Faustus (NHB Modern Plays) E-Book

Christopher Marlowe

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 100

Beschreibung

A radical reworking of Marlowe's classic Dr Faustus - here the original story of the man who sells his soul to the devil collides with a horrifying act of provocation by 21st-century artists the Chapman Brothers.Heidelberg, Germany, 1509. John Faustus, doctor and scholar, pledges himself to the dark art of necromancy and vows to conjure the devil. So begins his descent into a world of demons and angels, a journey across space and time and a blood pact which jeopardises his eternal soul...Hoxton, London, 2001. Jake and Dinos Chapman, artists and provocateurs, prepare to break the ultimate taboo, by 'rectifying' a priceless set of etchings by Francisco Goya. Confronting an act which cannot be undone, a statement of intent which cannot be taken back, the Brothers' world changes forever...Two universes collide as Faustus and the Chapmans challenge the limits of life and art, risking everything in their pursuit of immortality.'Devilishly suggestive' - Independent'Radical... provocative... ingenious' - Guardian'A triumph... a smorgasbord of theatrical delights' - Evening Standard'Wild, mad, deeply intelligent and thought-provoking... see this play' - Sunday Times

Leseprobe

FAUSTUS

in a new version by

Rupert Goold and Ben Power

after

Christopher Marlowe

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Original Production

‘This is hell, nor am I out of it’ by Ben Power

Characters

Faustus

About the Authors

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Faustus was first performed at the Royal Theatre, Northampton, on 24 October 2004, and subsequently at Hampstead Theatre, London, in 2006.

Director

Rupert Goold

Designer

Laura Hopkins

Lighting Designer

Rick Fisher

Malcolm Rippeth

Composer and Sound Designer

Adam Cork

The production was restaged at Nuffield Theatre, Southampton, on 18 October 2007, with the following cast:

MEPHISTOPHELES

Jason Baughan

CORNELIUS / VEGA / POPE / OLD MAN

Andrew Bridgemont

FOSTER

Gus Brown

FAUSTUS

Michael Colgan

HELENA

Claire Lams

JAKE

Rocky Marshall

DINOS

Tam Mutu

Original Director

Rupert Goold

Director

Steve Marmion

Designer

Laura Hopkins

Lighting Designer

Malcolm Rippeth

Composer & Sound Designer

Adam Cork

Video & Projection Designer

Lorna Heavey

Casting Director

Janine Snape

Production Manager

Sam Paterson

Company Stage Manager

Graham Michael

Deputy Stage Manager

Helen Bowen

Assistant Stage Manager

Bonnie Morris

Costume Supervisor

Mia Flodquist

‘This is hell, nor am I out of it’

The idea of freely adapting Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is not a new one. In the 1960s, John Barton adapted and directed a version for the RSC which featured text from various renderings of the Faust legend, interwoven with a reduced version of the Marlowe. The original play is magnificent in its vision, its poetry, its humanity. Yet the text, as in other Marlowe plays, sometimes feels imprecise. Many scenes speak to us with the precision and clarity of dramatic masterpieces, but others are tonally inconsistent. Whether this is an accurate reflection of the original play or the result of 400 years of textual corruption is impossible to say, but it was clear to Rupert Goold and me at the beginning of the adaptation process that some editing was required.

We became committed to boiling the play down and to producing a shortened, tightened version of Marlowe’s text. This then left room for us to insert a contemporary plotline which echoed and questioned the original. Our aim was to find a parallel which excavated the Marlowe and raised questions, which challenged an audience rather than instructed them. We wanted to find a modern situation that replicated the controversy, the whiff of danger, that necromancy embodied for Elizabethan playgoers, but that also possessed a heightened quality, a certain poetry, that raised it above the everyday.

It is these qualities that attracted us to the world of modern art and to the Chapman Brothers in particular. It should be noted immediately that the characters of Jake and Dinos in this play, and their journey within it, are fictional. They are inspired by actual people and events but have been heightened, dramatised and at times entirely reinvented to suit our purpose. We’ve tried to tell a story which is theatrical, modern and metaphorical. A story that examines the irrevocable act, the deed which cannot be undone. In short, we’ve tried to create a modern companion for Marlowe’s play, harness it to the original and then see what connections and collisions occur for an audience.

Ben Power

Characters

in order of appearance

FAUSTUS

GOOD ANGEL

EVIL ANGEL

CORNELIUS

MATTHEW FOSTER, an art critic

HELENA, a camera technician

JAKE CHAPMAN, an artist

DINOS CHAPMAN, his brother, an artist

MEPHISTOPHELES

POLICEMAN, voice on the phone

VEGA, a Spanish art dealer

LUCIFER

POPE

FIRST FRIAR

SECOND FRIAR

OLD MAN

MINTA

ART DEALER

SPACED-OUT DRUGGY

DRUNK STUDENT

FEMALE JOURNALIST

Also

CROWD at the Turner Prize ceremony

Party of FRIARS

ACT ONE

Scene One – The Doctor

A small medieval room, lined with books. FAUSTUS revealed.

FAUSTUS. Settle thy studies, Faustus, and begin

To sound the depth of that thou wilt profess:

Having commenc’d, be a divine in show,

Yet level at the end of every art,

And live and die in Aristotle’s works.

Sweet Analytics, ’tis thou hast ravish’d me!

‘Bene disserere est finis logices.’

Is to dispute well logic’s chiefest end?

Affords this art no greater miracle?

Then read no more; thou hast attain’d that end:

A greater subject fitteth Faustus’ wit:

Be a physician, Faustus; heap up gold,

And be eterniz’d for some wondrous cure:

‘Summum bonum medicinae sanitas’,

The end of physic is our body’s health.

Why, Faustus, hast thou not attain’d that end?

Is not thy common talk found aphorisms?

Are not thy bills hung up as monuments,

Whereby whole cities have escap’d the plague,

And thousand desperate maladies been eas’d?

Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man.

Couldst thou make men to live eternally,

Or, being dead, raise them to life again,

Then this profession were to be esteem’d.

Physic, farewell! Where is Justinian?

‘Si una eademque res legatur duobus, alter rem, alter valorem rei, &c.’

A pretty case of paltry legacies!

Such is the subject of the institute,

And universal body of the law:

This study fits a mercenary drudge,

Who aims at nothing but external trash;

Too servile and illiberal for me.

When all is done, divinity is best:

Jerome’s Bible, Faustus; view it well.

‘Stipendium peccati mors est. Ha! Stipendium, &c.’

The reward of sin is death: that’s hard.

‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and there’s no truth in us. Why, then, belike we must sin, and so consequently die.’

Ay, we must die an everlasting death.

What doctrine call you this, Che sera, sera,

What will be, shall be? Divinity, adieu!

These metaphysics of magicians,

And necromantic books are heavenly;

Lines, circles, scenes, letters, and characters;

Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires.

O, what a world of profit and delight,

Of power, of honour, of omnipotence,

Is promis’d to the studious artizan!

All things that move between the quiet poles

Shall be at my command: emperors and kings

Are but obeyed in their several provinces,

Nor can they raise the wind, or rend the clouds;

But his dominion that exceeds in this,

Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man;

A sound magician is a mighty god:

Here, Faustus, tire thy brains to gain a deity.

I’ve sent word to my friend Cornelius,

Requesting him today to visit me.

His conference will be a greater help to me

Than all my labours, plod I ne’er so fast.

Enter GOOD ANGEL and EVIL ANGEL.

GOOD ANGEL. O, Faustus, lay that damnèd book aside,

And gaze not on it, lest it tempt thy soul,

And heap God’s heavy wrath upon thy head!

Read, read the Scriptures: that is blasphemy.

EVIL ANGEL. Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art

Wherein all Nature’s treasure is contain’d:

Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky,

Lord and commander of these elements.

Exit ANGELS.

FAUSTUS. How am I glutted with conceit of this!

Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,

Resolve me of all ambiguities,

Perform what desperate enterprise I will?

I’ll have them fly to India for gold,

Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,

And search all corners of the new-found world

For pleasant fruits and princely delicates;

I’ll have them read me strange philosophy,

And tell the secrets of all foreign kings;

I’ll have them wall all Germany with brass,

And make swift Rhine circle fair Wertenberg;

I’ll have them fill the public schools with silk,

Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad;

I’ll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,

And reign sole king of all the provinces;

Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war,

Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp’s bridge,

I’ll make my servile spirits to invent.

A knock on the door. Enter CORNELIUS.

Come enter here, German Cornelius,

And make me blest with your sage conference.

Know that your words have won me at the last

To practise magic and concealèd arts:

Yet not your words only, but mine own fantasy,

That will receive no object; for my head

But ruminates on necromantic skill.

Philosophy is odious and obscure;

Both law and physic are for petty wits;

Divinity is basest of the three,

Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible, and vile:

’Tis magic, magic, that hath ravish’d me.

Then, gentle friend, aid me in this attempt;

And I, that have with concise syllogisms

Gravell’d the pastors of the German church,

And made the flowering pride of Wertenberg

Swarm to my problems, as the infernal spirits

On sweet Musaeus when he came to hell,

Will be as cunning as Agrippa was,

Whose shadow made all Europe honour him.

CORNELIUS. Faustus, these books, thy wit, and my experience,

Shall make all nations to canonise us.

As Indian Moors obey their Spanish lords,

So shall the spirits of every element

Be always serviceable to us two;

Like lions shall they guard us when we please;

Like Almain rutters with their horsemen’s staves,

Or Lapland giants, trotting by our sides;

Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids,

Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows

Than have the white breasts of the queen of love:

If learnèd Faustus will be resolute.

FAUSTUS. My friend as resolute am I in this

As thou to live: therefore object it not.

CORNELIUS. The miracles that magic will perform

Will make thee vow to study nothing else.

He that is grounded in astrology,

Enrich’d with tongues, well seen in minerals,

Hath all the principles magic doth require:

Then doubt not, Faustus, but to be renowm’d,

And more frequented for this mystery

Than heretofore the Delphian oracle.

The spirits tell me they can dry the sea,

And fetch the treasure of all foreign wrecks,

Ay, all the wealth that our forefathers hid

Within the massy entrails of the earth:

Then tell me, Faustus, what shall we two want?

FAUSTUS. Nothing, Cornelius. O, this cheers my soul!

Come, show me some demonstrations magical,

That I may conjure in some lusty grove,

And have these joys in full possession.

CORNELIUS. Then haste thee to some solitary grove,

And bear wise Bacon’s and Albertus’ works,

The Hebrew Psalter, and New Testament;

And whatsoever else is requisite

I will inform thee ere our conference cease.

First I shall let thee know the words of art;

And then, all other ceremonies learn’d,

Faustus may try his cunning by himself.

When I’ve instructed thee the rudiments,

And then wilt thou be perfecter than I.

FAUSTUS. Then come and dine with me, and, after meat,

We’ll canvass every quiddity thereof;

For, ere I sleep, I’ll try what I can do:

This night I’ll conjure, though I die therefore.

Exeunt.

Scene Two – An Announcement

The studio of the CHAPMAN BROTHERS. Two people appear to be waiting, FOSTER, an art critic, and HELENA, a camera technician of Middle-Eastern extraction. HELENA unpacks her camera and sound equipment. FOSTER breezes about the studio.

HELENA (holding a personal mic out to FOSTER). May I . . . ?

FOSTER. Oh yes, of course.

She spools it under his shirt. He seems slightly irritated.

Where’s Minta?

HELENA. I’m sorry?

FOSTER. Minta? I did ask Pablo for Minta. It’s not as if this isn’t important.

HELENA. I start just today. From features.

FOSTER. Typical. Once again the BBC excels itself . . . I’m sure you’re very good, it’s just, well, usually Minta films my pieces . . .

HELENA looks confused. Beat.

You are ready to film at once?

HELENA. Yes . . . I must . . . (She holds up her personal mics.) . . . for sound.

FOSTER. Yes, yes, I know. It’s just we won’t have long and, as Pablo clearly fails to realise, this could be a scoop of monumental proportions.

Silence. The sound of music from a car passing outside. HELENA picks up a toy soldier.

HELENA. He is a toymaker?

FOSTER (snorting). No, he’s not a toymaker. They are artists.

FOSTER checks watch and smoothes his hair. Pause.

HELENA (looking around the studio uncertainly). Artists?

FOSTER. Yes. Didn’t anyone tell you before you came out?

HELENA. No. This is my first time for BBC4. There was problem today – other cameras busy.

FOSTER. I see. (Sighs.