Drama Cloning Essay guidance
Your response has to be 2000 words maximum
You must include: analysis of 4 explorative strategies: For example:
• Still image
• Narration
• Ritual/movement
• Role-play
• Automatic writing
Choose exercises from any of the lessons to evaluate these.
Your reaction to stimuli:
• The music (Holst Planets) to create the cloning movement and ritual
• Research on stem cells( the doctors and parents or automatic writing scene)
Analyse use of:
• Space/levels
• Use of props
• Language
• Characterisation
From any of the lessons and exercises:
Your evaluation of the whole scheme of work and the content /forms/plot used to analyse and explore the issue of cloning. Evaluate your own and others work.
Tuesday 14 December 2010
Thursday 25 November 2010
Brecht on stage
Year 12 please watch this documentary to help you with your exploration notes on Brecht
Tuesday 12 October 2010
The big Fellah information
4 STARS Critics' Choice "Jaw-dropping laughs... a big meaty subject... cracking performances" Sunday Times 12 Sep 2010. More reviews.
Young fireman Michael Doyle decides to live up to his Irish heritage by joining the IRA. He's recruited by Costello, the charismatic "Big Fellah", who wants to use Doyle's brownstone apartment in The Bronx as a safe house for an escaped killer. But it soon becomes clear that someone is leaking information to the FBI...
Set among Irish Americans in New York, Richard Bean's dark, glinting, funny play spans three turbulent decades.
A boisterous and witty story of loyalty, disillusion and betrayal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"a marvellously funny and humane dramatist" Daily Telegraph
Richard Bean's plays include Under The Whaleback, Harvest (Critics' Circle Awards: Best Play), Honeymoon Suite, The English Game and most recently the controversial, Olivier-nominater England People Very Nice for the National Theatre.
Director: by Max Stafford-Clark
Designer: Tim Shortall
Lighting Designer: Jason Taylor
Sound Designer: Nick Manning
Cast: Rory Keenan, Youssef Kerkour, Finbar Lynch, Claire Rafferty, David Ricardo-Pearce, Fred Ridgeway, Stephanie Street
Young fireman Michael Doyle decides to live up to his Irish heritage by joining the IRA. He's recruited by Costello, the charismatic "Big Fellah", who wants to use Doyle's brownstone apartment in The Bronx as a safe house for an escaped killer. But it soon becomes clear that someone is leaking information to the FBI...
Set among Irish Americans in New York, Richard Bean's dark, glinting, funny play spans three turbulent decades.
A boisterous and witty story of loyalty, disillusion and betrayal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"a marvellously funny and humane dramatist" Daily Telegraph
Richard Bean's plays include Under The Whaleback, Harvest (Critics' Circle Awards: Best Play), Honeymoon Suite, The English Game and most recently the controversial, Olivier-nominater England People Very Nice for the National Theatre.
Director: by Max Stafford-Clark
Designer: Tim Shortall
Lighting Designer: Jason Taylor
Sound Designer: Nick Manning
Cast: Rory Keenan, Youssef Kerkour, Finbar Lynch, Claire Rafferty, David Ricardo-Pearce, Fred Ridgeway, Stephanie Street
Friday 17 September 2010
faust theatre visit 30th September 2010
Year 12 and 13 theatre students will attend this theatre event.
Monday 29 March 2010
revision pack year 13 faustus
Revision pack for year 13 Theatre studies 2010-
Some notes on Faustus: Use these to enhance your ideas for your production notes and choices. These notes come from Spark notes and the Open University if you quote them.
Doctor Faustus
Christopher Marlowe
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
Sin, Redemption, and Damnation
Insofar as Doctor Faustus is a Christian play, it deals with the themes at the heart of Christianity’s understanding of the world. First, there is the idea of sin, which Christianity defines as acts contrary to the will of God. In making a pact with Lucifer, Faustus commits what is in a sense the ultimate sin: not only does he disobey God, but he consciously and even eagerly renounces obedience to him, choosing instead to swear allegiance to the devil. In a Christian framework, however, even the worst deed can be forgiven through the redemptive power of Jesus Christ, God’s son, who, according to Christian belief, died on the cross for humankind’s sins. Thus, however terrible Faustus’s pact with Lucifer may be, the possibility of redemption is always open to him. All that he needs to do, theoretically, is ask God for forgiveness. The play offers countless moments in which Faustus considers doing just that, urged on by the good angel on his shoulder or by the old man in scene 12—both of whom can be seen either as emissaries of God, personifications of Faustus’s conscience, or both.
Each time, Faustus decides to remain loyal to hell rather than seek heaven. In the Christian framework, this turning away from God condemns him to spend an eternity in hell. Only at the end of his life does Faustus desire to repent, and, in the final scene, he cries out to Christ to redeem him. But it is too late for him to repent. In creating this moment in which Faustus is still alive but incapable of being redeemed, Marlowe steps outside the Christian worldview in order to maximize the dramatic power of the final scene. Having inhabited a Christian world for the entire play, Faustus spends his final moments in a slightly different universe, where redemption is no longer possible and where certain sins cannot be forgiven.
The Conflict Between Medieval and Renaissance Values
Scholar R.M. Dawkins famously remarked that Doctor Faustus tells “the story of a Renaissance man who had to pay the medieval price for being one.” While slightly simplistic, this quotation does get at the heart of one of the play’s central themes: the clash between the medieval world and the world of the emerging Renaissance. The medieval world placed God at the center of existence and shunted aside man and the natural world. The Renaissance was a movement that began in Italy in the fifteenth century and soon spread throughout Europe, carrying with it a new emphasis on the individual, on classical learning, and on scientific inquiry into the nature of the world. In the medieval academy, theology was the queen of the sciences. In the Renaissance, though, secular matters took center stage.
Faustus, despite being a magician rather than a scientist (a blurred distinction in the sixteenth century), explicitly rejects the medieval model. In his opening speech in scene 1, he goes through every field of scholarship, beginning with logic and proceeding through medicine, law, and theology, quoting an ancient authority for each: Aristotle on logic, Galen on medicine, the Byzantine emperor Justinian on law, and the Bible on religion. In the medieval model, tradition and authority, not individual inquiry, were key. But in this soliloquy, Faustus considers and rejects this medieval way of thinking. He resolves, in full Renaissance spirit, to accept no limits, traditions, or authorities in his quest for knowledge, wealth, and power.
The play’s attitude toward the clash between medieval and Renaissance values is ambiguous. Marlowe seems hostile toward the ambitions of Faustus, and, as Dawkins notes, he keeps his tragic hero squarely in the medieval world, where eternal damnation is the price of human pride. Yet Marlowe himself was no pious traditionalist, and it is tempting to see in Faustus—as many readers have—a hero of the new modern world, a world free of God, religion, and the limits that these imposed on humanity. Faustus may pay a medieval price, this reading suggests, but his successors will go further than he and suffer less, as we have in modern times. On the other hand, the disappointment and mediocrity that follow Faustus’s pact with the devil, as he descends from grand ambitions to petty conjuring tricks, might suggest a contrasting interpretation. Marlowe may be suggesting that the new, modern spirit, though ambitious and glittering, will lead only to a Faustian dead end.
Power as a Corrupting Influence
Early in the play, before he agrees to the pact with Lucifer, Faustus is full of ideas for how to use the power that he seeks. He imagines piling up great wealth, but he also aspires to plumb the mysteries of the universe and to remake the map of Europe. Though they may not be entirely admirable, these plans are ambitious and inspire awe, if not sympathy. They lend a grandeur to Faustus’s schemes and make his quest for personal power seem almost heroic, a sense that is reinforced by the eloquence of his early soliloquies.
Once Faustus actually gains the practically limitless power that he so desires, however, his horizons seem to narrow. Everything is possible to him, but his ambition is somehow sapped. Instead of the grand designs that he contemplates early on, he contents himself with performing conjuring tricks for kings and noblemen and takes a strange delight in using his magic to play practical jokes on simple folks. It is not that power has corrupted Faustus by making him evil: indeed, Faustus’s behavior after he sells his soul hardly rises to the level of true wickedness. Rather, gaining absolute power corrupts Faustus by making him mediocre and by transforming his boundless ambition into a meaningless delight in petty celebrity.
In the Christian framework of the play, one can argue that true greatness can be achieved only with God’s blessing. By cutting himself off from the creator of the universe, Faustus is condemned to mediocrity. He has gained the whole world, but he does not know what to do with it.
The Divided Nature of Man
Faustus is constantly undecided about whether he should repent and return to God or continue to follow his pact with Lucifer. His internal struggle goes on throughout the play, as part of him of wants to do good and serve God, but part of him (the dominant part, it seems) lusts after the power that Mephastophilis promises. The good angel and the evil angel, both of whom appear at Faustus’s shoulder in order to urge him in different directions, symbolize this struggle. While these angels may be intended as an actual pair of supernatural beings, they clearly represent Faustus’s divided will, which compels Faustus to commit to Mephastophilis but also to question this commitment continually.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Magic and the Supernatural
The supernatural pervades Doctor Faustus, appearing everywhere in the story. Angels and devils flit about, magic spells are cast, dragons pull chariots (albeit offstage), and even fools like the two ostlers, Robin and Rafe, can learn enough magic to summon demons. Still, it is worth noting that nothing terribly significant is accomplished through magic. Faustus plays tricks on people, conjures up grapes, and explores the cosmos on a dragon, but he does not fundamentally reshape the world. The magic power that Mephastophilis grants him is more like a toy than an awesome, earth-shaking ability. Furthermore, the real drama of the play, despite all the supernatural frills and pyrotechnics, takes place within Faustus’s vacillating mind and soul, as he first sells his soul to Lucifer and then considers repenting. In this sense, the magic is almost incidental to the real story of Faustus’s struggle with himself, which Marlowe intended not as a fantastical battle but rather as a realistic portrait of a human being with a will divided between good and evil.
Practical Jokes
Once he gains his awesome powers, Faustus does not use them to do great deeds. Instead, he delights in playing tricks on people: he makes horns sprout from the knight’s head and sells the horse-courser an enchanted horse. Such magical practical jokes seem to be Faustus’s chief amusement, and Marlowe uses them to illustrate Faustus’s decline from a great, prideful scholar into a bored, mediocre magician with no higher ambition than to have a laugh at the expense of a collection of simpletons.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Blood
Blood plays multiple symbolic roles in the play. When Faustus signs away his soul, he signs in blood, symbolizing the permanent and supernatural nature of this pact. His blood congeals on the page, however, symbolizing, perhaps, his own body’s revolt against what he intends to do. Meanwhile, Christ’s blood, which Faustus says he sees running across the sky during his terrible last night, symbolizes the sacrifice that Jesus, according to Christian belief, made on the cross; this sacrifice opened the way for humankind to repent its sins and be saved. Faustus, of course, in his proud folly, fails to take this path to salvation.
Faustus’s Rejection of the Ancient Authorities
In scene 1, Faustus goes through a list of the major fields of human knowledge—logic, medicine, law, and theology—and cites for each an ancient authority (Aristotle, Galen, Justinian, and Jerome’s Bible, respectively). He then rejects all of these figures in favor of magic. This rejection symbolizes Faustus’s break with the medieval world, which prized authority above all else, in favor of a more modern spirit of free inquiry, in which experimentation and innovation trump the assertions of Greek philosophers and the Bible.
The Good Angel and the Evil Angel
The angels appear at Faustus’s shoulder early on in the play—the good angel urging him to repent and serve God, the evil angel urging him to follow his lust for power and serve Lucifer. The two symbolize his divided will, part of which wants to do good and part of which is sunk in sin.
Faustus as a Tragic Hero
There are different views of Dr. Faustus.
There may be different or varying ways of looking at certain characters and revealing them as a certain type of character. In Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus, the main character, Doctor Faustus, could be described and revealed as a tragic hero, similarly to other tragic characters, such as Sophocles’ Oedipus and Shakespeare’s Hamlet may also be described as such. There are different features and characteristics, which would make these characters be considered as tragic heroes rather than another type of character.
One of the features that characterize a tragic hero is that this type of character “will mistakenly bring his own downfall”, (McManus) which is referred to as “hamartia”. In Marlowe’s play, the main character, Faustus, brings his own downfall by the end of the story. In his opening speech, in Act 1 Scene 1, Faustus tells and explains the audience and the readers that he has skilled himself in law, medicine and divinity, but he wants to know more than what he knows and also know more about other things. This aspect of Faustus, his curiosity to learn and know more, may be thought of as part of the human condition and human nature and isn’t something that is seen as wrong in our society.
However, this aspect also blinds Faustus from a sense of reason and right from wrong. This eventually leads the main character of Doctor Faustus to make an agreement with the devil, which results in Faustus’ downfall. This aspect of Faustus’ character and personality is similar to Oedipus, in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Oedipus’ pride blinds him from seeing truth, reason, as well as the difference from right and wrong, which leads to and results in the character’s downfall and to the main character of Sophocles’ play, Oedipus, stabbing his eyes out.
This feature will lead to the characteristic and fact that, by doing these mistakes or “flaws”, the tragic heroes are doomed from the beginning and the audience and readers know the fate of these characters is sealed. And for the tragic hero be just that, a tragic hero or tragic character, this type of character has to be doomed from the beginning of the play, but doesn’t hold any responsibility for possessing his flaw or fault. This may be seen in Faustus. From the beginning of the play, from the time that he tells the audience and readers that he wants to acquire more knowledge and especially when he signs the, the audience and readers may that Faustus is doomed to have a less than perfect and happy ending. Much like Faustus, Oedipus’ fate is sealed when he refuses to see the truth, even when it’s standing right in front of him. Though these two tragic heroes may feel some sense of guilt about their actions, neither Faustus nor Oedipus seem feel some sense of guilt or responsibility of their flaw.
A third feature or characteristic that the tragic hero should have is that “[t]he protagonist should be renowned and prosperous”. (McManus) The audience and readers may witness and see this characteristic in the main character of Doctor Faustus. Early on in the play, the audience and readers knows that Faustus is well renowned and with some reputation. Over the course of the play, there are several people, mainly three scholars, talk about Faustus, his knowledge, and such aspects of this character. The audience and readers may see some signs of prosperity in Faustus. In Act 1 Scene 1, Faustus calls in his servant and student, which reveal not only that Faustus is prosperous, but also renown. The reason for this is that people at this time wanted to send their children study would to well known people.
It could also be said that Oedipus and Hamlet are also prosperous and renown. Oedipus is king of Thebes, which leads the readers and audience to assume that he is fairly prosperous. The readers and audience may also assume that he is renown, because the citizens of Thebes come to Oedipus, when the city is attacked with plague, in the prologue. Hamlet is a prince, which also may lead us to suggest that he is fairly prosperous and successful.
A fourth feature and aspect involving the tragic hero is that this character must support the plot of the story, which is similar to many other protagonists. This may be easily seen with Faustus, in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. It is Faustus’ actions, which seem to lead and direct the plot and the entire story of the play. This is the same situation with Oedipus and Hamlet, in Oedipus Rex and Hamlet. Both Oedipus and Hamlet are tragic heroes, who both lead and guide the story and its plot. This may be also part of and applied to the human life, as most of us make our own decisions and lead and drive our own lives, much like Faustus, Oedipus, and Hamlet guide the plays they are in.
A fifth feature, which is attributed to the tragic hero, is that the main character must be realistic or present some sense of realism. This may help the audience and readers relate to the character. This aspect of the tragic hero is meant for the audience to relate to or feel some form of connection with the characters and the story of the play. Faustus does have a certain sense of realism to him. For one, the main character of the play Doctor Faustus makes mistakes, which is part of the human condition and is something that every human being does. This also adds to a sense of realism to Faustus. This is the same for Oedipus and Hamlet, who also both make mistakes.
There is also the fact that Faustus wants to acquire more knowledge, which adds to the realism of the play. Acquire knowledge is another aspect that is part of the human condition. Learning and understanding more and more subjects and obtaining more knowledge is part of how we can grow and evolve as human beings, as individuals and as a society.
This sense of realism in the tragic hero may introduce pity. This is a crucial aspect to the tragedy genre. If the audience and the readers pity or sympathizes with the main character, this may lead to suggest that the audience and readers feel some form of connection with the hero of the play. In order for this to occur, the character must have some realistic features. This aspect of the tragic hero of Doctor Faustus in relation to the audience and readers may vary. There may be some who do pity Faustus, while other may feel no pity for this character. The same can be said of the characters Oedipus and Hamlet. Several people may feel sympathy for these two characters, while others won’t sympathize with these characters. This aspect and feature is part of the human condition and adds to the realism of the character and of the play. It is impossible to like or sympathize with everyone.
These aspects are a few attributes and features that characterize a tragic hero. Most of these attributes may be applied to Faustus, as well as other tragic heroes, such as Hamlet and Oedipus. But, like every human being and characters that exist, these three tragic heroes aren’t perfect and do make mistakes.
Reading Doctor Faustus ( Open University notes)
2.2 Act 2, Scene 1: Faustus and God ( Calvinism)
By the end of Act 1, Faustus appears to have made up his mind to sell his soul to the devil in exchange for twenty-four years in which he will ‘live in all voluptuousness’ (1.3.94). Act 2, Scene 1 opens with another soliloquy.
Activity
Please look now at this soliloquy (page 15, lines 1–14). How would you describe its mood? Jot down any points you think are important about the way the language helps to create this mood.
Faustus appears to be wrestling with his conscience in this soliloquy. He clearly feels the urge to repent, so why doesn't he? It is interesting that although he delivers this speech before he has signed his contract with Lucifer, he tells himself in the first line that he must ‘needs be damned’; in other words, he sees his own damnation as unavoidable. So what's the point, he asks himself, of thinking of God or heaven? The repetition of the word ‘despair’ in lines 4 and 5 emphasises Faustus's hopeless state of mind. If you count the syllables in lines 2 and 10, you will see that each line has only six. This means that in performance the actor would have to pause for a moment because the lines are shorter than normal, and this would have the effect of drawing attention to the sentiments expressed in the two lines, that is, to Faustus's despairing conviction that he cannot be saved and that God does not love him.
Why should Faustus feel so strongly that he is damned, when at this point in the play there seems to be every reason to believe that repentance will secure God's forgiveness? Some critics, most notably Alan Sinfield (1983) and John Stachniewski (1991), have argued that Marlowe is exploring the mental and emotional impact of the form of Protestantism that prevailed in England during the late sixteenth century, based on the doctrines of the French-born Protestant reformer Jean Calvin. Calvinist theology developed and changed over time, but at this historical juncture it stressed the sinfulness and depravity of human nature. In contrast to the traditional view of salvation as something that an individual could earn by living a virtuous Christian life, Calvinism argued that salvation is entirely God's gift rather than the result of any human effort. Moreover, according to the doctrine of predestination, God gives that gift only to a fortunate few whom he has chosen; everyone else faces an eternity of hellfire.
This theology formed the official doctrine of the Elizabethan Church. However bleak it sounds, its effect on believers was often positive; for those persuaded by their own virtuous impulses that they were chosen by God, it proved an enormous source of comfort and well-being, perhaps especially for poorer members of society, for whom the conviction of divine favour could be empowering. But for some, these doctrines provoked a sense of powerlessness and anxious fear about their spiritual destiny. It is possible to argue that Marlowe's Faustus is a depiction of one of these casualties of Calvinist doctrine, and that this helps to explain not only his opening dismissal of Christianity as obsessed with sin and damnation, but his repeated inability to repent. As in the soliloquy that opens Act 2, he cannot bring himself to believe that God favours him and has granted him salvation. The desire for repentance is overwhelmed by a still stronger belief, consistent with Calvinist doctrine in its early modern form, that the chances are that God does not love him at all.
However, it isn't necessary to believe that Doctor Faustus is specifically about Calvinism to feel that its portrait of the Christian God who vindictively ‘conspires’ Faustus's overthrow is not entirely flattering. Numerous critics have been troubled by a particular episode in the play that seems to cast doubt on the presence of divine mercy and benevolence. This is the moment in Act 2, Scene 3 when Faustus makes his most serious attempt at repentance. He quarrels with Mephistopheles, the Good Angel (unusually) gets the last word in the debate with the Evil Angel, and Faustus calls out to Christ ‘to save distressèd Faustus’ soul’ (2.3.85). And what happens? Lucifer, Beelzebub and Mephistopheles enter. Why does God not intervene to save Faustus? The stony silence that greets his plea for divine assistance seems to call into question the traditional Christian notion of a loving and merciful God.
Other critics have argued that God is silent on this occasion because Faustus's repentance is insincere, and that he consistently fails to repent not because he is suffering from theologically-induced despair, but because he is afraid of the devils and constantly distracted by the frivolous entertainments they stage for him, like the pageant of the seven deadly sins which follows this episode. One could argue as well that the play does represent the Christian God as loving and merciful, and shows human beings to be free to shape their own spiritual destinies. The Good and Evil Angels, after all, seem to give dramatic form to Faustus's freedom to choose: he has a choice between good and evil, and he chooses evil in full knowledge of what the consequences will be. As late as Act 5, Scene 1, the Old Man appears on stage to drive home the availability of God's mercy if only Faustus will sincerely repent his sins. Looked at from this perspective, it is Faustus and not God who is responsible for the terrible fate that greets him at the close of the play.
This critical debate serves to remind us that it is difficult to evaluate how much sympathy the play arouses for its protagonist without taking into consideration its treatment of the Christian God. If you think the God of the play is fundamentally benevolent then you are less likely to feel favourably disposed towards Faustus than if you think he comes across as a harsh and punitive cosmic despot. It is clear, though, that the play offers textual evidence in support of both views. Once again, we find Marlowe refusing to be pinned down to one interpretation.
2 Reading Doctor Faustus
2.3 Acts 3 and 4: What does Faustus achieve?
Act 2 points repeatedly to the failure of Faustus's attempt to secure power and autonomy through his pact with Lucifer: in Act 2, Scene 1 Mephistopheles declines his request for a wife, and in Act 2, Scene 3 he refuses to tell him who made the world. Acts 3 and 4 cover the bulk of the twenty-four-year period that Faustus purchased with his soul. How do they make us feel about what he actually achieves through his embracing of black magic? Are we encouraged to feel it was worth it?
Activity
Please have another look at Act 4, Scenes 1 and 2 (pages 35–43). On the basis of these scenes, would you say that Faustus has realised his dreams of power and pleasure? What evidence would you offer in support of your view?
Now read the discussion
Yet is this all there is to say on this matter? As usual with this play, there is another side to the story, especially if we consider Act 3. Earlier we looked at Faustus's desire to ‘chase the Prince of Parma from our land’, and speculated how, in a climate of military conflict with Spain, it might have endeared him to the play's original audience. At the time of the play's first performances, the Catholic Church would have been viewed by many with comparable hostility. In 1570 the Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth I and released her Catholic subjects from their allegiance to the Protestant heretic queen; in 1580 he proclaimed that her assassination would not be a mortal sin. Read with this context in mind, Act 3, Scene 1, in which Faustus makes a fool of the Pope under cover of his magician's cloak of invisibility, looks like a bid for audience approval, by its portrayal of the Catholic Church as decadent and corrupt, and mired in absurd superstitions like the ceremony of excommunication. By casting Faustus in the role of Protestant hero, this scene seems designed to elicit a favourable response to his conjuring skill.
We need to remember as well the limitations of the theatre, in particular of Marlowe's open-air theatre, where plays were performed in broad daylight with little in the way of props, scenery or artificial lighting see Figure 4). In these conditions, it is not hard to grasp why so many of Faustus's adventures as a magician are reported rather than enacted: the Chorus to Act 3, for example, tells us that in order to learn ‘the secrets of astronomy’ (3.1.2), Faustus scaled Mount Olympus ‘in a chariot burning bright / Drawn by the strength of yoky dragons' necks’ (3.1.5–6). This sounds anything but a hollow experience, and when discussing Acts 3 and 4 we should give due weight to the descriptions Marlowe provides of activities he was unable to enact on stage, especially given that these descriptions probably had a powerful impact on the play's original audience, who were much more accustomed to listening to long and often complex speeches (sermons, for example) than we tend to be nowadays.
Figure 4: William Dudley, The 1587 Rose Theatre: A Cutaway View, 1999 for the onsite exhibition which was also designed by Dudley. Used with the permission of William Dudley. The Rose was the site of the first recorded performance of Doctor Faustus on 30 September 1594
The mention of the play in performance leads us to an important characteristic of drama, which makes it different from other literary forms such as the novel and poetry: plays are written to be performed whereas novels and poems are written to be read. This means that a play is not so much a fixed and finished literary text as a blueprint for actors and directors who will have to make decisions about how it is going to be translated from the page to the stage. They will have to ask themselves questions, such as what is actually happening on stage at any given moment? How should a particular speech be spoken by the actor playing the part, and which actor is best suited to play the part? A director will also need to make decisions about set design, costumes, lighting, music and other sound effects. All of these aspects of performance will contribute to the meaning of the play, and they will differ from one production to another.
Activity
So how might consideration of Doctor Faustus as a text intended for performance affect our response to Faustus's career as a magician? A moment ago we discussed the way in which Act 4 in particular seems to emphasise the gap between Faustus's aspirations and his actual achievement. Does thinking about these scenes in terms of performance open up different possibilities?
Now read the discussion
The same might be said of the two appearances of Helen of Troy in Act 5, Scene 1. This scene is structured in such a way as to establish a clear contrast between Faustus's two encounters: with the Old Man, who urges piety and repentance, and with the legendary beauty Helen of Troy (Figure 5). Faustus chooses Helen, and many critics have echoed the Old Man's stern disapproval. Yet the critic Thomas Healy points out that in the theatre Helen is usually represented as so ‘strikingly beautiful’ that even if one agrees on a rational level that Faustus would be better off with the Old Man, on a visual level the Old Man loses out to Helen, who engages what Healy calls the audience's ‘emotional and aesthetic sympathy’ (Healy, 2004, p. 183). By the same token, a director might choose to portray Helen instead as a malign influence on the hero.
Reading Doctor Faustus
2.5 Morality play or tragedy?
Pity and fear are the emotions that, according to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, are aroused by the experience of watching a tragedy. At the start of this chapter we asked whether Doctor Faustus is a late sixteenth-century morality play, designed to teach its audience about the spiritual dangers of excessive learning and ambition. When the play was published, first in 1604 and then in 1616, it was called a ‘tragical history’; if we take ‘history’ here to refer not to a particular dramatic genre but more generally to a narrative or story, then the publisher described the play as a tragic tale. So what is a tragedy? In fact, ‘tragedy’ is a notoriously difficult literary term to define, for it seems to take various forms in different historical periods. But for the sake of discussion, we can fall back on the broad strokes of Aristotle's description (in the Poetics) of the tragedies he had seen in Athens in the fourth century BCE: tragedies are plays that represent a central action or plot that is serious and significant. They involve a socially prominent main character who is neither evil nor morally perfect, who moves from a state of happiness to a state of misery because of some frailty or error of judgement: this is the tragic hero, the remarkable individual whose fall stimulates in the spectator intense feelings of pity and fear.
Figure 6: This is the title page of the 1620 edition of the ‘B’ text of Doctor Faustus, first published in 1616: The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. British Library, London. c. 1891–6 C.39.c.26. By permission of the British Library
To what extent does Doctor Faustus conform to this description of a tragic play? Well, it follows the classic tragic trajectory in so far as it starts out with the protagonist at the pinnacle of his achievement and ends with his fall into misery, death and (in this case) damnation. From the beginning the play identifies its protagonist not as ‘everyman’, the morality play hero who ‘stands for’ all of us, but as the exceptional protagonist of tragic drama. Moreover, it is certainly possible to argue that Faustus brings about his own demise through his catastrophically ill-advised decision to embrace black magic. Perhaps most importantly, we have seen in the course of this unit that Faustus is consistently presented to us as an intermediate character, neither wholly good nor wholly bad: both brilliant and arrogant, learned and foolish, consumed with intellectual curiosity and possessed of insatiable appetites for worldly pleasure, a conscience-stricken rebel against divine power. We have seen as well how skilfully Marlowe uses the soliloquy to create a powerful illusion of a complex inner life: from Faustus's first proud rejection of the university curriculum and his exuberant daydreams of unlimited power, to his anguished self-questioning and final terrified confrontation with the divine authority he defied, the play gives us access to the thoughts and feelings of a dramatic character whose fall, whether or not we feel it is deserved, seems to call for a fuller emotional response than the Epilogue's moralising can provide.
3 Hero and author
What, if anything, does Doctor Faustus tell us about its notorious author? Having read the play, do you feel that it supports or invalidates the dominant view of Marlowe as the bad boy of Elizabethan drama? There is certainly no doubt that the play has a defiant streak, that it calls into question the justice of a universe that places restrictions on human achievement and demands the eternal suffering of those who disobey its laws. On this level, it does seem to be the work of an author disinclined to take orthodox beliefs on trust, who bears some resemblance to the restless, irreverent personality described and decried by the likes of Baines and Beard. However, we have seen throughout this unit that this allegedly rebellious figure produced a play that, if it questions divine justice, also insists on the egoism and sheer wrong-headedness of its erring protagonist, and powerfully conveys his feelings of guilt and remorse. Perhaps the play's ambiguity is a measure of how risky it would have been for Marlowe to write a more overtly subversive drama; yet one could also argue that the play's orthodox sentiments are too deeply felt to be dismissed as camouflage for the author's heretical opinions. In the end, all we can say is that Marlowe's treatment of the Faust legend is neither simply orthodox nor simply radical. With its stubborn resistance to single, fixed meanings, Doctor Faustus leaves the character and beliefs of its author in shadow. Yet if we cannot finally assess the accuracy of Marlowe's reputation as a rebel and outsider, I hope that your reading of the play has made clear why he also has a reputation as a pioneer of English drama.
Figure 5: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Helen of Troy, 1863, oil on panel, 33 × 28 cm. Photo: Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg/The Bridgeman Art Library. A representation of Helen of Troy, reputed to be the most beautiful woman in the world, by the pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti
2 Reading Doctor Faustus
2.4 Act 5, Scene 2: Faustus's last soliloquy
The play draws to a close with Faustus's final soliloquy, which is supposed to mark the last hour of his life.
Activity
Please reread this speech now, thinking as you read about how Marlowe uses sound effects to heighten the emotional impact of the soliloquy.
Now read the discussion
Critics have often commented on how skilfully Marlowe uses rhythm to underline the passage of time. Look, for example, at the second line: ‘Now hast thou but one bare hour to live’ (l. 67). Because this is a sequence of monosyllabic words, it is not entirely clear which of them are stressed. It would certainly be possible for an actor to give a more or less equally strong stress to each word, which is why O'Connor points out that the line seems to echo the striking clock we have just heard (p. 108). This echo effect is strengthened by the internal rhyme between ‘Now’ and ‘thou’. The monosyllabic words continue into the next line until the last word: ‘And then thou must be damned perpetually’ (l. 68). The sudden appearance of a long five-syllable word focuses our attention on it and alerts us to what it is that Faustus most fears: an infinity of suffering. This sparks his desperate and futile plea for time to stand still, and Marlowe underlines the futility through the use of enjambement, or run-on lines:
Fair nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day … (ll. 71–3)
Faustus wants time to stop or slow down, but the way one line of verse tumbles into the next, accelerating rather than slowing down the rhythm, seems to signal the inevitable frustration of that wish. Faustus himself grasps this: ‘The stars move still; time runs; the clock will strike; / The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned’ (ll. 76–7).
Time really is the essence of this soliloquy, not only because the clock is ticking for Faustus, but because, as we have seen, what most horrifies him is the prospect not of suffering but of endless suffering. After the clock strikes the half hour, Faustus pleads with God to place a limit on his time in hell – ‘Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, / A hundred thousand, and at last be saved’ (ll. 103–04) – only to come back to the awful truth: ‘O, no end is limited to damnèd souls’ (l. 105).
One of the most striking aspects of the speech is the way it reverses the dreams of power and glory that Faustus expressed in his first soliloquy. In that speech he declared his desire to be more than human, to be a ‘mighty god’, but now, as he faces an eternity in hell, he wishes that he were less than human: he longs to be transformed into ‘some brutish beast’ whose soul would simply dissolve into the elements when it dies (ll. 109–12), or that his soul might ‘be changed into little waterdrops, / And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found’ (ll. 119–20). In his final soliloquy, Faustus's self-assertive spirit collapses into a desire for extinction; his aspiration to divinity into a longing for annihilation as he seeks desperately to escape from ‘the heavy wrath of God’ (l. 86).
Does this final humbling of Faustus encourage a feeling of satisfaction that he has got what he deserved? That seems to be how the Epilogue sees things. As in the Prologue, the Chorus begins by acknowledging Faustus's greatness, but in essence it is issuing a warning to the audience that his terrible fate is what awaits all those ‘forward wits’ who ‘practise more than heavenly power permits’ (ll. 7–8). Yet it is arguable that the final soliloquy's powerful evocation of Faustus's agony, coupled with its stress on the horrors of the never-ending suffering to which he has been sentenced, are designed to make us wonder whether the savage punishment really fits the crime. Feelings of pity and fear might seem a more appropriate response to Faustus's end than the Epilogue's moral, as tidy as its concluding rhyming couplet.
Some notes on Faustus: Use these to enhance your ideas for your production notes and choices. These notes come from Spark notes and the Open University if you quote them.
Doctor Faustus
Christopher Marlowe
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
Sin, Redemption, and Damnation
Insofar as Doctor Faustus is a Christian play, it deals with the themes at the heart of Christianity’s understanding of the world. First, there is the idea of sin, which Christianity defines as acts contrary to the will of God. In making a pact with Lucifer, Faustus commits what is in a sense the ultimate sin: not only does he disobey God, but he consciously and even eagerly renounces obedience to him, choosing instead to swear allegiance to the devil. In a Christian framework, however, even the worst deed can be forgiven through the redemptive power of Jesus Christ, God’s son, who, according to Christian belief, died on the cross for humankind’s sins. Thus, however terrible Faustus’s pact with Lucifer may be, the possibility of redemption is always open to him. All that he needs to do, theoretically, is ask God for forgiveness. The play offers countless moments in which Faustus considers doing just that, urged on by the good angel on his shoulder or by the old man in scene 12—both of whom can be seen either as emissaries of God, personifications of Faustus’s conscience, or both.
Each time, Faustus decides to remain loyal to hell rather than seek heaven. In the Christian framework, this turning away from God condemns him to spend an eternity in hell. Only at the end of his life does Faustus desire to repent, and, in the final scene, he cries out to Christ to redeem him. But it is too late for him to repent. In creating this moment in which Faustus is still alive but incapable of being redeemed, Marlowe steps outside the Christian worldview in order to maximize the dramatic power of the final scene. Having inhabited a Christian world for the entire play, Faustus spends his final moments in a slightly different universe, where redemption is no longer possible and where certain sins cannot be forgiven.
The Conflict Between Medieval and Renaissance Values
Scholar R.M. Dawkins famously remarked that Doctor Faustus tells “the story of a Renaissance man who had to pay the medieval price for being one.” While slightly simplistic, this quotation does get at the heart of one of the play’s central themes: the clash between the medieval world and the world of the emerging Renaissance. The medieval world placed God at the center of existence and shunted aside man and the natural world. The Renaissance was a movement that began in Italy in the fifteenth century and soon spread throughout Europe, carrying with it a new emphasis on the individual, on classical learning, and on scientific inquiry into the nature of the world. In the medieval academy, theology was the queen of the sciences. In the Renaissance, though, secular matters took center stage.
Faustus, despite being a magician rather than a scientist (a blurred distinction in the sixteenth century), explicitly rejects the medieval model. In his opening speech in scene 1, he goes through every field of scholarship, beginning with logic and proceeding through medicine, law, and theology, quoting an ancient authority for each: Aristotle on logic, Galen on medicine, the Byzantine emperor Justinian on law, and the Bible on religion. In the medieval model, tradition and authority, not individual inquiry, were key. But in this soliloquy, Faustus considers and rejects this medieval way of thinking. He resolves, in full Renaissance spirit, to accept no limits, traditions, or authorities in his quest for knowledge, wealth, and power.
The play’s attitude toward the clash between medieval and Renaissance values is ambiguous. Marlowe seems hostile toward the ambitions of Faustus, and, as Dawkins notes, he keeps his tragic hero squarely in the medieval world, where eternal damnation is the price of human pride. Yet Marlowe himself was no pious traditionalist, and it is tempting to see in Faustus—as many readers have—a hero of the new modern world, a world free of God, religion, and the limits that these imposed on humanity. Faustus may pay a medieval price, this reading suggests, but his successors will go further than he and suffer less, as we have in modern times. On the other hand, the disappointment and mediocrity that follow Faustus’s pact with the devil, as he descends from grand ambitions to petty conjuring tricks, might suggest a contrasting interpretation. Marlowe may be suggesting that the new, modern spirit, though ambitious and glittering, will lead only to a Faustian dead end.
Power as a Corrupting Influence
Early in the play, before he agrees to the pact with Lucifer, Faustus is full of ideas for how to use the power that he seeks. He imagines piling up great wealth, but he also aspires to plumb the mysteries of the universe and to remake the map of Europe. Though they may not be entirely admirable, these plans are ambitious and inspire awe, if not sympathy. They lend a grandeur to Faustus’s schemes and make his quest for personal power seem almost heroic, a sense that is reinforced by the eloquence of his early soliloquies.
Once Faustus actually gains the practically limitless power that he so desires, however, his horizons seem to narrow. Everything is possible to him, but his ambition is somehow sapped. Instead of the grand designs that he contemplates early on, he contents himself with performing conjuring tricks for kings and noblemen and takes a strange delight in using his magic to play practical jokes on simple folks. It is not that power has corrupted Faustus by making him evil: indeed, Faustus’s behavior after he sells his soul hardly rises to the level of true wickedness. Rather, gaining absolute power corrupts Faustus by making him mediocre and by transforming his boundless ambition into a meaningless delight in petty celebrity.
In the Christian framework of the play, one can argue that true greatness can be achieved only with God’s blessing. By cutting himself off from the creator of the universe, Faustus is condemned to mediocrity. He has gained the whole world, but he does not know what to do with it.
The Divided Nature of Man
Faustus is constantly undecided about whether he should repent and return to God or continue to follow his pact with Lucifer. His internal struggle goes on throughout the play, as part of him of wants to do good and serve God, but part of him (the dominant part, it seems) lusts after the power that Mephastophilis promises. The good angel and the evil angel, both of whom appear at Faustus’s shoulder in order to urge him in different directions, symbolize this struggle. While these angels may be intended as an actual pair of supernatural beings, they clearly represent Faustus’s divided will, which compels Faustus to commit to Mephastophilis but also to question this commitment continually.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Magic and the Supernatural
The supernatural pervades Doctor Faustus, appearing everywhere in the story. Angels and devils flit about, magic spells are cast, dragons pull chariots (albeit offstage), and even fools like the two ostlers, Robin and Rafe, can learn enough magic to summon demons. Still, it is worth noting that nothing terribly significant is accomplished through magic. Faustus plays tricks on people, conjures up grapes, and explores the cosmos on a dragon, but he does not fundamentally reshape the world. The magic power that Mephastophilis grants him is more like a toy than an awesome, earth-shaking ability. Furthermore, the real drama of the play, despite all the supernatural frills and pyrotechnics, takes place within Faustus’s vacillating mind and soul, as he first sells his soul to Lucifer and then considers repenting. In this sense, the magic is almost incidental to the real story of Faustus’s struggle with himself, which Marlowe intended not as a fantastical battle but rather as a realistic portrait of a human being with a will divided between good and evil.
Practical Jokes
Once he gains his awesome powers, Faustus does not use them to do great deeds. Instead, he delights in playing tricks on people: he makes horns sprout from the knight’s head and sells the horse-courser an enchanted horse. Such magical practical jokes seem to be Faustus’s chief amusement, and Marlowe uses them to illustrate Faustus’s decline from a great, prideful scholar into a bored, mediocre magician with no higher ambition than to have a laugh at the expense of a collection of simpletons.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Blood
Blood plays multiple symbolic roles in the play. When Faustus signs away his soul, he signs in blood, symbolizing the permanent and supernatural nature of this pact. His blood congeals on the page, however, symbolizing, perhaps, his own body’s revolt against what he intends to do. Meanwhile, Christ’s blood, which Faustus says he sees running across the sky during his terrible last night, symbolizes the sacrifice that Jesus, according to Christian belief, made on the cross; this sacrifice opened the way for humankind to repent its sins and be saved. Faustus, of course, in his proud folly, fails to take this path to salvation.
Faustus’s Rejection of the Ancient Authorities
In scene 1, Faustus goes through a list of the major fields of human knowledge—logic, medicine, law, and theology—and cites for each an ancient authority (Aristotle, Galen, Justinian, and Jerome’s Bible, respectively). He then rejects all of these figures in favor of magic. This rejection symbolizes Faustus’s break with the medieval world, which prized authority above all else, in favor of a more modern spirit of free inquiry, in which experimentation and innovation trump the assertions of Greek philosophers and the Bible.
The Good Angel and the Evil Angel
The angels appear at Faustus’s shoulder early on in the play—the good angel urging him to repent and serve God, the evil angel urging him to follow his lust for power and serve Lucifer. The two symbolize his divided will, part of which wants to do good and part of which is sunk in sin.
Faustus as a Tragic Hero
There are different views of Dr. Faustus.
There may be different or varying ways of looking at certain characters and revealing them as a certain type of character. In Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus, the main character, Doctor Faustus, could be described and revealed as a tragic hero, similarly to other tragic characters, such as Sophocles’ Oedipus and Shakespeare’s Hamlet may also be described as such. There are different features and characteristics, which would make these characters be considered as tragic heroes rather than another type of character.
One of the features that characterize a tragic hero is that this type of character “will mistakenly bring his own downfall”, (McManus) which is referred to as “hamartia”. In Marlowe’s play, the main character, Faustus, brings his own downfall by the end of the story. In his opening speech, in Act 1 Scene 1, Faustus tells and explains the audience and the readers that he has skilled himself in law, medicine and divinity, but he wants to know more than what he knows and also know more about other things. This aspect of Faustus, his curiosity to learn and know more, may be thought of as part of the human condition and human nature and isn’t something that is seen as wrong in our society.
However, this aspect also blinds Faustus from a sense of reason and right from wrong. This eventually leads the main character of Doctor Faustus to make an agreement with the devil, which results in Faustus’ downfall. This aspect of Faustus’ character and personality is similar to Oedipus, in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Oedipus’ pride blinds him from seeing truth, reason, as well as the difference from right and wrong, which leads to and results in the character’s downfall and to the main character of Sophocles’ play, Oedipus, stabbing his eyes out.
This feature will lead to the characteristic and fact that, by doing these mistakes or “flaws”, the tragic heroes are doomed from the beginning and the audience and readers know the fate of these characters is sealed. And for the tragic hero be just that, a tragic hero or tragic character, this type of character has to be doomed from the beginning of the play, but doesn’t hold any responsibility for possessing his flaw or fault. This may be seen in Faustus. From the beginning of the play, from the time that he tells the audience and readers that he wants to acquire more knowledge and especially when he signs the, the audience and readers may that Faustus is doomed to have a less than perfect and happy ending. Much like Faustus, Oedipus’ fate is sealed when he refuses to see the truth, even when it’s standing right in front of him. Though these two tragic heroes may feel some sense of guilt about their actions, neither Faustus nor Oedipus seem feel some sense of guilt or responsibility of their flaw.
A third feature or characteristic that the tragic hero should have is that “[t]he protagonist should be renowned and prosperous”. (McManus) The audience and readers may witness and see this characteristic in the main character of Doctor Faustus. Early on in the play, the audience and readers knows that Faustus is well renowned and with some reputation. Over the course of the play, there are several people, mainly three scholars, talk about Faustus, his knowledge, and such aspects of this character. The audience and readers may see some signs of prosperity in Faustus. In Act 1 Scene 1, Faustus calls in his servant and student, which reveal not only that Faustus is prosperous, but also renown. The reason for this is that people at this time wanted to send their children study would to well known people.
It could also be said that Oedipus and Hamlet are also prosperous and renown. Oedipus is king of Thebes, which leads the readers and audience to assume that he is fairly prosperous. The readers and audience may also assume that he is renown, because the citizens of Thebes come to Oedipus, when the city is attacked with plague, in the prologue. Hamlet is a prince, which also may lead us to suggest that he is fairly prosperous and successful.
A fourth feature and aspect involving the tragic hero is that this character must support the plot of the story, which is similar to many other protagonists. This may be easily seen with Faustus, in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. It is Faustus’ actions, which seem to lead and direct the plot and the entire story of the play. This is the same situation with Oedipus and Hamlet, in Oedipus Rex and Hamlet. Both Oedipus and Hamlet are tragic heroes, who both lead and guide the story and its plot. This may be also part of and applied to the human life, as most of us make our own decisions and lead and drive our own lives, much like Faustus, Oedipus, and Hamlet guide the plays they are in.
A fifth feature, which is attributed to the tragic hero, is that the main character must be realistic or present some sense of realism. This may help the audience and readers relate to the character. This aspect of the tragic hero is meant for the audience to relate to or feel some form of connection with the characters and the story of the play. Faustus does have a certain sense of realism to him. For one, the main character of the play Doctor Faustus makes mistakes, which is part of the human condition and is something that every human being does. This also adds to a sense of realism to Faustus. This is the same for Oedipus and Hamlet, who also both make mistakes.
There is also the fact that Faustus wants to acquire more knowledge, which adds to the realism of the play. Acquire knowledge is another aspect that is part of the human condition. Learning and understanding more and more subjects and obtaining more knowledge is part of how we can grow and evolve as human beings, as individuals and as a society.
This sense of realism in the tragic hero may introduce pity. This is a crucial aspect to the tragedy genre. If the audience and the readers pity or sympathizes with the main character, this may lead to suggest that the audience and readers feel some form of connection with the hero of the play. In order for this to occur, the character must have some realistic features. This aspect of the tragic hero of Doctor Faustus in relation to the audience and readers may vary. There may be some who do pity Faustus, while other may feel no pity for this character. The same can be said of the characters Oedipus and Hamlet. Several people may feel sympathy for these two characters, while others won’t sympathize with these characters. This aspect and feature is part of the human condition and adds to the realism of the character and of the play. It is impossible to like or sympathize with everyone.
These aspects are a few attributes and features that characterize a tragic hero. Most of these attributes may be applied to Faustus, as well as other tragic heroes, such as Hamlet and Oedipus. But, like every human being and characters that exist, these three tragic heroes aren’t perfect and do make mistakes.
Reading Doctor Faustus ( Open University notes)
2.2 Act 2, Scene 1: Faustus and God ( Calvinism)
By the end of Act 1, Faustus appears to have made up his mind to sell his soul to the devil in exchange for twenty-four years in which he will ‘live in all voluptuousness’ (1.3.94). Act 2, Scene 1 opens with another soliloquy.
Activity
Please look now at this soliloquy (page 15, lines 1–14). How would you describe its mood? Jot down any points you think are important about the way the language helps to create this mood.
Faustus appears to be wrestling with his conscience in this soliloquy. He clearly feels the urge to repent, so why doesn't he? It is interesting that although he delivers this speech before he has signed his contract with Lucifer, he tells himself in the first line that he must ‘needs be damned’; in other words, he sees his own damnation as unavoidable. So what's the point, he asks himself, of thinking of God or heaven? The repetition of the word ‘despair’ in lines 4 and 5 emphasises Faustus's hopeless state of mind. If you count the syllables in lines 2 and 10, you will see that each line has only six. This means that in performance the actor would have to pause for a moment because the lines are shorter than normal, and this would have the effect of drawing attention to the sentiments expressed in the two lines, that is, to Faustus's despairing conviction that he cannot be saved and that God does not love him.
Why should Faustus feel so strongly that he is damned, when at this point in the play there seems to be every reason to believe that repentance will secure God's forgiveness? Some critics, most notably Alan Sinfield (1983) and John Stachniewski (1991), have argued that Marlowe is exploring the mental and emotional impact of the form of Protestantism that prevailed in England during the late sixteenth century, based on the doctrines of the French-born Protestant reformer Jean Calvin. Calvinist theology developed and changed over time, but at this historical juncture it stressed the sinfulness and depravity of human nature. In contrast to the traditional view of salvation as something that an individual could earn by living a virtuous Christian life, Calvinism argued that salvation is entirely God's gift rather than the result of any human effort. Moreover, according to the doctrine of predestination, God gives that gift only to a fortunate few whom he has chosen; everyone else faces an eternity of hellfire.
This theology formed the official doctrine of the Elizabethan Church. However bleak it sounds, its effect on believers was often positive; for those persuaded by their own virtuous impulses that they were chosen by God, it proved an enormous source of comfort and well-being, perhaps especially for poorer members of society, for whom the conviction of divine favour could be empowering. But for some, these doctrines provoked a sense of powerlessness and anxious fear about their spiritual destiny. It is possible to argue that Marlowe's Faustus is a depiction of one of these casualties of Calvinist doctrine, and that this helps to explain not only his opening dismissal of Christianity as obsessed with sin and damnation, but his repeated inability to repent. As in the soliloquy that opens Act 2, he cannot bring himself to believe that God favours him and has granted him salvation. The desire for repentance is overwhelmed by a still stronger belief, consistent with Calvinist doctrine in its early modern form, that the chances are that God does not love him at all.
However, it isn't necessary to believe that Doctor Faustus is specifically about Calvinism to feel that its portrait of the Christian God who vindictively ‘conspires’ Faustus's overthrow is not entirely flattering. Numerous critics have been troubled by a particular episode in the play that seems to cast doubt on the presence of divine mercy and benevolence. This is the moment in Act 2, Scene 3 when Faustus makes his most serious attempt at repentance. He quarrels with Mephistopheles, the Good Angel (unusually) gets the last word in the debate with the Evil Angel, and Faustus calls out to Christ ‘to save distressèd Faustus’ soul’ (2.3.85). And what happens? Lucifer, Beelzebub and Mephistopheles enter. Why does God not intervene to save Faustus? The stony silence that greets his plea for divine assistance seems to call into question the traditional Christian notion of a loving and merciful God.
Other critics have argued that God is silent on this occasion because Faustus's repentance is insincere, and that he consistently fails to repent not because he is suffering from theologically-induced despair, but because he is afraid of the devils and constantly distracted by the frivolous entertainments they stage for him, like the pageant of the seven deadly sins which follows this episode. One could argue as well that the play does represent the Christian God as loving and merciful, and shows human beings to be free to shape their own spiritual destinies. The Good and Evil Angels, after all, seem to give dramatic form to Faustus's freedom to choose: he has a choice between good and evil, and he chooses evil in full knowledge of what the consequences will be. As late as Act 5, Scene 1, the Old Man appears on stage to drive home the availability of God's mercy if only Faustus will sincerely repent his sins. Looked at from this perspective, it is Faustus and not God who is responsible for the terrible fate that greets him at the close of the play.
This critical debate serves to remind us that it is difficult to evaluate how much sympathy the play arouses for its protagonist without taking into consideration its treatment of the Christian God. If you think the God of the play is fundamentally benevolent then you are less likely to feel favourably disposed towards Faustus than if you think he comes across as a harsh and punitive cosmic despot. It is clear, though, that the play offers textual evidence in support of both views. Once again, we find Marlowe refusing to be pinned down to one interpretation.
2 Reading Doctor Faustus
2.3 Acts 3 and 4: What does Faustus achieve?
Act 2 points repeatedly to the failure of Faustus's attempt to secure power and autonomy through his pact with Lucifer: in Act 2, Scene 1 Mephistopheles declines his request for a wife, and in Act 2, Scene 3 he refuses to tell him who made the world. Acts 3 and 4 cover the bulk of the twenty-four-year period that Faustus purchased with his soul. How do they make us feel about what he actually achieves through his embracing of black magic? Are we encouraged to feel it was worth it?
Activity
Please have another look at Act 4, Scenes 1 and 2 (pages 35–43). On the basis of these scenes, would you say that Faustus has realised his dreams of power and pleasure? What evidence would you offer in support of your view?
Now read the discussion
Yet is this all there is to say on this matter? As usual with this play, there is another side to the story, especially if we consider Act 3. Earlier we looked at Faustus's desire to ‘chase the Prince of Parma from our land’, and speculated how, in a climate of military conflict with Spain, it might have endeared him to the play's original audience. At the time of the play's first performances, the Catholic Church would have been viewed by many with comparable hostility. In 1570 the Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth I and released her Catholic subjects from their allegiance to the Protestant heretic queen; in 1580 he proclaimed that her assassination would not be a mortal sin. Read with this context in mind, Act 3, Scene 1, in which Faustus makes a fool of the Pope under cover of his magician's cloak of invisibility, looks like a bid for audience approval, by its portrayal of the Catholic Church as decadent and corrupt, and mired in absurd superstitions like the ceremony of excommunication. By casting Faustus in the role of Protestant hero, this scene seems designed to elicit a favourable response to his conjuring skill.
We need to remember as well the limitations of the theatre, in particular of Marlowe's open-air theatre, where plays were performed in broad daylight with little in the way of props, scenery or artificial lighting see Figure 4). In these conditions, it is not hard to grasp why so many of Faustus's adventures as a magician are reported rather than enacted: the Chorus to Act 3, for example, tells us that in order to learn ‘the secrets of astronomy’ (3.1.2), Faustus scaled Mount Olympus ‘in a chariot burning bright / Drawn by the strength of yoky dragons' necks’ (3.1.5–6). This sounds anything but a hollow experience, and when discussing Acts 3 and 4 we should give due weight to the descriptions Marlowe provides of activities he was unable to enact on stage, especially given that these descriptions probably had a powerful impact on the play's original audience, who were much more accustomed to listening to long and often complex speeches (sermons, for example) than we tend to be nowadays.
Figure 4: William Dudley, The 1587 Rose Theatre: A Cutaway View, 1999 for the onsite exhibition which was also designed by Dudley. Used with the permission of William Dudley. The Rose was the site of the first recorded performance of Doctor Faustus on 30 September 1594
The mention of the play in performance leads us to an important characteristic of drama, which makes it different from other literary forms such as the novel and poetry: plays are written to be performed whereas novels and poems are written to be read. This means that a play is not so much a fixed and finished literary text as a blueprint for actors and directors who will have to make decisions about how it is going to be translated from the page to the stage. They will have to ask themselves questions, such as what is actually happening on stage at any given moment? How should a particular speech be spoken by the actor playing the part, and which actor is best suited to play the part? A director will also need to make decisions about set design, costumes, lighting, music and other sound effects. All of these aspects of performance will contribute to the meaning of the play, and they will differ from one production to another.
Activity
So how might consideration of Doctor Faustus as a text intended for performance affect our response to Faustus's career as a magician? A moment ago we discussed the way in which Act 4 in particular seems to emphasise the gap between Faustus's aspirations and his actual achievement. Does thinking about these scenes in terms of performance open up different possibilities?
Now read the discussion
The same might be said of the two appearances of Helen of Troy in Act 5, Scene 1. This scene is structured in such a way as to establish a clear contrast between Faustus's two encounters: with the Old Man, who urges piety and repentance, and with the legendary beauty Helen of Troy (Figure 5). Faustus chooses Helen, and many critics have echoed the Old Man's stern disapproval. Yet the critic Thomas Healy points out that in the theatre Helen is usually represented as so ‘strikingly beautiful’ that even if one agrees on a rational level that Faustus would be better off with the Old Man, on a visual level the Old Man loses out to Helen, who engages what Healy calls the audience's ‘emotional and aesthetic sympathy’ (Healy, 2004, p. 183). By the same token, a director might choose to portray Helen instead as a malign influence on the hero.
Reading Doctor Faustus
2.5 Morality play or tragedy?
Pity and fear are the emotions that, according to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, are aroused by the experience of watching a tragedy. At the start of this chapter we asked whether Doctor Faustus is a late sixteenth-century morality play, designed to teach its audience about the spiritual dangers of excessive learning and ambition. When the play was published, first in 1604 and then in 1616, it was called a ‘tragical history’; if we take ‘history’ here to refer not to a particular dramatic genre but more generally to a narrative or story, then the publisher described the play as a tragic tale. So what is a tragedy? In fact, ‘tragedy’ is a notoriously difficult literary term to define, for it seems to take various forms in different historical periods. But for the sake of discussion, we can fall back on the broad strokes of Aristotle's description (in the Poetics) of the tragedies he had seen in Athens in the fourth century BCE: tragedies are plays that represent a central action or plot that is serious and significant. They involve a socially prominent main character who is neither evil nor morally perfect, who moves from a state of happiness to a state of misery because of some frailty or error of judgement: this is the tragic hero, the remarkable individual whose fall stimulates in the spectator intense feelings of pity and fear.
Figure 6: This is the title page of the 1620 edition of the ‘B’ text of Doctor Faustus, first published in 1616: The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. British Library, London. c. 1891–6 C.39.c.26. By permission of the British Library
To what extent does Doctor Faustus conform to this description of a tragic play? Well, it follows the classic tragic trajectory in so far as it starts out with the protagonist at the pinnacle of his achievement and ends with his fall into misery, death and (in this case) damnation. From the beginning the play identifies its protagonist not as ‘everyman’, the morality play hero who ‘stands for’ all of us, but as the exceptional protagonist of tragic drama. Moreover, it is certainly possible to argue that Faustus brings about his own demise through his catastrophically ill-advised decision to embrace black magic. Perhaps most importantly, we have seen in the course of this unit that Faustus is consistently presented to us as an intermediate character, neither wholly good nor wholly bad: both brilliant and arrogant, learned and foolish, consumed with intellectual curiosity and possessed of insatiable appetites for worldly pleasure, a conscience-stricken rebel against divine power. We have seen as well how skilfully Marlowe uses the soliloquy to create a powerful illusion of a complex inner life: from Faustus's first proud rejection of the university curriculum and his exuberant daydreams of unlimited power, to his anguished self-questioning and final terrified confrontation with the divine authority he defied, the play gives us access to the thoughts and feelings of a dramatic character whose fall, whether or not we feel it is deserved, seems to call for a fuller emotional response than the Epilogue's moralising can provide.
3 Hero and author
What, if anything, does Doctor Faustus tell us about its notorious author? Having read the play, do you feel that it supports or invalidates the dominant view of Marlowe as the bad boy of Elizabethan drama? There is certainly no doubt that the play has a defiant streak, that it calls into question the justice of a universe that places restrictions on human achievement and demands the eternal suffering of those who disobey its laws. On this level, it does seem to be the work of an author disinclined to take orthodox beliefs on trust, who bears some resemblance to the restless, irreverent personality described and decried by the likes of Baines and Beard. However, we have seen throughout this unit that this allegedly rebellious figure produced a play that, if it questions divine justice, also insists on the egoism and sheer wrong-headedness of its erring protagonist, and powerfully conveys his feelings of guilt and remorse. Perhaps the play's ambiguity is a measure of how risky it would have been for Marlowe to write a more overtly subversive drama; yet one could also argue that the play's orthodox sentiments are too deeply felt to be dismissed as camouflage for the author's heretical opinions. In the end, all we can say is that Marlowe's treatment of the Faust legend is neither simply orthodox nor simply radical. With its stubborn resistance to single, fixed meanings, Doctor Faustus leaves the character and beliefs of its author in shadow. Yet if we cannot finally assess the accuracy of Marlowe's reputation as a rebel and outsider, I hope that your reading of the play has made clear why he also has a reputation as a pioneer of English drama.
Figure 5: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Helen of Troy, 1863, oil on panel, 33 × 28 cm. Photo: Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg/The Bridgeman Art Library. A representation of Helen of Troy, reputed to be the most beautiful woman in the world, by the pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti
2 Reading Doctor Faustus
2.4 Act 5, Scene 2: Faustus's last soliloquy
The play draws to a close with Faustus's final soliloquy, which is supposed to mark the last hour of his life.
Activity
Please reread this speech now, thinking as you read about how Marlowe uses sound effects to heighten the emotional impact of the soliloquy.
Now read the discussion
Critics have often commented on how skilfully Marlowe uses rhythm to underline the passage of time. Look, for example, at the second line: ‘Now hast thou but one bare hour to live’ (l. 67). Because this is a sequence of monosyllabic words, it is not entirely clear which of them are stressed. It would certainly be possible for an actor to give a more or less equally strong stress to each word, which is why O'Connor points out that the line seems to echo the striking clock we have just heard (p. 108). This echo effect is strengthened by the internal rhyme between ‘Now’ and ‘thou’. The monosyllabic words continue into the next line until the last word: ‘And then thou must be damned perpetually’ (l. 68). The sudden appearance of a long five-syllable word focuses our attention on it and alerts us to what it is that Faustus most fears: an infinity of suffering. This sparks his desperate and futile plea for time to stand still, and Marlowe underlines the futility through the use of enjambement, or run-on lines:
Fair nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day … (ll. 71–3)
Faustus wants time to stop or slow down, but the way one line of verse tumbles into the next, accelerating rather than slowing down the rhythm, seems to signal the inevitable frustration of that wish. Faustus himself grasps this: ‘The stars move still; time runs; the clock will strike; / The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned’ (ll. 76–7).
Time really is the essence of this soliloquy, not only because the clock is ticking for Faustus, but because, as we have seen, what most horrifies him is the prospect not of suffering but of endless suffering. After the clock strikes the half hour, Faustus pleads with God to place a limit on his time in hell – ‘Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, / A hundred thousand, and at last be saved’ (ll. 103–04) – only to come back to the awful truth: ‘O, no end is limited to damnèd souls’ (l. 105).
One of the most striking aspects of the speech is the way it reverses the dreams of power and glory that Faustus expressed in his first soliloquy. In that speech he declared his desire to be more than human, to be a ‘mighty god’, but now, as he faces an eternity in hell, he wishes that he were less than human: he longs to be transformed into ‘some brutish beast’ whose soul would simply dissolve into the elements when it dies (ll. 109–12), or that his soul might ‘be changed into little waterdrops, / And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found’ (ll. 119–20). In his final soliloquy, Faustus's self-assertive spirit collapses into a desire for extinction; his aspiration to divinity into a longing for annihilation as he seeks desperately to escape from ‘the heavy wrath of God’ (l. 86).
Does this final humbling of Faustus encourage a feeling of satisfaction that he has got what he deserved? That seems to be how the Epilogue sees things. As in the Prologue, the Chorus begins by acknowledging Faustus's greatness, but in essence it is issuing a warning to the audience that his terrible fate is what awaits all those ‘forward wits’ who ‘practise more than heavenly power permits’ (ll. 7–8). Yet it is arguable that the final soliloquy's powerful evocation of Faustus's agony, coupled with its stress on the horrors of the never-ending suffering to which he has been sentenced, are designed to make us wonder whether the savage punishment really fits the crime. Feelings of pity and fear might seem a more appropriate response to Faustus's end than the Epilogue's moral, as tidy as its concluding rhyming couplet.
Monday 22 March 2010
Mock exam Thursday 25th March
Mock paper for set text
1)
A) Outline for your performers two ways they might indicate the relationship between Faustus and Mephistopheles ( 4)
B) Consider the appropriate rehearsal techniques you might use in order to highlight the different personalities of Faustus and Mephistopheles. (6)
C) Explain to your performers how you intend to work on developing the relationship between Faustus and the pope and me Mephistopheles in this extract, giving reasons for your approach, supported by clear examples. (10)
2) As a director, outline and justify how you will explore and communicate your themes in a production of Faustus in your chosen performance space
1)
A) Outline for your performers two ways they might indicate the relationship between Faustus and Mephistopheles ( 4)
B) Consider the appropriate rehearsal techniques you might use in order to highlight the different personalities of Faustus and Mephistopheles. (6)
C) Explain to your performers how you intend to work on developing the relationship between Faustus and the pope and me Mephistopheles in this extract, giving reasons for your approach, supported by clear examples. (10)
2) As a director, outline and justify how you will explore and communicate your themes in a production of Faustus in your chosen performance space
Thursday 4 March 2010
AS level exam practical date
A date for your diary
6th May 2010 6pm in the Phoenix Theatre is the practical exam where AS drama students will perform "The Maids " by Jean Genet and monologues and duologues to an outside examiner
6th May 2010 6pm in the Phoenix Theatre is the practical exam where AS drama students will perform "The Maids " by Jean Genet and monologues and duologues to an outside examiner
Monday 1 March 2010
drama year 13 question for thursday timed essay guidance
As a director outline and justify your approach to a production of the play staged in your chosen performance space. (30 marks)
• These are the elements you need to address in this question:
• How the production will impact on a modern audience so therefore its themes and message and how you intend to convey that to an audience
• Choice of space and venue and why, link to audience actor relationship and practitioner.
• Style of the play and the choices you have made in relation to its original style and the practitioner you have chosen to convey your ideas in acting etc.
• Design elements, eg lighting/set/costumes/ props/staging will come together within an overall interpretation but with specific reference to the chosen space and venue.
This is a question about the performance of the play, it is not specifically about the play and the candidate needs to apply appropriate drama and theatre terminology in order to be able to respond effectively.
• Explain why a particular practitioner has been chosen or why the ideas of a particular recognised practitioner have been adopted. There may be reference to historic features that have influenced the interpretation and how these feature in the staging ideas.
In order to gain all 30 marks you will have to:
1. Demonstrate an outstanding understanding of drama and theatre terminology and offer consideration of the play in relation to a director working on an interpretation of a text and question, which shows imagination, based upon knowledge gained throughout the course.
2. Will be able to give convey an excellent understanding of the play and are able to help their audience understand the play through directorial choices and guidance to enhance their understanding of it further.
3. There will be examples of how a production can be made visually and practically appealing, without losing sight of the original performance values.
4. Examples of how the understanding of drama will have an impact on the audience and the candidate will offer some examples from their interpretation for the production in support.
5. There will be a distinct reference to stylistic or historic elements in the proposed interpretation of the play and there will be an excellent understanding of the likely aesthetic impact on the production and how this compliments the meaning and structure of the play.
6. The chosen space and venue will be identified and how the candidate may explore the performance will be detailed in relation to this.
Give quotes from practitioners, analyse quotes, give example from the text and analyse to back up your point.
Try not to make more than four points in depth.
Friday 12 February 2010
Year 12 Drama half term work
Over half term I would like you to work on the Brecht notes for your final notes on Friday.
Also James and Theo need to be working through the list I sent you for sound and set for The maids and working on character development and units and objectives for your duologues.
Sophie and Molly need to work on the character development of your characters in the maids and write a plot summary and all the main plot points of the play. Also create a character arc for your character, what does she say about herself, what does she say about the other, what is her super objective for the play? Also work on your monologues and develop your character biography.
Also you should all have learnt your lines of your monologues and duologues
year 13 drama work half term
Carrying on work on Faustus
1 Create a 50 minute rehearsal for any scene in the play and be ready to direct the scene with the other members of the group on the first lesson back.
2 Carry on developing your idea with notes on costume/setting with diagrams/ character development/practitioner etc.
Wednesday 3 February 2010
year 13 faustus timeline and links
1.
1564
Feb 6, 1564 - Christoper Marlow Christopher Marlow Christopher Marlowe was born on February 6, 1564 (Discovering Christopher Marlowe 2), in Canterbury, England, and baptized at St. George's Chur... Tragedy In Drama Tragedy and Drama In a range of dramatic works from ...
Show more
From Is Dr. Faustus A Medieval Morality Play Or Is It A Renaissance Drama? - … - Related web pages
www.bignerds.com/essays/Dr-Faustus-Medieval ...
3.
1587
1587 - The Rose , built in 1587, was an original venue for the plays of Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Its remains are present in SE1 today and, once it is fully analysed, the Rose's remains will be the only available evidence of an original ...
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From Rose Theatre appeal launched - Related web pages
www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/428
5.
1590
1590 - 344. Marlowe's " Tamberlaine." — Christopher Marlowe's (1564-1593) " Tambourlaine the Great," was published in 1590. It may bo read in Mr Havelock Ellis's edition of the best plays of Marlowe. Ancient Pistol.—The Second Part of King Henry IV. ii.
From Monarchs Retired from Business - Related web pages
books.google.com/books?id=7fsVAAAAYAAJ&pg ...
7.
1592
1592 - The novel's title also alludes to Christopher Marlowe's classic play, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus written in 1592. [edit] Other composite elements Mann's characters are composites, not specific counterparts to individuals. Where names do seem to allude ...
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From Doctor Faustus (Thomas Mann novel) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Faustus_ ...
9.
1593
1593 - The Marlowe Inquest - Christopher Marlowe died in Deptford, Kent, in 1593, in a tavern brawl. Despite the verdict of an inquest held that year, mystery still surrounds his death. Feel the anguish of the English king whose reckless relationship with another man ...
Show more
From Edward II - DVD
www.bbcamericashop.com/dvd/edward-ii-15085.html
11.
May 1593 - Part of the report from Richard Baines to the Privy Council in May 1593, stating what Christopher Marlowe was supposed to have said. The report listed one and a half pages of similar accusations. That Christ was illegitimate and Mary his mother dishonest... that ...
Show more
From The Making of the United Kingdom and Black Peoples of the Americas
books.google.com/books?id=xpZy8nEtE4cC&pg=PA41 ...
13.
May 30, 1593 - Christopher Marlowe died on May 30th, 1593. Answer verified with This answer was verified with Encyclopedia.com Get more facts and information about Christopher Marlowe from Encyclopedia of World Biography at Encyclopedia.com.
From When did Christopher Marlowe die? | Smart QandA: Answers and facts … - Related web pages
qanda.encyclopedia.com/question/did ...
15.
1604
1604 - A couple of centuries earlier, a prior version of the story entitled The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Dr. John Faustus had made its way from Germany to England. There it was picked up and rewritten by Christopher Marlowe in 1604. Dr ...
Show more
From Green-Eyed Monsters and Good Samaritans - Related web pages
books.google.com/books?id=yZlT3JzDxuoC&pg ...
Tuesday 26 January 2010
Year 12 theatre studies rehearsal schedule
Rehearsal schedule
Week one: Tuesday 26th Jan
The maids cuts and revisions and vision
Start off all set design and sound
Scene 1
Character work.
Thurs 28th Jan
Monologues duologues final choices and start research.
Fri: written work: Theatre review final handed in.
Week Two: Tues 2nd Feb
Opening sequence
Page 35-38
Research for James and Theo
Thurs 4th Feb
Monologues and duologues write a plot synopsis/character biography / objectives and units
Friday: Stanislavski notes final draft. Handed in
Week Three: Tues 9th Feb
Pages 39- 50
Ist ideas for sound and set for maids prod seen.
Thurs 11th Feb
Individual tutorials
Friday 12th Feb
Brecht notes final draft handed in.
HALF TERM
Week Four: Tues 23rd Feb
51-61 pages
Theo drawings and sourcing set and interview set designer
James sourcing sound and interview of sound engineer.
Thurs 25th feb :indiv monologues and duologues tutorials
Fri: 26th : james and theo indiv tut / girls work on scenes or research/ costume etc.
Week five March 2nd
Pages 66-79
Thurs 4th March: present monologues duologues to each other peer assessment.
Fri 5th Written coursework for monologues/duologues.
Week 6 tues 9th march pages 79-90
Thurs 11th march indiv tut for monologues duologues.
Fri 12th march Theo and James presentation of work so far/ girls work on lines and scenes already looked at.
Week 7 : tues 16th march
Pages 91-100
Powerpoint worked on by james/ theo
Thurs 18th march indiv monologues/ duologues.
Friday 19th march written work
Week 8
Tues 23rd march run through
Thurs 25th march present monologues duologues
Fri 26th march revision work for easter.
Week 9 tues 30th march
Run through play and establish work over Easter.
Easter holiday.
Week 9 Thurs 22nd April: Run through of play in theatre.
Friday : written work.
Week 10 tues 27th April: run through of play / pres of theo and james
Thursday 29th April: present monologues etc.
Fri 30th written work
Weekend reh: 1st may /2nd may 10am – 4pm compulsory
Week 11 Tues 4th may:
Dress rehearsal in lesson and 4pm -6pm
Wed 5th may: open dress rehearsal 6pm
Thrus 5th May EXAM PERFORMANCE Time TBA
Week one: Tuesday 26th Jan
The maids cuts and revisions and vision
Start off all set design and sound
Scene 1
Character work.
Thurs 28th Jan
Monologues duologues final choices and start research.
Fri: written work: Theatre review final handed in.
Week Two: Tues 2nd Feb
Opening sequence
Page 35-38
Research for James and Theo
Thurs 4th Feb
Monologues and duologues write a plot synopsis/character biography / objectives and units
Friday: Stanislavski notes final draft. Handed in
Week Three: Tues 9th Feb
Pages 39- 50
Ist ideas for sound and set for maids prod seen.
Thurs 11th Feb
Individual tutorials
Friday 12th Feb
Brecht notes final draft handed in.
HALF TERM
Week Four: Tues 23rd Feb
51-61 pages
Theo drawings and sourcing set and interview set designer
James sourcing sound and interview of sound engineer.
Thurs 25th feb :indiv monologues and duologues tutorials
Fri: 26th : james and theo indiv tut / girls work on scenes or research/ costume etc.
Week five March 2nd
Pages 66-79
Thurs 4th March: present monologues duologues to each other peer assessment.
Fri 5th Written coursework for monologues/duologues.
Week 6 tues 9th march pages 79-90
Thurs 11th march indiv tut for monologues duologues.
Fri 12th march Theo and James presentation of work so far/ girls work on lines and scenes already looked at.
Week 7 : tues 16th march
Pages 91-100
Powerpoint worked on by james/ theo
Thurs 18th march indiv monologues/ duologues.
Friday 19th march written work
Week 8
Tues 23rd march run through
Thurs 25th march present monologues duologues
Fri 26th march revision work for easter.
Week 9 tues 30th march
Run through play and establish work over Easter.
Easter holiday.
Week 9 Thurs 22nd April: Run through of play in theatre.
Friday : written work.
Week 10 tues 27th April: run through of play / pres of theo and james
Thursday 29th April: present monologues etc.
Fri 30th written work
Weekend reh: 1st may /2nd may 10am – 4pm compulsory
Week 11 Tues 4th may:
Dress rehearsal in lesson and 4pm -6pm
Wed 5th may: open dress rehearsal 6pm
Thrus 5th May EXAM PERFORMANCE Time TBA
Tim Bevan Master class
Tim Bevan of Working Title productions will be giving a master class on 27th January 2010.
Monday 18 January 2010
Year 13 Monday 18 January cover work.
Year 13 this week needs to be a combination of getting ready for Saturday and Sunday dress rehearsal and Monday and Tuesday Performances. You must have ready
1) a script of cues for the lights so the technician will be able to follow what we are doing. Also think of what lighting you need.
2) a script or any dialogue for Richard including an idea of movement work he needs to do written and emailed to me at debby_turner@hotmail.com as soon as possible.
3) All media projections need to be saved onto the lap top
4) all sound placed on the ipod and cds ( ipod in my filing cabinet)
5) all costume and set needs to be in place for saturday.
6) make a poster and programme. Write a directors vision about what the show is about.
You must also have all notes for your swed completed and ready for marking.
If all is ready you can finish off christmas work on Faustus.
If you have any questions contact me via Lydia and I will ring you at lesson times.
Faustus
Social/Cultural/Historical
1 Find out about Christopher Marlowe, His life, his other plays
2 Find out about life in the 1600s politics etc
3 What were their views on religion/Education/ morals in the 1600s
Visual/Design elements
· Find out about staging of plays in the 1600’s- original staging. How did it affect design elements? Lighting/set/costume/ Acting Techniques.
Language
· Comparisons with Shakespeare/ any similarities?
Form and Structure
· Write out the plot in 10 sections
· Characters: Who are the main characters? Do a character biography for each and what are their super objectives for the play?
Vision
What is your overall vision for your production of Faustus?
Think of time set in, original or modern?
Context: making relevant to a modern audience.
Staging: Where will your play be staged what kind of theatre space?
How will this effect communication with the audience?
Overall message.
1) a script of cues for the lights so the technician will be able to follow what we are doing. Also think of what lighting you need.
2) a script or any dialogue for Richard including an idea of movement work he needs to do written and emailed to me at debby_turner@hotmail.com as soon as possible.
3) All media projections need to be saved onto the lap top
4) all sound placed on the ipod and cds ( ipod in my filing cabinet)
5) all costume and set needs to be in place for saturday.
6) make a poster and programme. Write a directors vision about what the show is about.
You must also have all notes for your swed completed and ready for marking.
If all is ready you can finish off christmas work on Faustus.
If you have any questions contact me via Lydia and I will ring you at lesson times.
Faustus
Social/Cultural/Historical
1 Find out about Christopher Marlowe, His life, his other plays
2 Find out about life in the 1600s politics etc
3 What were their views on religion/Education/ morals in the 1600s
Visual/Design elements
· Find out about staging of plays in the 1600’s- original staging. How did it affect design elements? Lighting/set/costume/ Acting Techniques.
Language
· Comparisons with Shakespeare/ any similarities?
Form and Structure
· Write out the plot in 10 sections
· Characters: Who are the main characters? Do a character biography for each and what are their super objectives for the play?
Vision
What is your overall vision for your production of Faustus?
Think of time set in, original or modern?
Context: making relevant to a modern audience.
Staging: Where will your play be staged what kind of theatre space?
How will this effect communication with the audience?
Overall message.
Monday 11 January 2010
Monday 4 January 2010
year 12 questions opening research for The Maids
1 Using the research on this blog and elsewhere explain what does the term Theatre of the Absurd mean?
2 What were the characteristics of Jean Genets work?
3 How did he like his plays to be viewed by the audience?
4 How much of an influence was genet's life on his playwriting , give specific examples.
2 What were the characteristics of Jean Genets work?
3 How did he like his plays to be viewed by the audience?
4 How much of an influence was genet's life on his playwriting , give specific examples.
Theatre of the absurd by Martin Esslin
James Saunders | writings | weed's home page
Absurd Drama - Martin Esslin
Introduction to "Absurd Drama" (Penguin Books, 1965)
'The Theatre of the Absurd' has become a catch-phrase, much used and much abused. What does it stand for? And how can such a label be justified? Perhaps it will be best to attempt to answer the second question first. There is no organised movement, no school of artists, who claim the label for themselves. A good many playwrights who have been classed under this label, when asked if they belong to the Theatre of the Absurd, will indigniantly reply that they belong to no such movement - and quite rightly so. For each of the playwrights concerned seeks to express no more and no less his own personal vision of the world.
Yet critical concepts of this kind are useful when new modes of expression, new conventions of art arise. When the plays of Ionesco, Beckett, Genet, and Adamov first appeared on the stage they puzzled and outraged most critics as well audiences. And no wonder. These plays flout all the standards by which drama has been judged for many centuries; they must therefore appear as a provocation to people who have come into the theatre expecting to find what they would recognize as a well-made play. A well-made play is expected to present characters that are well-observed and convincingly motivated: these plays often contain hardly any recognizable human beings and present completely unmotivated actions. A well-made play is expected to entertain by the ding-dong of witty and logically built-up dialogue: in some of these plays dialogue seems to have degenerated into meaningless babble. A well-made play is expected to have a beginning, a middle, and a neatly tied-up ending: these plays often start at an arbitrary point and seem to end just as arbitrarily. By all the traditional standards of of critical appreciation of the drama, these plays are not only abominably bad, they do not even deserve the name drama.
And yet, strangely enough, these plays have worked, they have had an effect, they have exercised a fascination of their own in the theatre. At first it was said that this fascination was merely a succès de scandale, that people flocked to see Beckett's Waiting for Godot or Ionesco's Bald Primadonna merely because it had become fashionable to express outrage and astonishment about them at parties. But this explanation clearly could not apply to more than one or two plays of this kind. And the success of a whole row of similarly unconventional works became more and more manifest. If the critical touchstones of conventional drama did not apply to these plays, this must surely have been due to a difference in objective, the use of different artistic means, to the fact, in short, that these plays were both creating and applying a different convention of drama. It is just as senseless to condemn an abstract painting because it lacks perspective or a recognizable subject-matter as it is to reject Waiting for Godot because it has no plot to speak of. In painting a composition of squares and lines an artist like Mondrian does not want to depict any object in nature, he does not want to create perspective. Similarly, in writing Waiting for Godot Beckett did not intend to tell a story, he did not want the audience to go home satisfied that they knew the solution to the problem posed in the play. Hence there is no point in reproaching him with not doing what he never sought to do; the only reasonable course is to try and find out what it was that he did intend.
Yet, if tackled directly most of the playwrights in question would refuse to discuss any theories or objectives behind their work. They would, with perfect justification, point out that they are concerned with one thing only: to express their vision of the world as best they can, simply because, as artists, they feel an irrepressible urge to do so. This is where the critic can step in. By describing the works that do not fit into the established convention, by bringing out the similarities of approach in a number of more or less obviously related new works, by analysing the nature of their method and their artistic effect, he can try to define the framework of the new convention, and by doing so, can provide the standards by which it will become possible to have works in that convention meaningfully compared and evaluated. The onus of proof that there is such a convetion involved clearly lies on the critic, but if he can establish that there are basic similarities in approach, he can argue that these similarities must arise from common factors in the experience of the writers concerned. And these common factors must in turn spring from the spiritual climate of our age (which no sensitive artist can escape) and also perhaps from a common background of artistic influences, a similarity of roots, a shared tradition.
A term like the Theatre of the Absurd must therefore be understood as a kind of intellectual shorthand for a complex pattern of similarities in approach, method, and convention, of shared philosophical and artistic premises, whether conscious or subconscious, and of influences from a common store of tradition. A label of this kind therefore is an aid to understanding, valid only in so far as it helps to gain insight into a work of art. It is not a binding classification; it is certainly not all-embracing or exclusive. A play may contain some elements that can best be understood in the light of such a label, while other elements in the same play derive from and can best be understood in the light of a different convention. Arthur Adamov, for example, has written a number of plays that are prime examples of the Theatre of the Absurd. He now quite openly and consciously rejects this style and writes in a different, realistic convention. Nevertheless even his latest plays, which are both realistic and socially committed, contain some aspects which can still be elucidated in terms of the Theatre of the Absurd (such as the use of symbolic interludes, guignols, in his play Spring '71). Moreover, once a term like Theatre of the Absurd is defined and understood, it acquires a certain value in throwing light on works of previous epochs. The Polish critic Jan Kott, for example, has written a brilliant study of King Lear in the light of Beckett's Endgame. And that this was no vain academic exercise but a genuine aid to understanding is shown by the fact that Peter Brook's great production of King Lear took many of its ideas from Kott's essay.
What then is the convention of drama that has now acquired the label of the Theatre of the Absurd?
Let us take one of the plays in this volume as a starting point: Ionesco's Amédée. A middle-aged husband and wife are shown in a situation which is clearly not taken from real life. They have not left their flat for years. The wife earns her living by operating some sort of telephone switchboard; the husband is writing a play, but has never got beyond the first few lines. In the bedroom is a corpse. It has been there for many years. It may be the corpse of the wife's lover whom the husband killed when he found them together, but this is by no means certain; it may also have been a burglar, or a stray visitor. But the oddest thing about it is that it keeps growing larger and larger; it is suffering from 'geometric progression, the incurable disease of the dead'. And in the course of the play it grows so large that eventually an enormous foot bursts from the bedroom into the living-room, threatening to drive Amédée and his wife out of their home. All this is wildly fantastic, yet it is not altogether unfamiliar, for it is not unlike situations most of us have experienced at one time or another in dreams and nightmares.
Ionesco has in fact put a dream situation onto the stage, and in a dream quite clearly the rules of realistic theatre no longer apply. Dreams do not develop logically; they develop by association. Dreams do not communicate ideas; they communicate images. And inded the growing corpse in Amédée can best be understood as a poetic image. It is in the nature both of dreams and poetic imagery that they are ambiguous and carry a multitude of meanings at one and the same time, so that it is futile to ask what the image of the growing corpse stands for. On the other hand one can say that the corpse might evoke the growing power of past mistakes or past guilt, perhaps the waning of love or the death of affection - some evil in any case that festers and grows worse with time. The image can stand for any and all of these ideas, and its ability to embrace them all gives it the poetic power it undoubtedly posseses.
Not all the plays of the Theatre of the Absurd can be described simply as dreams (although Adamov's Professor Taranne in this volume actually came to Adamov as a dream, Albee's Zoo Story is clearly far more firmly anchored in reality) but in all of them the poetic image is the focus of interest. In other words: while most plays in the traditional convention are primarily concerned to tell a story or elucidate an intellectual problem, and can thus be seen as a narrative or discursive form of communication, the plays of the Theatre of the Absurd are primarily intended to convey a poetic image or a complex pattern of poetic images; they are above all a poetical form. Narrative or discursive thought proceeds in a dialectical manner and must lead to a result or final message; it is therefore dynamic and moves along a definite line of development. Poetry is above all concerned to convey its central idea, or atmosphere, or mode of being; it is essentially static.
This does not mean, however, that these plays lack movement: the movement in Amédée, for instance, is relentless, lying as it does in the pressure of the ever-growing corpse. But the situation of the play remains static; the movement we see is the unfolding of the poetic image. The more ambiguous and complex that image, the more intricate and intriguing will be the process of revealing it. That is why a play like Waiting for Godot can generate considerable suspense and dramatic tension in spite of being a play in which literally nothing happens, a play designed to show that nothing can ever happen in human life. It is only when the last lines have been spoken and the curtain has fallen that we are in a position to grasp the total pattern of the complex poetic image we have been confronted with. If, in the traditional play, the action goes from point A to point B, and we constantly ask, 'what's going to happen next?', here we have an action that consists in the gradual unfolding of a complex pattern, and instead we ask, 'what is it that we are seeking? What will the completed image be when we have grasped the nature of the pattern?' Thus in Arrabal's The Two Executioners in this volume we realise at the end of the play that the theme is the exploration of a complex image of the mother-son relationship; in Albee's Zoo Story it is only in the last lines of the play that the idea of the entire dialogue between Jerry and Peter falls into place, as an image of the difficulty of communication between human beings in our world.
Why should the emphasis in drama have shifted away from traditional forms towards images which, complex and suggestive as they may be, must necessarily lack the final clarity of definition, the neat resolutions we have been used to expect? Clearly because the playwrights concerned no longer believe in the possibility of such neatness of resolution. They are indeed chiefly concerned with expressing a sense of wonder, of incomprehension, and at times of despair, at the lack of cohesion and meaning that they find in the world. If they could believe in clearly defined motivations, acceptable solutions, settlements of conflict in tidily tied up endings, these dramatists would certainly not eschew them. But, quite obviously, they have no faith in the existence of so rational and well ordered a universe. The 'well-made play' can thus be seen as conditioned by clear and comforting beliefs, a stable scale of values, an ethical system in full working condition. The system of values, the world-view behind the well-made play may be a religious one or a political one; it may be an implicit belief in the goodness and perfectibility of men (as in Shaw or Ibsen) or it may be a mere unthinking acceptance of the moral and political status quo (as in most drawing-room comedy). But whatever it is, the basis of the well-made play is the implicit assumption that the world does make sense, that reality is solid and secure, all outlines clear, all ends apparent. The plays that we have classed under the label of the Theatre of the Absurd, on the other hand, express a sense of shock at the absense, the loss of any such clear and well-defined systems of beliefs or values.
There can little doubt that such a sense of disillusionment, such a collapse of all previously held firm beliefs is a characteristic feature of our own times. The social and spiritual reasons for such a sense of loss of meaning are manifold and complex: the waning of religious faith that had started with the Enlightenment and led Nietzsche to speak of the 'death of God' by the eighteen-eighties; the breakdown of the liberal faith in inevitable social progress in the wake of the First World War; the disillusionment with the hopes of radical social revolution as predicted by Marx after Stalin had turned the Soviet Union into a totalitarian tyranny; the relapse into barbarism, mass murder, and genocide in the course of Hitler's brief rule over Europe during the Second World War; and, in the aftermath of that war, the spread of spiritual emptiness in the outwardly prosperous and affluent societies of Western Europe and the United States. There can be no doubt: for many intelligent and sensitive human beings the world of the mid twentieth century has lost its meaning and has simply ceased to make sense. Previously held certainties have dissolved, the firmest foundations for hope and optimism have collapsed. Suddenly man sees himself faced with a universe that is both frightening and illogical - in a word, absurd. All assurances of hope, all explanations of ultimate meaning have suddenly been unmasked as nonsensical illusions, empty chatter, whistling in the dark. If we try to imagine such a situation in ordinary life, this might amount to our suddenly ceasing to understand the conversation in a room full of people; what made sense at one moment has, at the next, become an obscure babble of voices in a foreign language. At once the comforting, familiar scene would turn into one of nightmare and horror. With the loss of the means of communication we should be compelled to view that world with the eyes of total outsiders as a succession of frightening images.
Such a sense of loss of meaning must inevitably lead to a questioning of the recognised instrument for the communication of meaning: language. Consequently the Theatre of the Absurd is to a very considerable extent concerned with a critique of language, an attack above all on fossilized forms of language which have become devoid of meaning. The converstaion at the party which at one moment seemed to be an exchange if information about the weather, or new books, or the respective health of the participants, is suddenly revealed as an exchange of mere meaningless banalities. The people talking about the weather had no intention whatever of of really exchanging meaningful information on the subject; they were merely using language to fill the emptiness between them, to conceal the fact that they had no desire to tell each other anything at all. In other words, from being a noble instrument of genuine communication language has become a kind of ballast filling empty spaces. And equally, in a universe that seems to be drained of meaning, the pompous and laborious attempts at explanation that we call philosophy or politics must appear as empty chatter. In Waiting for Godot for example Beckett parodies and mocks the language of philosophy and science in Lucky's famous speech. Harold Pinter, whose uncanny accuracy in the reproduction of real conversation among English people has earned him the reputation of having a tape-recorder built into his memory, reveals that the bulk of everyday conversation is largely devoid of logic and sense, is in fact nonsensical. It is at this point that the Theatre of the Absurd can actually coincide with the highest degree of realism. For if the real conversation of human beings is in fact absurd and nonsensical, then it is the well-made play with its polished logical dialogue that is unrealistic, while the absurdist play may well be a tape-recorded reproduction of reality. Or, in a world that has become absurd, the Theatre of the Absurd is the most realistic comment on, the most accurate reproduction of, reality.
In its critique of language the Theatre of the Absurd closely reflects the preoccupation of contemporary philosophy with language, its effort to disentangle language, as a genuine instrument for logic and the discovery of reality, from the welter of emotive, illogical usages, the grammatical conventions that have, in the past, often been confused with genuine logical relationships. And equally, in its emphasis on the basic absurdity of the human condition, on the bankruptcy of all closed systems of thought with claims to provide a total explanation of reality, the Theatre of the Absurd has much in common with the existential philosophy of Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus. (It was in fact Camus who coined the concept of the Absurd in the sense in which it is used here.) This is not to say that the dramatists of the Absurd are trying to translate contemporary philosophy into drama. It is merely that philosophers and dramatists respond to the same cultural and spiritual situation and reflect the same preoccupations.
Yet, however contemporary the Theatre of the Absurd may appear it is by no means the revolutionary novelty as which some of its champions, as well as some of its bitterest critics, tend to represent it. In fact the Theatre of the Absurd can best be understood as a new combination of a number of ancient, even archaic, traditions of literature and drama. It is surprising and shocking merely because of the unusual nature of the combination and the increased emphasis on aspects of drama that, while present in all plays, rarely emerge into the foreground.
The ancient traditions combined in a new form in the Theatre of the Absurd are: the tradition of miming and clowning that goes back to the mimus of Greece and Rome, the commedia dell' arte of Renaissance Italy, and such popular forms of theatre as the pantomime or the music-hall in Britain; the equally ancient tradition of nonsense poetry; the tradition of dream and nightmare literature that also goes back to Greek and Roman times; allegorical and symbolic drama, such as we find it in medieval morality plays, or in the Spanish auto sacramental; the ancient tradition of fools and mad scenes in drama, of which Shakespeare provides a multitude of examples; and the even more ancient tradition of ritual drama that goes back to the very origins of the theatre where religion and drama were still one. It is no coincidence that one of the masters of the Theatre of the Absurd, Jean Genet, regards his plays as attempts at recaturing the riual element in the Mass itself, which, after all, can be seen as a poetic image of an archetypal event brought to life through a sequence of symbolical actions.
It is against this background that we must see the history of the movement which culminates in Beckett, Ionesco, or Genet. Its immediate forebears are dramatists like Strindberg, who progressed from photographic naturalism to more and more openly expressionist representations of dreams, nightmares, or obsessions in plays like the Ghost Sonata, Dream Play, or To Damascus, and novelists like James Joyce and Kafka. A form of drama concerned with dream-like imagery and the failure of language was bound to find inspiration also in the silent cinema, with its dream-like quality and cruel, sometimes nightmare humour. Charlie Chaplin's little man and Buster Keaton's stonefaced stoic are among the openly acknowledged influences of writers like Beckett and Ionesco. These comedians, after all, derive from the most ancient traditions of clowning, as do, in the talking cinema, the Marx Brothers, W. C. Fields, or Laurel and Hardy, all clearly part of the tradition which leads to the Theatre of the Absurd.
Another direct and acknowledged influence is that of the Dadaists, the surrealists, and the Parisian avant-garde that derives from writers like Alfred Jarry (1873-1907) and Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918). Jarry's Ubu Roi, first performed in 1896, might in fact be called the first modern example of the Theatre of the Absurd. It is a savage farce in which monstrous puppets castigate the greed and emptiness of bourgeois society through a series of grotesque stage images. Apollinaire's play Les Mamelles de Tiresias ('The Breasts of Tiresias') was the first play to be labelled by its author as 'a surrealist drama'. Here too the action proceeds through a series of savagely grotesque images; the hero, or rather the heroine, Thérèse-Tiresias changes sex by letting her breasts float twards the heavens in the shape of two toy balloons. Jarry and Apollinaire were the direct precursors of the Dadaists in Switzerland, France and Germany. Brecht's earliest plays bear the marks of the Dadaist influence and can be regarded as early examples of the Theatre of the Absurd: In the Jungle of the Cities for instance presents the audience with a totally unmotivate struggle, a series of poetic images of man fighting a senseless battle with himself. In France the two leading exponents of surrealism in drama were Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) and Roger Vitrac (1899-1952). Vitrac's play Victor ou Les Enfants au Pouvoir (1924) anticipates Ionesco and Arrabal by showing the world from the point of view of a nine-year-old child of giant size and monstrous intelligence. Artaud, who wrote very little in dramatic form himself, is of immense importance as a theoretician of the new anti-literary theatre: he coined the slogan of the 'Theatre of Cruelty' for his conception of a theatre designed to shock its audience into a full awareness of the horror of the human condition. Jean-Louis Barrault and Roger Blin, two of the leading directors of the contemporary avant-garde theatre, were pupils of Artaud; Arthur Adamov was among his closest friends.
In its present form the Theatre of the Absurd is a post-war phenomenon. Genet's The Maids had its first performance at the Athénée in Paris in 1947; Ionesco's Bald Primadonna and Adamov's earliest plays were first produced in 1950; Beckett's Waiting for Godot in 1952. It will be noticed that all these first performances took place in Paris. And Paris certainly is the fountainhead of the Theatre of the Absurd. Yet it is equally strange and significant that the playwrights themselves are largely exiles from other countries domiciled in Paris: Beckett (born 1906) an Anglo-Irishman who writes in French; Ionesco (born 1912) half-French and half-Rumanian; Adamov (born 1908) a Russo-Armenian. Only Genet is a Frenchman born and bred, but then he is an exile in a different sense: an exile from society itself, a child abandoned by his mother, brought up by foster-parents and drifting from detention centres for juvenile delinquents into an underworld of thieves and male prostitutes, prison and penitentiary. It is in the experience of the outcast or exile that our image of the world seen from the outside assumes a new and added significance: for the exile, from his country or from society, moves in a world drained of meaning, sees people in pursuit of objectives he cannot comprehend, hears them speak a language that he cannot follow. The exile's basic experience is the archetype and the anticipation of twentieth-century man's shock at his realization that the world is ceasing to make sense.
Of the dramatists of the Absurd Samuel Beckett is undoubtedly the profoundest, the greatest poet. Waiting for Godot and Endgame are certainly masterpieces; Happy Days and Play, Krapp's Last Tape, and the two Acts without Words (where language has drained away altogether) are brilliant and profound poetic images; and the radio plays All that Fall, Embers, Words and Music, and Cascando have an equal enigmatic power.
Jean Genet (born 1910) lacks Beckett's discipline, intellect and erudition, but he too is a poet, endowed with the wellnigh magic power of creating beauty from evil, corruption and excrement. If the evanescence of man in time and the mystery of human personality and identity are Beckett's main themes, Genet's chief concern is with the falseness of human pretensions in society, the contrast between appearance and reality, which itself must remain for ever elusive. In The Maids we see the servants bound in a mixture of hatred and erotic dependence to their mistress, re-enacting this love-hate in an endless series of ritual games; in The Balcony society itself is symbolized in the image of a brothel providing its customers with the illusions of power; and in The Blacks we are back with the underdog acting out his hatred for his oppressor (which is also a form of love) in an endless ritual of mock-murder.
Jean Tardieu (born 1903) and Boris Vian (1920-59) are among the best of the French dramatists of the Absurd. Tardieu is an experimenter who has systematically explored the possibilities of a theatre that can divorce itself from discursive speech to the point where language becomes mere musical sound. Vian, a devoted follower of Jarry, wrote a play, The Empire Builders, which shows man fleeing from death and loneliness in the image of a family moving into ever smaller flats on higher and higher floors of a mysterious building.
In Italy Dino Buzzati and Ezio d'Errico, in Germany Günter Grass (known as a novelist for his monumental Tin Drum) and Wolfgang Hildesheimer are the main exponents of the Theatre of the Absurd. In Britain, N. F. Simpson, James Saunders, David Campton, and Harold Pinter might be classed under this heading. N. F. Simpson has clear links with English nonsense literature, Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. James Saunders, particularly in Next Time I'll Sing to You, expresses in dramatic form the thought of the existential philosophers. Pinter, who acknowledges Kafka and Beckett among his literary heroes, combines realism with an intuition of the absurdity of human existence. In his later work he has shed some of the allegorical symbolism of his beginnings, but even in seemingly realistic plays like The Collection there is an absense of motivation and solution, a multple ambiguity and a sense of non-communication which transforms the seemingly realistic account of humdrum adultery into a poetic image of the human condition.
Behind the Iron Curtain, where socialist realism is the official creed in the theatre, there would appear to be no room for an avant-garde trend of this type. Yet there is one country where the influence of the Theatre of the Absurd has produced some astonishingly successful plays: Poland, an area of relative artistic freedom since the defeat of the Stalinists by Gomulka in the autumn of 1956. A strong surrealist influence was present in Poland even before the war (Gombrowicz and Witkiewicz are two dramatists who might be regarded as among the most important immediate precursors of the Theatre of the Absurd) so that the soil was fertile for a development which was further fostered by the ability of drama of this kind to express political comment in a suitably oblique form. A number of young dramatists, notably Slawomir Mrozek and Tadeusz Rozewicz, have produced outstandingly original work in the convention of the Absurd.
Three of the playwrights represented in this volume are Parisian exiles. Eugène Ionesco is undoubtedly the most fertile and original of the dramatists of the Absurd, and also, in spite of a streak of clowning and fun for its own sake in his work, one of the most profound. He is moreover the most vocal of the dramatists of the Absurd, the only one who is prepared to discuss the theoretical foundations of his work and to reply to the attacks on it from committed left-wing realists. The critique of language and the haunting presense of death are Ionesco's chief themes in plays like The Bald Primadonna, The Lesson, The Chairs, The Killer, Rhinoceros, and Exit The King. Amédée or How to Get Rid of It (1953) is Ionesco's first full-length play and contains one of his most telling images. It is also characteristic in its alternation between states of depression and euphoria, leaden oppression and floating on air, an image which reappears through his work and which culminates, in this particular play, in Amédée's floating away at the end.
Arthur Adamov today belongs to the camp against which Ionesco directs his harshest polemics, the socialist realists whose organ is the periodical Théâtre populaire, but he started out as a follower of Artaud, a self-confessed neurotic, an alien in a senseless world. Adamov's development from one extreme to the other is a fascinating artistic and psychological case history, in which Professor Taranne occupies a key position. Adamov's progress can be seen as a process of psychological therapy through writing. Unable to face the reality of the outside world, he started out by projecting his oppressions and anxieties on to the stage. Nothing would have induced him, he has since confessed, to mention any element of the real world, such as a place-name in one of his plays; he would have regarded that as a piece of unspeakable vulgarity. And yet, when he committed to paper the dream which is now the play Professor Taranne, he realized that a real place-name, that of Belgium, had occurred in the dream. Truthfulness in transcribing the dream thus forced him to compromise on one of his fundamental artistic principles. And from then onwards reality kept breaking through into his writing in ever more insistent form, until today he is a thorough-going realist of the Brechtian school. That is to say, by writing his obsessions out of his system, Adamov acquired the ability to face and to control the objective world from which he had withdrawn into neurosis. It might be argued that the projection of neurotic obsessions is both more interesting and more illuminating in providing insights into the dark side of the human mind than the accurate transcription of historical events, and that therefore Adamov's absurdist plays are more fascinating, more successful than his later efforts. But this is a matter of taste as well as of ideological bias. The fact remains that Professor Taranne and the somewhat more realistic Ping Pong are undoubtedly among Adamov's best plays.
Fernando Arrabal (born 1932) is a Spaniard who has been living in France since 1954 and now writes in French. He is an admirer of Beckett, but sees his roots in the surrealist tradition of Spain, a country that has always been rich in fantasy and the grotesque (El Greco, Goya) and that in more recent times has produced such outstanding representatives of the modern movement as the painter Picasso (who has himself written two plays in an absurdist vein) and the writers Lorca and Valle Inclàn. Arrabal's own contribution to the absurdist spectrum is a highly original one: his main preoccupation is with the absurdity of ethical and moral rules. He looks at the world with the incomprehemsion of a child that simply cannot understand the logic of conventional morality. Thus, in The Automobile Graveyard there is a prostitute who follows her profession simply because religion demands that one be kind to one's neighbours; how then could she refuse them the ultimate kindness of giving herself to them? And similarly in The Two Executioners the rebel son who objects to the tortures that his mother inflicts on his father is faced with the dilemma of several contradictory moral laws: obediance to one's father, the human goodness that prompts one to save the suffering victim from his torturers, and the need to honour and obey one's mother. These moral laws are here in obvious conflict, as it is the mother who has the father tortured. Clearly the situation in which several moral laws are in contradiction exposes the absurdity of the system of values that accommodates them all. Arrabal refuses to judge; he merely notes the position and shows that he finds it beyond his comprehension.
Edward Albee (born 1928) is one of the few American exponents of the Theatre of the Absurd. An adopted child, he shares with Genet the orphan's sense of loneliness in an alien world; and the image of the dream child which exists only in the adoptive parents' imagination recurs in a number of his plays, notably The American Dream and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. The latter, which has earned him an enormous success on Broadway, is undoubtedly one of the finest American plays since the heyday of Eugene O'Neill. It is a savage dance of death reminiscent of Strindberg, outwardly realistic in form, but in fact, as in the case of Pinter's best work, existing on at least two levels apart from the realistic one: as an allegory of American society, a poetic image of its emptiness and sterility, and as a complex ritual on the pattern of Genet. The Zoo Story (1958), one of Albee's earliest dramatic ventures, has a similar complexity: it is a clinically accurate study of Schizophrenia, an image of man's loneliness and inability to make contact, and also, on the ritual and symbolic level, an act of ritual self-immolation that has curious parallels with Christ's atonement. (Note the names Jerry - Jesus? - and Peter).
The plays in this volume, like the plays of the Theatre of the Absurd in general, present a disillusioned, harsh, and stark picture of the world. Though often couched in the form of extravagant fantasies, they are nevertheless essentially realistic, in the sense that they never shirk the realities of the human mind with its despair, fear and loneliness in an alien and hostile universe. There is more human reality in the grotesquely extravagant images of Amédée than in many far longer plays plays in a convention that is a mere photographic copy of the surface of life. The realism of these plays is a psychological, and inner realism; they explaore the human sub-conscious in depth rather than trying to describe the outward appearance of human existence. Nor is it quite correct that these plays, deeply pessimistic as they are, are nothing but an expression of utter despair. It is true that basically the Theatre of the Absurd attacks the comfortable certainties of religious or political orthodoxy. It aims to shock its audience out of complacency, to bring it face to face with the harsh facts of the human situation as these writers see it. But the challenge behind this message is anything but one of despair. It is a challenge to accept the human condition as it is, in all its mystery and absurdity, and to bear it with dignity, nobly, responsibly; precisely because there are no easy solutions to the mysteries of existence, because ultimately man is alone in a meaningless world. The shedding of easy solutions, of comforting illusions, may be painful, but it leaves behind it a sense of freedom and relief. And that is why, in the last resort, the Theatre of the Absurd does not provoke tears of despair but the laughter of liberation.
- Martin Esslin, Introduction to "Penguin Plays - Absurd Drama" (Penguin, 1965)
"Martin Esslin was born Julius Pereszlenyi on 6 June 1918 into a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary. After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the Great War, he became Austrian by default and in 1920 the family moved to Vienna where he was educated at the Bundesgymnasium II. In 1936 he went to the University of Vienna where he studied Philosophy and English. He also studied directing, acting and dramaturgy at the Reinhardt Seminar of Dramatic Art. He was about to begin his theatrical career in Vienna when the Nazis invaded Austria. He fled, spending a year in Brussels before reaching England where he became a scriptwriter and producer for the BBC’s European Services in 1940. He wrote numerous radio features on political, social and literary subjects and in 1955 was appointed assistant head of BBC European Productions, and in 1961, assistant head of Drama (Sound). In 1963 Esslin was appointed head of BBC Radio Drama. By the mid-1960s the Radio Drama department at the BBC was originating between 400 and 500 plays a year. In 1977 Esslin turned to teaching. He became Professor of Drama at Stanford University, California, for two quarters annually, until 1988, and after that Professor Emeritus. He had also been visiting Professor of Theatre at Florida State University (1969-1976). He achieved much recognition as the author of two of the most influential books dealing with the post-war theatre, Brecht: A Choice of Evils (1959) and The Theatre of the Absurd (1962) — a term coined by Esslin. Esslin was awarded the OBE in 1972."
from austrian cutural forum
Martin Esslin links
Stanford Report - drama professor and theater critic (obit)
Guardian Unlimited - illuminating writer and radio drama producer (obit)
Stanford Magazine - he found meaning in absurdity (obit)
Voy Forums - Martin Esslin, drama critic, teacher, author (obit)
Joanne Karpinski (Regis Univ) - The Theatre of the Absurd (Martin Esslin extract)
Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia - theater of the absurd (Martin Esslin article)
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