New York Shakespeare Reading Group

Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays

Sun, Jun 21 · 12:00 PM EDT

·

Online

Online

NOISY REALITY PRESENTS
Sunday, June 21st , 2026
12:00 PM
Eastern Standard Time

Shakespeare’s
Serial History Plays
A conversation with Nicholas Grene

ZOOM Link for our discussion:

Invite Link
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86411768499?pwd=UitCdlJuWFR2QkZZTDVOQ2w0anVZUT09

ALL ARE WELCOME !!!!

Nicholas Grene is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Trinity College Dublin. His most recent book, Irish Theatre in the Twenty-first Century, was published by Oxford University Press in 2024. His next, The History Play, will appear from Bloomsbury in the autumn of 2026. This is a list of his other books that he either authored or co-authored:
Nicholas Grene, Derek Mahon: A Retrospective, First, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2024, Nicholas Grene, The Theatre of Tom Murphy: Playwright Adventurer,
Nicholas Grene and Chris Morash, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre, Oxford, Oxford University Press ,
Nicholas Grene, Home on the stage: domestic spaces in modern drama,, Cambridge University Press, 2014,
Brian Cliff and Nicholas Grene (eds.), Synge and Edwardian Ireland, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012
Nicholas Grene and Patrick Lonergan, Irish Drama: Local and Global Perspectives,
Nicholas Grene, R.K. Narayan, Tavistock, Devon, Northcote House, 2011,
Nicholas Grene, Yeats's Poetic Codes, Oxford, Oxford University Press ,
John Devitt, Nicholas Grene, Chris Morash, Shifting Scenes: Irish Theatre-Going, 1955-1985, Dublin, Carysfort Press, 2008
Nicholas Grene, Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara, New Mermaids
Nicholas Grene and Chris Morash, Irish Theatre on Tour: Irish Theatrical Diaspora Series 1, Dublin, Carysfort Press, 2005,
Nicholas Grene, Shakespeare's Serial History Plays, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,, 2002
Nicholas Grene, Interpreting Synge: Essays from the Synge Summer School 1991-2000, Dublin, Lilliput Press,, 2000
Nicholas Grene, The Politics of Irish Drama, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
Nicholas Grene, Shakespeare's Tragic Imagination, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1992
Nicholas Grene, Bernard Shaw: a Critical View, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1984Book, 1984
Nicholas Grene, Shakespeare, Jonson, Moliere: the Comic Contract, Basingstoke, Macmillan,, 1980
Nicholas Grene, Synge: a Critical Study of the Plays, Basingstoke, Macmillan,, 1975
These are complete lists of his publications
https://www.tcd.ie/english/people/academic-staff/ngrene/#id_first
https://www.tcd.ie/english/people/academic-staff/ngrene/#id_second
He has been awarded the Robert Gardiner Memorial Scholarship, University of Cambridge 1969-72,is a Life Member, Clare Hall, Cambridge 1989 and was an Andrew W. Mellon Award Fellow, Huntington Library, Pasadena, California 1994.
Grene is a member of the Member of the Royal Irish Academy; Vice-chair (Ireland), International Association from the Study of Irish Literatures, and has been Vice-chair (Ireland), International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures, 2001-9 Trustee, Ireland Chair of Poetry, 2010-to the present.

I include here an essay from the GUARDIAN

# West side story: how Shakespeare stormed America's frontier

Whether his plays were performed on a whaling ship, up a redwood tree or by a burlesque dancer, the pioneers had a particular fondness for the Bard
Andrew Dickson
Fri 15 Apr 2016 14.39 EDT

In May 1831, the French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville and his friend Gustave de Beaumont landed in Newport, Rhode Island, for what would be a nine-month tour through the emerging United States. They spent Independence Day in Albany, zigzagged north to Canada, made a counterclockwise loop down through Cincinnati and Nashville, then came back up through the south. Technically they were there on a research trip: they dutifully visited prisons and penitentiaries, read up diligently on every aspect of American manners and morals, and talked politics with President Andrew Jackson in Washington DC (“not a man of genius”, Tocqueville thought).
But the pair also made time for a spot of pleasure: in Baltimore they scored free tickets to a grand ball, and in New Orleans they spent the evening at the theatre. Sojourning in a log cabin somewhere on the frontier, Tocqueville later admitted he had whiled away a few hours reading Shakespeare’s Henry V. “There is scarcely a pioneer’s hut,” he casually remarked in the book he compiled from the journey, Democracy in America, “where one does not encounter some odd volumes of Shakespeare.”
It is an arresting thought – an effete French aristocrat in some bug-infested cabin, reading about his own nation being pulverised at Agincourt. The curious thing is, though, the closer one examines the history of the United States, how Shakespeare pops up in the remotest of places. In 1764, only 12 years after a Shakespeare play was first staged professionally on the American continent, a British officer was presented a copy of the complete works by a Native American chief in Illinois territory, and perused Antony and Cleopatra in a canoe.
There’s the tale of an 1840s fur trapper who lugged “a copy of Shakespeare” around in his pack, and another of a competition run by a Colorado newspaper in 1861 to find an amateur who could play Hamlet on stage with only three days to memorise the part. The competition was won by a professional gambler, who gave a “highly creditable” performance.


View image in fullscreen
A production of Kiss Me Kate, Cole Porter’s take on The Taming of the Shrew. Photograph: Helene Pambrun/The Guardian
Much has been written about America’s long and eventful history with Shakespeare – the founding fathers’ adoration of him, multiple American relocations and reimaginings, from Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate to Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing. But would there really be copies of Henry V lying around in pioneers’ log cabins? Was Shakespeare genuinely part of culture on the 19th-century frontier?
The short answer is: yes. Perhaps especially on the frontier. Researching a book about the playwright’s impact on global culture, I came across story after colourful story about his vivid presence in even the remotest locations, far from the east coast libraries and theatres where the works first arrived on American shores. I was impressed to read of the “mountain man” Jim Bridger, famous for mapping the Salt Lake area, who became so captivated by the plays that he employed a German boy to read them to him in the forests of Wyoming (Bridger himself was illiterate). I was even more surprised to hear about an abridged performance of Othello on board a whaling ship in the South Pacific in 1848, “Wind, Weather, and Whales Permitting”, with sailors taking the roles of Desdemona and the Moor, and a curtain hanging from the rigging.
Education was one reason the plays were everywhere in 19th-century America: they were drummed into generations of children at school via primers such as McGuffey’s Reader (first published in 1836), which was stuffed full of speeches from Shakespeare. Many 19th-century Americans could still recite passages by heart; others – particularly female readers – joined literary appreciation societies, which became hugely popular. Hundreds of cheap, mass-produced editions enabled even poor households to place a volume of Shakespeare next to their King James Bible and copy of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The west may have been wild – some bits of it, at least – but it was by no means lacking in culture.


View image in fullscreen
Chiwetel Ejiofor (Othello) and Ewan McGregor (Iago) in Othello, a play previously performed at sea in 19th-century America. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
What’s striking is how egalitarian all this seems to be. Whereas on the east coast and back in Britain, Shakespeare was increasingly regarded as the purview of the snobbish middle classes, in the west there seemed to be little sense that he was anything other than popular entertainment. Theatre both professional and amateur became an important part of pioneer life; Shakespeare came along with the singers and magicians and carnival hucksters who toured even the most distant corners of the frontier. The seven-strong Chapman acting family fitted out an “entertainment boat” at Pittsburgh in 1831 and sailed it up and down the Ohio river, valiantly bringing Hamlet and Othello to settlers’ camps and riverside settlements. Other companies trekked through almost every state in the Union. Only rarely did these troupes actually find theatres to act in; they played saloon bars, billiard halls, schoolrooms, hotel ballrooms. Much later, in California, the Chapmans are reputed to have performed on the stump of a giant redwood tree, perhaps a stunt designed to drum up business.
By our standards, Shakespeare was treated with a refreshing lack of reverence, and performed in a form that would give season ticket holders at the Royal Shakespeare Company the vapours. In San Francisco Richard III was staged with “equestrian circus entertainments”, and a travelling troupe advertised Othello featuring the talents of a dancer called “Miss Celeste”. Minstrel troupes and comedians offered burlesque versions under titles like Julius Sneezer and Much Ado About a Merchant of Venice (one hopes they were funnier than they sound). But in the words of the great scholar Ashley T Thorndike, “no other writer was so quickly assimilated into the wilderness”.
While contemporary historians are less evangelical about manifest destiny, it’s almost certain that Shakespeare was the most performed playwright on the 19th-century frontier. Not just among white audiences: according to one contemporaneous newspaper report from New Orleans, “the play-going portion of our Negro population feel more interest in, and go in greater numbers to see, the plays of Shakespeare represented on the stage, than any other class of dramatic performance”.


View image in fullscreen
Washing for gold, California, c 1850 – theatres were built to entertain the prospectors.Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock
Even so, it’s still a surprise to discover what a major role Shakespeare played in the California Gold Rush. Within months of gold being discovered at Sutter’s Mill in 1848 and thousands upon thousands of “forty-niners” decamping to make their fortunes, theatres were being thrown up to cater for hordes of new arrivals, impatient for entertainment. California’s first playhouse, the Eagle, was raised in Sacramento in October 1849; numerous others followed in San Francisco. Actors joined the stampede. Alongside a variety of less salubrious entertainments – dancing girls, brothels, gambling dens – gold-hunters could watch Italian operas or European tragedies while they waited for a ride up to the goldfields.
Even the Sierra Nevada mountains proved a welcoming environment for thespians; gutsy, tight-knit groups of actors roamed the mining camps on what became known as the “gold circuit”. There are stories of miners booing off those who didn’t meet their high standards, joining in on the big speeches, tossing bags of gold dust to performers they revered. The sad thing is that so little survives: a couple of years ago I spent two weeks in California searching for traces of Shakespeare in the goldfields, armed with diaries and accounts of early actors, and the closest I got was a performance of The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged) in Nevada City, California, a giddy boom-town of the 1850s that is now a shadow of its former self. Others are merely ghost towns; Shakespeare, I suppose, yet another ghost.


View image in fullscreen
Huckleberry Finn: echoes of Shakespeare. Photograph: Moviestore/Rex Shutterstock
Why Shakespeare, and why his particular popularity in the west? For hard-pressed acting companies these scripts were like jazz standards – everyone knew them, everyone performed them. There was also the omnipresence of the plays in 19th-century American literary culture – open a story by James Fenimore Cooper or Louisa May Alcott and the shade of the immortal Bard is never far away. Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn famously includes a sardonic parody of Hamlet and Macbeth, offered by a pair of nefarious travelling players Huck meets on the river (“To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin,” one of them declaims).
But I wonder if it’s just that. The theory could be fanciful, but I couldn’t help thinking when I was in California of how Shakespeare’s titanic dramas of kings and queens, heroes and villains, found some kind of resonance with hard-bitten frontier communities, accustomed to a life of extremes. One would expect the comedies to go down a storm; in fact, it was the big-boned tragedies – Othello, Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet – that were most staged. Fascinatingly, far and away the most popular play in 19th-century American west was Richard III – no doubt because it offered opportunities for barnstorming acting, but perhaps also because the wisecracking, smart-alec Richard, who gambles everything for power and riches, was an antihero many a pioneer could identify with.
Should we regard this as Shakespeare? The cut-down texts, the interruptions and ad-libs, the improvised costumes and scenery, the gambling and bear-baiting, the rambunctious, drunken audiences? Not the timid and sanitised Shakespeare performed in many modern theatres, perhaps – but I bet the playwright himself would have felt right at home.
Andrew Dickson’s Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare’s Globeis published in the US by Henry Holt

The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus-Christopher Marlowe

Sun, Jun 21 · 3:00 PM EDT

·

Online

Online

INVITE LINK
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81085586371?pwd=1gR9Fao4gWGCSTNCdzfbjxnrHA1xCc.1

# Doctor Faustus (play)

| The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus |
| ------------------------------------------------------------ |
|


Frontispiece to a 1620 printing of Doctor Faustus showing Faustus conjuring Mephistophilis. The spelling "Histoy" is agreed to be a typographical error.[1] |
| Written by | Christopher Marlowe |
| Characters | Doctor Faustus

Lucifer

Mephistophilis

Belzebub

Seven deadly sins

Pope Adrian VI

Charles V

Duke of Saxony

Helen of Troy |
| Date premiered | c. 1592 |
| Place premiered | England |
| Original language | Early Modern English |
| Genre | Tragedy |
| Setting | 16th century Europe |

The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, commonly referred to simply as Doctor Faustus, is an Elizabethan tragedy by Christopher Marlowe, based on German stories about a scholar who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for magical power. Written in the late 16th century and first performed around 1594, the play follows Faustus’ rise as a magician through his pact with Lucifer—facilitated by the demon Mephistopheles—and his ultimate downfall as he fails to repent before his damnation.
The play survives in two major versions: the shorter 1604 "A" text and the expanded 1616 "B" text, which includes additional scenes and material of debated authorship. Though once considered less authoritative, the "B" text has gained renewed scholarly interest, especially regarding its comic elements and their thematic significance.
Doctor Faustus blends classical tragedy with Elizabethan drama, employing a five-act structure and a chorus. Thematically, it explores ambition, the limits of knowledge, Christian theology, and Renaissance humanism. Critics have long debated its stance on Calvinist predestination and its reflection of Reformation-era anxieties.
The play has had a lasting influence, inspiring adaptations across stage, film, and other media. Performances have been associated with supernatural legends since the 17th century, and the characters of Faustus and Mephistopheles remain iconic figures in Western literature.

## Performance

The Admiral's Men performed the play 23 times between September 1594 and October 1597.[2] On 22 November 1602, the diary of Philip Henslowe recorded a £4 payment to Samuel Rowley and William Bird for additions to the play, which suggests a revival soon after that date**.[3]**
The powerful effect of the early productions is indicated by the legends that quickly accrued around them. In Histriomastix, his 1632 polemic against the drama, William Prynne records the tale that actual devils once appeared on the stage during a performance of Faustus, "to the great amazement of both the actors and spectators". Some people were allegedly driven mad, "distracted with that fearful sight." John Aubrey recorded a related legend, that Edward Alleyn, lead actor of The Admiral's Men, devoted his later years to charitable endeavours, like the founding of Alleyn's College, in direct response to this incident.[3]

## Text

Given its source in the Historia von D. Johann Fausten, published as a chapbook in Germany in 1587, and the fact that the earliest known translation of the latter work into English was in 1592, the play was probably written in 1592 or 1593.[4] It may have been entered into the Stationers' Register on 18 December 1592, though the records are confused and appear to indicate a conflict over the rights to the play. A subsequent Stationers' Register entry, dated 7 January 1601, assigns the play to the bookseller Thomas Bushell (variant written forms: Busshell or Bushnell),[5] the publisher of the 1604 first edition. Bushell transferred his rights to the play to John Wright on 13 September 1610.[6][7]

### Text A and Text B

Two versions of the play exist:

1. The 1604 quarto, printed by Valentine Simmes for Thomas Bushell is usually called the A text. The title page attributes the play to "Ch. Marl.". A second edition (A2) of the A text was printed by George Eld for John Wright in 1609. It is merely a direct reprint of the 1604 text. The text is short for an English Renaissance play, only 1485 lines long.
2. The 1616 quarto, published by John Wright, enlarged and altered the text and is usually called the B text. This second text was reprinted in 1619, 1620, 1624, 1631, and as late as 1663. The B text includes additions and revisions attributed to the minor playwright and actor Samuel Rowley and William Borne (or Birde), with possible contributions from Marlowe himself.[8]

The 1604 version was once believed to be closer to the play as originally performed in Marlowe's lifetime, simply because it was older. By the 1940s, after influential studies by Leo Kirschbaum[9] and W. W. Greg,[10] the 1604 version came to be regarded as an abbreviation, and the 1616 version as Marlowe's original fuller version. Kirschbaum and Greg considered the A-text a "bad quarto", and thought that the B-text was linked to Marlowe himself.[11] Since then scholarship has swung the other way, most scholars now considering the A-text more authoritative, even if "abbreviated and corrupt", according to Charles Nicholl.[12]
The 1616 version omits 36 lines but adds 676 new lines, making it roughly one third longer than the 1604 version. Some of the shared lines differ in wording; for example, "Never too late, if Faustus can repent" in the 1604 text becomes "Never too late, if Faustus will repent" in the 1616 text, a change that offers a very different possibility for Faustus's hope and repentance.
The B texts contains many exchanges that the A text does not. One of the most pivotal is the exchange between Dr. Faustus and Mephistopheles. In the B text, Mephistopheles takes credit for Dr. Faustus' damnation. This changes the trajectory of the story because it makes Dr. Faustus seem less culpable. He is more a victim of evil forces and less a man who damns himself through rash actions.[13]
Another difference between texts A and B is the name of the devil summoned by Faustus. Text A states the name is generally "Mephistopheles",[14] while the version of text B commonly states "Mephostophilis".[15] The name of the devil is in each case a reference to Mephistopheles in Faustbuch, the source work, which appeared in English translation in about 1588.[16][17]
The relationship between the texts is uncertain and many modern editions print both. As an Elizabethan playwright, Marlowe had nothing to do with the publication and had no control over the play in performance, so it was possible for scenes to be dropped or shortened, or for new scenes to be added, so that the resulting publications may be modified versions of the original script.[18]

## Characters

### Doctor Faustus

Doctor Faustus is the protagonist. He is a scholar from Wittenberg University. In addition he is a Doctor of Theology. He is the man who considers himself as a scholar of almost every discipline including Law, Medicine, Philosophy etc. Now he wants to master Necromancy which pulls him a blind obsession that costs him his soul. He is an intelligent man whose curiosity and ambition lead him to sell his soul for power. Throughout the play, he goes back and forth between reveling in his newfound power and trying to repent to God. Pensky theorizes that while in the presence of real devils, Faustus still does not truly believe/understand the consequence of selling his soul is going to hell until the end of the play.[19]

### Mephistopheles

Mephistopheles is a demon who accompanies Doctor Faustus throughout the play. He is first introduced in Act 1, Scene 3, when Doctor Faustus attempts to conjure a demon from the underworld. He tries to warn Faustus about the consequences of abjuring God and Heaven. Mephistopheles gives Faustus a description of Hell and the continuous horrors it possesses; he wants Faustus to know what he is getting himself into before going through with the bargain:

> Think'st thou that I who saw the face of God
> And tasted the eternal joy of heaven
> Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
> In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
> O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands
> Which strikes a terror to my fainting soul

#cite_note-20)

Mephistopheles offers twenty-four years of worldly power in exchange for his soul, a temptation that leads Faustus to a path of damnation. Despite this, he believes that supernatural powers are worth a lifetime in Hell:

> Say he [Faustus] surrender up to him [Lucifer] his soul
> So he will spare him four and twenty years,
> Letting him live in all voluptuousness
> Having thee [Mephistophilis] ever to attend on me[21]

Mephistopheles's description of Hell suggests the kind of pain Faustus will endure when his contract is up and his soul is finally taken.[22] Mephistopheles is not so grave all the time though, he also participates and plays along with the petty pranks that Faustus pulls on others.[23]

### Wagner

Wagner is Doctor Faustus's assistant who is first introduced in Act 1, Scene 1. Scott observes that although Wagner has a moral responsibility to dissuade Faustus from magic, he instead follows his commands and imitates him.[24] Wagner shares in some of Doctor Faustus's magic powers, but his uses of magic are more for his entertainment. Such as in Act 1, Scene 4, when he conjures up demons to terrify the clown, Robin, into working for him. Walker argues that Wagner is Doctor Faustus's comedic foil in the play; subverting Doctor Faustus's ability and intelligence by showing that acquiring demonic magic takes no real skill.[25]

### Good Angel and Bad Angel

The Good Angel and the Bad Angel are two characters who appear at multiple points in the play when Faustus is at a crossroads of what to do. The Good Angel tries to persuade Faustus to repent and turn back to God, while the Bad Angel tries to convince Faustus that he is past the point of forgiveness from God.

### Lucifer

Lucifer is the ultimate authority in hell. Mephistopheles tells Faustus that he can't do anything without Lucifer's say-so and that Lucifer allows people to sell their souls to him because he wants more people in hell. He appears to Faustus twice in the play, once to keep Faustus from repenting by showing him the Seven Deadly Sins and once to collect his soul at the end of the play. In Act 5, Scene 2 of the B-text, there is an added conversation between Lucifer, Mephistopheles, and Beelzebub about how Faustus is soon to suffer in hell.

### Robin and Rafe

Robin and Rafe are the main comedic characters of the play, although Rafe is renamed "Dick" in the B-text. Robin steals one of Doctor Faustus's conjuring books to play petty tricks on people with Rafe. Along with Wagner, Robin and Rafe show that anybody could use demonic magic and that Doctor Faustus's skills are not special.[25]

### Old man

A mysterious and devoutly religious figure who appears in the final act, the Old Man serves as a personification of Christian faith and redemption. He represents a final opportunity for Faustus to repent and turn back to God, urging him to seek mercy even after the demonic pact. Unmoved by Mephistopheles’s threats, the Old Man remains steadfast in his belief that divine grace is still within Faustus's reach. His presence underscores the play's central theme of salvation versus damnation and heightens the tragedy of Faustus’s ultimate refusal to repent[26]

## Sources

Doctor Faustus is based on an older tale; it is believed to be the first dramatization of the Faust legend.[16] Leo Ruickbie[27] believes that Marlowe developed the story from a popular 1592 translation, commonly called The English Faust Book.[28] This was based on [29] the 1587 German language Historia von D. Johann Fausten, which itself may have been influenced by even earlier and ill-preserved pamphlets in Latin (such as those that likely inspired Jacob Bidermann's treatment of the damnation of the doctor of Paris, Cenodoxus (1602)).
Several soothsayers or necromancers of the late fifteenth century adopted the name Faustus, a reference to the Latin for "favoured" or "auspicious"; typical was Georgius Faustus Helmstetensis, calling himself astrologer and chiromancer, who was expelled from the town of Ingolstadt for such practices. Subsequent commentators have identified this individual as the prototypical Faustus of the legend.[30]
Whatever the inspiration, the development of Marlowe's play is very faithful to the Faust Book, especially in the way it mixes comedy with tragedy.[31]
However, Marlowe also introduced some changes to make it more original. He made four main additions:

• Faustus's soliloquy, in Act 1, on the vanity of human science
• Good and Bad Angels
• The substitution of a Pageant of Devils for the seven deadly sins. He also emphasized Faustus's intellectual aspirations and curiosity, and minimized the vices in the character, to lend a Renaissance aura to the story.
• The name Bruno in the rival Pope scenes recalls that of Giordano Bruno who was tried for heresy by the Inquisition and burnt at the stake in 1600. This reference indicates that Marlowe recognized the cosmic machinery of the Faust story as a reflection of terrestrial power and authority, by which dissidents were tortured and executed in the name of obedience and conformity.[32]

## Structure


Portrait of Doctor Faustus
The play is in blank verse and prose in thirteen scenes (1604) or twenty scenes (1616).
Blank verse is largely reserved for the main scenes; prose is used in the comic scenes. Modern texts divide the play into five acts; act 5 being the shortest. As in many Elizabethan plays, there is a chorus (which functions as a narrator), that does not interact with the other characters but rather provides an introduction and conclusion to the play and, at the beginning of some Acts, introduces events that have unfolded.[33][34]
Along with its history and language style, scholars have critiqued and analyzed the structure of the play. Leonard H. Frey wrote a document entitled In the Opening and Close of Doctor Faustus, which mainly focuses on Faustus's opening and closing soliloquies. He stresses the importance of the soliloquies in the play, saying: "the soliloquy, perhaps more than any other dramatic device, involved the audience in an imaginative concern with the happenings on stage".[35] By having Doctor Faustus deliver these soliloquies at the beginning and end of the play, the focus is drawn to his inner thoughts and feelings about succumbing to the devil.
The soliloquies also have parallel concepts. In the introductory soliloquy, Faustus begins by pondering the fate of his life and what he wants his career to be. He ends his soliloquy with the solution: he will give his soul to the devil. Similarly in the closing soliloquy, Faustus begins pondering and finally comes to terms with the fate he created for himself. Frey also explains: "The whole pattern of this final soliloquy is thus a grim parody of the opening one, where decision is reached after, not prior to, the survey".[35]

## Synopsis


The Devil and Doctor Faustus Meet
The Chorus explains that Faustus was low-born, or born of low social rank, but still managed to quickly achieve a doctorate in theology at the University of Wittenberg. However, his interest in learning and his pride soon led him to necromancy.
In the first scene of the play, Faustus expresses his boredom and impatience with the various branches of knowledge and concludes that only magic is worth learning. He asks his servant Wagner to return with the magicians Valdes and Cornelius, who have been trying to interest him in magic for some time. While he waits, he is visited by a Good Angel, who tries to dissuade him from this path, and a Bad Angel, who encourages him. Valdes and Cornelius arrive and declare that if Faustus devotes himself to magic, great things are indeed possible with someone of Faustus's learning and intelligence.
While Faustus is at dinner with the magicians, two scholars notice Faustus's absence and ask Wagner about his whereabouts. When Wagner tells them he is with Valdes and Cornelius, the scholars worry that the magicians have corrupted him and leave to inform the rector of the university.
Faustus attempts to conjure a devil, and Mephistopheles arrives. Faustus believes that he has summoned him, but Mephistopheles says that he came of his own accord, and that he serves Lucifer, and cannot do anything without his leave. Faustus questions Mephistopheles about Lucifer and Hell, and tells him to speak to Lucifer and return. The next scene is a comedic reflection in which Wagner calls two devils, with which he scares the Clown into serving him.
Mephistopheles returns, and Faustus signs a contract in his own blood: Mephistopheles will serve him for 24 years, at which point Lucifer will claim him, body and soul. Once the contract is signed, Faustus asks for a wife, but Mephistopheles declines, saying marriage is "but a ceremonial toy"; he asks for books of knowledge, and Mephistopheles provides a single book. In the corresponding comedic scene, Robin, a hostler, has stolen a conjuring book, and plans mischief with it.
Faustus begins to waver and think about God and is visited again by the Good and Bad Angels. Lucifer arrives to remind him of his contract and entertains him with a show of the Seven Deadly Sins. Faustus and Mephistopheles then travel Europe, eventually arriving in Rome, where they play tricks on the Pope. Next, Robin and Rafe (A version) or Dick (B version), having been caught for stealing a goblet, call on Mephistopheles, who arrives and angrily turns them into animals before returning to attend on Faustus. Faustus has been called to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, where he and Mephistopheles conjure Alexander the Great and his paramour and give a knight cuckold's horns for being a heckler. In the A version, the emperor asks Faust to relent, and he does; in the B version a longer scene follows in which the knight and his friends attack Faustus; all are given horns. In both versions, Faustus then plays tricks on a horse dealer. Faustus and Mephistopheles then put on a magic show for the Duke and Duchess of Vanholt.
When Faustus's 24 years are nearly up, he bequeaths his possessions to Wagner. He conjures Helen of Troy for some students, and, when he starts to think of repenting again, renews his pledge to Lucifer and asks Mephistopheles for Helen as his lover. In the final scene, Faustus admits to some scholars that he has bargained away his soul; despite their prayers, the devils come for him.

## The Calvinist/anti-Calvinist controversy

The theological implications of Doctor Faustus have been the subject of considerable debate. Among the most complicated points of contention is whether the play supports or challenges the Calvinist doctrine of absolute predestination, which dominated the lectures and writings of many English scholars in the latter half of the sixteenth century. According to Calvin, predestination meant that God, acting of his own free will, elects some people to be saved and others to be damned—thus, the individual has no control over his own ultimate fate. This doctrine was the source of great controversy because it was seen by the so-called anti-Calvinists to limit man's free will in regard to faith and salvation, and to present a dilemma in terms of theodicy.
At the time Doctor Faustus was performed, this doctrine was on the rise in England, and under the direction of Puritan theologians at Cambridge and Oxford had come to be considered the orthodox position of the Church of England.[36] Nevertheless, it remained the source of vigorous and, at times, heated debate between Calvinist scholars, such as William Whitaker and William Perkins, and anti-Calvinists, such as William Barrett and Peter Baro.[37] The dispute between these Cambridge intellectuals had quite nearly reached its zenith by the time Marlowe was a student there in the 1580s, and likely would have influenced him deeply, as it did many of his fellow students.[38]
Concerning the fate of Faustus, the Calvinist concludes that his damnation was inevitable. His rejection of God and subsequent inability to repent are taken as evidence that he never really belonged to the elect but rather had been predestined from the very beginning for reprobation.[39] For the Calvinist, Faustus represents the worst kind of sinner, having tasted the heavenly gift and rejected it. His damnation is justified and deserved because he was never truly adopted among the elect. According to this view, the play demonstrates Calvin's "three-tiered concept of causation," in which the damnation of Faustus is first willed by God, then by Satan, and finally, by himself.[40]