The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus is a play about the classic Faustian bargain published in 1604 and written by the playwright Christopher Marlowe. Telling the story of Dr. Faustus, an erudite scholar who makes a deal with the devil, The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus is both enjoyable and thought-provoking.
The play begins with a chorus, which states that Faust was born in Germany in a town named Rhodes. While his parents weren’t rich, he was a very academic person and focused heavily on the accumulation of knowledge. He soon became a professor and was an expert on many subjects, which earned him the respect of his peers. However, he was still unsatisfied, seeing how he craved for non-traditional knowledge (magic). The play shows that Faustus is bemoaning the limits of his knowledge: he already knows philosophy (Aristotle), law, economics, anatomy (Galen), and medicine (Faustus bemoans that even though he knows much in this field, he still can’t bring the dead back to life). Faustus reads a section of the Bible, and after reading that “The reward of sin is death,” he logically discerns that Christianity is quite perverse: why would sin be punished with eternal hellfire? Faustus puts aside the Bible and starts thinking about magic, describing that it must be great to have knowledge in that field: “What will be, shall be? Divinity, adieu! / These metaphysics of magicians, / And necromantic books are heavenly; / Lines, circles, scenes, letters, and characters; / Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires / O, what a world of profit and delight, / Of power, of honour, of omnipotence, / Is promis’d to the studious artizan!” Faustus, after looking more into the subject, is astounded that magic can promise to make him king of the world, as the spirits are supposedly capable of influencing nature itself, not to mention that “A sound magician is a mighty god: / Here, Faustus, tire thy brains to gain a deity.” Of course, the “deity” here is actually a euphemism for “demon.” Faustus calls for his servant Wager to enter his room, and tasks him with finding two magicians: Valdes and Cornelius. Wagner obeys, and Faustus is ecstatic with enthusiasm. At that point in time, a good angel and evil angel (potentially representing the fight between good and evil within him, as well as his superego and id) whisper different things into his ear. While the good angel begs for Faust to stop learning magic to avoid incurring God’s wrath. The evil angel tells Faustus to continue to learn magic, as he can become as powerful as Jove (thus falling into the trap of hubris). Faustus states that he looks forward to being able to control spirits who can do many things for him. Valdes and Cornelius enter the room, and Faustus asks them to teach him magic, and they agree. They tell him to get the appropriate materials to make contact with an entity.
Two scholars (Faustus’s associates) come across Wagner and they ask where Faustus is. Wagner tells them that he doesn’t know, as he wants to give Faustus some privacy. A scholar states that Faustus is probably learning magic, seeing that he was seen with Valdes and Cornelius. Their suspicions are proven accurate: Faustus, standing in an isolated area, tries to summon a demon to communicate with: “Within this circle is Jehovah’s name, / Forward and backward anagrammatiz’d, / Th’ abbreviated names of holy saints, / Figures of every adjunct to the heavens, / And characters of signs and erring stars, / By which the spirits are enforc’d to rise: / Then try not, Faustus, to be resolute / And try the utmost magic can perform.” In a Latin incantation, Faustus curses the Abrahamic god and asks for a demon named Mephistophilis to come to him. Mephistophilis enters, and Faustus screams in horror upon seeing him, as he’s ugly. He tells Mephistophilis to change into a more appealing form: he suggests adopting the form of an old Franciscan friar, seeing that the minions of the devil love trickery. Faustus recollects his previous desires, and is momentarily glad, seeing how Mephistophilis seems to obey him unquestioningly. Mephistophilis enters the area like a Franciscan friar, and asks Faustus what he desires. Faustus tells him that he wants him to be his servant who will obey all his commands without question for as long as he lives. Mephistophilis tells him that he serves Lucifer, and that he can’t just do what he wants without his master’s permission: “I am servant to great Lucifer, / And may not follow thee without his leave: / No more than he commands must we perform.” Mephistophilis tells Faustus that he appeared to him of his own accord, as he and his brethren appear to those who seem to be in danger of eternal damnation (Faust, after all, cursed the name of god and Christ in his incantations). Mephistophilis then tells him that Lucifer was once an angel, but became the devil after becoming arrogant. He says that he himself is unhappy, as he was cast out of Heaven when he sided with Lucifer. He tells Faustus that he’s constantly in hell: the deprivation of the bliss of Heaven is torture enough for those who know its pleasures. In his own words, “Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it: / Think’st thou that I, that saw the face of God, / And tasted the eternal joys of heaven, / And not tormented with ten thousand hells, / In being depriv’d of everlasting bliss?” Mephistophilis calls for Faustus to not dabble any more in magic, as he himself can attest to the sufferings of eternal damnation. Faustus, uncaring and overconfident, tells Mephistophilis to be braver, and to think no more of regret. He then gives Mephistophilis the terms of the bargain he’s willing to make with Lucifer: “Say, he surrenders up to him his soul, / So he will spare him four and twenty years, / Letting him live in all voluptuousness; / Having thee ever to attend on me, / To give me whatsoever I shall ask, / To tell me whatsoever I demand, / To slay mine enemies, and to aid my friends, / And always be obedient to my will. / Go, and return to mighty Lucifer, / And meet me in my study at midnight, / And then resolve me of thy master’s mind.” Mephistophilis agrees to fulfill his request and disappears. At that time, Wagner has learned some magic himself, and intimidates a clown into becoming his servant by summoning two devils. He promises the clown that he’ll teach him how to shapeshift, causing the clown to willingly become his apprentice.
Faustus, while waiting in his study, is tormented by self-doubt: he wants the services of Mephistophilis, but he knows eternal damnation awaits him in the end. The good angel and the evil angel continue to plague his mind, only making Faustus more conflicted. Mephistophilis enters Faustus’s room, and tells him that Lucifer has given his approval for the bargain. He instructs Faustus to sign a contract outlining the bargain with his blood (the devil loves physical evidence of transactions). Mephistophilis tells him that if Lucifer has his soul, his kingdom will be enlarged (which will also decrease the kingdom of the Abrahamic god). He then encourages Faustus to make the bargain (he’s a very contradictory character: one section of the play he’s warning Faustus, and for the rest of the play he adopts the role of a tempter): “But, tell me, Faustus, shall I have thy soul? / And I will be thy slave, and wait on thee, / And give thee more than thou hast wit to ask.” Faustus agrees and stabs his arm to get the blood flowing. However, the blood quickly congealed, as if warning him of the bargain he’s making. Uncaring, Faustus uses charcoals to break open the wound and he signs the contract. After signing the contract, Faustus sees the phrase “Homo, fuge” inscribed on his arm, which translates to “Fly, man!” Mephistophilis, seeing that Faustus was feeling doubt, calls for some devils to entertain him: they dance around and give luxuries to Faustus. Faustus then reads the contract, which promises Mephistophilis as a servant for twenty-four years and gives him the ability to become invisible, along with other advantages, though at the cost of his eternal soul: “On these conditions following. First, that Faustus may be a spirit in form and substance. Secondly, that Mephistophilis shall be his servant, and be by him commanded. Thirdly, that Mephistophilis shall do for him, and bring him whatsoever he desires. Fourthly, that he shall be in his chamber or house invisible. Lastly, that he shall appear to the said John Faustus, at all times, in what shape and form soever he please. I, John Faustus, of Wittenberg, Doctor, by these presents, do give both body and soul to Lucifer, Prince of the East, and his minister Mephistophilis, and furthermore grant unto them, that, four-and-twenty years being expired, and these articles above-written being inviolate, full power to fetch or carry the said John Faustus, body and soul, flesh and blood, into their habitation wheresoever. By me, John Faustus.” Faustus confirms that he has willingly signed the contract, and immediately asks Mephistophilis about Hell. Mephistophilis tells him that Hell involves unimaginable torture and is not set in an exact place: it’s more of a state of mind. That is, those who are damned are constantly harried by the knowledge of the bliss they’re missing out on: “Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib’d / In one self-place; but where we are is hell, / And where hell is, there must we ever be.” Faustus says that he believes Hell is fake, and Mephistophilis tells him that he will soon change his mind. Faustus asks Mephistophilis for a wife, “The fairest maid in Germany; For I am wanton and lascivious, / And cannot live without a wife,” and Mephistophilis agrees. He comes back with a woman whom Faustus isn’t interested in. Mephistophilis comforts Faustus, telling him that marriage is only a troublesome proceeding. He tells him that if he so desires, he’ll bring him beautiful women whenever he wishes: “I’ll cull thee out the fairest courtezans, / And bring them every morning to thy bed: / She whom thine eyes shall like, thy heart shall have.” Mephistophilis gives Faustus a book of magic, which Faustus gladly accepts.
Later on, Faustus curses Mephistophilis for depriving him of the joys of Heaven. Mephistophilis corrects him, telling him that he did it to himself. Faustus flirts with the idea of repentance, but stops short of doing so, as he believes himself unsalvageable. He asks Mephistophilis about the heavenly spheres, and Mephistophilis tells him the answers. Faustus asks Mephistophilis who made the world, and Mephistophilis is unable to answer, seeing that that’s outside his range of power: demons can’t invoke the name of angels and the like. Faustus sends Mephistophilis away, and starts thinking about whether he should repent once again. The evil angel tells him that if he does, demons will tear him into pieces. The good angel tells him that if he does, they’ll be unable to do so, as it’s still not too late. Faustus, growing desperate, calls for Christ to come to deliver him from his dilemma. Lucifer himself enters with Belzebub and Mephistophilis and tells Faustus that he can’t be delivered from him, and that he shouldn’t be a traitor to his new companions, as calling the name of Christ is dissonance to their ears. To tempt him back into their fold, they call the seven deadly sins to appear before him. The first to appear is pride, who reveals itself to be extremely arrogant - it views itself as being great, despite having little evidence to support the notion. The second sin is covetousness, which reveals itself to be obsessed with the collection and hoarding of money. The third is envy, which states that it wishes for others to suffer like itself, seeing how it couldn’t partake in their joys: “I cannot read, and therefore wish all books burned. I am lean with seeing others eat. O, that there would come a famine over all the world, that all might die, and I live alone! then thou shouldst see how fat I’d be. But must thou sit, and I stand? come down, with a vengeance!” The next sin to appear is wrath, who reveals itself to have been angry since it was born, and desires to fight to express its aggression. The fifth is gluttony, which states that it wants to eat everything it comes across. The sixth to appear is sloth, which barely speaks, seeing that it’s sloth, after all. The last to appear is lechery, which states that it “loves an inch of raw mutton better than an ell of friend stock-fish; and the first letter of my name begins with L.” Faustus, instead of seeing the sins as warnings of his future, is delighted, saying that he’s happy to have such great company. Later on, Faustus was given a dragon to ride by Mephistophilis: he rode across the entire Earth in eight days. After a while, he went to Rome to pay the Pope a visit (to prank him). That is, Mephistophilis makes him invisible. Faustus enters a ceremony and speaks loudly, causing people to believe he’s a spirit. He also steals the food of the church authorities, greatly frightening them. He soon punches the pope, and when the friars come to curse the entity which disturbed their feast and assaulted the pope, Faustus and Mephistophilis proceed to beat them up. Later on, when two characters try to summon Mephistophilis, he is enraged: he curses them as “damned slaves” seeing how they’re inexperienced in magic. He threatens that he’ll turn them both into animals (an ape and a dog, seeing that he wants to turn the person who did something apish into an ape himself). Faustus is eventually called into the court of Emperor Charles (ruler of Germany). Emperor Charles welcomes him, as he heard that he has supernatural powers. He asks to see Alexander the Great, and Faustus grants his wish by using Mephistophilis’s powers. Beforehand, he tells Emperor Charles to not interact with the ghosts, as they can only be summoned, not communicated with. Emperor Charles agrees to Faustus’s terms, and the spirits enter. Aside from Alexander the Great, his wife also showed up, as well as the Persian Emperor Darius. In the courtroom, Darius was killed by Alexander the Great (in spirit form) in front of Emperor Charles. Alexander the Great and his wife proceed to salute Emperor Charles, who almost succeeds in touching them (he is only stopped by Faust). Emperor Charles is extremely impressed, as he heard that the wife of Alexander the Great had a wart/mole on her neck, which was indeed present on the apparition. Faustus, despite his impressive feat, was continuously insulted by the knight Benvolio. Deciding to teach him a lesson, he calls for Mephistophilis to fix two horns on his head. Mephistophilis obeys, and Benvolio is deeply embarrassed.
Emperor Charles, believing that Benvolio had learned his lesson, calls for Faustus to remove the horns. Faustus obeys, and is congratulated once more by Emperor Charles. Benvolio, feeling his honor is at stake, calls for his allies to murder Faustus in retaliation for being spited, calling, “Come, soldiers, follow me unto the grove: / Who kills him shall have gold and endless love.” After waiting a while, Faustus is spotted by them. Jumping out of nowhere, they stab Faustus to death and go so far as to decapitate his head. After planning to hang his body outside with horns attached to this head to warn people against insulting Benvolio (they also planned to gouge out his eyes and to use them as buttons for his mouth, as well as cutting off his beard to sell it to a chimney-sweeper to supposedly form ten birchen brooms), Faustus suddenly comes back to life, rising up from the ground. He tells them that before his twenty-four-year contract is up, it is impossible for him to be killed in any way. He calls for Mephistophilis to get his two demonic allies (named Asteroth and Belimoth) to teach them a lesson. In his own words, “Faustus will have heads and hands, / Ay, all your hearts to recompense this deed. / Knew you not, traitors, I was limited / For four-and-twenty years to breath on earth? / And, had you cut my body with your swords, / Or hew’d this flesh and bones as small as sand, / Yet in a minute had my spirit return’d, / And I had breath’d a man, made free from harm. / But wherefore do I dally my revenge?- / Asteroth, Belimoth, Mephistophilis?” Faustus then orders the three demons to humiliate them: “Go, horse these traitors on your fiery backs, / And mount aloft with them as high as heaven: / Thence pitch them headlong to the lowest hell. / Yet, stay: the world shall see their misery, / And hell shall after plague their treachery. / Go, Belimoth, and take this caitiff hence, / And hurl him in some lake of mud and dirt. / Take thou this other, drag him through the woods / Amongst the pricking thorns and sharpest briers; / Whilst, with my gentle Mephistophilis, / This traitor flies unto some steepy rock, / That, rolling down, may break the villain’s bones, / As he intended to dismember me. / Fly hence; despatch my charge immediately.” The three demons obey, and when other soldiers try to intervene, they are stopped by the powers of Mephistophilis. Benvolio and his two friends (Martino and Federick) suffered degrading humiliation, and found that horns were on their heads after their respective ordeals. Benvolio notes that his castle is near where they currently were (the woods), and that they should go and remain there until their horns finally disappear: “I have a castle joining near these woods; / And thither we’ll repair, and live obscure, / Till time shall altar these our brutish shapes: Sith black disgrace hath thus eclips’d our fame, / We’ll rather die with grief than live with shame.” Faustus later tricks a poor man to buy his horse, and warns him that while the horse will be extremely agile and fast, he must never allow it to be submerged into water. The man obeys, but later, out of curiosity, rode his horse into the water, only to find that it was composed of hay. Furiously confronting Faustus, he pulls off his leg (a fake). Faustus pretends to be concerned, only to reveal his real one later. Leaving the scene, he is called by the Duke of Vanholt and his Duchess. The Duchess requests for some grapes (it was January, and she really wanted them). Faustus tells Mephistophilis to fetch the grapes at once - this clearly shows his wasted potential. Where he once desired to change the world and to amass great power, he has degenerated over time, his ambition and knowledge largely stagnating and going to waste: with all the powers of Mephistophilis at his disposal, he settles for pulling pranks on people and satisfying the petty demands of the wealthy. Indeed, it can be noted that this could’ve been expected: it’s more than a little ironic for those allied with Mephistophilis and other demonic forces to descend themselves into depths they would be horrified to fall into.
Later, Wagner remarks that he believes Faustus is going to die soon: he has already finished writing his will. In Wagner’s own words, “he has made his will, and given me his wealth, his house, his goods, and store of golden plate, besides two thousand ducats ready-coined. I wonder what he means: if death were nigh, he would not frolic thus.” It’s then noted by Wagner that Faustus was dining with scholars. One of the scholars asks to see Helen of Greece (who caused the Trojan War and the deaths of many thousands of people due to her lasciviousness and indecisiveness), as she is supposedly the most beautiful woman of that era. Faustus calls for Mephistophilis to bring in the spirit of Helen, which delights the scholars. An old man talks to Faustus (whose twenty-four years were almost over), and told him that he shouldn’t persist in his bargain, seeing the consequences: “O gentle Faustus, leave this damned art, / This magic, that will charm thy soul to hell, / And quite bereave thee of salvation! / Though thou hast now offended like a man, / Do not persever in it like a devil: / Yet, yet thou hast an amiable soul, / If sin by custom grow not into nature; / Then, Faustus, will repentance come too late; / Then thou art banish’d from the sight of heaven: / No mortal can express the pains of hell. / It may be, this my exhortation / Seems harsh and all unpleasant: let it not; / For, gentle son, I speak it not in wrath, / Or envy of thee, but in tender love, / And pity of thy future misery; / And so have hope that this my kind rebuke, / Checking thy body, may amend they soul.” Faustus, moved, moves into a period of deep contemplation. Mephistophilis enters and threatens to tear him into pieces, as he was a traitor to Lucifer. Faustus (despite being greatly intelligent and knowledgeable, he’s also cowardly and indecisive), ashamed at his previous mistakes and believing that he was a lost cause, as well as being terrified of what Mephistophilis can do to him, apologizes. He then asks for Mephistophilis to torment the old man who had just moved him to potentially becoming a better person and pursuing a better future: “Torment, sweet friend, that base and aged man, / That durst dissuade me from thy Lucifer, / With greatest torments that our hell affords.” Mephistophilis responds by informing Faustus that the old man’s purity prevents him from suffering serious injury at the hands of him: however, he will do whatever ills he can to him (bodily ailments). Faustus, in an attempt to distract himself from his encroaching demise, asks Mephistophilis to summon the spirit of Helen. Once she appears, he marvels at her beauty. Not long after, Lucifer speaks with Mephistophilis and Belzebub: they see how Faustus is growing more and more panicked, and they plan to take his soul once he’s alone in his study-room. Faustus shows Wagner his will to finalize the proceedings a few hours before he’ll be dragged down to Hell (at midnight), and is approached by some scholars, who are concerned about his increasingly worrying behavior. Faustus admits everything and curses himself for his stupidity and short-sightedness. That is, he says that he is definitely irredeemable now, seeing how the Abrahamic god will probably be unwilling to take pity on him due to how many times he blasphemed him. Faustus tellingly says that he has made a terrible mistake: “for the vain pleasure of four-and-twenty years hath Faustus lost eternal joy and felicity.” He continues his rant, saying that he often thought of repenting, but never did out of fear, laziness, and cowardice: “Oft have I thought to have done so; but the devil threatened to tear me in pieces, if I named God, to fetch me body and soul, if I once gave ear to divinity: and now ‘tis too late. Gentlemen, away, lest you perish with me.”
The scholars decide to leave: however, they still plan to aid him, as they’ll pray for his sake in the next room. Faustus tells them to do just that, and warns them to not enter the room for the night, no matter what noises they hear. He tells them that if he’s still alive, he’ll go into the room in the morning: if he doesn’t, they’ll know that he’s been dragged off to perdition. The good angel and the evil angel return once more, and the good angel criticizes Faustus: he has given up an eternity of pleasure and bliss in exchange for a measly twenty-four years of pointless distraction. The evil angel tells Faustus that he’ll be tortured forever “Into that vast perpetual torture-house: / There are the Furies tossing damned souls / On burning forks; there bodies boil in lead; / There are live quarters broiling on the coals, / That ne’er can die; this ever-burning chair / Is for o’er-tortur’d souls to rest them in; / These that are fed with sops of flaming fire, / Were gluttons, and lov’d only delicates / And laugh’d to see the poor starve at their gates: / But yet all these are nothing; thou shalt see / Ten thousand tortures that more horrid be.” The evil angel tells Faustus that since he loved pleasure in his life, he’ll have to fall due to them: “He that loves pleasure must for pleasure fall.” Faustus, seeing that he only had one hour to live, became terrified. He asks for Christ to come save him, but he’s full of contrition and self-hatred. He begs for the Abrahamic god to limit his sentence in hell, so long as he is eventually let out of damnation. Regardless, once the clock struck midnight, demons entered the room, causing Faustus to exclaim, “O mercy, heaven! look not so fierce on me! Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while! / Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer! I’ll burn my books!-O Mephistophilis!” Faustus is dismembered by the demons and his soul is plunged into eternal damnation (this isn’t detailed explicitly, but it’s mentioned at the end). That is, when the scholars came into the room the following morning, they saw his limbs scattered everywhere haphazardly. One of the scholars described, “The devils whom Faustus serv’d have torn him thus; For, twixt the hours of twelve and one, methought, I heard him shriek and call aloud for help; At which self time the house seem’d all on fire. With dreadful horror of these damned fiends.” Another scholar says that although Faustus made a terrible mistake, he still had a positive impact on his students: his body, consequently, will be given a proper funeral and burial. A chorus then ends the play with the following lamentations and warnings: “Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, / And burned is Apollo’s laurel-bough, / That sometimes grew within this learned man. / Faustus is gone: regard his hellish fall, / Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise, / Only at wonder at unlawful things, / Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits / To practise more than heavenly power permits.”
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Personal thoughts:
The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus is a superb play by Christopher Marlowe: not only does it tell the entertaining and powerful narrative which is a key example of the Faustian tale, but it has multiple themes within it. Of course, the predominant one is the stupidity of making short-sighted decisions that afford only temporary pleasures at the cost of those in the long-run. Personally, I read the play from a strictly secular angle: there are many real-life behaviors that can cause long-run devastation, though they are sensuous in the short-run. A few examples include: smoking (including vaping), spending time with toxic friends, excessively drinking, abusing drugs, allowing procrastination to run amok in one’s life, eating too much junk food, and living in denial of basic truths. One of the main messages of The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus is that everyone makes mistakes: the act of making mistakes shouldn’t dissuade you from trying to remedy your follies. Throughout the entire play, Faustus could have bettered his future by taking the necessary steps: although they would be very hard, he probably would’ve been fine if he took them. But, alas, like most people who are unable to quit bad behaviors and habits, he was held back by fear, cowardice, self-hatred, and laziness. It shouldn’t be forgotten that he was an exceedingly intelligent man: this clearly demonstrates that everyone can make terrible, irrational mistakes, even the erudite. To reiterate, if there is one lesson to be learned from this play, it should be that you learn to be willing to change your life for the better and to remedy mistakes not only for yourself, but for others (Faustus, as mentioned before, was a fantastic mentor to his students). The only complaint I have when it comes to this play is the religious diction: I loathe the fact that this play could be read as critiquing the accumulation of knowledge and information, seeing how some branches of knowledge were seen as forbidden only due to the fact that they challenged divine authority. Furthermore, why should Faustus worship a deity who is perfectly fine with having him and hordes of other people horrifically tortured, mutilated, and butchered for eternity? Aside from the religious references, I greatly enjoyed the play. I highly recommend The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus to those interested in plays, Faustian stories, inner conflicts, and relevant themes.
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