^1. See the introduction to Greg's Marlowe's Doctor Faustus 1604–1616, Parallel Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950).

^2. See, e.g., C. L. Barber, “ ‘The Form of Faustus’ Fortunes Good or Bad', ” Tulane Drama Review, viii (1964), 93, n. 2.

^3. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, ed. Frederick S. Boas (London, 1932), p. 23.

^4. Greg, Parallel Texts, pp. 230–232.

^5. One cannot attribute all the varied structural failings of Marlowe's plays to textual corruption. Tamburlaine, Part I, succeeds to the extent that it does despite a singular lack of dramatic form.

^6. See Una Ellis-Fermor's acute discussion of poetry and idea in Tamburlaine in Christopher Marlowe (London, 1927), pp. 27 ff.

^7. Plays such as Nathaniel Woodes's Conflict of Conscience.

^8. Kyd's apology and the fragments of the Arian disputation he said belonged to Marlowe are reprinted in F. S. Boas, The Works of Thomas Kyd (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), pp. cx-cxiii. Kyd's accusations against Marlowe and Richard Baines's note are reprinted by Paul Kocher in Christopher Marlowe (Chapel Hill, N. C, 1946), pp. 25, 34–36. Kocher argues very persuasively the consistency of atheistic ideas attributed to Marlowe by various contemporaries (pp. 27–32).

^9. Kocher, p. 119.

^10. See my earlier essay, “The Comic Synthesis in Doctor Faustu,” ELU, xxii (1955), 165–172.

^11. Again and again the thought of man challenging or displacing the gods recurs in the first part of Tamburlaine, couched usually in allusions to Greek mythology. See, e.g., ii.iii.18 ft; n.vi.1-8; n.vii.12-15; iv.iv.71-72; v.ii.387-390, 447–448. It is revealing that the great apostrophe to man's aspiring mind “still climbing after knowledge infinite” (ii.vii. 18 ff.) immediately follows a reference to Jove's deposition of Saturn, king of the gods. In Part ii Tamburlaine threatens to turn his cavalieros against the heavens (ii.iv. 103–106) when Zenocrate dies. And when he feels his fatal illness, he would “march against the powers of heaven” to “slaughter the gods” (v.iii.48-50). All references to Marlowe's plays are to The Complete Plays, ed. Irving Ribner (New York, 1963).

^12. “But Faustus' offence can ne'er be pardoned. / The serpent that tempted Eve may be saved, but not Faustus” (v.ii.41-42).

^13. Concluding his summary of his feats in medicine, Faustus remarks, “Yet art thou still but Faustus and a man.” And to be but a man is of course to be subject to death.

^14. In paralleling the careers of Faustus and Macbeth, Helen Gardner emphasizes only their degradations (“The Tragedy of Damnation,” Essays and Studies, i, 1948, 46 ff.). Yet we have only to compare the last scenes of Dr. Faustus with the last scenes of Macbeth to realize how different are the spiritual fates of the two “damned” heroes.

^15. One example is W. W. Greg's argument that Faustus is ultimately damned because he makes love to a witch (Helen), in “The Damnation of Faustus,” MLR, XLI (1946), 97–107.

^16. Similarly Faustus' fellow scholars shrink from his side lest they tempt the wrath of God. The heavens can burn as well as hell. When the opening Chorus speaks of “melting heavens,” it refers, not to tears of mercy and compassion, but to the heat of vindictive wrath. Indeed, “melting heavens conspired [Faustus'] overthrow.”

^17. See Kocher, pp. 71 et passim.

^18. We can only speculate about Marlowe's motives for publicizing his atheism. See n. 26.

^19. According to Baines, Marlowe said, “The first beginning of Religioun was only to keep men in awe,” and he accused Moses of tricking the Jews so as to implant an “everlasting superstition” in their hearts (Kocher, p. 34). To be sure, Marlowe's target in Dr. Faustus is the hated papacy. But Baines reports Marlowe's statement “that if there be any god or any good Religion, then it is in the papistes because the service of god is performed with more Cerimonies, as Elevation of the mass, organs, singing men, Shaven Crownes” (Kocher, p. 35). Marlowe may well have been attracted to the solemn ritual and mysteries of the Catholic service.

^20. The first antagonism between Faustus and Mephistophi-lis arises when Faustus asks “who made the world.” Faustus tries to think “upon God that made the world,” but he is ordered by Lucifer (iiü108 to “talk not of Paradise or creation.”

^21. See the emphasis on the eternality and omnipotence of the deity in the Arian disputation, Kyd, pp. cxi, cxii.

^22. The dreariness of the opening scene of Tourneur's The Atheist's Tragedy, where D'Amville discusses his philosophy at length with his accomplice Borachio, provides an instructive contrast to the brilliant opening scene of Dr. Faustus.

^23. Doctrinally, of course, Christ's blood is the symbol of redemption. But the immediate imaginative and emotional force of the line, I think, is to evoke the agony of the Crucifixion. When the red banners hang at Damascus (Tamburlaine), the Virgins are slaughtered at spearpoint, and in Part ii, Tamburlaine would “set black streamers in the firmament / To signify the slaughter of the gods” (v.iii.49-50). In Tamburlaine, at least, bloody hues in the firmament are associated with implacable will and destructiveness. Equally revealing is the description of Tamburlaine's “mildness of mind / That, satiate with spoil, refuseth blood” (iv.i.51-58). Such is the “mercy” of satisfied will at Damascus in Part i.

^24. This is not to agree with Una Ellis-Fermor that Marlowe envisions in Or. Faustus a Satanic world order (The Frontiers of Drama, London, 1948, pp. 141 ff.). Cruelty, sadistic destructiveness, and vindictiveness are characteristic of the would-be god, Tamburlaine (or Lucifer), in his degradation, not of the wrathful deity of Marlowe's last play.

^25. It is interesting that Faustus' last despairing attempt to appease his angry God by offering to bum his books echoes Envy's sentence: “I cannot read and therefore wish all books burned” (ii.ii.128).

^26. To read Baines's account of Marlowe's obscene and treasonous public statements—an account corroborated by others—is to know that whatever Marlowe's motive was, it was not a hope of winning believers from Christianity.