Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus and Goethe’s Faust

The Myth

            It’s a fascinating tale: a scholar bored with all of his knowledge and hungry for more strikes a deal with the devil himself. In return for his soul, he will have immense power, while he lives. This is the basic myth that Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Johan Goethe’s Faust are based on. However, now that I’ve read both of them, Marlowe’s in my “Shakespeare’s Contemporaries” class and Goethe’s in the classics list I’ve been working through, I can safely say that the execution of Faust and Faustus are quite different.

Some Context

            First I have a disclaimer not only is the execution of the two plays quite different the settings in which I read them are quite different as well. Before I go into the plays themselves, I felt as though I should elucidate why my opinions of them might be tainted given the fact that I read them in such different manners. My “Shakespeare’s Contemporaries” class was simultaneously one of the most entertaining and interesting classes I ever took in college and one of the most frustrating. This mainly comes from the professor. He was a sweet, fiercely opinionated, old, catholic man obsessed with what he called the sublime.

Some More Context

Although the class was called “Shakespeare’s Contemporaries” contemporaries being plural it more accurately could have been named “Christopher Marlowe and some other guys” because even after we finished reading Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus our professor was never done talking about him. I could tell you all about this Marlowe, the English Renaissance’s James Bond, but I already have in this post, “The Name’s Marlowe, Christopher Marlowe: Why I’m not an English Professor.” My trek through Goethe’s Faust was much more solitary. I was the only person I knew reading it, though I did discuss it briefly with my student teaching supervisor as we both originally pronounced Goethe incorrectly as “Go-th” instead of “Ger-te” like it is supposed to be pronounced.

The First Half

For the first half of Goethe’s Faust I reveled in the differences between his and Marlowe’s.  The main conflict in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus was an internal man-versus-self conflict, where Faustus agonized over whether he would be damned or not. Whether this brief moment of glory in the #sublime was going to be worth a lifetime in hell. On the other hand, Goethe focused more on Faust’s shenanigans with the devil Mephistopheles. The question, “What would you do if given access to the devil’s power?” is just as interesting as Marlowe’s central conflict and significantly less of a downer. However, Goethe’s Faust quickly becomes scrambled. The somewhat obscure plotline of his romance with Gretchen is completely abandoned for Faust takes a random holiday in classical Greece.

Maybe? But no

My first thought is that had Goethe’s Faust ended with Part I, I would have been satisfied, but even that isn’t true. In Part I there’s no resolution, nor is there time for resolution to Faust’s deal with Mephistopheles. While Part II does tack it randomly on at the end, at least he attempts to touch upon it. The rest of Part II is equally disjointed. Each act touches upon a different theme and none seem to have any bearing on the other. While Marlowe’s Faustus is much more depressing at least it is at least somewhat consistent. There is a moment whether Faustus goes gallivanting through Rome to mess with the pope, but my professor suspects that that was a later edit done by the acting companies who wanted to add some comedy to this otherwise dark tragedy.

The Men

Now let’s take a look at the men themselves. If you stood Faust beside Faustus, what would you see? Faust for one is much more concerned with how much fun he is going to have in life compared to Faustus. While Faustus counted his knowledge as worthless and so summed the devil for more knowledge, Faust counted his knowledge as worthless, given the fact that he wasn’t having any frolicking fun. Faust didn’t even deliberately summon Mephistopheles; he just accidentally caught him. Meanwhile, Faustus started his existential agonizing before he even summoned Mephistopheles, asking if merely summoning would equal eternal damnation.

The Devils

We’ve looked at the men; now how about the devils? Faustus’ Mephistopheles is a patient killer biding his time fulfilling Faustus’ desires till he may drag him down to hell. Comparatively, Faust’s Mephistopheles is more like a gleeful sidekick acting as an accomplice to Faust’s trysts and ploys. Faustus’ Mephistopheles’ long-con works as he gets to triumphantly drag him down to hell, while Faust’s Mephistopheles attempts to drag him down, but is thwarted by angels who save Faust. If I might play judge and jury for a moment, if you compare these two men, Faustus was certainly repentant of his actions, whereas Faust was not at all. Faust reveled in his bad deeds, whereas Faustus agonized deeply over every moment.

Ultimately…

Ultimately, I understand that Faustus’ damnation was in keeping with Marlowe’s bleak tone and that Faust’s salvation was in keeping with Goethe’s, in this case literal, Deus Ex Machina-ing him out of consequences.  Nevertheless, I can’t help grumbling at the relative injustice of the endings. But what do I think of the literature overall? Goethe’s is undeniably more fun for at least the first part, but Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus actually deserved to be on that classics list, though it wasn’t, while Goethe’s did not.

What about you?

What do you think? Did you ever read either of these books?  Have you ever been in a similar situation where you could look at two retellings of the same story? Let me know!