The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe [new ebook reader .txt] 📗

of yon labouring clouds,
That, when you vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths,
So that my soul may but ascend to Heaven. The clock strikes the half-hour.

Ah, half the hour is past! ’twill all be past anon!
O God!
If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul,
Yet for Christ’s sake whose blood hath ransomed me,
Impose some end to my incessant pain;
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years⁠—
A hundred thousand, and⁠—at last⁠—be saved!
O, no end is limited to damned souls!
Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
Or why is this immortal that thou hast?
Ah, Pythagoras’ metempsychosis! were that true,
This soul should fly from me, and I be changed
Unto some brutish beast! all beasts are happy,
For, when they die,
Their souls are soon dissolved in elements;
But mine must live, still to be plagued in hell.
Cursed be the parents that engendered me!
No, Faustus: curse thyself: curse Lucifer
That hath deprived thee of the joys of Heaven.

The clock strikes twelve.

O, it strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell!

Thunder and lightning.

O soul, be changed into little water-drops,
And fall into the ocean⁠—ne’er be found!

Enter Devils.

My God! my God! look not so fierce on me!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while!
Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!
I’ll burn my books!⁠—Ah, Mephistopheles!

Exeunt Devils with Faustus. Enter Chorus. Chorus

Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
And burned is Apollo’s laurel-bough,
That sometime grew within this learned man.
Faustus is gone; regard his hellish fall,
Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise
Only to wonder at unlawful things,
Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits
To practice more than heavenly power permits.

Exit. Endnotes

Confound. The Carthaginians were, however, victorious at Lake Trasimenus. ↩

Roda, in the Duchy of Saxe-Altenburg. —⁠Bullen ↩

Whereas, i.e. where. Perhaps “kinsmen” should be “kinsman;” it is “uncle” in the prose History. ↩

I.e. Knowledge. The word occurs throughout the play in the sense of knowledge or skill. ↩

Dyce suggests that probably the Chorus, before going out, drew a curtain, and disclosed Faustus sitting in his study. ↩

This is Mr. Bullen’s emendation. Ed. 1604 reads “Oncaymaeon,” by which Marlowe meant the Aristotelian ὅν καὶ μὴ ὅν (“being and not being”). The later quartos give (with various spelling) “Œconomy,” which is nonsense. ↩

Maxims of medical practice. ↩

Prescriptions by which he had worked his cures. Professor Ward thinks the reference is rather to “the advertisements by which, as a migratory physician, he had been in the habit of announcing his advent, and perhaps his system of cures, and which were now ‘hung up as monuments’ in perpetuum.” —⁠Bullen ↩

The old form of spelling for “sarà.” ↩

This refers to an incident at the blockade of Antwerp by the Prince of Parma in 1585, which is thus described in Grimestone’s Generall Historie of the Netherlands, p. 875, ed. 1609:⁠—“They of Antuerpe knowing that the bridge and the Stocadoes were finished, made a great shippe, to be a meanes to breake all this work of the prince of Parmaes; this great shippe was made of mason’s worke within, in the manner of a vaulted caue: vpon the hatches there were layed myll-stones, graue-stones, and others of great weight; and within the vault were many barrels of powder, ouer the which there were holes; and in them they had put matches, hanging at a thred, the which burning vntill they came vnto the thred, would fall into the powder, and so blow vp all. And for that they could not haue anyone in this shippe to conduct it, Lanckhaer, a sea captaine of the Hollanders, being then in Antuerpe, gaue them counsell to tye a great beame at the end of it, to make it to keepe a straight course in the middest of the streame. In this sort floated this shippe the fourth of Aprill, vntill that it came vnto the bridge; where (within a while after) the powder wrought his effect, with such violence, as the vessell, and all that was within it, and vpon it, flew in pieces, carrying away a part of the Stocado and of the bridge. The marquesse of Roubay Vicont of Gant, Gaspar of Robles lord of Billy, and the Seignior of Torchies, brother vnto the Seignior of Bours, with many others, were presently slaine; which were torne in pieces, and dispersed abroad, both vpon the land and vpon the water.” ↩

This is the famous Cornelius Agrippa. German (possibly meant for “Hermann”) Valdes is not known. Various improbable persons have been brought forward. In Scene II it is said “they two are infamous through the world.” I can only suggest that Marlowe may have meant Paracelsus. ↩

Cf. Virgil, Aeneid, vi 667. ↩

I.e. Cornelius Agrippa whom he is addressing, here spoken of as another person. “In Book I of his work De Occulta Philosophia, Agrippa gives directions for the operations of sciomancy.” —⁠Ward ↩

Troopers. Germ. Reiters. ↩

On the contrary, Laplanders are almost dwarfs. Marlowe falls into a similar error in Tamburlaine. ↩

Düntzer suggests that Marlowe refers to Pietro d’Abano, an Italian physician and alchemist who narrowly escaped burning by the Inquisition. He was born about 1250 and died about 1316, and wrote a work called Conciliator Differentiarum Philosophoruni et Medicorum. “Albanus” was changed by Mitford into “Albertus,” the schoolman, whose works were considered to possess magical properties. ↩

It has been suggested that the scene is before Faustus’s house, as Wagner presently speaks of his master being within at dinner. ↩