[In the following excerpt, Ward discusses The History of the Damnable Life and deserved Death of Doctor Johann Faustus as a source for Marlowe's play.]

There is no external evidence, then, to show that either before or in 1589 any literary materials were in existence of which Marlowe could have availed himself in the composition of his tragedy, except the editions which had already appeared of the German Faustbuch. At the same time no doubt can be said to remain that he made full use of an early edition of the English translation of the German book, which very speedily made its appearance. Now, the earliest extant edition of 'The History of the Damnable Life and deserved Death of Doctor Johann Faustus: Newly Printed and in convenient Places impertinent Matter amended, according to the true Copy, Printed at Frankfort; and translated into English, by P. F. Gent,' was printed at London, by T. Orwin for Edw. White, in 1592². As, however, the expressions 'newly printed' and 'amended' imply³, the book bearing this title is itself a reprint; there are, moreover, indications in a later edition⁴ that it was reprinted from an earlier text. But, most unfortunately, we are without satisfactory evidence as to the date when this original edition of the English translation was issued. No entry of it is to be found in the Stationers' Registers⁵. There is at the same time no prima facie probability in favour of the English translation having been considerably later in date than the German editio princeps of 1587; while there remains no reasonable doubt that it was, in any case, made before February 28, 1589, when the Ballad of Doctor Faustus was entered in the Registers. The supposition that the compiler of the English History of Doctor Faustus had the play before his eyes, or passages from it in his memory, seems a conjecture both a priori unlikely, and supported by no special arguments on which it would be worth while to dwell⁶. Furthermore, there seems no reason for concluding the English translation to have been based upon any later edition of the German original than the editio princeps, or the pirated edition of 1587, or the reprint of 1588. The arrangement of chapters, though they are slightly reduced in number (from sixty-eight to sixty-two), is substantially the same in the English version as in the German original⁷; and the English History does not include the six chapters (lii-lvii) which were added to the Faustbuch in the edition of 1590.

At the same time there are certain differences of detail between the German and the English books. These differences it would be impossible to exhibit here with completeness; yet nothing short of a minute comparison can justify the expression of a definite opinion on the question, as to whether the play with which we are specially concerned was based upon the German Faustbuch or upon its English version; or, for this third supposition is prima facie by no means unreasonable, upon both the one and the other. This question has been argued with great acuteness, and much energy, by several scholars⁸; and I think can no longer be regarded as open. The internal evidence in favour of the conclusion that Marlowe's play, in the form in which it was printed in 1604, was founded directly on the English History of Doctor Faustus appears to me finally established. To begin with, there is the verbal coincidence between one most salient passage in the play, occurring in the contract with Mephistophilis, and the text of the History, which I agree with Mr. Bullen⁹ in thinking too striking to be merely accidental. Indeed, the entire arrangement and sequence of the articles in the contract are those adopted in the English, but not in the German, story-book. Other minor points of agreement are noticeable between the History and the play, which are wanting in the Faustbuch; above all, the account given by Faustus of his Italian travels contains descriptive passages concerning Naples and Rome, of which the originals are to be found in the English, but not in the German, narrative¹⁰. Furthermore, resemblances of phraseology between corresponding passages in the play and in the History have been noted which it is difficult to attribute to chance; though as a matter of course no such close similitude could ordinarily have been expected in the corresponding German passages¹¹. To this evidence the advocates of the theory which holds the play to have been based directly upon the German Faustbuch, have nothing to oppose, that will bear the test of close inquiry¹².

On the whole, in the absence of any evidence as to the date of publication of the English History, beyond the fact that it was reprinted in 1592,¹³ it would perhaps be unsafe to set down as an absolutely certain fact that this particular edition of the English version of the Faustbuch was in Marlowe's hands when he was engaged upon Doctor Faustus. But the conclusion that the play, as we have it in its earliest known edition, was composed mainly with the aid of the English History, may be regarded as established. To summarize the matter with Logeman in a few words, Marlowe's use of the English History was occasional rather than continuous; and though in certain passages, as will be seen by a comparison of text and notes, he copied the narrative as closely as Shakespeare copied his English Plutarch, the identity of particular words or verbal forms is rare¹⁴. That Marlowe was acquainted with the German Faustbuch itself remains perfectly possible, and by no means unlikely. In the absence, however, of any direct proof of this supposition, it would be useless to recur to speculations based on the assumption that portions of the play were founded upon the Faustbuch, and others upon the English History.¹⁵

As to the German Faustbuch, it may well have been brought over to England in one of its early editions by some person or persons who had travelled in Germany¹⁶, and through them, in its original shape or in that of a manuscript English translation, have come into the hands of 'P. F.,' or whoever was the 'gentleman' who wrote the English History, or for that matter, into the hands of Marlowe himself. He can hardly have been abroad as late as 1587. Who, then, were the possible person or persons in question? It has been happily conjectured by van der Velde¹⁷—and the conjecture is adopted by Professor Wagner¹⁸—that they were English comedians who had performed in Germany before the year 1588. In a work¹⁹ of which the interest and importance for the study of the English as well as of the German drama have been generally recognized, Mr. A. Cohn has shown that on October 16, 1586, Duke Christian of Saxony appointed five Englishmen 'fiddlers and instrumentalists to play music and exhibit their art in "leaping and other graceful things that they have learnt"'; and that this company of comedians included the names, afterwards well known in the annals of the English stage, of Thomas Pope and George Bryan. They had belonged to the Earl of Leicester's company, and by him been recommended to the service of King Frederick II of Denmark, whence they were transferred into that of the Duke of Saxony²⁰. Mr. Cohn considers that this Thomas Pope was beyond all reasonable doubt the only actor of that name known to us as belonging to this period—the same Thomas Pope who was afterwards the associate of Shakespeare, and who in 1594 took part in Tarleton's revived play of the Second Part of The Seven Deadly Sins, which has a special interest for us in connexion with Marlowe's tragedy²¹. 'The above-mentioned Englishmen,' he continues, 'are not met with again in the Dresden Archives after 1586, though other "Jumpers and Dancers" are named at a later period, as e.g. in 1588.' It therefore appears that these Englishmen quitted the Saxon service about 1587, and returned to England. Here we have a link suggested between Marlowe and Germany, and a way in which he might have conceivably become acquainted with the German Faustbuch in the very year of its first publication, or in that immediately succeeding it.

The Faustbuch, then—but so far as is actually demonstrable, entirely through the medium of a very early English version of it—must be regarded as the source of the tragedy of Doctor Faustus. For Marlowe's play cannot reasonably be supposed to have had a model in any German drama, since there is no sufficient reason for assuming that any such existed at so early a date. A weighty authority—Simrock²²—has indeed held it probable that some such German play existed and was known to Marlowe, who elaborated his tragedy out of it with the help of the Faustbuch, and this hypothesis has since been revived²³. The essential point which Marlowe's tragedy has in common with the puppet-plays, based on an early German drama or dramas, is to be found, as Simrock says, in the apparitions of the Good and the Evil Angel—allegorical figures familiar to German legend, but not appearing in the story-book. I cannot think this parallelism, striking as it is, sufficient to make us look for the original of Marlowe's tragedy in an unknown German drama, of which the very existence rests on pure conjecture²⁴. To the Faustbuch his debt is in any case undeniable. Before making the extracts necessary for rendering patent this fact, it will however be convenient to complete the data as to the history of the legend of Doctor Faustus in our Elizabethan literature, by stating that in 1594 was published in London, where it had been entered on the Stationers' Registers, November 16, 1593, 'The Second Report of Dr. John Faustus, containing his appearances and the deeds of Wagner. Written by an English Gentleman student in Wittenberg an Vniuersity of Germany in Saxony. Published for the delight of all those who desire Nouelties by a frend of the same Gentleman²⁵.' This English version of the Wagnerbuch is preceded by a preface 'unto them which would know the Trueth,' in which they are apprised of some remarkable instances in support of the fact that Faustus was a real man. 'First, there is yet remaining the ruins of his house not farre from Melanchthon's at Wittenberg. Secondly, there is his tree, a great hollow Tree wherein he vsed to read Nigromancy to his schollers, not farre from the towne in a very remote place.… Next, his tomb at Mars Temple a three miles beyond the cittie, upon which is written on a Marble stone by his owne hand this Epitaph, which is somewhat old by reason of his small skill in graving:—

'Hic iaceo lohannes Faustus, Doctor diuini iuris indignissimus, qui pro amore magiae Diabolicae scientiae vanissimè cecidi ab amore Dei: O Lector pro me miserrimo damnato nomine ne preceris, nam preces non iuvant quem Deus condemnavit: O pie Christiane memento mei, et saltem vnam pro infiducia mea lachrymulam exprime, et cui non potes mederi, eius miserere, et ipse caue.

The Stone was found in his Study, and his wil was fulfilled, and he lieth betwixt a heap of three and thirty fir trees in the foot of the Hill in a great hole where this is erected.'

For further testimony to convince the incredulous, he repeats (including their manifest errors) the statements of Wierus; and with this circumstantial evidence conscientiously tendered by an Englishman, scorning, like others of his countrymen, to see with any eyes but his own, I must close my imperfect sketch of the early history of the Faust-legend. Later English translations of German magical works attributed to Faustus have no more significance for the present purpose than their German originals.

The following are the passages in the 1592 edition of the Historie of the damnable life and deserved death of Doctor John Faustus (here reprinted from the text of Professor Logeman's recent edition²⁶), the parallels to which in the play of Doctor Faustus will be immediately recognized. As it would be tedious to print both the original and the translation side by side or in sequence at length; and as the English History was demonstrably the direct source of Marlowe's play, I have contented myself with occasional references to the arrangement or phraseology of the German Faustbuch.

It may be noticed that the Faustbuch mentions 'Rod,' the English History 'Rhode,' and the play 'Rhodes' as the birthplace of the magician. This is Roda in the Duchy of Saxe-Altenburg, situate between the towns of Jena and Gera, and correctly described by the English History as 'lying in the Province of Weimer,' inasmuch as it was not till 1573 that a partition took place between the Altenburg and Weimar lands, which were alike included in those secured to the Ernestine line by the new Elector Maurice in 1547. Widmann gives Anhalt as the country of Faustus' birth, and the mark Sondwedel, i.e. Salzwedel, as the place of his parents' abode. But we have seen that the older and contemporary authorities stated him to have been born at Knüttlingen, i.e. Knittlingen—or, as several of them, following Manlius' report of Melanchthon's discourse, misspelt the name, 'Kundling'—in Württemberg²⁷. The connexion of Faustus with Wittenberg led to a confusion between the names of the South-German duchy and of the Saxon university town by Marlowe or the transcribers of his play, in the first extant edition of which Wittenberg is called 'Wertenberg' or 'Wertenberge²⁸.' I have seen no reason for retaining this error in the text of the play, as it could only lead to confusion. Again, in both the German Faustbuch and its English version, as well as in Marlowe, the student-life of Faustus is passed at Wittenberg only; Widmann makes him study at Ingolstadt, a South-German university of transient celebrity, where Reuchlin was professor. In the German Faustbuch, the summoning of the Devil (who is not here called Mephistophiles till his second colloquy with Faustus in chapter iv) takes place in a thick wood near Wittenberg, called 'der Spesser Wald'; and the conjuring of Mephistophiles in the English History is likewise localized in 'a thick wood, called in the German tongue Spisser Waldt, that is in English the Spissers Wood²⁹.' This wood, the 'solitary grove' of the play, has been held to be identifiable with a kind of bosquet near Wittenberg called the 'Specke,' a locality where Luther is known to have taken his exercise³⁰. Lastly, in the German as well as in the English Faust-book, 'the village called Rimlich, half a mile from Wittenberg,' and in Marlowe Wittenberg itself, is the scene of Faustus' death; according to Melanchthon it occurred in a village of Faustus' native country (Württemberg). Other places contended for the notoriety of having seen the last of the famous sorcerer—among them another village near Wittenberg called Praten, the castle of Wardenberg, and the towns Maulbronn and Cologne. The rest of the geography of the Faustbuch, the English History, and the play, may be left to incidental comment, or must account for themselves³¹.…

Notes

² A copy of this is in the British Museum. The translator's initials are given as 'P. R.' and 'P. K.' in some later editions. It is 'P. R.? in that printed by R. C. Brown, and used by Thoms for the reprint in vol. iii of his Early Prose Romances, 1828. Cf. Logeman, The English Faust-Book of 1592, Introduction, p. ix; see also Marlowe's Works, edited by A. H. Bullen, vol. i, Introduction, p. xxv, and the second edition of Thoms' Early English Prose Romances, iii. 159. Of the three copies in the Bodleian, as I am obligingly informed, one printed by Edward All-de for Edward White, 1618, gives the translator's initials as P. F.; the two others, both printed by C. Brown for M. Hotham, s.d., as P. R. Thoms, in his first edition, mentions an edition of the English History of 1626; Dyce's quotations are from that of 1648. Logeman's conjectures as to the identity of the translator are avowedly futile.

³pace Düntzer in Anglia, i. 47, who thinks it means 'recently.'

⁴ viz. that used by Thoms. Cf. Logeman, u.s., pp. xvi, 148 et al.

⁵ In a note to his edition of Henslowe's Diary, p. 42, Collier states the book to have been entered on the Stationers' Registers in 1588; and Mr. Fleay suggests the possibility of a leaf having been abstracted from these.

⁶ Wagner, who inclined to this view, thought that certain passages in the English History pointed to the translator having made use of the tragedy. The passages on which he relied are those describing Vergil's tomb and the grotto of Posilippo (vii. 13-5), and the Castle of St. Angelo at Rome (ibid., 37-43), which have their proper parallels in the History, but to which there is nothing to correspond in the Faustbuch. But Th. Delius, Marlowe's Faustus und seine Quelle (Bielefeld, 1881), pp. 7-9, has conclusively shown that the chapters (xxii and xxiii) in the English History which describe the journeys of Faustus through the world are an expanded and elaborated version of the German original, and contain additional touches which do not occur in the play, e.g. 'the windmill that stood in the water' at Naples; whereas the play contains none that are wanting in the History (unless it be vii. 8, which can hardly be considered farfetched). Whence the English translator derived the body of his additions, has not been discovered. But, as Logeman points out, they can hardly have been the fruit of his own continental travels. They include misstatements, such as that of Carolus Magnus having built the Campo Santo at Rome, and stories of a cock and a bull, like that of the Brazen Virgin acting as public executioner of naughty children on the bridge at Breslau.

⁷ The statements of Delius to this effect, u.s., pp. 5-6, appear on verification to be essentially correct.

⁸ Notably by Erich Schmidt, "Marlowe's Faust und sein Verhältniss zu den deutschen und englischen Faustbüchern" in Lemcke's Jahrbuch für romanische und englische Sprache und Literatur, Neue Folge, ii. 42-62 (1875); by Düntzer, "Zu Marlowe's Faust," in Anglia, i. 44-54 (1878); by the late Professor Wagner, Zu Marlowe's Faustus, ibid., ii. 308-13 (1879); and, more recently, by Th. Delius in the very able doctor's disputation already cited (1881), by Mr. E. W. Pantin, and by Professor H. Logeman, in Faustus-Notes, Ghent, 1898; which last publication seems to me to exhaust all the issues of the controversy. I have freely used the researches of these writers for my statements. I have not seen Münch's essay on the internal relation of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus to the Faustbuch (Bonn, 1879), which is praised by M. Koch, "Zerstreute Bemerkungen zu M.'s Faust," in Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, xxi. (1886).

⁹Marlowe's Works, vol. i, Introduction, p. xxxvi. The passage in question is the third article of the contract (v. 99-100), where the History, in the edition of 1592, reads: 'That Mephistophiles should bring him anything, and doo for him whatsoever.' Only a much later edition, as Dyce pointed out, adds 'he desireth.'

¹⁰ It is due to Mr. W. E. Pantin (see his letter in The Academy, June 25, 1887), to acknowledge that he first fully set forth the points of agreement between Marlowe and the English History, as distinct from the German. I had previously noticed that the epithet 'sumptuous' in the History (chapter xxii) is applied to St. Mark's at Venice, and in the play (vii. 16) to a 'temple' in 'Venice, Padua,' or 'the rest'; in the Faustbuch there is no such epithet. In the play (ibid., 5) the town of Trier is described as—

'Not to be won by any conquering prince;'

the History declares it 'impossible for any prince's power to win it'; in the Faustbuch it is said that 'they have to fear no foe.' In the play (ibid., 7) the river Maine 'falls' into the Rhine as in the History, instead of 'flowing' into it as in the Faustbuch; and the description of the streets of Naples (ibid., 11) likewise comes 'straight forth' from the History, without there being any equivalent in the Faustbuch. See also note 1 to p. lxviii ante. In the History (chapter xix) Lucifer says that he and his companions have come from hell to show Faustus some pastime; cf. the line in the play (vi. 104), to which there is nothing to correspond in the Faustbuch. Mr. Pantin further observes in the English History, as in the play (xiii. 18), but not in the German book, Faustus addresses as his friends the students before whom he is about to produce the apparition of Helen; and, again, that in the scene with the Pope the latter in the German book is without a guest; in the English History, as in the play, he entertains a cardinal. Mr. Pantin, by the way, has overlooked the circumstance, that the line

'Roof'd aloft with curious work in gold'

first occurs in the quarto of 1616.

¹¹ Compare, for instance, the Emperor's speech (x. 1 seqq.) with the History (ch. xxix) and the Faustbuch (ch. xxxiii). Thus, in the play (v. 104) as in the English History, Faustus gives 'body and soul' to the Evil One. Again in the play (vii. 84), as in the History, the Pope's curse has the idiomatic accompaniment of 'with bell, book, and candle.' (Pantin.)

¹² In the play (vii. 2) Faustus speaks of himself as having

'Pass'd with delight the stately town of Trier,'

just as in the Faustbuch (ch. xxvi) he visits 'the neighbourhood of Trier.' In the corresponding passage of a later edition or editions of the English History, used by Thoms for his reprint of 1827 in vol. iii of the Collection of Early Prose Romances, the town is called not even Treves, but Trent; the discrepancy however loses its significance, since Logeman pointed out that the reading in the 1592 edition is Treir. So again, the magnificent lines of xiv. 83-7, expanding, or rather recasting, a passage in the Faustbuch, are without an analogon in the later edition of the History from which the same reprint was made; but the words 'Would God that I knew where to hide me, or into what place to creep or fly,' occur in a chapter (lx) to be found in the 1592 edition. The incident of Faustus eating the load of hay, which occurs in the German Faustbuch (ch. xl), has been erroneously supposed not to occur in the English History, of which however it forms a chapter (xxxv in Thoms' version). Moreover, the scene in which this incident is introduced occurs neither in the quarto edition of the play of 1604, nor in that of 1609, while it appears in that of 1616, and was therefore manifestly a later addition to the drama. I find that Bodin in his Opinionum Joannis Wieri Confutatio tells the story of Simon Magus, who, in the presence of the Emperor Nero, 'currum onustum foeno cum equis et agitatore coram toto populo absorbebat' (p. 463 in the Basel edition, 1583). Logeman has noted one or two trifling correspondences between the Faustbuch and the play, of which he magnanimously makes a present to the opponents of his view; but they are not worth repeating.

¹³ I cannot see how a certainty that the English History was not published before 1592 can be deduced, as Wagner and Th. Delius seem to think it must, from Thoms (2nd edition), iii. 159. In fact, Thoms says the direct contrary.

¹⁴ One of these is the form 'Rhodes' (for 'Roda,' represented in the Faustbuch by 'Rod,' which illustrates a favourite perversity of English popular spelling (cf. 'rhodomontade'). See also notes to iii. 19 and vi. 104.

¹⁵ Of course such speculations would have a very great interest, could they be made to subserve a demonstration such as that attempted by Mr. Fleay in the Appendix (A) with which he has favoured me, that parts of the 1604 Doctor Faustus were all Marlowe's, and parts are written by another hand (as he thinks, Dekker's). Th. Delius has made such an attempt, and his results are on the whole not dissimilar from Fleay's, though Delius makes havoc of the last, and most powerful, scene of the play.

¹⁶ On reflexion, I think it best to abstain from complicating an already sufficiently difficult question by the suggestion, advanced by me in my first edition, that the corruption of the name of the Duke of Anhalt (correctly spelled thus in the Faustbuch, and 'Anholt' in the English History) into 'Vanholt' points to some Dutch manipulation of the story before it was dramatized in England. No doubt the English actors on their way back from Germany might have passed through the Netherlands, where the Faust-legend was sooner or later well known; but, as Mr. Bullen says, it is unsafe to build on foundations so slender. There is no real difficulty in explaining the corruption 'Vanholt' in a less ambitious way. Mr. Fleay thinks it may have been the result of a mere piece of sound-catching (Duke of Vanholt); a correspondent, whose letter I have unfortunately mislaid, thinks it may have arisen from the common German abbreviation 'v.' (= von) 'Anhalt,' or 'Anholt.'

¹⁷ Marlowe's Faust (German translation), Introduction, 23.

¹⁸ Introduction, xxxi.

¹⁹Shakespeare in Germany in the XVIth and XVIIth Centuries, xxv-xxvii.

²⁰ Cf. Fleay's Life of Shakespeare, p. 93.

²¹ See sc. vi; and compare The Seven Deadly Sins in notes on Dramatis Personae of Doctor Faustus.

²²u. s., 224-7.

²³ Quite recently by Dr. Bruinier, in the Zeitschrift für Deutsche Philologie, vols. xxix and xxx. See Logeman, u. s., pp. 144 seqq.

²⁴ Herman Grimm, who has constructed the scheme of such a drama, discreetly declines to give an opinion on the question, whether a play of the kind was actually in existence before the Faustbuch, u. s., p. 462.—The 'Tragedy of Doctor Faustus seen in the Air,' described in chapter viii of the Second Report, is of course a purely imaginary production.

²⁵ This publication, of which there is a copy in the Bodleian Library, is reprinted by Thoms, u. s., vol. iii.

²⁶The English Faust-Book of 1592, edited with an Introduction and Notes by H. Logeman, &c. (Ghent and Amsterdam, 1900). In his Introduction, Professor Logeman 'states emphatically, that if his text proves faultless, it is owing to the great pains taken over it by Miss H. A. Andrews and her friend, Miss L. Taylor,' who generously placed at his disposal a type-written copy of their type-written transcript of the text, and furthermore carefully collated with the latter his proofs. Under these circumstances I have contented myself with a careful personal comparison of his printed text with that of the quarto in the British Museum.

²⁷ According to the Second Report, in Silesia.

²⁸ Cf. Wagner, Introduction, p. xi, as corrected by Proescholdt. Oddly enough, the converse blunder occurs in R. Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft, bk. vi, ch. iv (edition of 1654): 'Wierus telleth a notable story.… There was (saith he) in the dukedom of Wittneberge, not far from Tubing, a butcher, &c.

²⁹ In Thoms: 'Called in the German tongue, Spisser Holt, that is in English, the Spisser's Wood,' probably the correct reading.

³⁰ See Kühne's quotation from Luther's Table Talk in his edition of the Faustbuch, 156. The Spesser Wald had been thought to be a synonym for the Spesshart mountains (Spesshart = Spechtshart, woodpeckers' wood).

³¹ The spelling of the following Extracts has, as a rule, been modernized; nor have I thought it necessary to adhere to the interpunctuation, or the use of capital letters, adopted in the English History.…