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‘What book is that?’

‘What book is that?’. Performance, text, and unofficial speech in Doctor Faustus. Text and performance. Carl Grose, The Dark Philosophers , 2011. Tim Crouch, The Author , 2009. Rebecca Gilman, The Sweetest Swing in Baseball , 2005. Doctor Faustus : A- and B-texts.

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‘What book is that?’

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  1. ‘What book is that?’ Performance, text, and unofficial speech in Doctor Faustus

  2. Text and performance Carl Grose, The Dark Philosophers, 2011 Tim Crouch, The Author, 2009 Rebecca Gilman, The Sweetest Swing in Baseball, 2005

  3. Doctor Faustus: A- and B-texts

  4. Doctor Faustus: a textual timeline 1587: German Faustbuch (source for much of Marlowe’s play) published. c. 1588-93:Doctor Faustus is written and performed for the first time. c. 1592: Publication of The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus, P. F’s English translation of the German Faustbuch. 1593: Christopher Marlowe stabbed to death in Deptford, 30 May. 1594: First recorded performance by the Lord Admiral’s Men at the Rose Theatre. Henslowe’s diary lists many more performances between 1594-7. 1601: ‘A booke called the plaie of Doctor Faustus’ entered into the Stationers’ Register by Thomas Bushell. 1602: Henslowe pays £4 to William Birde and Samuel Rowley for ‘adicyones in doctor fostes’, 22 November. 1604: A-text printed by Valentine Simmes for Bushell. Reprinted in 1609 and 1611. 1616: B-text printed for John Wright. Reprinted at least six times 1619-31. B2 (1619) onwards have the phrase ‘With new Additions’ on title page.

  5. Doctor Faustus: A- and B-texts • Scenes unique to B-text: • The Pope’s humiliation of Saxon Bruno and Faustus’s rescue of Bruno (3.1); • The Benvolio sub-plot, comprising the introductory conversation between Martino, Frederick and Benvolio (4.1), their plan and attempt to get revenge on Faustus (4.2), and his subsequent retaliation (4.3); • The clowns’ meeting with the horse-courser in the tavern (4.5) and their subsequent humiliation at the court of the Duke of Vanholt (4.6); • The appearance of Lucifer, Beelzebub and Mephistopheles at the beginning of 5.2; • The reappearance of Mephistopheles, the Good Angel and the Bad Angel in the moments before Faustus’s damnation (5.2); • The final scene featuring the scholars’ discovery of Faustus’ remains (5.3).

  6. Doctor Faustus: A- and B-texts • Textual anomalies: • Misplaced scenes: Act 2 Scene 2 is misplaced in both texts (after 3.1 in A-text and after 2.3 in B-text); the B-text misplaces the Act 3 Chorus; the A-text misplaces the Act 4 Chorus. • Act 3 scene 2 has two endings in A-text: Mephistopheles enters twice, and transforms the clowns twice into animals. • Contradictions over Mephistopheles’ free will.

  7. Printing Doctor Faustus • ‘Compositor X abbreviates speech headings and punctuates them with a period, uses an upper-case “E” in Exit directions, prefers -ea- spellings in words like year, dear, and chear, prefers bloud over blood, and uses -ll spellings in words like will, shall, and hell.’ • ‘Compositor Y frequently uses unabbreviated and unstopped speech headings or abbreviated speech headings punctuated with a colon. In contrast to X, Y uses a lower-case “e” in exit directions, prefers -ee- spellings in words like yeer, deer, and cheer, prefers blood over bloud, and uses single -l spellings in words like wil, shal, and hel.’ (Rasmussen 1993: 223)

  8. Textual transmission Manuscript 1602 additions Christopher Marlowe Performance William Birde (playwright) Lord Admiral’s Men Marlowe’s co-author Samuel Rowley (playwright) Philip Henslowe (manager) ? ? ? ? A-text (1604) B-text (1616) Valentine Simmes (printer) Thomas Bushell (publisher) John Wright (publisher) Other playing companies, printers & compositors ‘Compositor X’ ‘Compositor Y’ Printer & compositor(s)

  9. Theories 1) A-text as memorial reconstruction; B-text as closest to Marlowe’s text • Memorial reconstruction theory championed by Leo Kirschbaum (1946) and W. W. Greg (1950) • Possible reference in The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597-8) to passage unique in B-text: HOST. Where be my horses? Speak well of them, varletto. BARDOLPH. Run away with the cozeners. For so soon as I came beyond Eton, they threw me off from behind one of them, in a slough of mire, and set spurs and away, like three German devils, three Doctor Faustuses. (4.5.61-5)

  10. Theories 2) A-text as memorial reconstruction; B-text as Rowley and Birde’s 1602 version; Marlowe’s version as lost • Fredson Bowers (1973) has argued that both surviving texts are corrupted. • The B-text must be a revised text because of its inconsistencies: • the purpose for the Pope’s feast changes (is it for St. Peter’s day, or for the Pope’s victory?), • Faustus begs Mephistopheles to stay despite Mephistopheles himself having already suggested that they should do so.

  11. Theories 3) A-text as closest to Marlowe’s text; B-text as Rowley / Birde version • Memorial reconstruction theory challenged by (among others), Constance Brown Kuriyama (1975), Michael Warren (1981), Michael H. Keefer (1983), Eric Rasmussen (1993). • Bevington and Rasmussen list borrowings from the A-text in other plays of the 1590s: The Taming of A Shrew, Mucedorus, and A Looking-Glass for London and England (1993: 65-6). • Removal of references to ‘Christ’ in B-text suggest a theatrical text post 1606 (when a parliamentary act forbade the use on stage of ‘the holy name of God or of Christ Jesus’). • Aesthetic superiority?

  12. A-text’s ‘aesthetic superiority’ • Michael H. Keefer argues that the A-text is ‘aesthetically preferable to the B-version’ (1983: 324): • Benvolio’s sense of impugned honour as inconsistent • ‘Feebleness’ of final clown scene • ‘…the B-text episodes of Benvolio’s revenge and the horse-courser’s leg-pulling and its consequences make Faustus no longer human, but a kind of monstrous amphibian … This disruption in the B-text of the play’s patterns of meaning and its rhetorical decorum has serious consequences. For if Faustus is going to become once more in the last act of the play a human being, a tragic figure, then a major re-adjustment of the audience’s responses is necessary.’ (1983: 345)

  13. Text and performance • Were both texts performed? • Stage directions in A-text • Theatrical demands of B-text • Props • Special effects • Cast • Space • Contrasting climaxes

  14. Contemporary disapproval of clowning scenes • ‘…all their plays be neither right tragedies, nor right comedies, mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in clowns by head and shoulders, to play a part in majestical matters, with neither decency nor discretion, so as neither the admiration and commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel tragi-comedy obtained.’ (Sir Philip Sidney, Apology for Poetry, c.1579 [published 1595]) • …midst the silent routComes leaping in a self-misformed lout,And laughs, and grins, and frames his mimic face,And justles straight into the prince’s place;Then doth the theatre echo all aloud,With gladsome noise of that applauding crowd.A goodly hotch-potch! when vile russetingsAre match’d with monarchs, and with mighty kings. (Dr Joseph Hall, ‘Virgidemiarum’, 1597)

  15. Clowning and text • Preface to Marlowe’s Tamburlaine by printer Richard Jones, 1590: • ‘I have purposely omitted and left out some fond and frivolous jestures, digressing, and, in my poor opinion, far unmeet for the matter, which I thought might seem more tedious unto the wise than any way else to be regarded, though haply they have been of some vain-conceited fondlings greatly gaped at, what time they were shewed upon the stage in their graced deformities: nevertheless now to be mixtured in print with such matter of worth, it would prove a great disgrace to so honourable and stately a history.’ • Arguably, though, such scenes are an important (if not fully integrated) part of early modern drama.

  16. Locus and platea • In his influential study Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theatre (1978, reprinted 1987), Robert Weimann identified a ‘dual perspective’ in Elizabethan drama which ‘encompasses conflicting views of experience’ (1987: 243). • Weimann analysed this in terms of locus and platea.

  17. Locus and platea

  18. Locus Localised setting (e.g. a palace, a house): “a rudimentary element of verisimilitude” (Weimann 1987: 75); Mimesis; High status characters: royalty, nobility, ‘Virtues’; Sacred; Heightened language (usually verse); Officially sanctioned historical narratives; Elevation Platea Unlocalised setting (literally a ‘place’): “a theatrical dimension of the real world” (Weimann 1987: 76); Direct address and audience interaction; Low status characters: rustics, clowns, servants, ‘Vices’; Profane; Vernacular language (prose); Anachronistic subversion; Debasement and satire Locus and platea

  19. Locus and platea • ‘What is involved is not the confrontation of the world and time of the play with that of the audience, or any serious opposition between representational and non-representational standards of acting, but the most intense interplay of both’ (Weimann 1987: 80-1). • Example: The Second Shepherds’ Pageant (Wakefield cycle) • Anachronism • Blasphemy • Parody

  20. Platea dramaturgy in Doctor Faustus • Anachronism • Clowns’ names: Robin and Rafe/Dick, ‘Nan Spit’ • Implied Englishness on French/English jokes (A-text: 1.4) • Social class • Bawdy humour • Presence of audience WAGNER.(to audience) Bear witness I gave them him. ROBIN. Bear witness I gave them you again. (A-text: 1.4.41-2)

  21. Platea dramaturgy in Doctor Faustus • Audience space, the profane, and damnation: PRIDE. But fie, what a scent is here! (2.3.111) COVETOUSNESS. …and might I have my wish, I would desire that this house and all the people in it were turned to gold, that I might lock you up in my good chest. (2.3.116-8) WRATH. … I was born in hell, and look to it, for some of you shall be my father. (2.3.124-5) • Mephistopheles spells out spatial relationship: • ‘…this is hell, nor am I out of it’ (1.3.77) • ‘I am damned and am now in hell’ (2.1.137)

  22. Clowning as unofficial speech • Note use of prose and repetitions: WAGNER. Alas, poor slave, see how poverty jesteth in his nakedness! The villain is bare and out of service, and so hungry that I know he would give his soul to the devil for a shoulder of mutton, though it were blood-raw.   ROBIN. How? My soul to the Devil for a shoulder of mutton, though ’twere blood-raw? Not so, good friend. By’r Lady, I had need have it well roasted and good sauce to it, if I pay so dear. (A-text: 1.4.6-12)

  23. Clowning as unofficial speech • Note use of ‘etc.’ in 3.2 (A-text): ROBIN. I scorn you, and you are but a etc. (3.2.10-11) ROBIN.Polypragmos Belseborams framanto pacostiphos tostu Mephistopheles, etc. (3.2.26-7) • One of 26 plays of the period to use ‘etc.’ in this way • Legality? • Why unofficial speech?

  24. Clowning as parodic echo • Robert Ornstein: ‘the slapstick scenes which tickled groundling fancies unite with the seemingly fragmented main action to form a subtly ironic tragic design.’ (1955: 165) • Selling one’s soul ‘for a shoulder of mutton’ • Image of Robin with book in magic circle • Anticipation of dismemberment • ‘Nan Spit’ / Helen of Troy • Snatching of Pope’s cup / Vintner’s goblet • Incantation (culminating in summoning of Mephistopheles) • Difference between endings of clown sub-plot in A-text and B-text: metaphor for damnation?

  25. Speech, text, performance • Some concluding questions: • What is the relationship between what is performed and what is written? • What is ‘authorised’? What is not? Does it matter? • What is Doctor Faustus? Where is it?

  26. References • Bevington, D. & Rasmussen, E. [eds] (1993) Doctor Faustus: A- and B-texts (1604, 1616), Manchester: MUP. • Bowers, F. (1973) ‘Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus: The 1602 Additions’, Studies in Bibliography 26, 1-18. • Greg, W. W. [ed.] (1950) Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, 1604-1616, Oxford: Clarendon. • Keefer, M. H. (1983) ‘Verbal Magic and the Problem of the A and B Texts of Doctor Faustus’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 82:3, 324-46. • Kirschbaum, L. (1946) ‘The Good and Bad Quartos of Doctor Faustus’, The Library 26, 272-94.

  27. References • Kuriyama, C. B. (1975) ‘Dr. Greg and Doctor Faustus: The Supposed Originality of the 1616 Text’, English Literary Renaissance 5, 171-197. • Ornstein, R. (1955) ‘The Comic Synthesis in Doctor Faustus’, ELH, 22:3, 165-72. • Rasmussen, E. (1993) ‘Rehabilitating the A-Text of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus’, Studies in Bibliography 46, 221-38. • Warren, M. (1981) ‘Doctor Faustus: The Old Man and the Text’, English Literary Renaissance 11, 111-147. • Weimann, R. (1987) Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater: Studies in the Social Dimension of Dramatic Form and Function, Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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