Doctor Faustus

Right.

It i- it is acts 3 and 4 of Doctor Faustus-

That's true

... by Marlowe.

Marlowe was under scrutiny.

During this period, he authored Doctor Faustus, a play that, like himself, flouted moral expectations while inviting critical acclaim.

Faustus may have been more than entertainment.

It could have served as coded commentary on the political machinations of Elizabeth I's advisors.

In front of the gate, seeing Estadio Mario Filho walking in with the gathered Vasco fans, Gabby next to me, her first Vasco game, her first time at Maracanã, I thought, I would sell my soul for Vasco to win.

Dr. Faustus, in the eponymous play which is Marlowe's most sempiternal contribution to literature, got the same sort of notion, except his goal is more nebulous.

He's bored with his books.

He feels like he's reached the end of learning.

Emperors and kings are but obeyed in their several provinces, nor can they raise the wind or rend the clouds, but his dominion that exceeds in this stretches as far as doth the mind of man.

A sound magician is a mighty god.

Here, Faustus, try thy brains to gain a deity.

This night I'll conjure, though I die, therefore.

The first circumstance which drew my attention to this class of writers I well remember, and if my readers will excuse the egotism which occurs in such frequent reference to myself, I will simply state it.

Passing one vacation in the country with an old maiden lady, a distant relation, when I was yet very young, among the treasures which her library, none of the most capacious, by the by, afforded, I by the chance met with an old copy of Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, a personage whose name had no small attraction to me, from the eager interest with which in my younger days I had devoured the adventures of his most extraordinary life and exit.

I immediately took possession of it and carried it with me, for my own private reading, into a small room, which was a kind of sanctum sanctorum, and from which I excluded without mercy the profane inmates of the house.

This little room, which I remember with feelings of fondness and affection, is still present to my mind's eye.

The soft green hue of the trees, forming a pleasing contrast to the neat and unsullied whiteness of the wainscotting, and the kind of fairy prospect which was visible through the boughs of a large oak, which overshadowed this part of the building, I never can forget.

Alas, now that that room and mansion are the property of another, I can almost say to it, O domus antiqua, quam dispari dominaris domina.

But, pardon me for this digression, young as I was, I was able to perceive that the Faustus of Marlowe was a little different from the accounts of his exploits, which had formerly attracted my attention.

There was a something of undefined and breathless interest attached to it, which seized a firm hold on my mind and communicated to it a kind of excitement which did not cease with the bare perusal of the work that caused it.

It's a really good question.

One of the opening plays of this theater back in early 2000s, we did Dr. Faustus, and we were very happy with it.

We have a company within Playbox, I shouldn't say it, but it's called the Shakespeare Young Company.

Hmm.

And the whole idea of Elizabethan and Jacobean popular theatre.

And The Massacre at Paris is one that... one hears about, one can read a little bit about it, but it never seems to be done.

It never seems to be spoken of in the same breath as Edward II, Tamburlaine, Faustus.

And yet within that play, there are prototypes of all these characters and many more.

Not such a fool on earth were the enemy of mankind to traverse it with the offer.

True, the theme of such devil pact had appeared in folktales and in the drama previously, notably in Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, but Maturin here gives the idea of a dramatic twist and psychological poignancy by making a human being the one to seek to buy another's soul to save his own.

A mortal, cursed with physical immortality, ceaselessly harried across the world by the hounds of fate, forever forced by an irresistible urge to make his impitiable offer to tormented souls, and always meeting a tragic refusal, offers dramatic possibilities of a high order, and Maturin's story has a dreadful power.

Clara Reeves' avowed purpose in writing The Old English Baron was to produce a ghost story that should be more probable and realistic than Walpole's.

The devil incarnate is one of the familiar figures in the terror novel.

Here, as in the case of the ghost, we see the influence of the dramatic rather than of the epic tradition.

He is akin to Calderon's wonder-working magician in Marlowe's Dr. Faustus rather than to the satanic creations of Dante and Milton.

He is not a dread, awe-inspiring figure, either physically or as a personality, though he does assume terrifying almost epic proportions in the closing scenes of The Monk and Zafolya.

The Elizabethan dramatists were fascinated by the terrors of the invisible world.

Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, round whose name are clustered legends centuries old concerning bargains between man and devil, the apparitions and witches in Macbeth, the dead hand, the corpse-like images, the mask of madmen, the tomb-maker and the passing bell in Webster's sombre tragedy The Duchess of Malfi, prove triumphantly the dramatic possibilities of terror.

As a foil to his Mask of Queens, 1609, Ben Jonson introduced twelve loathly witches, with Ate as their leader, and embellished his description of their profane rites with details culled from James I's treatise on demonology and from learned ancient authorities.

In The Pilgrim's Progress, Despair, who had as many lives as a cat, his wife Diffidence at Doubting Castle, and Maul and Slaygood are the ogres of popular story, whose acquaintance Bunyan had made in chapbooks during his ungodly youth.

But if you haven't heard, Faust is the guy who supposedly made a deal with the devil, hence Mephistopheles here, outside of the summoning circle that Faust has created.

This is very evident in Dr. Faustus, Marlowe's play version of the story, which he publishes in the early 17th century, like he was a contemporary of Shakespeare's.

Um, but the story goes that like Dr. Faustus is this guy who is very knowledgeable.

He used to be a doctor.

He used to be an academic.

So he seizes power.

He summons a demon and forces that demon to do his bidding.

And the demon is willing to under the condition that he gets to take Faustus's soul after 24 years.