Famous First Lines: Dr. Faustus

What would Christopher Marlowe have gone on to write, had he not been killed (at the age of 29) in Deptford in 1593? His work up until that point was gloriously and extravagantly experimental, unpolished in some places, wickedly world-wise in others -- but always reaching for more: more excellence of logical disputation; more intense lyricism; more wit; more taboo-breaking; more vivid imagery and metaphorical thought-pictures brought to life; more dark, dark humor.

Most people are surprised to learn that he was born in the same year (1564) as that other famous Elizabethan playwright -- you know, the one from Stratford -- who, incidentally, was completely unknown while folk were flocking to see Marlowe's Tamburlaine in 1587. How could Marlowe have rushed to such prominence, technical brilliance, and notoriety at such a young age?

Well, leaving aside all those vagaries of chance that shape our destinies, the main aspect of Christopher Marlowe's life -- the one that influenced what he would think and even, to some degree, how he would think it -- was his education, both at the King's School, Canterbury and at Corpus Christi, Cambridge.

That Marlowe was the product of a stringent conventional classical education is ironic -- while the Church was busy banning "dangerous" popish or heathenish books and vainly trying to suppress the translation of the Bible into English, universities were teaching the classical Greek and Roman authors to hungry minds disciplined by years (and years!) of forced translation of, and free composition in, Latin.

Learning the rhetorical strategies of dialectical reasoning must have seemed liberating after all those irregular verb conjugations; students were encouraged -- nay, expected -- to examine both sides of any issue (or all sides; because there are always more than two; we have trained ourselves in the symmetry of our limited thinking to debate merely two sides, pro and con).

Hence we have the polemical and controversial subjects of Marlowe's theatrical works (his translations and mock epic poetry will have to go into a separate Hub): the rise and fall of powerful men; the goodness or evil of Christian and Jew alike; the salvation or damnation of a soul. . . .

Not marching now in fields of Thrasymene,
Where Mars did mate the Carthaginians;
Nor sporting in the dalliance of love,
In courts of kings where state is overturn'd;
Nor in the pomp of proud audacious deeds,
Intends our Muse to vaunt her heavenly verse:
Only this, gentlemen,--we must perform
The form of Faustus' fortunes, good or bad:

The Chorus speaks the opening lines, immediately announcing that this play is going to be nothing like traditional fare; in direct contrast to such plays as King Cambyses, a lamentable Tragedy, mixed full of pleasant mirth by Thomas Preston in the 1560's, that focused on a simpler look at the rise and fall of kings and nobles (full of pleasant mirth, no less), Faustus is going to have a very different fate.

What we need to remember is that man's knowledge of the universe was very much less than (the little) we know now.  University studies led to doctorates in divinity; any postgraduate interest veered towards what would have been a logical direction for such students: the study of magic.  Just as we know nothing of the 93% of the universe taken up by so-called "dark matter" or "dark energy," students then knew nothing of the rigors of scientific research and experimentation that have since rendered the mysteries of magic into parlor tricks for children. 

Faustus's desire to study magic should not surprise us; perhaps what should catch our attention in his own opening speech is his immediate dismissal of the formal study of logic, which casts his later damnation into its proper light (in Renaissance Christian terms) -- the blind, senseless conviction of a once-intelligent man that he cannot be forgiven for his sins.  The audiences would have been tense towards the climactic ending, knowing that all Faustus had to do was ask and salvation would be his.  Instead, he is dragged off by squealing demons, into the jaws of hell.