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Dr. Faustus By Christopher Marlowe. Origin. Marlowe’s most well-known play
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Origin • Marlowe’s most well-known play • Protagonist from the German Faustbuch (1587)—based on the life of an actual German astronomer and necromancer who died about 1540. Real rumors said he exchanged his soul for supernatural powers and entered German folklore as the “consummate naughty trickster, usually indulging in callow mischief.
Breaking New Ground • Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus is transformed into a character who “possess a certain tragic distinction” who his also held accountable for his errors. • Marlowe also transformed the English blank verse line, giving it vigor and range of expression that was to prove a strong influence on his contemporaries, including William Shakespeare.
Quarto • This text is based on the first quarto (1604), which is the earliest edition.
German source • Some scholars believe that Marlowe developed the story from a popular 1592 translation, commonly called The English Faust Book[1], of an earlier, unpreserved, German edition of 1587, which itself may have been influenced by even earlier, equally unpreserved pamphlets in Latin, such as those that likely inspired Jacob Bidermann’s treatment of the damnation of the doctor of Paris, Cenodoxus (1602). Whatever the inspiration, the development of Marlowe’s play is very faithful to the Faust Book of 1592, especially in the way it mixes comedy with tragedy.
Structure • The play is in blank verse and prose in thirteen scenes (1604) or twenty scenes (1616). Blank verse is largely reserved for the main scenes while prose is used in the comic scenes. Modern texts divide the play into 5 acts; act 5 is the shortest. As in many Elizabethan plays, there is a chorus who does not interact with the other characters but rather provides an introduction and conclusion to the play and gives an introduction to the events that have unfolded at the beginning of some acts.
Blank Verse • Blank Verse is Poetry that is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Blank verse is often unobtrusive and the iambic pentameter form often resembles the rhythms of ordinary speech. William Shakespeare wrote most of his plays in blank verse.
Blank Verse: Macbeth • Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
Context • Renaissance: • From the early 16th century until well into the 17th, England felt the grips of a revolution that would change the face of the country forever. This revolution had nothing to do with wars or land or expansion; unless you consider the expansion of the minds of the people all over Britain. It was back during the 14th century in the country of Italy in which the renaissance first started and slowly spread across the entire European continent. Known as the pan-European Renaissance, by the 16th century when the ruler of England was Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare was the talked about name anywhere you went, the English Renaissance began.
