Dr. Faustus (Christopher Marlowe) - A Thoroughly Modern Man

Dr. Faustus- A Thoroughly Modern Man                                                                 Mike Haldenby                                       

It seems axiomatic that any study of literature must take into account the demands placed upon the  writer by his or her political environment.  Spenser’s flattery of Elizabeth 1 in The Faerie Queen; the political angst of Milton’s Paradise Lost; Wordsworth’s revolutionary fervour , Dickens’ Victorian social conscience; all benefit from our understanding of contemporary values.   But what of Marlowe’s Dr Faustus?  Drawing upon mediaeval myth, renaissance freedoms and religious uncertainty, Marlowe also suggests a future with mankind standing, frighteningly, toe to toe with his God. The play seems, excitingly, to lend itself to modern interpretations that might be coloured and informed by our awareness of late sixteenth century influences but are not , necessarily,  limited by them.

And is this not perhaps the mark of any great work?  That it stands up in any context, and can be read, staged, or understood, from all perspectives?  Hamlet’s procrastination, Keats’ intense sensitivity, Wilde’s perception; all have a resonance today- different to,  but as compelling as when first read.  The appeal of Dr Faustus resides in its inherent transmutability.  Faustus himself can mean as much to modern man as he did to an Elizabethan audience…if not more.  His plight, while showing us the dangerous potential of a truly renaissance man, can resonate through the ages to represent  the trials and tribulations faced by us all in our modern lives.

Faustus is the gifted student who can’t bring himself to put Law or Medicine on his UCAS form.  Too much like hard work, too conventional.  He thinks that he is better than most- no, he’s confident he’s the best of them, and needs to have it recognised, even if it costs him everything.  His confidence is huge but there’s no Cassius Clay-style irony.  He really knows it all; his opening soliloquy is best summed up as “been there, done that”.  His fateful slide towards the gloomy cul-de-sac offered by necromancy is inexorable and inevitable.  As Cleanth Brooks nicely puts it, he’s “all dressed up with nowhere to go.” Like a demanding toddler, he asks questions to which he already knows the answers, and like two mates mixing up the party punch, Cornelius and Valdez egg Faustus on to do what they themselves dare not- then step back out of sight when hell breaks loose.  He’s on his own to face the music.   With the bravado of a joyrider, he can’t conceive of any form of responsibility, any boundaries to his excess.  It’s only when the boss comes down to threaten him with the sack that Faustus mumbles insincere acquiescence.  The boss, of course was only bluffing- good new staff are so hard to find.  Better the devil you know.  After watching a health and safety DVD, he’s passed the risk assessment and is back on the strength.  For now.

In our ever more secular society, we view Faustus’ “old wives’ tales” dismissal of a fire and brimstone hell as nothing exceptional.  When we are told, “Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it,” we understand, being saturated by images of horror on a daily basis.  Milton’s view in Paradise Lost, eighty years later, seems to owe much to this existential hell of Marlowe’s: "The mind is to its own place, and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven".   It’s the lingua franca; Neighbours from Hell; Heaven is the back seat of my Cadillac.  Hell and back.  Heaven sent.  It seems that today we have the freedom to play with and alter the meanings of what was sacredly set in stone five hundred years ago.   Mephistopheles retorts that, like graffiti art  praised for its anonymity, hell is defined not by what is IS, but by what it ISN’T; “all places shall be hell that is not heaven” - and in true modern terms dissuades Faustus from holy matrimony: “She whom thine eye shall like, thy heart shall have”, he states, defining modern relationships like a hippie from the summer of love turned loose in the Playboy mansion.   When he makes his offer to Faustus of countless “fairest courtesans”, Mephistopheles takes Faustus’ silence as acceptance.  Marriage is ditched in favour of promiscuous and unprotected  sex.  Maybe some tax breaks would have helped.

Tomorrow is sacrificed for today; the deceitful promise of power and freedom here and now is quickly accepted.  It is safe to say that Faustus has no pension  plan.  Taking on a 1000% short-term loan (no security required), Faustus signs in blood with the confidence and commitment of a conman’s victim, and in doing so accepts that he must pay in kind;  but like the warranty on your toaster, the bloody bond is worth less than the skin it’s written on.  It’s as flimsy as a Premier League footballer’s contract. And Faustus is conned by the legal jiggery-pokery, the small print. Pitifully, as the days draw to a close, he believes he is liable, legally, despite Lucifer’s clear failure to honour even the most basic clauses.  The deal was a non-starter from the off-  yet the loanshark’s finger hovers over the doorbell and the big boys in sunglasses get ready with baseball bats .  

When Faustus wastes his gifts, as we know he must, his slave becomes his master, his lottery winnings are spent on an overpriced and crumbling villa on the Costa Brava, sliding into negative equity.  He can’t sell it, and his Mercedes is going rusty.  He baits the Pope like a football supporter at an Easter game, (he’s a “good Protestant”, claims George Santayana), backs the wrong horses and surrounds himself with the sort of “friends” you discover you have the day after you win the lottery; they wind him up enough to provide the floorshow, which he weakly agrees to; and of course, he ends up with the strippagram himself, covered in foam, sick in the gutter.  His big ideas are pub-talk. The good angel has all the potency of a feeble Jerry Springer, an agony aunt Faustus studiously ignores; the old man becomes an impotent Victor Meldrew .  Helen of Troy  turns out to be the internet-sourced Thai-bride from hell;  but Lucifer’s impressively impatient interruptions are surely delivered complete with some 360 degree head rotating, Exorcist-style, splashed with green vomit. 

When all his credit is exhausted and nothing more can be sold on ebay, Faustus faces the final reckoning.  Buying round after round at the Last-Chance Saloon, Faustus is given many opportunities to accept and address his plight; he knows he’s on a suspended sentence and facing the ultimate penalty, but he just can’t see that the kind policeman with his well-judged warnings will soon be losing his patience .  It’s not his fault; he can blame society, astrology and his parents.  He didn’t ask to be born, did he?   When the crunch comes, he can always pull up the bedclothes and hide under the duvet.  Surely then everything will go away.  And when that crunch does come, and he sees what he’s done and what is left; “see, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament…” he’s too pig headed to accept he’s in the wrong.  He’d sooner burn the house down than give it to the wife in a divorce settlement.  His premature despair is the resignation of the football manager condemned to relegation by the numerous biased decisions of a bespectacled referee.  Obviously.

Dr Faustus works marvellously well for a modern audience.  In the past, critics have fallen over themselves  to define Faustus’ sins in terms of mid-twentieth century perspectives; Cleanth Brooks, in 1966, suggested somewhat nobly that Faustus damns himself by his “sense of legal obligation”, while Greg (writing in 1946) would have us believe that illicit sex, or “demionality” is his downfall.  In 1954 Harry Levin let Faustus off, and placed the blame squarely on the “threatening” Mephistopheles  and the “enticing” Helen.   Yet these don’t go far enough, surely.  Nicholas Brooke perhaps gets closest when he writes that Faustus cannot repent, because “his mind is directed at independence still” (1952).  In 2011, for “ independence” read arrogance; no one can tell Faustus what  to do, thank you very much.  He’ll leave the engine running while filling up at the Shell garage if he feels like it; he’ll use his mobile on the plane.  He’ll play his music as loud as he wants.  His carbon footprint is the size of a Hummer; he’ll leave off his seat belt and smoke sixty fags a day. 

Just because he can.

George Santayana “Three Philosophical Poets” (1910) pp.147-9

Cleanth Brooks, “The Unity of Marlowe’s Dr Faustus” (Faber 1966)

Harry Levin “Science Without Conscience”  from “The Overreacher” (1954)

W. W. Greg “The Damnation of Faustus” from “Modern Language Review”, XLI (1946)

Nicholas Brooke, “The Moral Tragedy of Dr Faustus”, Cambridge Journal V (1951-2)

John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1