The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus: Week 6

"Make me immortal with a kiss"

[Benjamin West: Helen Brought to Paris, 1776; in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Photograph by pohick2. Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 (Generic)]

I think one of the reasons I love this play so much is because it is so very, very tragic and so very, very serious. (There’s no worse tragedy than selling your soul to the devil and being dragged off to hell following a painful, terrible death!) Yet at the same time the play is full of hilarious, slapstick scenes which, as we’ve already seen, illuminate the tragedy even more. I like the texture and complications such a mix brings.

In the second half of the play, things move fast. I’m going to cover it all (all but the final scene) in this next-to-last post on the play.

Scene 7 takes place in the private chamber of the Pope. (Just imagine what kind of fair game a pope provided for a young wit in early Protestant England!) The scene opens with Faustus and Mephistopheles, each speaking in poetry. Faustus’s lines are especially elevated and beautiful as he describes the journey the two have made to Rome. So we would expect, given the lofty language and the dignified setting, that this would be a very serious scene in the play.

But instead …. we get Faustus playing silly pranks at the Pope’s expense: stealing his food, snatching his cup, boxing his ears. Really, Faustus? What are you, five? The language in this scene degenerates as does Faustus’s behavior. And we get more fireworks! Yay!

The servants mirror this behavior in the next two scenes, and we are reminded that it is all foolishness.  

Maybe this is a bit of a stretch, but when I was re-reading these scenes, I heard an echo of the words “take this cup,”¹ spoken by Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before the arrest that would lead to his crucifixion. Jesus, the Son, asks his Father, that if it is God’s will, he would remove the burden of the terrible suffering and pain he (Jesus) is about to endure. God could have done this but did not. And Jesus professes, too, that he wants not his own will, but his father’s will done. And so it comes to pass.

What a subtle but significant contrast here: God does not take away the cup of Christ’s crucifixion, and in not doing so, conquers death once and for all. Faustus then Robin both steal a goblet away—and in so doing, they play into the hands of death.

Next Faustus is summoned to the Emperor who hopes Faustus can use his dark arts to call forth from history all the great figures of times past so that he might witness firsthand their great deeds. However, Faustus admits that he does not have power to bring the dead back to life. He can only conjure spirits that resemble them. And that Faustus does.

Remember at the start of the play that one of the justifications Faustus used to convince himself to pursue his dealings with the devil was that his academic studies didn’t give him the knowledge and power he wanted, especially over death? Well, now that he has the made his bargain with Lucifer, he still doesn’t have that ability. All he can do is conjure semblances of bodies—and perform stupid party tricks.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, as my husband is wont to say.

More shenanigans ensue. In Scene 11, the elevated figure of the tragic hero encounters the comic figure of a low horse dealer, and Faustus descends to the level of playing tricks on this poor fellow by making his horse vanish in a pond and then pretending that the guy pulls his leg off when trying to awaken him. (Interestingly enough, the history of the phrase, “pulling someone’s leg,” to mean playing a joke on them doesn’t go back as far as this play, according to my quick internet search. But it wouldn’t surprise me if that sense was an already-existing one that Marlowe was invoking here. But who knows? Maybe Marlowe started it!)

At the close of Scene 12, in which Faustus satisfies the cravings of the pregnant Duchess by bringing her grapes that are in-season halfway around the world, the Duke’s words are unintentionally foreboding: “Come, Master Doctor, follow us and receive your reward.”

Faustus’s “reward” for the bargain he has made comes in the last of these final two scenes.

Before it does, however, he has one more chance to repent and be saved.

The character of the Old Man enters seeking, he tells Faustus, “to guide thy steps unto the way of life.”

When Mephistopheles gives Faustus a dagger in hopes of helping Faustus to hurry along his own end, the Old Man implores him,

Ah, stay good Faustus, stay thy desperate steps!

I see an angel hovers o’er thy head,

And, with a vial full of precious grace,

Offers to pour the same into thy soul;

Then call for mercy, and avoid despair.

Faustus tries to repent, but despairs. He asks for “forgiveness” from Lucifer, lord of Mephistopheles, instead. He then asks Mephistopheles to torment the Old Man who has tried to “dissuade me from my Lucifer.” But, Mephistopheles admits, “His faith is great. I cannot touch his soul.” (These Satanic powers are great—but they are limited!)

Then follow some of the most famous lines from the play. Before Faustus turns his body and soul in to Lucifer as he has promised, he wishes to embrace as paramour “that heavenly Helen” whom he conjured earlier for the emperor. This beauty is the Helen of Troy, so famous for starting the Trojan War. (Remember that Faustus asked for a wife early in the play? His good desires remain unfulfilled.)

Mephistopheles grants the wish, and upon seeing her, Faustus waxes poetic, just as Adam did upon first seeing Eve.

Here as elsewhere, but here even more than elsewhere, we witness the blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) that is so masterful that it has been called “Marlowe’s mighty line.” It is some of the most beautiful blank verse in the English language. In both its sound and its sense, it captures the tragedy of a man who desires so much, but who willingly exchanges his soul for a Heaven that is not divine but merely human:

Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. [Kisses her.]
Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!--
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.

Faustus’s end comes in the next, final scene. We will look at that next week, and that will conclude our study of The Tragical History of The Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. 

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BOOK NOTE:

Speaking of Faustian bargains, today a new book releases by my friend Christa Brown. (You can find her on Substack.) Baptistland: A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal, and Transformation is Christa’s harrowing and heartbreaking story of not only being abused as a teen by the youth pastor of her Southern Baptist church, but of being ignored, fed false promises, and vilified for years afterward by leaders in the SBC.

In endorsing the book, I said, “Baptistland will make you weep. It will make you angry. It will break your heart. It will open your eyes. Christa Brown is not just a survivor—she’s a hero we don’t deserve. Every Southern Baptist needs to read this story, and every Southern Baptist leader needs to account for what it reveals.”

Let me assure you, however, that this isn’t just a heartbreaking story. It is also a story of courage and resilience, a story that proves that telling the truth matters, even when it seems like no one is listening. Because eventually, some of us will listen. And learn. Thank you, Christa, for helping me and so many others learn.

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"Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” – Simone Weil²

1. Luke 22:42 (this is the rendering of the NIV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2022%3A42&version=NIV

2. Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. By Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr (London: Routledge, 2002), 117.