Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
[Line
references are to the Revels edition, ed. Bevington and Rasmussen (1993). But I
have not necessarily stuck with their spelling or punctuation.]
The corpus of plays attributed to Christopher Marlowe makes
a double and somewhat contradictory impression. On the one hand what you want
to remember is a cleanness and directness that are intensely exciting; on the
other hand, it’s rather a ragbag, with many pages and even whole plays in which
our interest, unless stoked up by biographical considerations, is really quite
tepid.
In the English-speaking world the two parts of Tamburlaine
make a powerful, troubling statement, and one of enduring significance for
our literature. But Marlowe’s “mighty line” and his confrontational immorality
are local matters. Outside the English-speaking world, Marlowe simply means Dr
Faustus, a formidable European classic, a key text.
This
is so even though, most people think, Marlowe wrote only the pivotal scenes and
left the foolery demanded by the Faust Book to be written up by an
unknown collaborator. (Elizabethan collaboration, some people say, usually meant that the
co-authors worked independently on the scenes assigned to them, and did not
have a close knowledge of each other’s contributions.) The date of composition
is uncertain, the evidence favouring 1588. The result of that collaboration is
more or less represented by the version now known as the A-text, printed in
1604. More or less, because the text is short; some scenes are disordered and
others seem to have disappeared altogether.
The A-Text of Dr Faustus makes quite modest demands on theatrical
resources. It was well adapted to touring companies such as Lord Pembroke’s
Men, who were presumably playing it during the recess of London playhouses in 1592-93. But when Dr
Faustus became a long-running hit in London
during the mid-1590s, there was an impulse to exploit the diabolical reputation
that the play was earning by spicing it up with more devils and more spectacle,
as well as re-working bits of clown repartee that had not worn well. In November 1602 Henslowe’s diary records
payment to “wm Bvrde &
Samwell Rowle” for additions to Dr Faustus. Byrde and Rowley’s
dressed-up version is presumably the basis of what is known as the B-text,
first printed in 1616. This had now taken over as the acting version, and in B
there is some censorship of the language, reflecting the impact of the 1606 Act
of Abuses. Both the printed versions are good plays, but A is the obvious
choice for most purposes.
The
above paragraph represents what is currently the orthodox view of many
difficult problems. It must be admitted that the evidence for most of its
assertions is more slender than one could wish. The strongest arguments for
e.g. the date, or the collaborator, are probably that they “feel” right. In
detail, however, there are some difficulties with the orthodox view.
One
is as follows. The B-text makes valiant (if not too convincing) efforts to
redress the disordering of scenes that is manifest in A; the obvious assumption
therefore is that the text from which Byrde and Rowley were working was more or
less the same one that was printed a couple of years later as the A-text, in
1604. In other words, A’s disordering of scenes did not take place in the
printing house. But there is important evidence that, in fact, the improvers’
source-text did differ from A. This evidence is contained in The Taming of A
Shrew (printed in 1594), which appropriates several passages from Dr
Faustus; for full details, see Appendix B, below. Some of what the Shrew-compilers
borrowed turns up in B but not in A, which suggests the possibility that B may
contain some valuable testimony to the material that seems to be lost from A.
One of the parallel passages in A Shrew relates to lines in B IV.2, the
scene where the Emperor’s knights ambush Faustus and he sets the devils on
them; but this whole episode is absent from A. There must be another scene
missing between A IV.1 and A IV.2: Faustus and Mephistophilis leave the stage
and re-enter immediately though there has been a gap in the action – which is a
fine cinematic cut, but foreign to Elizabethan stage practice. B supplies just
the kind of scene we’re looking for: a swift comic scene in which neither
Faustus nor Mephistophilis appear at all. And in it, the Clown/Robin tells us
that “one of his (Faustus’) devils turned me into the likeness of an ape’s
face”, which is indeed what happened in A III.2, but not in the revision of the
scene (B III.3). Obviously there is more than one way of interpreting what has
happened here, but the simplest is that Byrde and Rowley revised the action of
scenes that were in fact present in the original work by Marlowe’s
collaborator, though they went missing from the 1604 printing of A. So one naturally begins to think of the copy text for A not as virginal
“foul papers” but as reflecting some stage history, e.g. of cuts to reduce the
number of actors. It seems pretty clear that the final Scholars scene (B.V.3) was also part of the original, as explained in a couple of recent articles by Robert A. H. Smith.]
In Dr Faustus Marlowe explores (as the Faust Book had
not) the intriguing potency of the folkloric notion that one can irrevocably
make a pact with the devil in return for a temporal span of luxurious living.
The play spends very little time worrying about how Faustus arrived at such a
horrific decision; it is not a play about character and motivation. We only
need to know that Faustus is “resolute” – not why. The opening scenes cruise
with unstoppable momentum through the final stages of making the pact. Faustus
agrees with the Evil Angel that it is a pact – everything is irrevocable
now. But the devils are by no means so sure; they seem to agree with the Good
Angel. (Faustus himself quite understands that it is Lucifer who stabs him with
pain for naming Christ, even so near the end; he is being strong-armed into
hell.) The nagging possibility of redemption creates a sense of strain that
runs through the dream-like centre of the play (where no such matter is
discussed) and becomes ever more taut as time runs out in the final scenes. The
deeper the darkness that gathers around Faustus, the brighter its pinpoint of
salvation seems to burn.
Peter Hammill, lead singer of the ‘70s progressive rock
group Van der Graaf Generator, said in an interview that one of their “concept
albums”, Godbluff, dramatizes an action that took about two seconds.
It’s the same with Dr Faustus, which compulsively replays the same
two-second moment of choosing over and over again, casting it into new dramatic
forms with ceaseless invention. The aesthetic of Dr Faustus is not so
far away from the aesthetic of Shakespeare’s sonnets to his young man, every
one of which is a different way of saying “I love you infinitely”.
The real action of Dr Faustus concerns a choice of
purely metaphysical dimensions, a choice that may never have been made at all
and is perennially fresh, in defiance of time. But everyone makes a choice of
life – it doesn’t matter what - . Everyone has made choices in the past: big,
unpleasant and probably wrong, unassessable at best... so Dr Faustus
makes us think about ourselves. To respond to this no awareness is needed other
than of our own potential; which is why Faustus appeals (like the novels
of Dostoyevsky) to adolescents.
The awareness of our own potential is inconclusive. It
appears to be limitless, in principle. But then we are conscious of all sorts
of restraints. Have we, in fact, already made our choice, and is it
irrevocable? Have we already drifted far, so that now the apparent choice only
confirms what our natures have already become? Are we freely resolute to be
ourselves, or does our “resolution” only conceal from us that we are trapped in
our own destiny?
And then, increasingly with the years, one drifts away from
this contemplation and finds ways to avoid thinking about the choice (if it was
already irrevocable, more years make no difference; and if it is after all
revocable, we may yet wait for a more energetic mood). But perhaps in those
seedy middle years one is actually making the choice by not thinking about it?
These are the years in which what we once projected does not bring happiness,
only age. Nothing big that you ever bought actually delivered its payload. No
friendship that you formed or marred leaves you any less alone on the day when
you face the choice again and see that you are just where you were, that time
has not healed and nothing that you pursued in the meanwhile has made the choice
itself go away.
The god thou servest is
thine own appetite,
Wherein is fixed the love of
Belzebub;
To him I’ll build an altar and a
church,
And offer lukewarm blood of new-born
babes. (II.1.11-14)
With these words Faustus settles himself into a firm
decision after a moment of doubt. We understand that when he blusters about
lukewarm blood this is nothing more than “resolution” making itself look
resolved. Faustus in fact does nothing in the play that is repugnant to human
morality – this would introduce a quite different set of concerns. On the
contrary he is (but his character is not really the point of it) really rather
gentle with those around him. (His behaviour to the Pope does not count.) Like
many polite, gentle people, he is probably in truth indifferent. Faustus is
a scholar’s play as well as an adolescent’s play. Mephistophilis denies him a
wife, and Marlowe’s collaborator finely hints at Faustus’ melancholy sense of
isolation from the concerns of the Duke of Vanholt and his pregnant Duchess.
Faustus goes about consuming the years with his nasty little imaginary friend,
to whom also he is noticeably polite. The Third Scholar is not far astray when
he surmises: “Belike he (Faustus) is grown into some sickness by being
over-solitary”. [* See Appendix A, below]
The collaborator must take credit for this, too:
Now, Mephistophilis, the restless course
That time doth run with calm and silent foot,
Shortening my days and thread of vital life,
Calls for the payment of my latest years.
Therefore, sweet Mephistophilis, let us make haste
to Wittenburg.
(IV. 1. 100-104)
This is what any aging but still-busy person might say. It’s
as if the collaborator has forgotten that Faustus has a rather more dreadful
payment to make than such comfortably stoical words normally imply. What comes
across is that Faustus has forgotten. Or rather, he doesn’t like to talk about
it. The collaborator is perhaps just taking us as smoothly as possible through
to the point where his task is done and where Marlowe takes over again; the
result is a wonderfully moving moment, a very un-Marlovian one, but one that is
true to the multiple vision of the play. For Faustus is an Everyman too. If the
literal image of a pact with the devil is folkloric and perhaps contradictory
to Christianity, there are realities in every life that the pact can very well
stand for – which was obvious in that Calvinist age and no less obvious
now.
In Dr Faustus all times and places are omnipresent.
Faustus. How comes it then that thou art out of hell?
Mephistophilis. Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. (I.3.77-78)
Though Faustus may pretend otherwise, it is always the last
hour before the last midnight, the pact and the final payment are coincident.
The final hour is defined by Faustus at last seeing his choice in its true
colours.
See see where Christ’s blood
streams in the firmament! (V.2.78)
I still don’t know quite what Faustus says he is seeing (As
a teenager I always thought of a system of glass tubes, like in chemistry lessons).
But it is, approximately, a universal wound at the back of all things; the
world is eternally in a critical condition.... This might be the only time in
all art that Christ’s blood suddenly affects me like the sight of real blood.
That is to say, with horror.
Perhaps one may say, with unconfined heterodoxy, that what
tortures the damned in hell is nothing other than the vision of Christ.
Contrariwise, the advancing militia of hell could be salvation (though they
aren’t for Faustus), which is what ought to have been portrayed at the end of
V.1, when the pious Old Man is engulfed by devils, and is triumphant in
martrydom. Dyce’s mischievous idea that the Old Man repulses the devils and
smartly nips off stage in an opposite direction makes nonsense of
Mephistophilis’ point that the devils can (and will) afflict bodies to the
uttermost.
[Note how at this moment in Faustus’ final speech “Marlowe’s
mighty line” stretches and tears. He has made good use of that clean,
end-stopped pentameter in parts of Faustus (the speech about Helen being
its apotheosis) but it is only one of the tools, hastily taken up and thrown
down, that the multiple vision of the play has called forth. Think of Faustus’
astonishing prose speeches in the first part of V.2, when the scholars are
still with him.]
What the fully-engaged Faustus sees now is what has been
happening all along. Mephistophilis in fact manifested some impatience at
Faustus’ pert coolness in the earlier scenes when he made the pact. Stupidity,
even when it happens to suit our plans, can be unacceptable; and Marlowe, with
one of those swift intuitions of genius that also produced the Good and Evil
Angels, sees no reason for Mephistophilis to be a mere devil. As the scene with
the scholars demonstrates, the panoply of devils may be all in Faustus’ own
mind anyway.
I would lift up my hands,
but see, they hold them, they hold them.
(V.2.33-34)
When Faustus is lost in adoration of his Helen, the most
important and pitiable aspect of the scene is that Helen is his own projection.
As the old joke goes, nobody knows better how to please you.
Dr Faustus: Appendix A
[The following scrap of dialogue, though reflecting
the probably mistaken belief that Marlowe wrote the middle scenes of the
A-text, is the source of my thoughts about the Vanholt scene:
Rob.
.... I don’t agree with that at all. In fact I
don’t agree that Marlowe had a fixed conception of Faustus’ character at all.
That’s a Bradleyan notion of character which might often be quite appropriate to
Shakespeare, but Marlowe’s play is a completely different kind of thing. To be
frank, he has not much interest in human character. Faustus was a
perfect vehicle for him. It is about a sin that involves no human relations. It
takes place almost outside of time. Twenty-four years, one hour, what are they?
The sequence in the middle of the play is dream-like. Just as everyone grasps
that the opening scene of the play dramatises years of thought, so in these
scenes we have no doubt that we are seeing a specialized concentration of
Faustus’s twenty-four years. Of course it was going round in his head the whole
time. The same sickening thought-sequences: I will be resolute, that means I
can’t repent, yes I can if I wish, no it is too late, I have made a pact... But there was no point in Marlowe presenting
that same thought-sequence over and over again. What he does instead is show us
some other things, all of them important. First, that Faustus’s inner struggle
makes no outward impression on other people. Second, that Faustus in despair
turns out to have no taste for slaughtering new-born babes or bridging
continents. He is almost an automaton – he even enjoys a guided tour, for God’s
sake! Third, that Faustus’s damnation, or rather his conviction of damnation, is
quite consistent with being a kindly and sociable person.
Fern.
So for you the middle of the play – of the A-Text,
that is – is completely integrated with the rest of it.
Rob.
I don’t claim that it is full of dramatic
highpoints - the play has enough of
those anyway. But I think it works. Think of that odd little scene with the
Duke and Duchess of Vanholt and the grapes. Of course it is poetically vacuous,
but as I’ve said that’s typical of one element in Marlowe’s stagecraft. But
consider what it means – for everyone registers what Marlowe means in this
play, which I suppose is what you meant
by “fluency”. Would you like to read the scene? You are the
heavily-pregnant duchess. Start it from “summer”
Fern.
OK.
and were it now summer,
as it is January and the dead time of winter, I would desire no better meat
than a dish of ripe grapes.
Rob.
Alas,
madam, that’s nothing.
Then, after an aside to Mephistopheles and a small
pause while Mephistopheles departs, he goes on:
Were it a greater thing
than this, so it would content you, you should have it. – Here they be, madam. Will’t please you
taste on them?
Fern. (laughing)
I wish you had really produced some grapes!
Rob.
Don’t, it’s too creepy. Faustus blatantly
manipulates our buried belief that devils really can be invoked if you say the
right things.
Fern.
I don’t think I have that belief, but it’s quite
clear that Marlowe exploited it in his audience.
Rob.
I get scared just reading through the scene where
Faustus does the invocation - it ought to be sensational in the theatre.
Anyway, the duchess tucks into the grapes while Faustus makes scholarly
chit-chat about geography to the duke. Then he turns to her and says:
How
do you like them, madam? Be they good?
Fern.
Believe me, Master
Doctor, they be the best grapes that e’er I tasted in my life before.
Rob.
I
am glad they content you so, madam.
And that’s more or less it, apart from a
ceremonious exit. Now, what’s going on here? Is this comic relief?
Fern.
It’s idyllic relief, perhaps. A pregnant woman,
like the old man who is a staunch Christian, shows us the good things that
Faustus has given up.
Rob.
He is a scholar, he knows nothing of child-bearing.
He lusted after knowledge, but Mephistopheles wouldn’t let him be married, so
he is ignorant of most things that matter. Do you think he likes grapes?
Fern.
He does particularly mention, in another scene,
that he wants a book about plants.
Rob.
But that’s as a scientist. That’s to emphasize his
lack of interest in human life. There’s only one sin that Faustus is capable of
being tempted by.
Fern.
I don’t think Faustus is very pleased with the
grapes. He refuses to name them. When he asks the duchess about them, that’s
politeness – to bring her back into the conversation. Faustus is a very polite
person in this scene.
Rob.
I agree. Including “Alas, madam, that’s nothing.” Alas
registers disappointment, but it’s not with the duchess, is it? Does he imply
that her imagination doesn’t exactly set us on fire?
Fern.
He would have liked the opportunity to do something
more spectacular than produce a bunch of grapes.
Rob.
And as a theatre audience, we might agree. We too
might have looked for something more of a spectacle.
Fern.
The disappointment must certainly have to do with
his own situation. I know! Read this - what the duke says as they’re going out.
Come
madam, let us in,
Where
you must well reward this learnèd man
For
the great kindness he hath showed you.
He is over-stating it in a gracious way, but still,
he does think that Faustus has done a kindness to his wife. Faustus knows he
really hasn’t. Everything comes too easy to him. The power he has bargained for
is itself a kind of damnation. It places him outside the sphere of ordinary
human aspirations and intimacies.
Rob.
Look again at that line – “I am glad they content
you so, madam”. No reader believes him. Not that Faustus is vindictive, but the
fact of the grapes pleasing her so much is something that he is utterly
distanced from. What he senses is the insignificance of his own part in the
transaction. The whole scene makes him feel isolated. It certainly does not
“feed his soul”, whatever you might believe about the procession of the Sins.
There is a dramatic tension here, too. It’s a long time since Faustus has
really told us about his feelings. We won’t have much longer to wait...]
Dr Faustus: Appendix B
Borrowings
from Dr Faustus in The Taming Of A Shrew (1594)
The
Taming Of A Shrew is a play that was
“reconstructed”, seemingly from none-too-recent memories of Shakespeare’s early
masterpiece The Taming Of The Shrew , probably by actors for
the use of a touring company (i.e. the Pembroke company mentioned on the title
page). This reconstruction took place some time before 1594 when the text was
sold for printing. The company must by then have been in financial straits. The
actors had not been able to recollect many of Shakespeare’s actual words, or
even the exact story of the “Bianca” sub-plot, unless they were deliberately adapting what they might have copied. I'm doubtful about that, but anyway what they produced was
sufficient for its purposes. Their basic conception of a good play was Marlovian rather than
Shakespearian; they wanted high-sounding rhetoric so they plundered a wealth of material remembered from other plays in which they had acted,
including Dr Faustus. The upshot is a number of parallel passages. Some
are distinct “borrowings”, appropriated word for word; one would like to think
the actors had fresh memories of playing the parts of Wagner/Chorus and of
Faustus himself. Others have been adapted at will and the most imponderable
ones may well have been unconscious or even coincidental, so drawing
conclusions about the textual evidence for Faustus is not
straightforward. Since the details of these parallel passages are not easy to
come by, I present them in full here. This information comes from The Taming
of A Shrew, ed. F.S. Boas (1911), in which an Appendix is devoted to
Marlovian borrowings (some from Faustus, the rest from Tamburlaine),
supplemented by The Taming Of The Shrew, ed. Brian Morris (1981), p.
36n, which lists a few other parallel passages that have been discerned in the
years subsequent to Boas’ edition. A Shrew line references are to Boas’s
edition. I preserve the old spelling given in Boas’ Appendix where this is my
source; for the others I quote the modernized English of Boas’ main text. Faustus
line references and quotations are from Bevington and Rasmussen ed. (1993). I
make the assumption that where A Shrew has the same words as either A or
B or both, this represents the text of Dr Faustus in the form that was
known in 1594, and for convenience I refer to this text as the original.
Other hypotheses are of course possible; for example that manuscripts of Faustus
were already diverging into two streams at this earlier date.
1. (=Boas 1)
A
Shrew, Induction
Sc 1, 9-12
Lord. Now that the gloomie
shaddow of the night
Longing
to view Orion’s drisling lookes,
Leapes
from th’antarticke world unto the skie
And
dims the welkin with her pitchie breath.
Faustus A and B I.3.1-4
Faustus.
Now that
the gloomy shadow of the earth, [A: earth, B: night,]
Longing
to view Orion’s drizzling look,
Leaps
from th’Antarctic world unto the sky
And
dims the welkin with her pitchy breath,
Comment: A’s reading of “earth” is more attractive, but the Shrew
players seem to have been familiar with “night”, as preserved in B. It
looks like A improved on the original.
2. (=Boas 8)
A
Shrew,
II.1.79-80
Aurelius. To seeke for strange and
new-found pretious stones
And
dive into the sea to gather pearle.
Faustus
A I.1.84-87,
B I.1.81-84
(Faustus) I’ll have them fly to India for gold,
Ransack
the ocean for orient pearl,
And
search all corners of the new-found world
For
pleasant fruits and princely delicates.
Comment:
A Shrew preserves
the general sense, and the words “pearl” and “new-found”, though the latter is
applied in a different context, and America drops out of sight. A and B
texts are identical at this point.
3. (=Boas 13)
A
Shrew,
II.2.1-4
Boy.
Come
hither, sirha, boy.
Sander.
Of
your face, you have many boies with such
Pickadevantes
I am sure, souns would you
Not
have a bloudie nose for this!
Faustus,
A I.4.1-4
Wagner.
Sirrah boy,
come hither.
Robin.
How, ‘boy’?
‘Swounds, ‘boy’! I hope you have seen
many
boys with such pickedevants as I have. ‘Boy’,
quotha?
Faustus,
B I.4.1-4
Wagner.
Come
hither, sirrah boy.
Robin.
‘Boy’? O,
disgrace to my person! Zounds, ‘boy’ in your
face!
You have seen many boys with beards, I am
sure.
Comment:
The
original was clearly closer to B, but for the phrase “such pickedevants”. B has
dropped this (perhaps because the expression no longer raised a titter, or
because the current Robin did not have a pointy beard). The A-text is
substantially re-worded.
4. (=Boas 15)
A
Shrew, III.6.31-32
Emelia.
As once did
Orpheus with his harmony,
And
ravishing sound of his melodious harpe.
Faustus,
A
II.3.29-30; B II.3.26-27
(Faustus) And hath not he that built
the walls of Thebes
With
ravishing sound of his melodious harp
Comment:
A and B are
identical here. The lines in Faustus refer to Amphion, not Orpheus.
5. (=Boas 16)
A
Shrew, IV.2.60-61
Duke.
This angrie
sword should rip thy hatefull chest,
And
hewd thee smaller than the Libian sands.
Faustus,
B
IV.2.73-74
(Faustus)
And had you
cut my body with your swords,
Or
hewd this flesh and bones as small as sand
Comment.
This scene
(in which the Emperor’s knights ambush Faustus) is not in A. It forms part of
the substantial material in B that concerns Benvolio and his companions. Boas points out that the Duke’s subsequent
wish to “muster bands of hellish fiends” (A Shrew IV.2.73) also reflects
the general context of the Faustus speech, which leads up to summoning a
troop of devils to persecute the knights. B probably elaborated the original;
but it is yet more certain that A cut it.
6. (Morris, loc.cit.: first recognized by Raymond Houk,
1947)
A
Shrew, II.1.10
and16-17
(Kate)
For, trust
me, I take no great delight in it...
(Valeria)
If that,
sweet mistress, were your heart’s content,
You
should command a greater thing than that
Faustus,
A IV.2.4-5
and 15-16
(Faustus) But it may be, madam, you take no delight in
this.
I have heard that great-bellied women...
(Faustus) Were it a greater thing
than this, so it would content you,
you
should have it.
Comment:
From the
Vanholt scene. This scene is also in B (IV.6) but the relevant passages are
dissimilar, presumably because of revision by
Byrde and Rowley.
7. (Morris, loc. cit.: first recognized by Robert A.H.
Smith, 1979)
A
Shrew, Induction
Sc 2, 32-35
Lord.
Ay, my
gracious lord, and your lovely lady
Long
time hath mournèd for your absence here,
And
now with joy behold where she doth come,
To
gratulate your honour’s safe return.
Faustus,
A
IV.Chorus, 3-6
(Chorus)
He stayed
his course and so returnèd home,
Where
such as bear his absence but with grief –
I
mean his friends and nearest companions –
Did
gratulate his safety with kind words.
Comment.
This chorus
is not in B (and is generally agreed to be misplaced in A). Its content, describing
a visit that Faustus makes to Wittenburg before attending the Emperor, would
not have been consistent with the action in B, where Faustus is said to have
come straight to the Emperor from Italy in the company of Bruno, the rival pope. Perhaps the Bruno
material was Byrde and Rowley’s innovation, and hence they dropped the chorus.
This is the least persuasive of the parallel passages, I think; the Shrew-author
is exceedingly fond of the word “gratulate”, though of course it may be from Faustus
that he picked it up. It becomes one of his portmanteau expressions to add
a poetical colouring, like “precious stones” and “Medean silks” (both
ultimately from Tamburlaine). The word “gratulate” does not appear in Tamburlaine
or in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, but it does appear in Richard
III (IV.1), while in Titus Andronicus (another play that the hard-up
Pembroke company sold for printing in 1593-94) we find “And gratulate his safe
return to Rome” (I.1.222), which is close to the Shrew line above. To
“gratulate” someone’s “safe return” appears indeed to have been a fixed form of
words, for William Ponsonby’s dedicatory note to Spenser’s Amoretti (1595)
begins: “Sir, to gratulate your safe return from Ireland...”. It was a small world: A
Shrew had the same printer (Peter Short) as the Amoretti volume (as
did also e.g the Quartos of I Henry IV). The case for a recollection of Faustus
rests on little more than the
unstartling thought-progression from mourning (or grieving) someone’s absence
to gratulating their safety.
[Incidentally, the line from Titus Andronicus comes from Act I, the Act that most readers feel is distinctly un-Shakespearean. It has been persuasively connected with George Peele (see BrianVickers, Shakespeare: Co-Author (2004)). However when Vickers rightly comments that Peele was addicted to the word "gratulate" (p. 172) he might perhaps have added that lots of other people were, too.]
8. (Morris, loc. cit.: first recognized by Robert A.H.
Smith, 1979)
A
Shrew, III.6.7-8
Emelia.
Should thou
assay to scale the seat of Jove,
Mounting
the subtle airy regions,
Faustus,
B
III.Chorus, 3-4 (A III. Chorus, 3-4) and 18-19 (not in A)
(Chorus)
Graven in
the book of Jove’s high firmament,
Did
mount him up to scale Olympus’ top,... [B: him up A:himself]
And,
mounted then upon a dragon’s back,
That
with his wings did part the subtle air,
Comment:
“Scale”and
“Jove” also appear together in Tamburlaine, Part One, I.2.199-200, while
“mounted up the air” appears at Tamburlaine, Part Two, I.1.140, and
“airy region” at Tamburlaine, Part Two, IV.1.119. It is not always easy
to distinguish a definite recollection from a general Marlovian colour, and
much depends on that fragile testimony, the “subtle air”. If you accept it, the
same conclusion applies as to No. 5: B’s 25 lines may elaborate the original, but A’s 11 lines
are certainly an abridgment. In this case what B preserves may well be almost
pure Marlowe.
(2004, 2014)
Labels: Christopher Marlowe
