The Complete Plays (6 page)

Max Bluestone,
‘Libido Speculandi
: Doctrine and Dramaturgy in Contemporary Interpretations of Marlowe's
Doctor Faustus
', in
Reinterpretations of Elizabethan Drama. Selected Papers from the English Institute
, ed. Norman Rabkin (New York, 1969), pp. 33–88.

Roma Gill, ‘“Such Conceits as Clownage Keeps in Pay”: Comedy in
Doctor Faustus
', in
The Fool and the Trickster: Studies in Honour of Enid Welsford
, ed. Paul V. A. Williams (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 55–63.

Michael Hattaway, ‘The Theology of Marlowe's
Doctor Faustus
',
Renaissance Drama
n.s. 3 (1970), pp. 51–78.

J. H. Jones (ed.),
The English Faust Book
(Cambridge, 1994).

John Jump (ed.),
Marlowe, ‘Doctor Faustus': A Casebook
(London, 1969).

Harry Levin,
Christopher Marlowe: The Overreacher
, ch. 5.

Gareth Roberts, ‘Necromantic Books: Christopher Marlowe,
Doctor Faustus
and Agrippa of Nettesheim', in
Christopher Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture
, ed. Darryll Grantley and Peter Roberts (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 148–71.

Wilbur Sanders,
The Dramatist and the Received Idea: Studies in the Plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare
(Cambridge, 1968), chs. 10–12.

Edward A. Snow, ‘Marlowe's
Doctor Faustus
and the Ends of Desire', in
Two Renaissance Mythmakers: Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson
, Selected Papers of the English Institute, ed. Alvin Kernan (Baltimore, 1977), pp. 70–110.

Standard Modern Editions

Charles R. Forker (ed.),
Edward the Second
, Revels Plays (Manchester, 1994).

Roma Gill (ed.),
Edward II
(Oxford, 1967).

Richard Rowland (ed.),
Edward II
, Complete Works, vol. 3 (Oxford, 1994).

Martin Wiggins and Robert Lindsey (eds.),
Edward the Second
(London, 1997).

Suggested Further Reading

Debra Belt, ‘Anti-theatricalism and Rhetoric in Marlowe's
Edward II', English Literary History
21 (1991), pp. 134–60.

Gregory W. Bredbeck,
Sodomy and Interpretation: Marlowe to Milton
(Ithaca, NY, 1991).

Thomas F. Cartelli,
Marlowe, Shakespeare, and the Economy of Theatrical Experience
(Philadelphia, 1991).

Robert Fricker, ‘The Dramatic Structure of
Edward II', English Studies
34 (1953), pp. 128–44.

Michael Hattaway,
Elizabethan Popular Theatre: Plays in Performance
(London, 1982), pp. 141–59.

Clifford Leech, ‘Marlowe's
Edward II
: Power and Suffering',
Critical Quarterly
1 (1959), pp. 181–96.

J. F. McElroy, ‘Repetition, Contrariety and Individualization in
Edward II', Studies in English Literature
1500–1900 24 (1984), pp. 205–24.

Standard Modern Editions

H. J. Oliver (ed.),
Dido Queen of Carthage and The Massacre at Paris
, Revels Plays (Manchester, 1968).

Edward J. Esche (ed.),
The Massacre at Paris
, Complete Works, vol. 5 (Oxford, 1998).

Suggested Further Reading

Julia Briggs, ‘Marlowe's
Massacre at Paris
: A Reconsideration',
Review of English Studies
n.s. 34 (1983), pp. 257–78.

Richard Hillman,
Shakespeare, Marlowe and the Politics of France
(Basingstoke, 2002,), pp. 72–112.

Andrew M. Kirk, ‘Marlowe and the Disordered Face of French History',
Studies in English Literature
35 (1995), pp. 193–213.

Paul H. Kocher, ‘François Hotman and Marlowe's
The Massacre at Paris', PMLA
56 (1941), pp. 349–68.

___, ‘Contemporary Pamphlet Backgrounds for Marlowe's
The Massacre at Paris', Modern Language Quarterly
8 (1947), pp. 157–73, 309–18.

David Potter, ‘Marlowe's
Massacre at Paris
and the Reputation of Henri III of France', in
Christopher Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture
, ed. Darryll Grantley and Peter Roberts (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 148–71.

Judith Weil,
Christopher Marlowe: Merlin's Prophet
(Cambridge, 1977).

The texts in this volume have been freshly edited from the earliest printed editions of Marlowe's plays. The spellings, punctuation, speech-prefixes, stage directions and lineation preserved in the original editions have been silently modernized in accordance with the particular needs of each text, given that Marlowe's plays were subject to the diverse conventions of printers. We have undertaken these modernizations conservatively, and have not sought to impose an arbitrary consistency across the volume: the grand rhetorical speeches of
Tamburlaine
, for example, require a different presentation from that demanded by the rapid conversational exchanges of
The Jew of Malta
. Elizabethan compositors' punctuation does not necessarily respect the sense-units of the original. Richard Jones's printing of
Tamburlaine the Great
, for example, contains many verse lines ending with full stops which affect the intelligibility of the text. We have freely repunctuated with the aim of making the syntactic structure as clear as possible for the modern reader.

Elizabethan spellings have been modernized, so ‘mushrump', ‘centronel' and ‘vild' become ‘mushroom', ‘sentinel' and ‘vile'. All ‘-ed' endings have been standardized, so ‘serv'd' becomes ‘served' and ‘returnd' becomes ‘returned'. Syllabic ‘-ed' endings have been marked ‘-èd'. Contractions in the original have been retained but in their modern form, so ‘swolne' and ‘tane' become ‘swoll'n' and ‘ta'en'. We have followed the original lineation of the copy-texts, except when it is evident that verse has been mistakenly printed as prose and vice versa. These alterations have not been noted. Substantive changes to the wording of the
original texts, on the other hand, have been recorded with some discussion in the Notes.

Printing-house errors such as turned letters, misplaced and transposed type and obvious cases of missing type have been silently corrected. Where ‘and' is used, meaning ‘if', we have silently adopted the modern form, ‘an'. The abbreviations ‘Mr' and ‘S.' have been expanded to ‘Master' and ‘Saint', respectively. All numbers in the copy-texts have also been expanded, so ‘24' becomes ‘four and twenty'.

Speech-prefixes and character names have been standardized throughout in accordance with the designations given in the Dramatis Personae. Where no act-division is present in the original text (
Doctor Faustus, Edward the Second
and
The Massacre at Paris
), the text has been sub-divided into scenes only. Foreign languages have been corrected throughout, and are translated in the Notes. We have regularized the Latin except in the case of
Doctor Faustus
, where some incorrect usages seem to have comic, or other, significance.

We have been sparing in the use of editorial stage-directions, which are enclosed in square brackets; these are added to clarify rather than prescribe the stage action. Where possible, we have reproduced the original positioning of stage-directions as set in the copy-texts, but in some cases, it has made better sense to move those stage-directions which do not correspond with the stage action implied by the text. A number of ‘late entries' in the copy-text have therefore been repositioned to indicate when a character is most likely to enter the stage.

[Dramatis Personae

JUPITER
GANYMEDE
MERCURY
,
Or
HERMES
VENUS
AENEAS
ASCANIUS
,
Aeneas's son
ACHATES
ILIONEUS
CLOANTHUS
SERGESTUS
IARBAS
,
King of Gaetulia
DIDO
ANNA
,
her sister
CUPID
JUNO
A LORD
NURSE
ATTENDANTS
]

JUPITER

Come, gentle Ganymede, and play with me:

I love thee well, say Juno what she will.

GANYMEDE

I am much better for your worthless love

That will not shield me from her shrewish blows!

Today, whenas
I filled into your cups

And held the cloth of
pleasance whiles
you drank,

She reached me such a rap for that I spilled

As made the blood run down about mine ears.

JUPITER

What? Dares she strike the darling of my thoughts?

10      
By Saturn's soul and
this earth-threat'ning hair,

That, shaken thrice, makes nature's buildings quake,

I vow, if she but once frown on thee more,

To hang her meteor
-like 'twixt heaven and earth

And bind her hand and foot with golden cords,

As once I did for harming Hercules!

GANYMEDE

Might I but see that pretty sport a-foot,

O, how would I with Helen's brother laugh,

And bring the gods to wonder at the game!

Sweet Jupiter, if e'er I pleased thine eye,

20      Or seemèd fair,
walled-in with
eagle's wings,

Grace my immortal beauty with this boon,

And I will spend my time in thy bright arms.

JUPITER

What is't, sweet
wag, I
should deny thy youth,

Whose face reflects such pleasure to mine eyes

As I,
exhaled with
thy fire-darting beams,

Have oft
driven back the
horses of the night,

Whenas they would have haled thee from my sight?

Sit on my knee and call for
thy content,

Control proud fate and cut the thread of time.

30      Why, are not all the gods at thy command,

And heaven and earth the bounds of thy delight?

Vulcan shall
dance to make thee laughing sport,

And my
nine daughters sing
when thou art sad;

From
Juno's bird I
'll pluck her spotted pride

To make thee fans wherewith to cool thy face;

And Venus' swans shall shed their silver down

To sweeten out the slumbers of thy bed;

Hermes no more shall show the world his wings,

If that thy fancy in his feathers dwell,

40      But, as this one, I'll tear them all from him,

[
Plucks feather
]

Do thou but say, ‘their colour pleaseth me'.

Hold here, my little love! [
Gives jewels
.] These linkèd gems

My Juno wore upon her marriage-day,

Put thou about thy neck, my own sweet heart,

And trick thy arms and shoulders with my theft.

GANYMEDE

I would have a jewel for mine ear,

And a fine brooch to put in my hat,

And then I'll hug with you an hundred times.

JUPITER

And shall have, Ganymede, if thou wilt be my love.

Enter
VENUS
.

VENUS

50       
Ay, this is it! You
can sit toying there

And playing with that female wanton boy

Whiles my Aeneas wanders on the seas

And rests a prey to every billow's pride.

Juno, false
Juno, in her chariot's pomp,

Drawn through the heavens by steeds of Boreas' brood,

Made Hebe to direct her airy wheels

Into the windy country of the clouds,

Where, finding Aeolus entrenched with storms

And guarded with a thousand grisly ghosts,

60      She humbly did beseech him for our bane,

And charged him drown my son with all his train.

Then gan the winds break ope their brazen doors,

And all
Aeolia to
be up in arms;

Poor Troy must
now be sacked upon the sea,

And Neptune's waves be
envious men
of war;

Epeus' horse, to
Etna's hill transformed,

Prepared stands to wrack their wooden walls,

And Aeolus, like Agamemnon,
sounds

The surges, his fierce soldiers, to the spoil.

70       
See how the
night, Ulysses-like, comes forth,

And intercepts the day as Dolon erst!

Ay me! The stars, surprised, like Rhesus' steeds

Are drawn by darkness forth Astraeus' tents.

What shall I do to save thee, my sweet boy,

Whenas the waves do threat
our crystal world,

And Proteus, raising hills of floods on high,

Intends ere long to sport him in the sky?

False Jupiter, reward'st thou virtue so?

What? Is not piety exempt from woe?

80       Then die, Aeneas, in thine innocence,

Since that religion hath no recompense.

JUPITER

Content thee, Cytherea, in thy care,

Since thy Aeneas' wand'ring fate is firm,

Whose weary limbs shall shortly make repose

In those
fair walls I
promised him of yore.

But first
in blood must
his good fortune bud

Before he be the lord of
Turnus' town,