Metaphysical roots of the drama; Marlowe and the Promethean Hero

From Cincinnati we present the third in the 1968 series of six Frank L. Weil Institute lectures delivered at the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion. The lecture is Dr. Robert Bruce Dean Dean of the Yale School of Drama who is general topic is the metaphysical roots of the drama. These lectures are released through the University of Cincinnati station WAGA you see the title of this program is Marlowe and the Promethean hero. Here is Dr. Robert Bruce Dean. Today we talk about Christopher Moore his partner and the question that I've been trying to get to and I clung to the way the relationship between theater and religion. Now it should be understood that the development of the Elizabethan drama is very different from the development of the Greek drama in regard to this question of religious consciousness. The Greeks begin

with ESCALUS. At the very pinnacle of religious piety and we've seen that the works of Escalus come out of a tremendous religious sense. They wouldn't have been written in the same way of Escalus though were not functioning almost as a hydrophone almost as a priest as well as a dramatist and his first Orbison's his first obedience was to religion rather than to our. It was religion that animated his eyes. And indeed at this time art and religion were virtually identified. Only gradually we saw the skepticism creep into the drama. With your abilities. And finally going on to mend them to where there's no religion whatsoever in the drama of these writing new comedy and finally to the Romans who imitate men and Roman comedy as you may know. It is not an original form. Roman comedy of Terence

and tortoise are virtually adaptations of the works of the great dramatist Manda and it is completely secular now. The orchestra and the altar disappear from the theater of the audience now sits in the place where the chorus used to sing and dance and that signified as I mentioned a few times ago that the absence of the religious element in the drama all together. Now it's interesting that the high point of religious piety in Western civilization in Europe does not produce a great drama. It produces a certain primitive sketches based on Scripture and an apocryphal. Sketches called mystery plays or miracle plays and morality plays and into that there are these four distinct kinds of drama. For them connected with religion. Written by religious minded people beginning in the church eventually being booted out of the church as they get more and more secular but nevertheless continually

focusing. On Testament and New Testament stories climaxing with the crucifixion of the passion. But as I said this doesn't produce great drama produces interesting drama but not great drama. And the great flowering of English drama from the 15 eighties arm. Does not come out of an age of say it comes rather out of an age of skepticism. The playwrights of England our Seneca the Roman for G-d and very closely. Take your the whole. Paraphernalia of the Olympian. Did you find these dramatists referring up to Jesus so much not to God not to Jehovah but rather to Cissy force and jaw and Apollo. And Tantalus and the whole paraphernalia of the Senate can help. In fact in kids Spanish Tragedy one of the first the blood and thunder revenge plays written in the 15 80s the characters although the characters are

clearly Christian characters speak in the imagery of a classical purgatory and they are indeed at the end condemned to a classical hell. If the villains are condemned to a classical heaven if their hero. King Lear you may remember swears by Roman God not by Christian ones. Perhaps because the play takes place in pre-Christian in the pre-Christian Europe and Edmund in that play makes a guy's out of nature not a supernatural conventions of the Elizabethan drama with which this drama is filled to flowing. Say like Elizabeth in Ghost. Not Christian Conventions Hamlet's ghost comes out of purgatory and has a few things to say about the agonies and suffering there. But Shakespeare got the convention from Seneca from the ghost the ghost of Clyde a master. And from the ghost of Tantalus incertain the Seneca's tragedies and they belong more to the Roman drama than they do to Christian theology. So we can say that

the development of the Elizabethan drama very broadly speaking. Is not based so much of the crime of a religious faith as on the decline of a humanistic faith when the playwright start writing there for themselves for the possibilities of mankind on this great crest of renaissance humanism but what we get in this drama dramatize so beautifully in Marlowe and Shakespeare in Turner in Ford in the in Webster even in Ben Johnson is the growing sense that man is not as powerful and as super human as he thinks and as renaissance humanism has led him to think that mortality. The fact of death marks. His efforts and that human aspiration ultimately ends in the grave. There's a good deal of graveyard imagery throughout this trial and that imagery is consistently mocking human aspiration.

In fact there's a growing sense of contempt this Monday contempt for the world not people of the world so much as a feeling that it that everything is fruitless all human aspiration and striving is fruitless. That signifies a kind of preparation for conversion in these dromedary and why the Puritans are attacking in this drama continually throughout its life and eventually put an end to it in 16 42 with the Cromwellian revolution. Nevertheless these dramatists have a little of the Puritan strain in them and they have a sense great sense of hellfire and damnation which as I sort of say following on the heels of their humanism Now you can see this even in the beginning of the great age Elizabeth and drama and even in that most exuberance of all the Elizabethan dramatists Christopher Marr. Has become a commonplace. But why. Christopher Marlowe Paris the great surge of renaissance

humanism and exploration comes at the same time that the English are exploring the new world. That's all the rule is. There's plundering Virginia and discovering tobacco that the English are on the on the surgeon crest of the great triumphs of military prowess against the Spanish and that the Renaissance philosophers are beginning to see all kinds of possibilities in them in human life that were not seen before. Now the qualities of Marlowe's characters are very often the qualities of himself. He likes to write about homosexuals being a homosexual he writes about arrogant characters being highly arrogant himself. This character is a quite often atheists and there's a general assumption that Marlowe was an atheist and therefore. Boundless self-confidence which model himself is full of until until he begins to write plays like Doctor forester's. They were

about what Mark himself called the aspiring mind. His characters aspire in some way or other. Tam Elaine aspires to great conquest fastest aspires to prior knowledge in the world that you have more to aspires to a kind of talkers of the morning. Each of them is superhuman in their in their assaults on life as Mario himself was a kind of superhuman figure and was continually trying to scale the heights of life. Now the image of the great image of Marlowe in his plays and in his life is that of the great rebel. He writes about Promethean figures he might have written the Promethean Yes I think very easily and identified himself all the way with his Promethea. And it's interesting that after Marlowe writes pretty thin characters begin to be called Marlovian the characters are almost one and the same. The rebel against God who was conquered by God but goes down. Mightily in

his stride. Now mama is peculiarly modern in his armed revolt. And it's interesting that nobody in his own age follows him quite as far as he goes. He's one of the first writers in this great revival of drama in the 15 eighties. And yet when Shakespeare begins to write and have Tim Johnson and I have to Marston Webster and the whole Marsh none of them really are quite as adventurous quite as experimental quite as restless quite as outrageous in what they're writing as Marlowe or certain modern writers are and I think John Paul saw for example John Janae Albert Camus all these men are extremely influenced by Marlowe and when Cameron writes a book called The rebel long revolt they without mentioning Marya's name he's really writing about Marlowe human figures now the hero named Tamela and the great conqueror of the city and

shepherd of base birth who rose to be the greatest conqueror of the world kind of Alexander the Great desires in Mahler's words to march against. The powers of heaven. And separate black streamers in the firmament to signify the slaughter of the guard is Tamela and final desire after his car at all times on earth to go up to heaven and start conquering the guards to set himself up against the gods of the become greater than the day. This I think is probably Marlowe's desire to forge one of his desires heroes according to his contemporaries a notorious atheist and blast dreamer in his own day. Thomas Kyd a contemporary. How does the apartment raided one day by the secret police of Elizabeth's time and the police found in kid's apartment and atheistical documents and the accused kid of being an atheist kid who probably wasn't if he

wasn't intelligent enough for it. He didn't have enough ambition for others who were crying at the time that it wasn't. This document was Christopher Mauer's document and he named names and Mara was the first name the name and then gave it the position which he told the police that Morrow was given and I quote him to suggest that divine scriptures gibe at prayers and strive in argument to frustrate and confuse it with what has been spoken by prophets and holy men unquote. Well kids the position was not the sole argument against Marlowe. There was that also of Richard Baines who was called up by the same police in star chamber proceedings and who testified tomorrow damnable judgment of religion and scoring of God's word. Mom he said had argued that the human race was older than Genesis indicated that Moses was a juggler imposing on primitive people. The Christ was a

bastard and his mother dishonest. But the problem of the cycles were based follows neither of with no work and at the first beginning of religion it was only to keep men off. Sounds like an early Marxist here. He also himself was also to observe that those who love not tobacco and boys are fools. Well. Nothing happened tomorrow because he was a secret agent for Elizabeth at the time. Kind of a double agent. Go rounds and. He was let alone dying later on as you may know in what was thought to be a homosexual quarrel over a serving man. He was stabbed in the back and died in a tavern brawl but he died very young too. Like. Most people like him but he. Suggested in these two the positions put of course in their archaic judgment on Marlowe is almost messianic sweet to his thought and

imagination. He is trying to set himself up as a kind of God. You're setting yourself up in place of God as himself the Messiah handing down a new philosophy a new scripture to a waiting world. It doesn't actually follow through in this in this place because it's death to do it. But you feel the desire in him the impulse in him to revolutionise this time he was warning against the guards like his characters and. Eventually aspiring to replace them. How do we live in the. One commentator. Compared to a curious. New comparison Martin himself compares a character to prosy compares fastest to workers who you may remember with his father Daedalus the fabulous octopus it. Had Wings to get out of the enclosure together the prison. Crew army is wearing the suit can hear the siren conspire to hide the sudden knot of these waxen wings and he fell down to earth. And.

Levin in his book on the title of the book the all reach Earth and thinks of Marlowe like his characters as being someone who overreaches himself. Now he isn't a reacher. And it's interesting that all the reaching in Marlowe's plays does not always lead to doom. Here is the classical hubris thing we've been talking about the classical hubristic hero. We've seen what happens to him and asked us to see what happens to him and Sophocles and even in Europe that is what the morrow and a character possum self are the remains parked up quite often. Hamil rain dies in the second part when he wants to storm the heavens but that second part is an afterthought in the first part is committed every. Possible crime in the books including murdering the father of his girlfriend raping her. Carrying on in the most bloody and zealous way and is getting more and more prosperous as the play proceeds which is just the opposite of course of the usual I want to call justice that is visited on such heroes. Now another image for Marlowe and a better one I

think the not a vigorous is that evolution for me is like a bright angel for an angel. Lucifer wants to say none serve him. Remember James Joyce or Stephen Dedalus is the same thing in portrait of the artist. I will not serve. He refuses to serve that which calls itself his country his garden for his fatherland because he doesn't believe in it any longer. And pride and presumption refusal to serve remained only modest chief characteristic of the back of some of his central characters. It's worthwhile to read a. Section from Tara lane here to give you an idea of just the sort of thing that Marlowe felt so strongly. The characters are commenting on Tambling What means this devilish good to aspire was such a giant leap presumption of character pills against the face of heaven and they're a force of angry Jupiter. But as he thrust them underneath the hills and pressed out fire from their

burning jaws so I send this monstrous slave to hell where flames shall ever feed upon his soul and the other characters some powers divine. Or else infernal mix there and receives it his conception for he was never sprung of human race since with the spirit of the spear propriety there so dark was the result of a rule and by profession be ambitious. The other characters of one god or fiend or spirit of the earth are monster turned to a man the shape or whatever mold or metal he made what Star are states away or govern him. Let us put on our meeting countering minds and in the testing such a devilishly thin love of honor and defense of right be armed against the hate of such a full one. From what I hear all I have to grow they don't know where it comes from and tamarind himself then speaks his ambition. The thirst I bring and sweetness of a crowd the chorus the eldest son of heavenly ups to thrust his doting father from his chair and

place himself in the Imperial haven't moved me to manage arms against thy state. Now the heavenly ops you may not know is Joel or Jupiter was Zeus who overthrew his father Cronus the type and that is the man with whom family identifies himself better precedent than Mighty Joe. Nature of the framed us of four elements warring within our breast for Regiment teach us all to have Aspiring Minds. Our Song. Whose faculties can comprehend the wondrous architecture of the world and measure every wandering planets course still climbing after knowledge infinite and always moving as the restless Spears wills us to wear our souls and never rest until we reach the ripest fruit of all that perfect bliss and saw Felicity the sweet fruition of an earthly crown. Notice the emphasis are originally here this terrible aim finds his beauty in earthly pleasures.

There's no pleasure after life for him and indeed that is to put an end to all his striving. Well Dr. Foster's takes a somewhat different view of striving. And already in the second play of Marlowe's we see him. Somewhat diminished somewhat downcast somewhat the ject we have another character who was aspiring this time towards knowledge but a character who has an altogether different end than the one in Tambling. Marlowe has written in Dr. Frost as. One of the great masterpieces of literature but one that's from the paradoxes. And one that's subject to many disputes and it contains I think some of the finest writing in the form of Elizabeth and drama and that includes Shakespeare and you must understand Shakespeare would not be Shakespeare without Marlowe he built. His horse mind. Marlo's sophistication of blank verse. But inspired the beautiful writing in it. It's a sadly modern masterpiece. It's like a

great room and temple where the barrel inquires where late the sweet birds continue to sing. Because Mark had a collaborator. It's quite often happen in this period. A producer would say want to fill out a popular play and he paid two or three or four pounds to a collaborator to put into a witness fully. Fund. And in this case someone named Samuel Roy who also ruined another marvelous play called The Changeling by introducing a kind of idiotic tomfoolery into a subplot introduced a number of silly comic passages on the fly which are clearly not by Mahler himself was capable only of a kind of infantile our comedy. But if we look at the parts that Mark himself wrote They're beautiful in the extreme and the final paradox of our sisters. Is that the plane looks forward. To the modern period and back towards the middle ages at the same time or so it seems to be

like a genius with two heads. It's well in advance of its time and it seems at the same time to be looking back to a period that preceded it. It's full of intellectual philosophical and stylistic novelty. But it also uses a number of conventions inherited from a period of three or four or five hundred years old fastest. For example could be considered a morality play. The central character functions in the same way as every man who could be considered man. Or a. I can't remember any of the names of their all have the name meaning mankind. Every man the central figure of mankind and they stand of course in an allegorical way for all of us. And as in the morality plays we find good and bad angels fighting over the soul of the central figure in this play we find a parade of the seven deadly

sins. They always appear over our place and they do it here and we find it all man representing a kind of morality figure that used to be called good counsel devising the central figure forced us to repent. But I'm like the central figure of morality plays fast this is not saved. He stands at the end. Dragged down to hell. And this reminds us not so much of mankind and every man as he does of all the late great rebels of the 17th 18th 19th and 20th centuries of dung Humani For example remember that modernist unrepentant hero in Mozart's opera who refuses to say refuses to repent even to bury him in the commendatory of the stone statue was dragged down to hell and Mozart is wonderful in this in this opera because at the same time they seem to be moralizing he is a man. And a dismissive quartet comes at the very end of that opera singing our virtue however the rewards of virtue and

what happens to a sinful man. No doubt. You're whining when he refuses to repent is one of the most staggering know in all of music that really people that bass baritone know and if they go down to how the mighty scream you realize he has nevertheless triumphed in his refusal in his non Servian well past this does not triumph at the end but it is a he looks forward to this kind of triumph. In our own time. He's also not every man in so far as he doesn't share our attributes. He has certain very unique and unusual after a few. Out of place sticks very close to its source. Play is not original. It was taken from a book called The damnable history of Dr John Foster's. Generally known as the English first book which itself was a translation of the German house book. The historian. Back to yon forest again the story of Dr John Foster. And in these early books which are

medieval tracks really fast is very much like Cain and Judas and other such rebels because he thinks his sins are much greater than anything that ever forgive their rulers in these books. Forgiveness is still possible as it is still possible for Cain and Judas if they would only repent. For barristers had made Satan the promise of the English book. Yet he might have remembered through repentance sinners come again and to the favor of God. Well in the first book First this is how it too is packed by the brute strength of Satan himself. You can't break away. From our softens this he puts more of the responsibility on his central character and therefore turns the play into a tragedy of the will. I'm a man trying to express a superhuman well and therefore being unable to subject himself to the will of God. Throughout the play Fosters is provided by a sense of despair. We see here a man struggling.

Against a sense of spiritual impoverishment the kind of impoverishment which inflicts souls that are cut off from The Divine. However despair fastest is pagan and stoical rather than Christian as is the imagery and mythology in the forester's which is continually referring. Again the cynic and mythological figures redemption is always possible in the scheme of the play. But it's impossible to the man. It's not possible to his character as it is conceived by Marlowe cannot repent. He must always say no even that even when he most wants to hear the end of the play. Now the pressure is very real. The conviction of human greatness and power that we find in forming family rather it gives us a growing sense of failure and of bafflement and of impotence. Fastnesses ambition encompasses

the spiritual and the physical world. He has an insatiable thirst for knowledge you must know everything there is to know in the world. He also has an insatiable thirst for power. He wants to vanquish time and space which none of us can back. He wants to avoid obesity too much weight. He wants to avoid advancing years to transcend age sickness decay debt all of those horrible instruments of war towelie that keep us in chains. He wants to control men's minds. He wants to know the secrets of creation. He wants to drink and voluptuous fountains. But all of this lyrical exhortation and desire. Of eventually collapses and we find the fastest attains only the shadow of the things he was only the shadow of beauty. Only the externals of riches only the illusory power of the magician and throughout the play he is the most uncertain of man the most

easy of man the most restless of men. His terror stricken at his own courage and his own audacity. So what we get here is a hubristic. Cata film. Presumption but this human risk is always modified by a sense of fear and terror of the unknown. For the plague has a religious framework under Still the development of an unbeliever. Mara's atheism frees him from being imprisoned in religious dogma. But it leaves him unprotected as his characters I'm protected against evil suffering death and above all the contradictions in his own nature. The play begins with a highly sententious chorus of moralizing chorus comes right out of Seneca who announces that this will be a tragedy of presumption. The chorus by the way is entirely due. From a moral framework in the rest the play is always moralizing. Any

more lies at the end as well as at the beginning but the play itself seems to escape this kind of strict around the course tells us the fastnesses arrogance will cause him to overreach and he compares costis as Levin compares Marlowe to his waxen wings did mount above his reach and noting heavens conspired to overthrow foresters aspires to be something more than man a demi god. He wants to gain a deity. He wants like Tambling to set black streamers in the firmament to signify the slaughter of the gods. And the way he's going to reach this is through necromancy black magic. Because as he says a sound the fission is a mighty God.