115 speculation: Contemplation, study.
Scene 4
3 pickedevants: Pointed beards (French pic à devant ).
quotha: Indeed, forsooth (used sarcastically).
4 comings in: Income, with a bawdy quibble.
5 goings out: (i) Expenditure, (ii) holes in clothes. There are similar ‘misunderstandings’ throughout the clown’s lines.
else: If you don’t believe me.
15 Qui mihi discipulus: ‘[You] who [are] my pupil’, the opening of William Lily’s Carmen de Moribus, a didactic poem used as a school textbook.
17 beaten silk… stavesacre: Embroidered silk and delousing powder (with puns on the ache of a servant beaten with staves and (18) acres of land).
33 Gridirons: Robin’s misunderstanding of ‘guilders’ (32). The association of gridirons with torture by fire may suggest the pains of hell.
34–6 French crowns… English counters: The clown implies that French écus are as worthless as ‘counterfeit’ English coins. ‘French crowns’ were associated with the baldness caused by syphilis (‘the French disease’), and ‘counter’ may pun on ‘cunt’.
46 Balioll and Belcher: (N) The devils are summoned with comic variants on their names.
49–51 Do ye… over: The clown imagines himself with the costume (‘the round slop’ (G)) and reputation of a daredevil.
50 tall: Brave.
51 Kill devil: Perhaps also the name of a strong drink.
55–6 horns… clefts: (i) The horns and cloven feet of devils, (ii) the penis (or cuckold’s horns) and vulva.
59 Banios: Punning on bagno (Italian) = brothel.
66 plackets: Slits in petticoats; hence, in the bodies beneath.
72–3 quasi… insistere: As though to follow in our (= my) footprints (the irregular Latin in A may reflect Wagner’s ignorance).
74 fustian: Originally a cloth; hence, ‘nonsense’ (cf. ‘bombast’).
75 that’s flat: That’s for sure.
Scene 5
29 Veni… Mephistophile!: Come, come, Mephistopheles!
31 he lives: B’s reading gives better sense than A’s I live.
35 a deed of gift: Mephistopheles insists on a legally binding document.
42 Solamen… doloris: It is a comfort to the miserable to have had companions in sorrow.
74 Consummatum est: It is finished (Christ’s last words on the cross, in the Latin of the Vulgate, John 19:30).
77 Homo fugel: Flee, man! (1 Timothy 6:11).
105 by these presents: Not ‘gifts’, but ‘documents’ (a legal formula).
153 think no more: The ‘no’ is supplied from A2.
Scene 6
This scene is inserted at this point by modern editors. In A, the action is continuous from the end of Scene 5 to the start of Scene 7.
3 circles: (i) Magic circles, (ii) vaginas.
8 chafing: (i) Quarrel, (ii) rubbing.
16 he for… study: He will wear the cuckold’s horns; her ‘private study’ hints at her ‘privates’.
17 to bear with: (i) Put up with, (ii) support my weight (during intercourse), (iii) bear my child.
27 turn… wind her: (Like meat on a spit.) Both verbs sometimes have sexual connotations.
32 of free cost: For nothing.
Scene 7
27 Alexander: I.e. Paris, who deserted Oenone (N) for Helen.
28 he… Thebes: The walls of Thebes were magically raised by the music of Amphion.
35–43 Tell me… erring stars: Faustus asks how many spheres there are above that of the moon (though ‘heavens’ crosses from cosmology to divinity), and/or whether the heavenly bodies all form a single sphere, with the earth at the centre. Mephistopheles replies that, like the four elements (arranged in concentric spheres of earth, water, air and fire), the spheres too are concentrically arranged round a single great axis, the farthest point of which (‘terminine’) is the pole of the universe. Each of the planets has its own sphere. The questions are provocative, the replies orthodox.
44–5 both situ… tempore: Both in position and in time. Faustus asks whether the spheres all move in the same direction and complete their rotations of the earth at the same intervals.
51–7 Who knows… intelligentia: Faustus demonstrates his familiarity with the rotations of the planets relative to the background stars (the figures are approximations, sometimes inaccurate). The planetary spheres were traditionally under the guidance of angelic ‘intelligences’ (intelligentiae ). ‘Dominion’ (celestial influence) may here be confused with ‘domination’, one of the hierarchies of angels.
61 empyreal: Both ‘imperial’ and ‘empyrean’ (the fiery heaven).
63 conjunctions… aspects: Stars in conjunction appear close together; in opposition, to be opposite each other in the heavens; aspects are their relative positions.
65 Per… totius: Through unequal motion (of the planets) in respect to the whole.
92–3 the devil… his dame: The devil and his dam (mother) were a proverbial comic pairing.
111 Ovid’s flea: The subject of the pseudo-Ovidian erotic Elegia de Pulice. The joke is repeated from 4.64–6.
115 cloth of arras: Luxurious tapestry from Arras in Flanders.
118 leathern bag: A money-bag.
130–31 chimney-sweeper… oyster-wife: Emblematic of dirt and poverty.
139 the devil a penny: Not a damned penny.
pension: Payment for a child’s board and lodging (hence payment of any kind).
144 Martlemas-beef: Beef killed on St Martin’s day (11 November) and salted.
147 March-beer: Strong beer brewed in March.
progeny: (Here) parentage, progenitors.
159–60 I am… stockfish: Lechery prefers an inch of ‘raw mutton’ (slang for ‘food for lust’: cf. 4.10–11) to a lot (an ell = 45 inches) of dried cod (‘stockfish’).
160–61 ell… letter… Lechery: Lechery puns on the name and sound of the letter, presumably to make lewd gestures with her tongue in pronouncing it.
Chorus 2
6 yoky: Yoked (B’s reading).
7 to prove cosmography: To test the accuracy of the geographers’ maps.
Scene 8
12 Quarters… equivalents: Divide the town into four equal parts.
13–15 Maro’s… tomb… space: Virgil was buried outside Naples, where he was reputed to have created a long tunnel by magic. The phrasing is very close to that of the Faustbook.
17 sumptuous temple: Presumably St Mark’s in Venice.
27–8 be bold… cheer: Make free with his hospitality.
31–43 this city… Africa: The local detail (including the inaccurate positioning of the Castel Sant’Angelo on the bridge) is from the Faustbook.
33–4 Just through… parts: Supplied from B.
42 pyramides: (Four syllables) obelisks from Egypt.
51 And take… feast: And play a part in the feast (‘meal’ and ‘feast-day’) of St Peter.
52 bald-pate: Tonsured.
53 summum bonum: Highest good (scholastic term for the goodness of God).
73–4 ghost… pardon: The sale of papal indulgences for the souls of the dead in Purgatory had provoked the start of the Reformation.
75 dirge: Mass for the dead; from its Latin key word, dirige = ‘direct (my soul, O Lord)’.
82–3 cursed… candle: Excommunicated in a ritual in which the bell is rung, the book (the Bible) closed, and the candle put out. As in the Faustbook, the rite is here confused with that of exorcism.
90 Maledicat Dominus: May the Lord curse (him).
99 Et omnes sancti: And all the saints.
Scene 9
2 Ecce signum!: Behold the sign! (a reminiscence of the mass).
2–3 a simple… horse-keepers: An impressive haul for two stable-boys.
3 eat no hay: Be unusually well fed.
11 etc.: Et cetera may be a euphemism, or Latin bombast, or a signal to the actor to improvise. The grooms pass the cup between them as they are fri
sked.
20 scour you: Knock you about (punning on scouring, polishing a drinking-vessel).
26–8 Sanctobulorum… Mephistopheles!: Robin’s invocation sounds like bits of Latin and Greek, but is nonsense. Yet Mephistopheles comes (perhaps at the mention of his name).
tickle: (Used ironically) thump.
28.1 SD–35 Enter MEPHISTOPHELES… enterprise: Since Mephistopheles dismisses the grooms again in lines 45–7, and there threatens different transformations, these lines are sometimes treated as an undeleted first version of the end of the scene, and omitted. But the Vintner may be included in the first curse, but then left out of the second, because Mephistopheles spares him (he could exit at line 35.1). And the grooms’ initial failure to be transformed seems consistent with their sauciness.
29–32, O, nomine… nobis!: The scraps of Latin (nomine Domine (for Domini): ‘name of the Lord’; Peccatum peccatorum: ‘sin of sins’; Misericordia pro nobis: ‘pity for us’) recall phrases from the Catholic liturgy (in nomine Domini: ‘in the name of the Lord’; in remissionem peccatorum: ‘for the remission of sins’; miserere nobis: ‘have mercy on us’).
Chorus 3
3 stayed his course: Ended his journey.
Scene 10
11 conjurer: I.e. one who does ordinary magic tricks.
28 Chief… pre-eminence: Most admired of those who have been pre-eminent in the world.
31 motion: Mention.
36 his beauteous paramour: Probably Alexander’s Persian wife, Rox-ana; or perhaps the courtesan Thais.
45 if it like your grace: If your grace pleases. Faustus’ polite formulation disguises his anxiety that the Emperor might be displeased by his inability to bring on the ‘true substantial bodies’ (46 ).
50 lively resemble: Imitate to the life.
59 Actaeon: For his presumption Actaeon (N) was transformed into a stag and killed by his own hounds. Faustus’ reply puns on the cuckold’s horns, which are literalized later in the scene.
64–5 this lady… neck: This legend has not been traced.
81 no haste but good: Proverbial. ‘No haste but good (speed)’ (Tilley H199).
Scene 11
There is no break in the action at the end of Scene 10; leaving the Emperor’s court, Faustus and Mephistopheles walk into a new episode.
0.1 SD HORSE-COURSER: Horse-dealers were proverbially disreputable. Faustus cons this one with a device beyond the usual tricks of the trade.
2 Fustian: (G) The slip identifies Faustus as one who deceives with verbal trickery.
Mass: By the mass; a Catholic oath surviving in Elizabethan English.
10–12 I pray… child: Spoken ironically; the Horse-courser spends a lot (‘has a great charge’), even without the expense of a family.
15 water: Water traditionally dispels enchantment.
16 will he… waters?: ‘Isn’t he ready for anything?’ (Proverbial: R. W. Dent, Shakespeare’s Proverbial Language: An Index (Berkeley, 1981): W131.11).
21 forty: I.e. ‘dollars’.
22 hey, ding, ding: A song-refrain, often a euphemism for sexual intercourse. If the horse were not a gelding, the Horse-courser might ‘make a brave living’ from stud-fees (his slick buttock was a sign of potency).
25 water: Urine.
33–4 Christ… in conceit: Faustus comforts himself with the prime example of a sinner being saved at the last minute, and promptly falls asleep as a sign of his complacency. Christ promised salvation to the repentant thief crucified with him (Luke 23:40–43).
34.2 SD crying: Lamenting loudly, but perhaps also weeping.
36–7 Doctor Lopus… purgation: Doctor Faustus’ medicine (the ‘purgation’) is even worse than that of Lopus, the notorious doctor-poisoner (N). Since he was executed in 1594 (i.e. after Marlowe’s death) the line is probably not Marlovian and may cast doubt on the authenticity of the scene.
36 H’as: He has, like modern ‘he’s’.
46–7 O, yonder… master: Mistaking Mephistopheles for a servant, the Horse-courser addresses him contemptuously (snipper-snapper: whipper-snapper; hey-pass: a magician’s catch-phrase (cf. ‘hey presto’), hence a trickster).
63 So-ho: A hunter’s cry.
83 niggard… cunning: Miser with my skills.
Scene 12
0.1 SD: A’S stage-directions here are slightly inconsistent with those at the end of Scene 11. The action is probably still continuous, but a scene may be missing.
5 great-bellied: Pregnant.
21–4 the year… East: Faustus confuses seasonal differences between northern and southern hemispheres with climatic variation between western and eastern countries. ‘Saba’ (biblical Sheba) is modern Yemen.
30 let us in: Let us go in.
34 beholding: Beholden.
Scene 13
1–8 These lines are sometimes printed as a separate Chorus; but, though Wagner’s function is choric, his speech is assimilated to the action of the scene.
24.1 SD passeth over the stage: The formula indicates a processional entrance and exit.
39–46 Break heart… guilt: The Old Man talks of Faustus’ spiritual state in terms of bodily suffering; and he can be saved only by Christ’s blood.
40 heaviness: Sadness.
50.1 SD dagger: The dagger is a temptation to suicide, and Faustus seems about to kill himself in line 51.
75 age: Old man.
91 topless: Immeasurably high.
93–4 Her lips… again: The soul was believed to rise to the mouth in a kiss (in line 94, Faustus asks for a second). Succubi took human souls through sexual contact.
95 be: Probably just a variant for ‘is’ but perhaps optative (‘Let heaven be…’).
105–8 Brighter… azured arms: Semele’s disastrous request to Jupiter to appear in his full divine form was well known (N). The nymph Arethusa was pursued by the river-god Alpheus, and was transformed into a fountain to escape him. Some commentators described him as a descendant of Apollo, but ‘monarch of the sky’ suggests the sun-god himself. See (N) and Introduction, pp. xiii–xiv.
112.1 SD Enter the DEVILS: They come to torment the old man’s flesh.
113 sift: Make trial of, as in Luke 22:31: ‘Satan hath earnestly desired to sift you as wheat’ (Bishops’ Bible).
Scene 14
10 surfeit: A disease of over-eating.
48 save: Supplied from B.
71 O lente… equi: Oh, run slowly, slowly, horses of the night! Slightly adapted from Ovid, Amores I.xiii.40 (which Marlowe translated), where it is a call to prolong the night for love.
81–2 Mountains… God: Recalling Hosea 10:8: ‘and they shall say to the mountains, “Cover us,” and to the hills, “Fall on us” ‘, and Revelation 6:16, ‘And said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us, and hide us from the presence of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.” ’
86–92 You stars… heaven: Faustus asks the stars which predominated at his birth, and whose ‘influence’ (astrological power) has determined his fate, to draw him up, like moisture, into a thundercloud, and destroy his body when its lightning erupts, so long as his soul may go on up to heaven. In Renaissance meteorology, lightning was produced by the pressure of exhalations on their enclosing clouds.
92.1 SD The watch: The ‘clock’ of 6I.2SD.
104 Pythagoras’ metempsychosis: The doctrine of the transmigration of souls, attributed to Pythagoras (N). Though A’s metem su cossis suggests a compositor’s confusion, it seems also to preserve a learned Greek pronunciation.
120 I’ll burn my books: A traditional gesture of renouncing magic.
EPILOGUE
2 Apollo’s laurel bough: An emblem of poetic, and other intellectual, achievement.
9 Terminat… opus: ‘The hour ends the day, the author ends his work.’ Not apparently part of the foregoing speech, this line, for which no source has been found, and which may be a printer’s addition, reads like a motto on the whole play. It occurs also at the end of the manuscri
pt play Charlemagne in BL MS Egerton 1994.
EDWARD THE SECOND
The play was probably completed in 1592 and was first performed by Pembroke’s Men. Its first printing was in a quarto-size octavo of 1594, which forms the basis of this edition. Later quartos of 1598, 1612 and 1622 (which refers on its title-page to a revival of the play by Queen Anne’s Men at the Red Bull) attest its continuing popularity.
Like other Elizabethan history-plays, Edward the Second is about the conflict between a king and his nobles, and shows the clear influence of Shakespeare’s treatment of the theme in his Henry VI plays. But it differs from them in a number of ways: its characters are unconcerned with dynastic issues and show little interest in the larger shape of history; there is no trace of a providential design and no sense of the sanctity of monarchy (all are important issues in Shakespeare’s other comparable play, Richard II). Edward the Second is a play about power, pure and simple. ‘Essentially,’ writes J. B. Altman, ‘the conflict remains one between willful, mean-minded peers determined to preserve their own ancient prerogatives and a willful king jealous of his right to feed his fantasies, at whatever cost to others’ (The Tudor Play of Mind: Rhetorical Inquiry and the Development of Elizabethan Drama (Berkeley, 1978), pp. 363–4).
With the exception of a few details from the chronicles of Richard Grafton (1569) and John Stow (1580), events are drawn from Holins-hed’s Chronicles (probably from its second edition, 1587). But they are drastically reshaped. Holinshed’s narrative of Edward’s twenty-year reign is a long annalistic account cluttered with the detailed circumstances of the conflict with the barons, interwoven with full descriptions of Edward’s equally disastrous relations with Scotland, Ireland and France. Marlowe leaves out the complexities and aggregates events together so that the play is dominated by the intense desires and fierce hostilities of its protagonists, especially Gaveston and Mortimer. He personalizes the action. Gaveston’s relationship with the king is virtually the only issue between Edward and the barons. Marlowe eroticizes their love much more explicitly than does Holinshed, and extends Gaveston’s life to keep him at the centre of contention. The younger Spencer, who had, historically, little connection with Gaveston, becomes first his dependant and later his substitute in the king’s affections. Marlowe, and some members of his early audiences, would have known of at least two contemporary kings whose homosexuality supposedly made them susceptible to the influence of favourites (or minions) – Henri III of France, who figures in The Massacre at Paris, and James VI of Scotland, the future king of England. Gaveston’s sexual behaviour, in the play, matters less than his opportunism and casual cruelty, the exultation he feels when he first arrives and its rapid development into his vengeful humiliation of the bishop of Coventry. Mortimer too is given greater prominence. In the chronicles he scarcely figures until the end of the reign, but here he is present from the first as an antagonist of Gaveston and ally of the queen, later becoming her lover (as Holinshed only belatedly hints) and sole deviser of the plot to murder the king. Unlike the heroes of Marlowe’s other plays, who dominate the action, Edward is thus surrounded by personalities more powerful than himself.
The Complete Plays Page 62