Joseph Sturcken

Chapter Two: Inquisitive Vehicles and Marlowe’s Life

An inquisitive vehicle cannot exist without inquisition. To determine possible ways in which Christopher Marlowe gained the ideas in the Faustus inquisitive vehicle (and how he gained the ability to accomplish such a literary feat) I will discuss his life, life experiences, and beliefs. Obviously, no method exists to fully ascertain what the dramatist believed, but an examination of Marlowe’s life and lifestyle can serve as a “window” of sorts. The ideas expressed in Doctor Faustus are not Marlowe’s alone (I prefer to think of them as general concerns and skepticism of the time, as transmitted through Marlowe but further shaped by performance and printing), so I will be able to examine potential sources of his inquisition and potential catalysts for his creating the two texts as inquisitive vehicles through events of his life and his era.

Marlowe’s Life: Scholarship, “Political Religion,” and Atheism

The above subtitle is deliberately controversial, but true: Christopher Marlowe was indeed an atheist. However, one must consider what constituted atheism back in England during the late sixteenth century. While “modern atheism” implies a disbelief or rejection of divine agency (i.e., God or gods), sixteenth century atheism more closely resembles skepticism or heresy. David Riggs, author of The World of Christopher Marlowe, notes that during Marlow’s life, “anyone who rejected the immortality of the soul, the existence of heaven and hell (especially the latter) and[/or] the operations of Providence qualified as an atheist.”²⁵ Religious belief was quite literally all-or-nothing: either one accepted a religion’s doctrine and dogma wholesale, or one risked being considered an atheist by the more fanatic members of each faith. Furthermore, one needed to accept (or at least publicly conform to) the approved doctrine and dogma of the religion to avoid being denounced as an atheist.²⁶ An example of this paradox occurs in Richard Bains’s infamous letter to the Privy Council, in which the Elizabethan spy testifies against fellow spy Christopher Marlowe. In the letter, Marlowe was said to declare “[t]hat all the apostles were fishermen and base fellows neyther [sic] of wit nor worth.”²⁷ A scandalous accusation indeed, but David Riggs reminds us that “the apostles were supposed to be base fellows[; t]hat was why Jesus chose them for his ministry” (Riggs 41). Amusingly, Rigg’s accurate explanation of the apostles coincided with the contemporary dogma, so he would be judged an atheist as well!

As I continue my examination of Marlowe’s life, I once again reflect on the nuanced way in which I approach what is generally dismissed as mere biological information. An author may serve as the creator of his/her text and nothing more, with no connection or investment in the beliefs expressed in the story. William Shakespeare, another Elizabethan dramatist and Marlowe’s contemporary, serves as a prime example of this distance between an author and his work. Shakespeare is credited with creating 36 plays on topics ranging from romance to regicide to witchcraft, and with a far less blistering approach to the political. However, Christopher Marlowe is not William Shakespeare.²⁸ He did not enjoy a long life throughout which he could create plays: Ingram Frizer’s dagger, “plunged . . . into Marlowe’s face, just above the right eye” (Riggs 333), made certain of this. The Cambridge scholar was only 29, young even according to his era’s life expectancy (it is estimated that Shakespeare died at 59 years of age). Likewise, Marlowe constructed a comparatively minuscule eight plays before his death (counting each Faustus text as a separate play). An examination of the author’s life is necessary to provide an explanation for why the two inquisitive vehicles may have been written.²⁹ I will focus on three experiences which I believe to correspond strongly to his “atheism” and, consequently, his two Faustus texts: his childhood, his time at Cambridge, and his time as a spy.³⁰

Christopher Marlowe was born “base of stock” (A and B Prologue, line 11) in Canterbury. His father John moved there in hopes of finding a job, as an influenza pandemic in the early 1550s had recently claimed roughly a fourth of the city’s population. John gained rapid entrance to the shoemaker’s guild after his master died from the bubonic plague (Riggs 16). His first son Christopher was baptized at St. George the Martyr (an Anglican Church) on February 26, 1564. He grew up by Oaten Hill, near a local butcher and the gallows. David Riggs notes how “the pervasive odor of blood [from the butcher] were among the infant’s earliest sensations” (14) and how “the sight of condemned men being carted past his home . . . to the gallows” (14) would become a normal part of the dramatist-to-be’s youth. Did these unpleasant images and sensations have a lasting effect on Marlowe which can be seen through his works? Possibly: Riggs remarks that “[w]hen the adult Marlowe thinks of closure, he thinks of dismemberment, drowning and mass destruction” (33). Indeed, many of Marlowe’s plays feature scenes of shocking violence, from Tamburlaine’s barbarism to Faustus’s pranks (especially in the B-Text).³¹ However, this is not my reason for examining the dramatist’s childhood.

Christopher Marlowe was born into, and lived during, a time of continuous religious turmoil. His life was characterized by repeated experiences of “the godless creed of ‘political religion.’”³² Indeed, Marlowe’s father John recognized that remaining in favor of the (currently) victorious side of a religious debate was more important than the salvation offered by any of the combatants. John “avoid[ed] long-term commitments and [went] along with whichever faction held power at the time . . . ke[eping] a prudent distance from the ideological struggles that set long-time residents [of Canterbury] in ruinous conflict with one another” (Riggs 16). His father’s noncommital, pragmatic approach to religion offered the first “inkling of [Christopher’s] ironic, noncommitted stance on questions of religious belief” (Riggs 16). This sort of debate manifests itself in Doctor Faustus, possibly through the Good and Bad/Evil Angels, but most noticeably through Faustus’s pondering in the opening act. To a scholar such as Faustus, divinity (representative of heaven) and necromancy (representative of hell) are but fields of research: they do not belong to a supreme dichotomy of salvation and perdition, but are placed alongside other potential study topics such as logic, medicine, and law.

Christopher Marlowe’s sense of political religion continued during (and expanded due to) his time at Cambridge. He enrolled in Corpus Christi, Cambridge in December 1580. It was common for the less affluent students (such as Marlowe, who essentially was there on scholarship) to begin and end their studies as soon as possible to avoid accruing what is now known as student debt. G.M. Pinciss writes of “the growing debate among Protestants . . . [and how] Cambridge during the late 1580s [during Marlowe’s time of enrollment] was the battlefield on which the Calvinist and anti-Calvinist advocates played out their strategies.”³³ Christopher Marlowe completed his B.A. in Divinity in 1587 and applied for his M.A. in March 1587. (It must be noted that Marlowe’s career as a graduate student was rife with “periods of absence.”)³⁴ Research in the field of Divinity may have strengthened Marlowe’s sense of political religion, confirming that religion is not a way to salvation but a topic of fierce debate.

Riggs explains how such study may introduce a diligent student to “speculative atheism” (Quarrel 132). The B.A. course included studies in both rhetoric and the Bible (both the Old and New Testaments). The Biblical studies in particular, as Riggs notes, “exposed inconsistencies . . . and subjected individual texts to contradictory interpretations” (Quarrel 132). (Notice how Marlowe is already acquainted with the idea of a single tale offering radically different messages in the process of earning his B.A.) The M.A. course continued in this vein of research, and “introduced Marlowe to the ancient sources for modern atheism: Artistotle’s de Anima, Pliny, Lucretius, and Lucian” (Quarrel 132). Clearly, the course was adhering to the adage that one who can argue his opponent’s position better than his opponent will undoubtably win the debate; however, this requires that the divine in training not take up his opponent’s argument. For a skeptic such as Christopher Marlowe, such a course would provide him with all the necessary information, if not to build a respectable counterpoint to contemporary religion, to at least gain awareness of various questions for which his studies lacked satisfying answers. These questions might have festered within the scholar before finally resurfacing in works such as Doctor Faustus.

But would a scholar be able to complete seven (six for Marlowe) years of studying and discussing such topics in which he did not believe? Certainly: religion during Marlowe’s time not only encouraged this, but also instructed such scholars in becoming“closet atheist[s]” (Quarrel 131). True belief was not something that could be taught: someone either possessed it or did not. Those without true belief (a large number indeed, due to different religions potentially viewing the followers of other religions as atheists) were thought by Calvinists to be predestined to sin and had no hope of entrance into heaven, though religion deemed it “perfectly acceptable to pretend otherwise” (Quarrel 132). Such scholars were required to have a “generall [sic]” or “dead” faith in God, despite their assured perdition.³⁵ Riggs indicates how this “all-embracing criterion of conformity made it exceedingly easy to carry on as a hypocrite in the establishment” (Quarrel 132). It also demonstrates that the doomed not only derived their fate from predestination, but also the hypocrisy of “ever Handling Holy Things, but without feeling.”³⁶ For such action, regardless of predestination or human free will, the perpetrator must “be cauterized in the End.”³⁷

Then came Christopher Marlowe’s time as a spy. Or, to be more precise, Christopher Marlowe became a spy during his time at Cambridge (this is the generally accepted explanation for his prolonged absences during his time as an M.A. student) and is believed to have continued working as one for much of his remaining life. His work mainly involved spying on “dissident Catholics” (Quarrel 133), an occupation which can be considered the embodiment of political religion. The Elizabethan spy system filled its ranks by “turning” individuals who already associated with the “Catholic underground” (Quarrel 133); thus, the state calling for Marlowe to serve as a spy was a backhanded compliment at best. Spies received preferential treatment from the government, as seen through the Privy Council’s interference to debunk rumors that Marlowe was planning to join the English seminary at Rheims (an accusation of heresy) and ensure that Marlowe received his M.A. despite his long unexplained absences from Cambridge. The Privy Council merely needed to send a letter which said that Marlowe “had no such intent,” and the accusations (temporarily) ceased.

Because the spies tasked with focusing on the Catholic Church were often taken from Catholicism itself, their loyalty was always in question (Quarrel 133). The men endured a sort of double skepticism: they were considered of questionable character for their past Catholicism, but also perceived with cynicism for the ease with which they betrayed their past religion and began espionage work. The spy was forced to alternate between two opposite roles: “loyal servant and subversive other” (Riggs 184). As a loyal servant, the spy reported all the information he could gather to the crown and work to justify the crown’s action(s) against potential opposition. This was an impossible task, unless the spy acted as a subversive other. In his work for the government, like any double-agent, he was supposed to “create the enemies which justified the exercise of state power” (Riggs 184) by any means necessary. The crown expected the spy to “voice what it regarded as sedition[, atheism,] and heresy” (Riggs 184). In short, the government “licensed [him] to perform the role of the outlaw, [but] shrewdly suspect[ed him] of being the part he enacted” (Riggs 184). This meant that, paradoxically, the better a spy he was the less he was trusted by his superiors. An ineffective spy might be regarded as an upstanding citizen (albeit one whose loyalty was constantly in question due to his occupation), whereas a skilled spy might be demonized as a “rakehell.”

Yet, the government had to protect the double agent. Such protection came in the form of periodic pardons for the agent’s seemingly inexcusable behavior. This is why the Privy Council defended Marlowe when he was besieged with rumors of heresy and questions by his alma mater. The Council’s note declared that Marlowe’s controversial statements were not his true nature, but simply his playing of a part assigned to him by the government. In theory, this could explain away all the rumors of Marlowe’s atheism as listed in Bains’s letter. However, it does not: the Elizabethan spy is never to be viewed as a man lying about his beliefs to gain information for the crown. I must stress the spy’s initial (and eternal) status as a “turned” member of the opposition. Perhaps the crown was right in viewing their spies with caution. If a heretic or atheist was able to become a spy for the government, he would be free to vocalize his controversial views with virtually no repercussions. This may have been Marlowe’s case.

So what does this imply about Christopher Marlowe? He was born into steep poverty, something he never forgot and was never allowed to forget. Due to location and coincidence, he was desensitized to some of the more brutal, unsavory aspects of the human condition at a very young age. Religion may have meant little more to him than an ongoing earthly struggle in which sides were chosen out of a desire for survival, not a desire for a particular path to (or form of) paradise after death. He studied at Cambridge, receiving a Bachelors and Masters degree in Divinity, but became a “divine in show” (A and B 1.1.3) when he was called to be a spy on behalf of the Queen’s Privy Council. Then, when he was 23 years old, he first assembled The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. For over two decades, Christopher Marlowe endured political religion, unanswered “big” questions, and (quite possibly) the status of a reprobate. His time at Cambridge shaped this skepticism, and in the process gave him both the courage and ability to create an inquisitive vehicle. This vehicle, the two Doctor Faustus texts, provided something of an outlet for the frustration and curiosity he shared with many during his era.

Chapter Three: A Few Key Comparisons of the Two Texts

My two previous chapters have led up to this chapter. I have developed my critical fiction, examined the ongoing debate over the two texts of Faustus, offered my own theory as to what the existence of two texts signifies, briefly examined Marlowe’s life, and suggested why he used the Faust legend to create the two Doctor Faustus inquisitive vehicles. All that remains is to examine the two texts. The greatest frustration I face is the need to limit my examination. Both texts offer much in the way of discussion and inquisition without comparison; however, it is not my purpose to examine the two texts individually. Thus, I will try to avoid examining parts of the texts which are the same in both versions.

In addition, I will further thin my selection to three key topics. Thus, I divide this chapter into three sections: “The Nature of Hell,” “A Few Key Binaries,” and “Faustus’s Final Fate.” In “The Nature of Hell,” I will discuss how the A-Text’s portrayal of Hell is deeply rooted in psychological aspects, whereas the B-Text’s portrayal of hell focuses heavily on the physical. In the next section, “A Few Key Binaries,” I will discuss a few seemingly minor differences between the two texts: at first, these variations might be dismissed as accidental (perhaps due to a copying accident) or inconsequential, but I will show how even the alternation of a single word might have been a deliberate attempt to offer a different meaning. Finally, “Faustus’s Final Fate” will examine the very end of the plays, in which John Faustus is dragged off to Hell; I will also return to matter from the two previous sections to discuss a possible overall meaning in each text in this section.

Doctor Faustus fiercely resists being broken down into categories. I could begin by calling the A-Text a Calvinist text which views the afterlife through psychological terms and the B-Text an Anglican text which views the afterlife through physical terms; however, this is inaccurate. The themes and concepts are deeply interwoven (sometimes outright “muddled”) between the two texts, though even this might be a deliberate part of the Marlowe Effect: without any obvious path to follow, the viewer (or reader) is forced to examine and discuss each to interpret meaning and potentially reinterpret his/her own beliefs.

The Nature of Hell

I begin with a particularly interesting difference between the two texts. Soon after meeting Mephistopheles for the first time, John Faustus asks the demon several questions about hell and the demon’s fate. He concludes this inquiry by asking how Mephistopheles was able to leave hell to visit Faustus. “[T]his is hell” (A 1.3.76, B 1.3.74) Mephistopheles replies, then elaborates:

Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God

And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,

Am not tormented with ten thousand hells

In being deprived of everlasting bliss? (A 1.3.77-80, B 1.3.75-78)

Later on, Faustus resumes his inquiry on the nature of hell, asking Mephistopheles where hell is located. “Under the heavens” (A 2.1.113, B 2.1.112) the demon responds, then explains that “Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed/In one self place, for where we are is hell/And where hell is, there must we ever be” (A 2.1.117-122, B 2.1.116-121). Despite Faustus’s obliviousness to the implications of this information, they explain much about the nature of hell within the A-Text.

With these two passages, Marlowe presents not only a distinct image of hell, but one greatly at odds with nearly all the contemporary religions of his time. Hell was, as it often still is, envisioned as a place in which the damned are “cauterized” (Quarrel 132) for eternity. (Even if one does not subscribe to Dante’s image of hell, as detailed in The Inferno, Francis Bacon’s mention of cauterization [literally, burning with hot iron] suggests that hell was still synonymous with fire and physical anguish.) Mephistopheles, a quintessential reprobate, rejects this depiction of the physical boundaries and sensations associated with hell. Indeed, his statement that he is “tormented with ten thousand hells/In being deprived of everlasting bliss” (A 1.3.79-80, B 1.3.77-78) is an outright jab at this preconceived notion. Hell is, as described by one of its inhabitants, “a state of mind” more excruciating than any torture imaginable. ³⁸ Thus, it is not bound to one location, not limited to any place, and able to stay with its denizens at all times.

Rather than being a place of fire and torture, hell is treated as a state of psychological anguish. It is my assertion that Mephistopheles is suggesting that the physical torments generally associated with hell, amplified ten thousand times, only begin to equal the psychological torment of being denied eternal paradise with God in heaven. This concept of hell’s psychological torture is repeated again in the A-Text after Faustus orders Mephistopheles to torture the Old Man as viciously as hell will allow him to. In both texts, Mephistopheles replies that he “cannot touch [the Old Man’s] soul” (A 5.1.78, B 5.1.81) and is limited to physical torture, followed by the demon’s outright admission that physical torture “is but little worth” (A 5.1.80, B 5.1.83). However, the psychological torment of being deprived eternal paradise with the Almighty, rather than any bodily harm, is the “greatest tormen[t] that [the play’s] hell affords” (A 5.1.77, B 5.1.80) in the A-Text. This is confirmed when (in the A-Text) the Old Man briefly returns to declare that the devil’s torments do not sway his faith and that he draws strength from heaven (the implication here is, again, that hell’s greatest torment does not lie in physical abuse).

However, the B Text’s Act 5 contradicts Mephistopheles’s description of an existential hell, beginning with Act 5, Scene 2's opening line: Lucifer enters with Beelzebub and Mephistopheles and declares “[t]hus from infernal Dis do we ascend” (B 1 5.2). In Virgil’s Aeneid, which Marlowe undoubtably read, Dis is a city in the traditional (fixed location, physically experienced) hell. The mere mention of this area refutes Mephistopheles’s earlier statements about hell being a state of being not reliant on any set location or physical sensations. The refutation is completed when “Hell is discovered” (as listed in the stage directions). Faustus stares in horror at the physical torments awaiting him, which the Bad Angel narrates for the audience:

There are Furies tossing damnèd souls

on burning forks. Their bodies boil in lead.

There are live quarter[ed bodies] broiling on the coals,

That ne’er can die. This ever-burning chair

Is for o’er-tortured souls to rest them in.

These that are fed with sops of flaming fire

Were gluttons, and loved only delicates,

and laughed to see the poor starve at their gates.

But yet all these are nothing. Thou shalt see

Ten thousand tortures that more horrid be. (B 5.2.118-127)

This graphic description of nightmarish torture, coupled with the final scene in which “the scholars . . . find Faustus’s fragmented body” (Marcus 51) clearly shift the emphasis from the psychological to the physical. But why?

Surprisingly, I have found little during my research to directly account for this fixation on the physical in the B-Text over the A-Text’s psychological motif. However, I submit that this difference is made in reference to religion. I obviously agree with critics such as Leah Marcus who suggest that “[t]he different versions of the play carry different ideological freight” (42). Initially I agreed wholesale that “the A text could be described as more . . . Calvinist . . . [and] the B text as more Anglo-Catholic” (42) and argued that predestination figures much more strongly in the A-Text, whereas the B-Text adopts many tropes of Anglicanism and Catholicism.³⁹ However, I amend that theory to state that both texts offer Calvinist and Anglican elements, though the A-Text maintains a theme of psychological/existential harm and the B-Text maintains one of physical harm.

A Few Key Binaries

For purposes of my discussion, “binaries” refer to any situation in which a line in both texts is the same except for a few words. Indeed, many of the binaries I will examine focus on passages that are identical except for one word.⁴⁰ Such a difference might seem minor, but these small variations often lead to radical differences in implications. Though the possibility exists that, as critics such as W.W. Greg suggest, some of these binaries exist due to minor mistakes in transcribing lines from one text to the other (or from the “conversations” and alterations that Elizabethan texts undergo), I argue that the two text’s different “lenses” manifest through these seemingly inconsequential variations in form or diction.

I referenced this first binary near the end of my thesis’s introduction. “Never too late, if Faustus can repent” (emphasis added) is spoken by the Good Angel in line 76, Scene 3, of Act 2 in the A-Text. The B-Text counterpart occurs in line 80 of Act 2, Scene 3: “[n]ever too late, if Faustus will repent.” Critics who subscribe to the authenticity argument (such as W.W. Greg), as well as critics who support the conflation debate, might simply dismiss the A Text’s line as “wrong, [because it] mak[es] the [Good] Angel doubt Faustus ability to repent if he has the will to do so” (45). Greg’s interpretation of this line is perfectly acceptable, but his denouncing it as “wrong” is a gross oversimplification. The Good Angel is right to question Faustus’s ability to repent: if the doctor is predestined to hell, it does not matter how badly he wishes to repent. The B-Text replaces the word “can” and its Calvinist implications with “will.” The new meaning offers a less dire situation for Faustus: it is implied that he can, should he choose to do so, but will he? In short, the difference between “can” and “will” in the Good Angel’s line is the difference between ability and desire; in this case, it is also the difference between Calvinism’s emphasis on predestination and Catholicism’s emphasis on volition. The lines could be seen as “never too late, if Faustus [is not a reprobate]” in the A-Text and “never too late, [whenever] Faustus [chooses to repent]” in the B-Text.⁴¹ With just the change of a single word, the sentence signifies a shift from a paradigm of Calvinism to one of Catholicism (and by extension, Anglicanism).

One might also wonder why the A-Text’s angel is not aware of the status of Faustus’s soul. This could simply be an oversight in editing, or an indication that all the denizens of heaven are not fully attuned to humanity’s condition. The possibility also exists that the angels are a figment of Faustus’s imagination: a “physical” manifestation of Faustus’s conscience, not unlike the tiny angel and devil used in cartoons to symbolize a character’s conscience. If this is indeed the case, then Faustus is forced to supply his own psychological representatives from the afterlife in the A-Text; however, Faustus might not know if he is or is not a reprobate, and his ignorance of this is reflected in the angel’s dialogue. The same assumption might be made about the angels in the B-Text, though the angel would not need to know anything about the doctor to recognize his volition and could therefore be “real.”⁴²

The next binary I examine further garbles together the ideas of Calvinism, Anglicanism, a psychological/existential afterlife, and a traditional/physical afterlife. “I go, sweet Faustus, but with heavy cheer,/Fearing the ruin of thy hopeless soul” is spoken by the Old Man as he makes his first exit from the play in lines 61-62 of the A Text’s Act 5, Scene 1. In the B Text, the Old Man’s line before his (only) exit is “Faustus, I leave thee, but with grief of heart,/Fearing the ruin of thy hapless soul” in lines 62-63 of Act 5, Scene 1. Again, the difference is but a single word: “hopeless” and “hapless,” but the implications suggest that the former version reveals a Calvinist belief while the latter reveals an Anglican belief. This binary derives two alternate meanings through the words’ literal definition. In the context, to be hapless is to be unfortunate, whereas hopeless suggests that Faustus is literally without hope of redemption. This clear-cut binary is then muddled when one questions how accurate the Old Man actually is in his describing the state of Faustus’s soul.

The Old Man’s speech to and exchange with Faustus lead up to this line in both texts, but the actual speech is radically different in each version as well. Marcus notes how in the A-Text “the Old Man . . . does not quite preach a doctrine of Calvinist predestination in that he describes heaven as a[n attainable goal]” (48) in which Faustus still might partake. This ambiguity could be no different than the Good Angel’s hope that Faustus is not a reprobate and does in fact possess the ability to repent (implying that this deviation from a pure Calvinist declaration in the Old Man’s speech as little more than wishful thinking on the Old Man’s part), or it could simply be a muddling of the play’s Calvinist and Anglican elements. I agree with Marcus that the Old Man is perfectly clear that “everything depends on Faustus’s inner condition” (48), but this could refer to reprobate status or willingness to act on his volition. Faustus’s question of “where is mercy now?” (A 5.1.62) only furthers this ambiguity: either the divine mercy he knew of has vanished, or only now on his last night alive does he realize that it never really existed.

Conversely, the Old Man’s speech in the B-Text suggests that “Faustus’s sin[ful nature] is not an inborn condition, but a bad habit which is gradually becoming ingrained” (Marcus 48): Faustus “hast an amiable soul [still],/If sin by custom grown not into nature” (B 5.1.39-40). Here, as Marcus notes, the Old Man’s speech is “more on love than punishment” (48) with the hope that “his words . . . may have almost sacramental efficacy” (48). If Faustus is not a reprobate, then his soul can still be saved even in the last two hours of his life; this assumes that the Old Man is correct is assuming that Faustus is not a reprobate. The doctor’s question, “wretch, what hast thou done?” (B 5.1.64), reflects this (perhaps unwarranted) assumption of volition over predestination, but when Faustus is dragged off and mangled by demons, is it because he never repented or because he is a reprobate?

In continuing my speculation on the shift from the psychological to the physical, I am curious as to why it is the Old Man who provides this final plea for Faustus’s salvation instead of the Good Angel. This might affirm the Good Angel’s status as a manifestation of Faustus’s conscience. Indeed, the Good and Bad/Evil Angels say nothing that a man who “excel[s] all” (A Prologue 18, B Prologue 17) could not deduce on his own, and do not describe anything that he cannot see. In place of a divine entity, an old man is sent to aid Faustus. However, the A-Text suggests that the Old Man may in fact be linked to the ethereal when he resolves to “fly unto [his] God” (A 5.2.118) in a line absent from the B-Text: even if he is merely fleeing, he still is able to gain contact with the almighty.

Even the town in which John Faustus received his B.A. and M.A. in divinity is a binary; in fact, it is the most frequently repeated significant binary in the play.⁴³ The A-Text places the doctor’s place of study in “Wertenberg” (A Prologue, line 13), whereas the B-Text changes the location to “Wittenberg” (B Prologue, line 13). Many experts, such as W.W. Greg, are quick to reject the A Text’s location as “an oral or memorial blunder” (Greg 39): the historical Doctor Faustus, on which Marlowe based the text, is unanimously placed in Wittenberg. Likewise, “Wittenberg” was known for its conservative ideology (even by sixteenth century standards) despite its diminished belief in predestination, thereby making the idea of a divine selling his soul and pursuing necromancy all the more heinous in such an overwhelmingly conservative town and university. However, Wertenberg is not as insignificant a location as many theorists suggest. Marcus notes that this relocation “places [Faustus] in the context of militant Protestantism” with an emphasis on predestination (41).⁴⁴ Aside from toggling between a location which strongly favors predestination (Wertenberg) and a location which favors volition (Wittenberg), this enhances the Marlowe Effect by playing directly on political religion: the doctor’s implied faith can be altered to maintain his status as “seductive antagonist.”

I conclude this section with a few binaries scattered throughout Faustus’s final speech. In the A-Text, God is mentioned by name several times; however, the B-Text often replaces this with heaven.⁴⁵ This is especially noticeable in lines 78-79 of Act 5, Scene 2 in the A-Text: “[a]nd see, where God/Stretcheth out his arm and bends his ireful brows!” The B-Text contains, in its place, “[a]nd see, a threatening arm, an angry brow” (B 5.2.149).⁴⁶ While both binaries are almost certainly the result of censorship in the B-Text, I must note how shifting the emphasis from God to heaven alters Faustus’s predicament. In the A-Text, if Faustus is a reprobate, then his ensured damnation is simply the will of God. In the B-Text Faustus addresses heaven, a place to which he could go if he would simply repent (assuming he is not a reprobate). While this binary was almost unquestionably not constructed by Marlowe, it still contributes to the dramatic logic of the two texts. If nothing else, it serves as a binary created through alterations which still further the Marlowe Effect and the inquisitive vehicle’s functionality.