• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.237-253
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• 2010

In Christopher Marlowe's Cambridge days in the 1580s, the British forward wits were engaged in the curious pursuit of magic and occult philosophy in order to discover the mystery of things. Magic, together with judiciary astronomy, astrology, mathematics, and logic, was one of the most practical disciplines. Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Jonson demonstrate their deep interest in magic and its language of spell and charms in the light of their analogical application to the alchemical theatre. As Shakespeare says that the poet, the lover, and the madman are of the same because they give forms to airy nothing, a magical illusion is, for the three playwrights, similar to the theatrical illusion in that both magic and theatre work in and by a language and both give us sportive pleasures through the deceptio visus. However, while Jonson is rather puritanically antagonistic to the illusive language of alchemy and magic, Marlowe and Shakespeare are attracted to the rapturous nature of the absolute language of magic. Doctor Faustus' indulgence in magic stands for the Marlovian aspiration for the absolute language which allows no discrepancy between thinking and willing, conceiving and actualizing. His uses of spells, charms, anagrams, and magic books are transformed and translated in the play into an alchemical theatre. Faustus is dependant on and bound by his books of magic, as is the actor on the stage. Faustus is the poet condemned from the beginning. Though he is mistakenly thinking that it is he himself that manipulates Mephostophilis the magical agent, it is otherwise. Faustus is a shadow or an actor in the Elizabethan language. He remains a farcical figure during the twenty-four years which are given to him for his sensual dalliance. Marlowe never forgets through his farcical clowning to satirize such Catholic rituals as exorcism and benediction for their illusive theatricalism. The sports of Faustus' playacting and play-directing rise at the last hour to the height of a tragedy. Ironically Marlowe the playwright succeeds as a tragedian at the point where Faustus fails as a magician.