Poetry Editor, Ira Maine discusses Christopher Marlowe’s Tragical History of Doctor Faustus.
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) was a dazzling talent of the Elizabethan age. He was dead at twenty nine, having already written some of the finest plays in the language, including Tamburlaine the Great and The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. Like Kim Philby in the 20th century, Marlowe, whilst still studying at Cambridge university, was recruited as a spy, not for the USSR, but for (and upon) England by Elizabeth the First’s secret service. He had two other interests, atheism and homosexuality, either of which might have got him in big trouble, and both of which might have been used as levers to persuade him to go spying in the first place.
In this scene from Marlowe’s play, Faustus has done the unthinkable. He has sold his soul to the devil. The devil, as his part of the bargain, grants Faustus, for an agreed number of years, anything his heart desires. This undoubtedly, right here, is every man’s fantasy! You can imagine a superstitious Elizabethan audience, their lives filled with terror, portents and omens, horrified by this bargain yet fascinated, mesmerised by the choking audacity of Faustus, enjoying a life of riches in the full knowledge that at the end of the agreed period, the devil will return to claim his soul.
As this scene begins, the Doctor, courtesy of the devil, has Helen of Troy in his arms. He looks into her eyes in wonderment and awe and asks;
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? [Troy]
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss (they kiss)
He is, while it lasts, Paris, the lover of Helen, a god and therefore immortal. He cannot die.
Faust wants to be immortal to avoid his pact with the devil. Instead Helen, who is just a shade, a ghost, does the devil’s work and sucks his soul from his body.
Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies!
This line might also be read thus: Helen’s beauty has stolen his soul to the point where he is in Heaven, and intellectually at least, out of reach of the Devil.
Either way, Faustus is no fool. He knows it is not yet time for the reckoning.
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again…’
Here will I dwell, for Heaven is in these lips,
This is profanation. You can almost hear the audience gasp. To compare a woman’s charms, no matter how desirable with the reality of Heaven, the Kingdom of God, is utter sacrilege. Yet Faustus is doing precisely that, and the audience, the true believers, despite themselves are on the edge of their seats and absolutely electrified.
Elizabethan England, it must be remembered, is in the midst of change.Protestantism, through Elizabeth’s father, Henry the Eighth, has taken the place of rule from Rome. Copernicus, Galileo, Bruno and Tycho Brahe are turning traditional beliefs in the stars on their head. Certainties are being swept away and everything is suddenly open to question.
Marlowe is asking a question that people of the time hardly dared ask. What if this earthly existence is all there is and that perhaps, all of this fear of God, Heaven and Hell and all the rest of it is simply wrong?
And all is dross that is not Helena.
Surely Marlowe means in this line that everything outside the beauty of the earth, in all it’s forms is open to question and doubt. All of the churchgoing, the praying, the self sacrifice, the toleration of suffering and humiliation in order to ‘…get your reward in Heaven…’ is a waste of time. All of the dogmas and doctrines, scriptures and sins imposed on us by churchmen of every stripe for hundreds of years, are in the end ‘…a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing…’
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy, shall Wertenberg be sacked:
The story of Faust originated in the Poland/Germany region.
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
Briefly,Greek Helen was married to Menelaus, brother of King Agamemnon.
Paris, a Trojan, visiting the court of Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, meets Helen and abducts? seduces? makes off with her back to Troy. Menelaus is not happy and summons everybody to rescue her. Thus begins the Trojan war, with Ajax, Achilles, Odysseus and all of the rest of the legendary characters who have so influenced western literature.
Yeats poem ‘Leda and the Swan’ deals with Leda’s impregnation by Zeus who has taken the shape of a swan. She gives birth to Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world.
James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses’ deals with the travails of Odysseus/Ulysses as he makes his slow way back home after the Trojan Wars. The Romans adopted many of the Greek gods as their own and Odysseus the Greek became Ulysses the Roman.
Tennyson’s poem ‘Ulysses’ deals with this character in old age and his need ‘…to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield…’
Thom Gunn, Louis MacNiece, TS Eliot, Patrick Kavanagh and a host of others have all put this Helennic legend to good use in their work.
In part two we will look at Faustus’ last hours and how this devilish situation resolves itself.
TO BE CONTINUED.