7. Tragedy From Aristotle’s Poetics and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex
to Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus &
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

8. Classical Tragedy 5th c BCE
Chorus (15 men)
Tragic hero (hamartia, hubris; high station and moral worth)
Catastrophe/reversal; unities
Loses material things but has epiphany/anagnorisis
Catharsis; audiences
experience pity & relief

9. Senecan Tragedy Roman 4th c BCE-65
Knew in Medieval
5 acts
Revenge; bloody
No catharsis
Fortuna turns wheel
to bring high low

10. Miracle & Mystery Plays (10th – 14th centuries)
Miracle plays: lives of saints
Mystery plays: stories from Old and New Testaments
Performed in church as part of holy days
Moved outside onto wagons; guilds performed

11. Morality Plays (15th c) 1 plot
About common people; characters often allegories
Dramatized allegories representing a Christian’s life and his quest for salvation
Show audience that fortune is unpredictable

12. Medieval Staging Plays performed in church then moved to courtyard
Mobile, no stage
Used wagons, move episodes from one location to another
Guilds put them on
Symbolic props

13. Renaissance & Restoration Tragedy
Hero starts good/turns evil
Hero usually important if not ruler
Fall from grace marked by reversals and discoveries
Audience experiences fear and pity; catharsis
Added comic relief and subplots

14. Traits from Morality Plays in Doctor Faustus
Good and Bad Angel
7 Deadly Sins
Presence of Lucifer
and his cohorts
Vision of Hell
Chorus (1 person) to open the play
Allegory

15. Origins of Story
Johann Faust (1488) bragged he’d sold his soul to the devil for magical powers.
Wandered Germany until death in 1541
1587 story about him appeared in Germany: The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus
Translation in English 1592
1592 first performance of Doctor Faustus

16. Influences on Authorship
Written between ?
Perkins, don at Cambridge, preached about witchcraft because of popular interest in discovery and detection of witches; witchcraft is like “desiring to become a god, longing to win reputation, dissatisfaction with inward gifts received such as knowledge, wit, understanding, memory, and suchlike.”

17. Problems with Authorship
Faustus entered official records in 1601 but not as new work.
In 1602 at least 2 others paid for work on Faustus
First published in 1604
1616 another version printed
Today’s version based on work of Sir Walter Gregg

18. Problems with Authorship, cont.
Quality not consistent.
Most believe that Marlowe wrote tragic beginning and end; some that he did most of Acts 1, 3 & 5.
Collaborators wrote much of comical middle sections.

19. Renaissance authorship
Patrons; sold to printer or bookseller
No royalties; no copyright; pay poor
Censored by government and church
Printing legal only in London, Cambridge & Oxford UP after passed censorship
1579 John Stubbs lost his right hand as penalty for attempting to publish pamphlet against proposed French marriage

20. Patronage
First professional writers; University wits tried to make a living with their writing
Who will be offended? Who will pay?
Theatrical manager Philip Henslowe’s diary is full of entry after entry about university graduates in prison for debt or eking out a miserable existence writing plays.

21. Authorship/Ownership
60 % literacy by 1530
Writing passed by hand, copied pieces they liked in their own commonbooks, often no original author given.
Plays belonged to acting companies, not the playwright. Text changed with actors and situation; dramatists collaborated/changed.
Plays evolved with no printed copy to stabilize the correct text. Ben Jonson first to print play texts--after Marlowe’s death.

22. Additions to Faust Legend
Connections to witchcraft and Perkins’s motivations for witchcraft from sermons
Ambivalence of Faustus
Thematic elements

23. Allusions
References to literature, art, music, historical events and people
Why put Faustus in Wittenberg? What famous medieval person is connected with the university in Wittenberg?
Burning chair in Hell; Hungarian peasant rebel Gyorgy Dozsa (1514)
Icarus and Daedalus

24. Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (1560) by Peter Breughel the Elder
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (1560) by Peter Breughel the Elder. Musée Royaux des Beaux Arts de Belgique, Brussels.
See W. H. Auden’s poem about this picture of Icarus, Musee des Beaux Arts

25. Allegory Form of extended metaphor
Characters in a narrative have symbolic meaning as well as literal meaning
Personification of abstract qualities
Example: Everyman is the name of a character in a medieval narrative who goes through the conflicts of the plot, but he also is a symbol for all Christians who struggle through life to find salvation.

26. Why authors use allegory
To teach moral lessons
To explain universal truths
Marlowe uses these allegorical characters in Faustus: the Good Angel and the Bad Angel. Why?
What function do they serve?
Are they symbols? Of what?
How would they have been presented on stage then? Now?

27. Another Allegory: The 7 Deadly Sins
Pride
Covetousness
Envy
Wrath
Gluttony
Sloth
Lechery
Which sins does Faustus commit?
Why does Marlowe include the 7 Deadlies?
Which characters possess these traits?

28. Why Faustus abandons learning
Philosophy: “…though it has attained that end” (I.i.10).
Medicine: “Could’st thou make men to live eternally / Or being dead raise them to life again” (I. i ).
Law: “Too servile and illiberal for me” (I.i.34).

29. Why give up on religion just as he gets his doctorate in theology?
“. . .we must sin, and so consequently die. / Ay, we must die an everlasting death” (I.i.4043).
Syllogism: 2 statements which, if true, make a 3rd statement true.
Example: Socrates is a man; all men are mortal; therefore, Socrates is mortal.

30. Faustus’s Syllogism He has created a syllogism. Is it logical?
“. . .we must sin, and so consequently die. / Ay, we must die an everlasting death” ( ).
What is wrong with his thinking? Why is it ironic?

31. Logical Fallacy?
Faustus has taken the quote out of context and ignores the rest of the quote which promises mercy for those sinners willing to repent.
The world’s greatest scholar comes to ruin because of faulty research and reasoning; he misreads an important quote from an untrustworthy source.

32. What to look for as you read
Chorus: What functions does it serve?
Appears 4 times: to introduce heroic nature of the play, to foreshadow, to provide exposition, and to identify the setting.
Irony: Look at Faustus’s arguments and thinking. What logical mistakes does the great scholar make?

33. What else to look for Allegory Allusions
Comic relief; parallel subplots
Ideals/beliefs from Reformation, Medieval Period, and Renaissance;
Beliefs about witchcraft and the devil
Antithesis/contrast

34. Ask yourself Is Faustus’s fate predestined or does he have free will?
What is knowledge?
Does Faustus ever find knowledge?
What does Faustus really want?
Can Faustus be both hero and villain? Bad and good? What evidence can you find in the play?

35. Sources Barnet, Sylvan, ed. “Introduction. ” Doctor Faustus
Sources   Barnet, Sylvan, ed. “Introduction.” Doctor Faustus. Christopher Marlowe. New York: Signet Books, vii-xix. Bevington, David. “General Introduction.” The Complete Works of Shakespeare. New York: HarperCollins, Rpt. in Doctor Faustus: Divine in Show. Ed. McAlindon, T. Twayne’s Masterworks Studies. New York: Twayne, Duncan-Jones, Katherine. “Devil May Care.” New Statesman 131 (1996): McAlindon, T. Doctor Faustus: Divine in Show. Twayne’s Masterworks Studies. New York: Twayne, Gounod, Charles. “Alerte, Alerte! – Sauvée!” Faust. Performed by Chor und Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. New York: Philips Classic Compilation, “The Sixteenth Century I ): Introduction.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Ed. M. H. Abrams. New York: W. W. Norton, Stenning, Rodney. “The ‘Burning Chair’ in the B-text of Doctor Faustus.” Notes and Queries 43 (1996): Stumpf, Thomas A. “Images and Music.” Freshman Seminar: Visits to Hell. (2001). 29 Sept < Walton, Brenda. Lessons for Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Orlando, FL: Network for Instructional TV, Oct <