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From "Resolute" to "Dissolved" Tracking Faustus' s Decision MÁRTA HARGITAI

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Abstract

Marlowe' s Doctor Faustus has a lot to offer when interpreted in the context of belief and disbelief. From the beginning, Faustus repeatedly reminds himself that he should be resolute, but at the end of the play, he wishes above all to be like beasts whose souls are soon dissolved in elements he , however, is convinced that his soul "must live still to be plagued in hell." This certainty of the existence of hell is the end-point, something we have not only expected but known from the beginning, when Faustus casually and mockingly calls hell a fable. In this paper, I discuss various aspects of the play' s belief-disbelief spectrum, as well as that of fixity and change. I focus on Faustus' s changes of belief-states arguing that he only dismisses old beliefs so that he can find a final saving belief and he only changes to reach a final state where he will need to change no more. The paper suggests that, in a way, he accomplishes both goals, but it is not exactly the way he imagined or hoped for.
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FromResolute to “Dissolved”
Tracking Faustus’ s Decision
RTA HARGITAI
Abstract: Marlowe’ s Doctor Faustus has a lot to oer when interpreted in the context of belief and
disbelief. From the beginning, Faustus repeatedly reminds himself that he should be resolute, but
at the end of the play, he wishes above all to be like beasts whose souls are soon dissolved in ele-
ments he, however, is convinced that his soul “must live still to be plagued in hell.” This cer-
tainty of the existence of hell is the end-point, something we have not only expected but known from
the beginning, when Faustus casually and mockingly calls hell a fable. In this paper, I discuss
various aspects of the play’ s belief-disbelief spectrum, as well as that of xity and change. I focus
on Faustus’ s changes of belief-states arguing that he only dismisses old beliefs so that he can
nd a nal saving belief and he only changes to reach a nal state where he will need to change
no more. The paper suggests that, in a way, he accomplishes both goals, but it is not exactly
the way he imagined or hoped for.
At the beginning of the play’ s action, Faustus seems to be rather determined
to “try the uttermost magic can perform.Valdes ensures Faustus that “these
books, thy wit, and our experience / Shall make all nations to canonise us . . .”
(1.1.121–122),1 and that he will have omnipotence under one condition: “If learned
Faustus will be resolute” (1.1.135). Faustus’ s answer comes perhaps too soon,
1 Unless otherwise stated, all citations from the A-text of Doctor Faustus come from the Revels
edition of Doctor Faustus. A- and B-texts (1604, 1616), edited by David Bev ington a nd Eric
Rasmussen. I accepted Bevington and Rasmussen’ s opinion that “the critical verdict has swung
strongly in favour of the A-text in recent years” (ix). Tam burla in e, Edward II, and The Jew of Malta
are cited from Bevington and Rasmussen’ s Doctor Faustus and other plays, and The Massacre from
Romany and Lindsey’ s Complete plays, by act, scene, and line numbers. The poems are quoted
from Orgel’ s edition.
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MÁRTA HARGITAI
“Valdes as resolute am I in this / As thou to live” (1.1.136–7). When Faustus tries
to conjure up Mephistopheles and draws a circle holding a book, he encourages
himself saying, “Then fear not Faustus, but be resolute, / And try the uttermost
magic can perform” (1.3.14–15). At the end of the play, however, he wishes above
all to be like beasts, whose souls are soon dissolved in elements, although he is con-
vinced that his soul must live “still to be plagued in hell” (5.2.112):
All beasts are happy, for when they die,
Their souls are soon dissolved in elements,
But mine must live still to be plagued in hell.
Curst be the parents that engendered me.
No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer,
That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven.
The clock striketh twelve.
O, it strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.
Thunder and lightning.
O soul, be changed into little water drops,
And fall into the ocean, ne’er be found!
My God, my God, look not so erce on me! (5.2.110–120, emphasis added)
The trajectory of his life was already ash-forwarded in the Prologue:
So soon he prots in divinity,
The fruitful plot of scholarism graced,
That shortly he was graced with doctor’ s name,
Excelling all whose sweet delight disputes
In heavenly matters of theology;
Till, swoll’n with cunning of a self-conceit,
His waxen wings did mount above his reach,
And melting heavens conspired his overthrow.
For, falling to a devilish exercise,
And glutted more with learnings golden gifts,
He surfeits upon cursed necromancy;
Nothing so sweet as magic is to him,
Which he prefers before his chiefest bliss.
And this the man that in his study sits. (Prologue 15–28)
The parabola shape of Icarus’ s rise and fall is projected onto Faustus’ s fall, later
to be related to Lucifer’ s fall as rebel angel. The Icarus-parallel can also be detected
FROM “RE SOLUTE” TO “DISSOLVED”
245
at the end of the play, where Faustus’ s wish to be a waterdrop among myriads
in the sea might recall Icarus’ s plunge in the sea, thereby drawing a sophisticated
parallel between hell and the sea (maybe as a possible momentary reconciliation
of re and water),2 indirectly commenting upon the impossibility of hiding and
nding refuge in the sea and by extension in nature or anywhere in the universe.
“Homo, fuge” (2.1.77), i.e. “Fly, O Man,” is in itself a paradox: an inscription
momentarily envisaged to be solidifying on Faustus’ s arm. It is doubly paradoxical,
indeed, as the letters are formed by his blood reliquied by Mephistopheles sug-
gesting that Faustus should escape instead of standing by Satan’ s side. Although
the inscription appears on his arm in act 2, it only dawns on him at the last moment
(when “the clock striketh twelve,” 24 years later) with all its weight of nality that
there is nowhere to escape. This paradoxical tension between a desire for xity
and the eagerness and anxiety to change underlies the whole action of the drama.
My contention in this paper is that this xity can be related to belief while change
may correspond to disbelief.
Initially, resolute in the play means what it meant around 1500: “determinate,
decided, absolute, nal” (OED III.6). This is the usual meaning to be found else-
where in Marlowe’ s works, e.g. in Edward II, The Massacre at Paris, and The Jew
of Malta. The underlying notion behind the phrase, however, is only to become
explicit at the end of the play, where Faustus wants to be dissolved in the ele-
ments. There, the early fteenth-century meaning of resolute to mean “dissolved”
(OED a. I.1) returns.3
This reading seems to be conrmed by the same meaning of resolve appearing
in Tamburlaine Part I, where Cosroe complains to Menaphon:
Ah, Menaphon, I pass not for his threats.
The plot is laid by Persian noblemen
And captains of the Median garrisons
2 Cf. what Pinciss and Lockyer write about the Renaissance world view, that beside the optimistic,
“comforting, tidy and logical” beliefs “other views of the universe were being heard ever more loudly,
and these postulate nothing so permanent, rational, and optimistic. Fortune was ever ckle, change
could be chaotic as well as orderly, humanity had fallen and all things beneath the moon were
subject to decay. Eden was lost like the Golden Age of classical myth that was followed by an Age
of Iron. The four elements might be held in balance, but they were always ready to resume their
permanent opposition, re with water and earth with air. These, according to some, were as irrec-
oncilable as matter and spirit” (2).
3 Also “of loose structure;” “friable” (OED a. I.2) and “morally lax, dissolute” (OED a. I.3).
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MÁRTA HARGITAI
To crown me emperor of Asia.
But this it is that doth excruciate
The very substance of my vexed soul:
To see our neighbours, that were wont to quake
And tremble at the Persian monarch’ s name,
Now sits and laughs our regiment to scorn;
And that which might resolve me into tears,
Men from the farthest equinoctial line
Have swarmed in troops into the Eastern India,
Lading their ships with gold and precious stones,
And made their spoils from all our provinces. (Part I 1.2.109–122, emphasis added)
The word is used in the same meaning in Tamburlaine s praise of Zenocrate’ s beauty:
Ah, fair Zenocrate, divine Zenocrate!
Fair is too foul an epithet for thee
That, in thy passion for thy country’ s love,
And fear to see thy kingly father’ s harm,
With hair dishevelled wip’ st thy watery cheeks,
And, like to Flora in her morning’ s pride,
Shaking her silver tresses in the air,
Rain’ st on the earth resolved pearl in showers. (Part I 5.1.135–142, emphasis added)
The English word resolute comes from Latin resoluere; luere, perhaps derived immedi-
ately from the Greek luein, “to lose” appears in Latin mostly as “soluere, to ‘detach,
set loose or free’” (Partridge 1859).4 So, from his initial resoluteness (i.e. his deter-
mination), at the end of his life, Faustus wants something very dierent: to be lost
in the universe, something the word resolute used to mean earlier; all this a result
of his loose, negligent, morally or religiously lax, i.e. dissolute nature.
Although this meaning of dissolute was never linked to resolute or resolve, dissolu-
tion does stem from the same root as resolute, and it frequently resurfaces in the liter-
ature of the period with very rich connotations. In one more literal sense, it signies
an ending or dismissal (as in the dissolution of monasteries), separation into parts,
melting,5 liquefying, or disintegration, therefore, death. It derives from the Latin
4 Partridge adds, “so – is a variant of the privative or separative sē-”; the Sanskrit word is “‘lunati’
meaning ‘he cuts o,’ lavís, lavítram, a sickle” (1859). “The IE root, clearly, is *lū – or *leu – (both
with vowels now long, now short), to detach, set free” (Partridge 1859).
5 Cf. Falsta in Me rry W ives of Windsor, “Think of that, a man of my kidney think of that that
am as subject to heat as butter; a man of continual dissolution and thaw: it was a miracle to ‘ scape
FROM “RE SOLUTE” TO “DISSOLVED”
247
dissolutus (meaning “loosed,” “taken asunder on all sides,” “prodigal,” “lascivious,”
“too indulgent,” and also “cleared from,” “dissolved,” cp. Dumesnil 402–403).
According to the Middle English Dictionary, dissolucion meant 1. laxity in behav-
iour or in the observance of religious rites or practices; frivolity, dissipation, disso-
luteness; 2. disintegration, weakening of the body. Dissolute (adj.) in ME signied
1. of persons: morally or religiously lax or negligent, frivolous, lascivious; of conduct:
immoral, licentious; of actions: unruly, unrestrained; 2. feeble, weakened, severed,
disrupted, absolved, free (from trouble). Dissolven (v.) meant a, to break up or dis-
solve (a solid) to (a liquid), liquefy; b, (of a solid) to break up or melt; c, (of dew)
to evaporate; of a cloud: to break up, vanish. Kurath adds that the term was also
used guratively (1166).
The consistency of dissolved (5.2.111) with “O soul, be changed into little water
drops, / And fall into the ocean, ne’er be found” (5.2.118–119) is thus estab-
lished the fabric woven tight with the multiple meanings of the term recalling
the original meaning of resolute. Here, we can nd an organic and meaningful
frame established in the play-text between the last wish for change (dissolved) and
his initial desire to be resolute, thereby relativising his original wish for permanence,
xity, and nality.
Turning something solid, like his body, into liquid can hardly be the real solution,
although it did work once before: when Faustus’ s blood congealed, Mephistopheles
oered, “I’ll fetch thee re to dissolve it straight” (2.1.63), i.e. he volunteered to liq-
uefy Faustus’ s coagulated blood. Thus, whereas the congealing blood is obviously
a divine portent, the devil’ s volunteering to dissolve Faustus’ s blood stands for dia-
bolical dissolution, and by extension, I argue that it conrms the basic opposition
between the two ways Faustus could choose: God’ s or Lucifer’ s.
As Bevington and Rasmussen point out in their comment on Faustus’ s desper-
ate words, Marlowe provides no solid ground of meaning for his protagonist, “even
the Christian assurances that seem so absolute in the world of the play eternal
joy and felicity, pardon, penitence dissolve before his eyes and leave in their wake
an angry God stretching out his arm and bending his ireful brows” (Doctor Faustus 40).6
In his reply to the third scholar urging him to call on God, Faustus laments:
suocation” (3.5.105–107).
6 “The stars move still; time runs; the clock will strike; / The devil will come, and Faustus must
be damned. / O, I’ll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down? / See, see, where Christ’ s blood
streams in the rmament! / One drop would save my soul, half a drop. Ah, my Christ!
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MÁRTA HARGITAI
On God, whom Faustus hath abjured? On God, whom Faustus hath blasphemed?
Ah, my God, I would weep, but the devil draws in my tears. Gush forth blood instead
of tears, yea, life and soul. O, he stays my tongue! I would lift up my hands, but see,
they hold them, they hold them! (5.2.29–34)
In this late expression of grief and regret, the idea of diabolical dissolution is revis-
ited, inverted, and used against itself: tears, a natural bodily uid that is supposed
to be owing when in agony, is “drawn in,” or stopped by diabolical machination,
which is a “common sign of spiritual reprobation” (Doctor Faustus 193). That this
reverberation is not accidental is corroborated by the images of the second half
of the passage: the wish for his blood to ow repeats the motif of making his con-
gealed blood run again to be able to sign the pact. Finally, at the end of the passage,
the inversion of the contrast between xity standing for God and change symbol-
ising Satan is brought full circle in the picture of Faustus’ s tongue being tied and
his arms being held by devils, proving the deceptive nature of his earlier resolution.
Bevington and Rasmussen note that resolute is as important a word for Faustus
as it was for Tamburlaine, and that his repeated pleas to be resolved of ambiguities
will only result in his disintegration and dissolution (40). Bevington and Rasmussen
also cite McAlindon s astute point in his discussion of Doctor Faustus that resolute in one
sense means its antonym. McAlindon adds that “fundamental to Faustus’ s con-
ception of himself as a heroic individualist is the belief that he will uncover truths
from the rest of mankind: at his command, servile spirits will ‘resolve’ enigma and
mystery” (129).7 McAlindon concludes that “the truth, of course, is that the spirits
resolve nothing of importance (129), adding that just before signing the pact, “res-
olute Faustus is [now] married to the spirit of change and dissolution” (130).
Bevington and Rasmussen cite The Damnable Lifes description of “[h]ow Doctor
Faustus set his blood in a saucer on warm ashes,” which evidently suggests
the stage action that Marlowe has in mind, though that source says nothing about
Mephistopheles bringing the re and only implies that the blood coagulates,”
and quote Greg, who concludes that this is “certainly no earthly re, that will
/ Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ! / Yet will I call on him. O, spare me, Lucifer!
/ Where is it now? ‘Tis gone; and see, where God / Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful
brows! / Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me, / And hide me from the heavy wrath
of God!” (5.2.75–85).
7 Cf. “Resolve me o f al l a mbi gu it ies ” (1. 1.77 –79) ; “An d t hen resolve me of thy master’ s mind” (1.3.99–100);
Resolve me then in this one question” (2.2.63).
FROM “RE SOLUTE” TO “DISSOLVED”
249
liquify coagulated blood” (141). Bevington and Rasmussen also call attention to
the “pattern of dissolution” ending in the B-text “in a literal dismemberment
of Faustus’ s body by devils” (40).
Considering the context of the occurrences of the word dissolve and its deriva-
tives in Marlowe’ s other works, it is perhaps safe to say that dissolution can be used
both as a synonym for death and the end of the world. The Massacre at Paris starts
with Charles’ s blessing:
Prince of Navarre, my honourable brother,
Prince Conde, and my good Lord Admiral,
I wish this union and religious league,
Knit in these hands, thus joined in nuptial rites,
May not dissolve till death dissolve our lives . . . (1.1–5, emphasis added)
It is soon followed by the Queen Mother’ s aside: “Which I’ll dissolve with blood
and cruelty” (1.25). This repetition clearly emphasises the importance of the phrase
while at the same time highlights its dual connotations of human and cosmic
destruction. The collocation “death dissolve our lives,” conrms on several plains
that death is dissolution, disintegration; moreover, death itself plays an active
role in liquefying life.
In his translations, Marlowe also uses the word dissolve twice once
in The First Book of Lucan:
So when this world’ s compounded union breaks,
Time ends, and to old Chaos all things turn,
Confused stars shall meet, celestial re
Fleet on the oods, the earth shoulder the sea,
Aording it no shore, and Phoebe’ s wain
Chase Phoebus, and enraged aect his place,
And strive to shine by day and full of strife
Dissolve the engines of the broken world. (73–80, emphasis added)
Here, in place of “[d]issolve the engines of the broken world,” in the original Latin
text we nd “totaque discors machina divolsi turbabit foedera mundi” (79–80).
More closely, “the whole discordant machine will overturn the laws of a uni-
verse ripped apart” (translation by Roche 59), which shows that Marlowe’ s choice
250
MÁRTA HARGITAI
of words recalls the rst line’ s image of conpage solute, i.e. the structure of the cos-
mos being completely dissolved.
In his translation of Ovid’ s Elegia XV in Book I of Amores, Marlowe writes,
What age of Varro’ s name shall not be told,
And Jason’ s Argos and the eece of gold?
Lofty Lucretius shall live that hour
That nature shall dissolve this earthly bower (21–24, emphasis added)
whereas Ovid’ s original ran as follows: “carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura
Lucreti, / exitio terras cum dabit una dies,” more closely, in Showerman’ s transla-
tion, “[t]he verses of sublime Lucretius will perish only then when a single day shall
give the earth to doom.”
Although I am not at all qualied to discuss classical-philological subtleties
here, it seems evident to me that Marlowe could have used other words and phrases
than dissolve in his translations. If he chose this word out of many other possibilities,
it might indicate that he may have been impressed by the end-of-the-world, cata-
clysmic connotations of the word to be used in his own works as well.8
This is the meaning of the word also used by Mephistopheles in Doctor Faustus:
FAUSTUS. First will I question with thee about hell.
Tell me, where is the place that men call hell?
MEPHIST. Under the heavens.
FAUSTUS. Ay, but whereabout?
MEPHIST. Within the bowels of these elements,
Where we are torturd and remain for ever:
Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib’d
In one self place; for where we are is hell,
And where hell is, there must we ever be:
And, to conclude, when all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be puried,
All places shall be hell that are not heaven. (2.1.119–129, emphasis added)
8 Interestingly, Shakespeare uses the same idea in The Tempest: “And, like the baseless fabric of this
vision, / The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, / The solemn temples, the great globe
itself, / Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve / And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, / Leave
not a rack behind” (4.1.151–154).
FROM “RE SOLUTE” TO “DISSOLVED”
251
Bevington and Rasmussen gloss, “Mephistopheles’ description draws on 2 Peter iii.10–
11: ‘t he e leme nt s s ha l l m el t w it h he at . . . a ll t he se t hi ng s mu st be di s solv d,’ a nd D ani el
xii.9–10: ‘. . . till the end of time. Many shall be puried, made white, and tried’” (144).
This nicely dovetails with a sermon by John Donne from 1630, Death’ s Duel, in which
he writes about his own death.9 Donne proclaims that, until Christ’ s second com-
ing, no man is exempt from the rule that one’ s esh is to see corruption, and expe-
rience dissolution of body and soul. At that moment, though, we shall see a mystery,
he ensures us, when “we shall all be changed in an instant, we shall have a disso-
lution, and in the same instant a redintegration, a recompacting of body and soul,
and that shall be truly a death and truly a resurrection, but no sleeping in corrup-
tion” (Donne 406). Faustus is not to survive until then; therefore, he can only be one
of us who “die now and sleep in the state of the dead;” therefore, “we must all pass
this posthume death, this death after death, nay, this death after burial, this dis-
solution after dissolution, this death of corruption and putrefaction, of vermiculation
and incineration, of dissolution and dispersion in and from the grave . . .” (Donne
408, emphasis added).
Marlowe, I argue, is perhaps presenting in Mephistopheles’ “when all the world
dissolves, / And every creature shall be puried, / All places shall be hell that are not
heaven,” the image of dissolution after dissolution, which Faustus cannot skip, although
he wishes to experience such death and resurrection, a reintegration (Donne’ s redin-
tegration) of body and soul, but just like Macbeth, he cannot “jump the life to come.”
Dissolution, solution, absolve, resolute, and many other words stem from the IE *lū – or *leu
“to detach, set free” (Partridge 1859).10 Does Faustus s wish to be transformed
into small waterdrops and to be lost in the sea mean that he hopes for absolution
(from sin), release or detachment from Satan? Will his solvency (also from *leu) or uidity
9 Previously Donne expounded: “And if no other deliverance conduce more to his glory and my good,
yet he hath the keys of death, and he can let me out at that door, that is, deliver me from the manifold
deaths of this world, the omni die, and the tota die, the every day’ s death and every hour’ s death,
by that one death, the nal dissolution of body and soul, the end of all. But then is that the end
of all? Is that dissolution of body and soul the last death that the body shall suer (for of spiritual
death we speak not now). It is not, though this be exitus à morte: it is introitus in mortem; though
it be an issue from manifold deaths of this world, yet it is an entrance into the death of corrup-
tion and putrefaction, and vermiculation, and incineration, and dispersion in and from the grave,
in which every dead man dies over again. It was a prerogative peculiar to Christ, not to die this
death, not to see corruption” (Donne 406).
10 Other words stemming from the same root include solve, solvable, solvate, solvency, solvent (adj, hence n)
252
MÁRTA HARGITAI
save him, or will it prove fatal? Would he or his sin (or both) be cleared, ltered,
liquidated, liqueed, or melted (perhaps recalling Icarus’ s wings once again)?
Is it death that is being described here or a new life to come? Would the problem
be solved with this new solution (Faustus merging with water), or would that mean
that he wishes to be left, abandoned, liquidated, and therefore, annihilated? Would
the case be thereby closed, or would it be the beginning of another alliance, this
time not with Satan but with God?
We ca nnot be entirely sure of the answers to these vexing quest ions, but per-
haps it is worth stopping here to recall Ovid’ s metamorphosed characters, who keep
their human mind and soul. These characters continue suering on the basis that
both authors seem to experience a gap between mind and body, therefore, making
it possible to postulate that, although the body can change either gradually decay
or radically metamorphose the mind does not transform substantially.
Mythological references abound in Marlowe’ s play; let me now recall only two
characters who metamorphose in Ovid as well, Semele and Arethusa:
Brighter art thou than aming Jupiter
When he appeared to hapless Semele,
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa’ s azured arms . . . (5.1.106–109)
Bevington and Rasmussen note that “Semele urged her lover, Zeus or Jupiter
to appear to her in his full splendour as a god. When he did so, she was con-
sumed by lightning, thereby becoming (for some Renaissance mythographers
at least) the emblem of presumptuousness punished by divine fury” (191).
As we can see in Ovid (iii.316–396), Juno gulls the credulous Semele not unlike
how Mephistopheles gulls Faustus in Marlowe’ s play, the “poore sielie sim-
ple soule” that he was;11 as the scholar also presumptuously believed that he can
play god or that he can be God’ s or Satan’ s equal, and as such he can be master
of Mephistopheles. As a consequence, he will nally be consumed by everlasting
and soluble, solute (adj, hence n), solution: cf the cpds absolve, absolvent, and absolute (whence absolut-
ism, absolutist), absolution dissoluble, dissolute, dissolution, dissolve, dissolvable, dissolvent insol-
uble, insolubility, insolvent (whence insolvency) irresoluble, irresolute, irresolution resolute,
resolution, resolve (v, with pa resolved; hence also n), resolvent (Partridge 1858).
11 “A nd she po ore si eli e s im ple sou le im med ia tel y o n t his / R equ es ted Jov e t o g rau nt a bo one th e wh ic h
she did not name” (Ovid: Bk. III.360, trans. Golding).
FROM “RE SOLUTE” TO “DISSOLVED”
253
re in hell, comparable to the lightning that struck Semele despite his penultimate
utterance, in which Faustus pledges to burn his books instead, a burn for a burn.
However, this conventional form of abjuring magic comes manifestly too late
(cf. Bevington 197).
It is easy to see why Arethusa is mentioned next by Marlowe. “The nymph ed
from the river god Alpheus, whose lust she had awakened by bathing in his stream,
and was transformed by Artemis into a fountain, adding that the story was some-
times allegorised into the soul’ s pursuit of truth” (Bevington 191). As Arethusas case
proves in Ovid,12 there’ s no escape from God’ s love; and as Faustus would later
learn, there is no escape from his wrath either: Arethusa would be taken by Alpheus
whether or not she be transformed into waterdrops and by analogy we could argue
that Faustus would not be much better o either should he be turned into water-
drops. “Every metamorphosis,” concludes W. C. Carroll, “is partly a loss,” a ver-
sion of death; “the ultimate change that awaits us all,” and thus metamorphosis can
be used as a synonym for death (26). It is as foolish to ask for dissolution into water-
drops in a Christian framework as to wish for transformation into a non-human
shape in an Ovidian metamorphic world.
So, from believing that Hell is a fable and the conviction that the joys of Heaven
are not to be hoped for, cf.
What, is great Mephistopheles so passionate
For being deprived of the joys of heaven?
Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude,
And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess. (1.3.85–88)
he eventually arrives at the exact opposite: the poignant certainty of hell and
the heart-felt frustration of being deprived of the joys of heaven,
And what wonders I have done, all Germany can witness, yea, all the world, for
which Faustus hath lost both Germany and the world, yea, heaven itself heaven,
the seat of God, the throne of the blessed, the kingdom of joy and must remain
in hell for ever. Hell, ah, hell for ever! Sweet friends, what shall become of Faustus,
being in hell for ever? (5.2.21–26)
12 “A ch il l c ol de swe at my si eg ed li mm es opp re st , a nd dow ne ap ac e / Fr om al l m y b od ie st ea mi ng dr op s
254
MÁRTA HARGITAI
He, however, never questions the terms of the deal, “[f]or vain pleasure of four-and-
twenty years hath Faustus lost eternal joy and felicity” (5.2.39–41). In the end, one
of his nal lines also reiterates the anguish of deprivation, “[n]o, Faustus, curse thy-
self. Curse Lucifer, / That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven” (5.2.114–115).
Faustus’ s oscillation as to what to believe in, heaven or hell, can also be seen
to be drawn in the coordinates of belief and disbelief; the play-text thus opens
up a range of perspectives on scepticism as well. The word belief, however, is never
used, neither is disbelief or disbelieve. Believe is, but it only appears three times,
in much the same context, always used by the Duke and Duchess of Vanholt,
e.g. in the Duke’ s “[b]elieve me, Master Doctor, this merriment hath much pleased
me” (4.2.1–2). Yet the play, at least on one level, is about this: about the trajectory
from the initial disbelief of hell to the conviction that only Hell exists, or as Helen
Gardner puts it, “from doubt of the existence of hell to the belief in the reality
of nothing else” (104).
The question, however, is if this belief is any better than the initial doubt.
The word belief ultimately seems to originate from the PIE *leubh-, whose English
meaning is “to care for, love” (Pokorny 1908). According to Pokorny, OE leaf origi-
nates from this PIE root and its derivatives include OE līefan, -líefan “allow,” and
gelīefan “believe” (1908).
Faustus deliberates before signing the pact with his own blood:
Now, Faustus, must thou needs be damned,
And canst thou not be saved.
What boots it then to think of God or heaven?
Away with such vain fancies and despair!
Despair in God, and trust in Beelzebub.
Now go not backward. No, Faustus, be resolute.
Why waverest thou? O, something soundeth in mine ears:
‘Abjure this magic, turn to God again!’
Ay, and Faustus will turn to God again.
To God? He loves thee not.
The god thou servest is thine own appetite,
Wherein is xed the love of Beelzebub.
did fall of watrie hew. / Which way so ere I stird my foote the place was like a stew. / The deaw ran
trickling from my haire. In halfe the while I then / Was turnde to water, that I now have tolde the tale
agen. / His loved waters Alphey knew, and putting o the shape / Of man the which he tooke
before bicause I should not scape, / Returned to his proper shape of water by and by / Of pur-
pose for to joyne with me and have my companie” (v.716–789).
FROM “RE SOLUTE” TO “DISSOLVED”
255
To him I’ll build an altar and a church,
And oer lukewarm blood of new-born babes. (2.1.1–14)
So, if God does not love him, he will love, i.e. believe (in) Beelzebub instead.
The phraseology of the above passage in the play-text is most interesting: the god
to be served is inside oneself, where there is also the love of Beelzebub xed.
This emphasis on a xed place is revealing: something permanent should be found
in an ever-changing soul, best represented by its own changing appetite, which now
craves this, then something else, etc. This xity is further emphasised by the image
of building an altar and a church, and the blasphemy is completed with the satanic
black mass oer of the blood of new-born babes.
Ironically, however, the new-born babe can be seen to be Faustus himself: newly
born in Satan; he is just about to oer his own blood to Lucifer. This sacrice
of Faustus taking his own blood, therefore, metaphorically suggests the idea of suicide.
Lukewarm likewise anticipates his own congealing blood, obliquely conrming that
blood is a liquid that normally keeps owing, and thus it is also contrasted to the per-
manent settlement of Beelzebub in the church that Faustus promises to build.
Belief and disbelief thus seem to go hand in hand, but the question is why
the belief in something automatically triggers the disbelief of its opposite. Why
not doubt both? Why does Faustus end up accepting the reality of hell and give
up on the chance to get to heaven?
At the beginning of act 2, scene 1, Faustus speaks to himself: conrmed that
he is damned and cannot be saved, he warns himself against thinking about God
and heaven, calling them vain fancies and despair. Then he continues:
Despair in God and trust in Beelzebub.
Now go not backward. No, Faustus, be resolute.
Why waverest thou? O, something soundeth in mine ears:
‘Abjure this magic, turn to God again.’ (2.1.5–8)
Despair is another one of the key-words of the play, a theme on which Helen Gardner
has beautifully elaborated. Let me briey recall the etymology of the word here: de
“without” and sperare “to hope.” So, when Faustus exclaims, “[d]espair in God, and
trust in Beelzebub,” he commands himself to give up hope in God and believe (in)
Satan instead. Why one must lead to the other is not entirely clear, though: for prac-
tical reasons, for material gain, for dramaturgical/theatrical purposes, it is clear;
256
MÁRTA HARGITAI
but why does losing ground on one side necessarily lead to xing our position
on the other extreme?
Maybe the real question is not why this is the case, but what it tells about
the world of Faustus, and by extension, Christianity itself. In such a world, you must
choose sides, as remaining neutral is not an option. For someone full of doubt and
disbelief, however, it might seem tempting to try to overcome this dichotomous way
of thinking, defying set norms and trying the utmost this kind of logic can perform.
Taking this logic to its extreme, however, seems to prove self-defeating: Faustus
decides to sign the pact with Lucifer out of fear of losing his trust in Beelzebub.
It is as if he forces himself to do the more daring thing to avoid a lesser prob-
lem: his emerging doubts. When you give up or lose hope, it means that you
no longer have faith in something, but can you order yourself to lose hope as implied
by Faustus’ s imperative, “[d]espair in God and trust in Beelzebub?”
Doubts (from PIE root *dwo – “two”) are exactly what he does not need, what
he wants to get rid of forever; and since God has never oered such rm ground for
him as God never appeared to him, never reassured him, never answered his ques-
tions, he has only one chance to nd this solid basis he so sorely requires: Lucifer.
And for this new xed position to gain he would give anything, no matter the price.
The problem with this is that by doing so, he marries himself “to the spirit
of change and dissolution” (cf. McAlindon 130). McAlindon could be right again:
the rst time Faustus manages to conjure Mephistopheles, he appears too ugly
to attend on him, so as a probable anti-Catholic joke, he charges the devil to return
as an old Franciscan friar. This shapeshifting, Russell argues, identies the spirit
with the traditional Devil (61); therefore, if Faustus wants to change, he inevitably
needs to follow Lucifer. Note that Faustus rst refers to Beelzebub, then conjures
Mephistopheles, who leads him to Lucifer; i.e. even the representatives of Evil change.
In the play-text, there is further confusion as to who is Mephistopheles’ lord, Lucifer
or Beelzebub, which may be owing to the fact that in the Bible (Matt xii.24–28, Mark
iii.22–26, Luke xi.15–20) the names Satan, Lucifer and Beelzebub are all used for the chief
devils (Marlowe, Doctor Faustus 129). Bevington and Rasmussen also refer to Robert
West, who claims that demonology generally ranks devils when they are tempting
and overthrowing souls but dissolves such distinctions when the soul is taken o
to damnation (129).13
13 Russell also points out that Mephistopheles’ name, which appears rst in the 1587 Faustbook,
seems to be “a brand new coinage,” the chief elements being Greek me-, “not;” phos, photos, “light;”
FROM “RE SOLUTE” TO “DISSOLVED”
257
The unholy trinity of Satan, Lucifer, and Beelzebub, however, is very dierent
in nature from the Holy One, as the three-person God and the three personica-
tions of Evil symbolise two very dierent notions: God stands for constancy and per-
manence, whereas Satan represents change, division and dissolution.14
So, if Faustus despairs the exact reason is very ambiguous: is it God’ s power
in general or God’ s power to forgive Faustus’ s sin that he cannot trust? he has
no hope for constancy either. His predisposition to change, therefore, necessarily
pushes him towards Satan.
When he starts to disbelieve God, he begins to un-love him.15 Belief and disbelief
are not absolute antonyms: disbelief does not simply mean the lack of belief. Like
resolute meaning both determined, solid and xed and dissolute, dissolved, bro-
ken into its parts; belief and disbelief are dialectically mutual and often oscillating
points of view even within the soul of one man, every man, Everyman, or Faustus.
He un-loves God, loves apart, loves another.
In the nal estimation, however, belief seems to win albeit only by subverting
morality play anticipations: convinced that he has forfeited his salvation once and
for all, he nally overcomes his doubts and accepts his eternal stay (xity) in hell.
This, however, is only possible for him by continuing to disbelieve in the power
of heaven. So, although in the nal hour he does acknowledge (believe in) the exist-
ence of both heaven and hell, he only trusts in the power of the latter, thereby rel-
ativizing God’ s omnipotence, postulating that His redemptive power is limited.
Yet, belief seems to be stronger in another and more general sense as well: disbe-
lieving might very well mean that you do believe, just in something else, in another
philos, “lover,” probably an “ironic parody of Lucifer, ‘lightbearer’” (61). That the servant should
be parodying his master is yet another sign that Satan is divided against Satan.
14 As we read in The Geneva Bible, “[t]hen was brought to him one possessed with a devil, both blind,
and dumb, and he healed him, so that he which was blind and dumb, both spake and saw. And
all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this that son of David? But when the Pharisees heard
it, they said, This man casteth the devils no otherwise out but through Beelzebub the prince of devils.
But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to them , Every kingdom divided against itself, shall be brought to naught ,
and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand. So if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against him-
self; how shall then his kingdom endure? ” (Matt 12.22–26, emphasis added).
15 The word disbelief is a Lat in -Ge rm ani c mi xt ure ; the pr ex ori gi nat ing fr om P IE *dis – “apart, asun-
der, in two” (Partridge, 3904). Partridge adds that “the general meaning is ‘ separation,’ as in dis-
miss; hence, deprivation, reversal, negation . . .” then comments that “the Greek dis means twice,
doubly, double” (3904), and Pokorny calls du̯is – “twice” and du̯is – “divided, asunder” identical
in numerous old languages (788).
258
MÁRTA HARGITAI
(direction). If you are sceptical, you likewise do believe in or entertain the possibil-
ity of simultaneous truths. In this manner, I hope that at least some of the read-
ers of this paper will allow for the possibility of a truth or some truth in what has
been presented above.
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ConTribuTor deTails
Márta Hargitai is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at ELTE, Budapest. She
holds a PhD in Early Modern English literature. She has a major academic interest
in Renaissance drama, philosophy and theology, as well as in lm adaptations and
the methodology of teaching/using literature in the secondary classroom. Her pub-
lications include articles on the notion of time and space in Macbeth and The Tempest,
the special anities of Hitchcock’ s lms with Shakespearean theatre and dram-
aturgy, and most recently on masters or servants in Doctor Faustus and Macbeth,
in Things New and Old: Essays on the Medieval Period and the Renaissance, published
by Cambridge Scholars.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
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