ entered into the Stationers’
Register by Thomas Bushell.
1602: Henslowe pays £4 to William Birde and Samuel Rowley for ‘adicyones in
doctor fostes’, 22 November.
1604: A-text printed by Valentine Simmes for Bushell. Reprinted in 1609 and
1611.
1616: B-text printed for John Wright. Reprinted at least six times 1619-31. B2
(1619) onwards have the phrase ‘With new Additions’ on title page.
Doctor Faustus: A- and B-texts
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Scenes unique to B-text:
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The Pope’s humiliation of Saxon Bruno and Faustus’s rescue of Bruno
(3.1);
The Benvolio sub-plot, comprising the introductory conversation
between Martino, Frederick and Benvolio (4.1), their plan and attempt to
get revenge on Faustus (4.2), and his subsequent retaliation (4.3);
The clowns’ meeting with the horse-courser in the tavern (4.5) and their
subsequent humiliation at the court of the Duke of Vanholt (4.6);
The appearance of Lucifer, Beelzebub and Mephistopheles at the
beginning of 5.2;
The reappearance of Mephistopheles, the Good Angel and the Bad Angel
in the moments before Faustus’s damnation (5.2);
The final scene featuring the scholars’ discovery of Faustus’ remains (5.3).
Doctor Faustus: A- and B-texts
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Textual anomalies:
Misplaced scenes: Act 2 Scene 2 is misplaced in both
texts (after 3.1 in A-text and after 2.3 in B-text); the
B-text misplaces the Act 3 Chorus; the A-text
misplaces the Act 4 Chorus.
 Act 3 scene 2 has two endings in A-text:
Mephistopheles enters twice, and transforms the
clowns twice into animals.
 Contradictions over Mephistopheles’ free will.
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Printing Doctor
Faustus
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‘Compositor X abbreviates speech
headings and punctuates them
with a period, uses an upper-case
“E” in Exit directions, prefers -easpellings in words like year, dear,
and chear, prefers bloud over blood,
and uses -ll spellings in words like
will, shall, and hell.’
‘Compositor Y frequently uses
unabbreviated and unstopped
speech headings or abbreviated
speech headings punctuated with a
colon. In contrast to X, Y uses a
lower-case “e” in exit directions,
prefers -ee- spellings in words like
yeer, deer, and cheer, prefers blood
over bloud, and uses single -l
spellings in words like wil, shal, and
hel.’ (Rasmussen 1993: 223)
Textual transmission
Christopher
Marlowe
William Birde
(playwright)
Lord Admiral’s
Men
Marlowe’s
co-author
Performance
Samuel Rowley
(playwright)
Manuscript
Philip Henslowe
(manager)
1602 additions
?
?
?
?
Valentine
Simmes (printer)
Thomas Bushell
(publisher)
John Wright
(publisher)
‘Compositor X’
‘Compositor Y’
Printer &
compositor(s)
A-text (1604)
B-text (1616)
Other playing
companies,
printers &
compositors
Theories
1) A-text as memorial reconstruction; B-text as
closest to Marlowe’s text
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Memorial reconstruction theory championed by
Leo Kirschbaum (1946) and W. W. Greg (1950)
Possible reference in The Merry Wives of Windsor (c.
1597-8) to passage unique in B-text:
HOST. Where be my horses? Speak well of them, varletto.
BARDOLPH. Run away with the cozeners. For so soon as I came
beyond Eton, they threw me off from behind one of them, in a
slough of mire, and set spurs and away, like three German
devils, three Doctor Faustuses. (4.5.61-5)
Theories
2) A-text as memorial reconstruction; B-text as
Rowley and Birde’s 1602 version; Marlowe’s
version as lost
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Fredson Bowers (1973) has argued that both surviving texts
are corrupted.
The B-text must be a revised text because of its
inconsistencies:
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the purpose for the Pope’s feast changes (is it for St. Peter’s day, or
for the Pope’s victory?),
Faustus begs Mephistopheles to stay despite Mephistopheles
himself having already suggested that they should do so.
Theories
3) A-text as closest to Marlowe’s text; B-text as
Rowley / Birde version
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Memorial reconstruction theory challenged by (among
others), Constance Brown Kuriyama (1975), Michael
Warren (1981), Michael H. Keefer (1983), Eric Rasmussen
(1993).
Bevington and Rasmussen list borrowings from the A-text
in other plays of the 1590s: The Taming of A Shrew,
Mucedorus, and A Looking-Glass for London and England (1993:
65-6).
Removal of references to ‘Christ’ in B-text suggest a
theatrical text post 1606 (when a parliamentary act forbade
the use on stage of ‘the holy name of God or of Christ
Jesus’).
Aesthetic superiority?
A-text’s ‘aesthetic superiority’
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Michael H. Keefer argues that the A-text is ‘aesthetically
preferable to the B-version’ (1983: 324):
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Benvolio’s sense of impugned honour as inconsistent
‘Feebleness’ of final clown scene
‘…the B-text episodes of Benvolio’s revenge and the horsecourser’s leg-pulling and its consequences make Faustus no
longer human, but a kind of monstrous amphibian … This
disruption in the B-text of the play’s patterns of meaning and its
rhetorical decorum has serious consequences. For if Faustus is
going to become once more in the last act of the play a human
being, a tragic figure, then a major re-adjustment of the
audience’s responses is necessary.’ (1983: 345)
Text and performance
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Were both texts performed?
Stage directions in A-text
Theatrical demands of B-text
Props
 Special effects
 Cast
 Space
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Contrasting climaxes
Contemporary disapproval of
clowning scenes
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‘…all their plays be neither right tragedies, nor right comedies, mingling kings
and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in clowns by head
and shoulders, to play a part in majestical matters, with neither decency nor
discretion, so as neither the admiration and commiseration, nor the right
sportfulness, is by their mongrel tragi-comedy obtained.’
(Sir Philip Sidney, Apology for Poetry, c.1579 [published 1595])
…midst the silent rout
Comes leaping in a self-misformed lout,
And laughs, and grins, and frames his mimic face,
And justles straight into the prince’s place;
Then doth the theatre echo all aloud,
With gladsome noise of that applauding crowd.
A goodly hotch-potch! when vile russetings
Are match’d with monarchs, and with mighty kings.
(Dr Joseph Hall, ‘Virgidemiarum’, 1597)
Clowning and text
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Preface to Marlowe’s Tamburlaine by printer Richard
Jones, 1590:
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‘I have purposely omitted and left out some fond and
frivolous jestures, digressing, and, in my poor opinion, far
unmeet for the matter, which I thought might seem more
tedious unto the wise than any way else to be regarded,
though haply they have been of some vain-conceited
fondlings greatly gaped at, what time they were shewed upon
the stage in their graced deformities: nevertheless now to be
mixtured in print with such matter of worth, it would prove a
great disgrace to so honourable and stately a history.’
Arguably, though, such scenes are an important (if not
fully integrated) part of early modern drama.
Locus and platea
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In his influential study Shakespeare and the Popular
Tradition in the Theatre (1978, reprinted 1987),
Robert Weimann identified a ‘dual perspective’
in Elizabethan drama which ‘encompasses
conflicting views of experience’ (1987: 243).
Weimann analysed this in terms of locus and
platea.
Locus and platea
Locus and platea
Locus
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Localised setting (e.g. a palace, a
house): “a rudimentary element of
verisimilitude” (Weimann 1987:
75);
Mimesis;
High status characters: royalty,
nobility, ‘Virtues’;
Sacred;
Heightened language (usually
verse);
Officially sanctioned historical
narratives;
Elevation
Platea
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Unlocalised setting (literally a
‘place’): “a theatrical dimension of
the real world” (Weimann 1987:
76);
Direct address and audience
interaction;
Low status characters: rustics,
clowns, servants, ‘Vices’;
Profane;
Vernacular language (prose);
Anachronistic subversion;
Debasement and satire
Locus and platea
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‘What is involved is not the confrontation of the world
and time of the play with that of the audience, or any
serious opposition between representational and nonrepresentational standards of acting, but the most
intense interplay of both’ (Weimann 1987: 80-1).
Example: The Second Shepherds’ Pageant (Wakefield cycle)
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Anachronism
Blasphemy
Parody
Platea dramaturgy in Doctor Faustus
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Anachronism
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Clowns’ names: Robin and Rafe/Dick, ‘Nan Spit’
Implied Englishness on French/English jokes (A-text: 1.4)
Social class
Bawdy humour
Presence of audience
WAGNER. (to audience) Bear witness I gave them him.
ROBIN. Bear witness I gave them you again. (A-text: 1.4.41-2)
Platea dramaturgy in Doctor Faustus
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Audience space, the profane, and damnation:
PRIDE. But fie, what a scent is here! (2.3.111)
COVETOUSNESS. …and might I have my wish, I would desire that
this house and all the people in it were turned to gold, that I might
lock you up in my good chest. (2.3.116-8)
WRATH. … I was born in hell, and look to it, for some of you shall be
my father. (2.3.124-5)
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Mephistopheles spells out spatial relationship:
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‘…this is hell, nor am I out of it’ (1.3.77)
‘I am damned and am now in hell’ (2.1.137)
Clowning as unofficial speech
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Note use of prose and repetitions:
WAGNER. Alas, poor slave, see how poverty jesteth in his
nakedness! The villain is bare and out of service, and so
hungry that I know he would give his soul to the devil for a
shoulder of mutton, though it were blood-raw.
ROBIN. How? My soul to the Devil for a shoulder of mutton,
though ’twere blood-raw? Not so, good friend. By’r Lady, I
had need have it well roasted and good sauce to it, if I pay so
dear. (A-text: 1.4.6-12)
Clowning as unofficial speech
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Note use of ‘etc.’ in 3.2 (A-text):
ROBIN. I scorn you, and you are but a etc. (3.2.10-11)
ROBIN. Polypragmos Belseborams framanto pacostiphos tostu
Mephistopheles, etc. (3.2.26-7)
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One of 26 plays of the period to use ‘etc.’ in this
way
Legality?
Why unofficial speech?
Clowning as parodic echo
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Robert Ornstein: ‘the slapstick scenes which tickled
groundling fancies unite with the seemingly fragmented
main action to form a subtly ironic tragic design.’ (1955:
165)
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Selling one’s soul ‘for a shoulder of mutton’
Image of Robin with book in magic circle
Anticipation of dismemberment
‘Nan Spit’ / Helen of Troy
Snatching of Pope’s cup / Vintner’s goblet
Incantation (culminating in summoning of Mephistopheles)
Difference between endings of clown sub-plot in A-text and
B-text: metaphor for damnation?
Speech, text, performance
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Some concluding questions:
What is the relationship between what is performed
and what is written?
 What is ‘authorised’? What is not? Does it matter?
 What is Doctor Faustus? Where is it?
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References
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Bevington, D. & Rasmussen, E. [eds] (1993) Doctor
Faustus: A- and B-texts (1604, 1616), Manchester: MUP.
Bowers, F. (1973) ‘Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus: The 1602
Additions’, Studies in Bibliography 26, 1-18.
Greg, W. W. [ed.] (1950) Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, 16041616, Oxford: Clarendon.
Keefer, M. H. (1983) ‘Verbal Magic and the Problem of
the A and B Texts of Doctor Faustus’, Journal of English
and Germanic Philology, 82:3, 324-46.
Kirschbaum, L. (1946) ‘The Good and Bad Quartos of
Doctor Faustus’, The Library 26, 272-94.
References
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Kuriyama, C. B. (1975) ‘Dr. Greg and Doctor Faustus: The
Supposed Originality of the 1616 Text’, English Literary
Renaissance 5, 171-197.
Ornstein, R. (1955) ‘The Comic Synthesis in Doctor Faustus’,
ELH, 22:3, 165-72.
Rasmussen, E. (1993) ‘Rehabilitating the A-Text of Marlowe’s
Doctor Faustus’, Studies in Bibliography 46, 221-38.
Warren, M. (1981) ‘Doctor Faustus: The Old Man and the Text’,
English Literary Renaissance 11, 111-147.
Weimann, R. (1987) Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the
Theater: Studies in the Social Dimension of Dramatic Form and Function,
Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press.