SOURCE: "Prometheus Transformed and Transposed: Faustus As the Reformation Prometheus," in his Prometheus and Faust: The Promethean Revolt in Drama from Classical Antiquity to Goethe, Greenwood Press, 1995, pp. 67-104.

Magus, Gnostic Philosopher, and Occult Scientist

We have come to the point at which the road from the Caucasus and the road to Wittenberg converge, and it is on this road that the Promethean and Faustian personae meet, travel together for a while, and ultimately, almost mystically, emerge as something new. In the present chapter, I shall deal with the magus tradition as it leads to the Faustus legend, before dealing with the historical Faustus, the rapid rise of the Faustian mythology, and Marlowe's mighty tragedy. Finally, I shall return to Prometheus to consider where, when, and how the rebel Titan and the renegade scholar became permanently linked in literature, art, and the history of ideas.

In chapter 4, I surveyed the development of the Prometheus myth in antiquity after the Aeschylean play Prometheus Bound, and I began to hint at the eventual convergence of the Titan's story with that of Faustus. The comical Prometheus of Aristophanes, the civilizing Prometheus of the Protagoras myth, and Heraklides's Prometheus-the-creator belong to the post-Aeschylean, Hellenic tradition. I also surveyed the Roman Prometheus, both in literary tragedy (as far as we are able to discem) and, more significantly, in the shows of the Roman amphitheater. These non-literary shows are immensely important, I argued, for in them Prometheus is no longer the admirable rebel against oppressive tyranny, but the ignoble rogue getting what he deserves. Moreover, the Roman Prometheus's story is conflated with that of the Roman bandit Laureolus.

Because the punishment meted out to Prometheus reminded Martial of crucifixion, a typical punishment for outlaws in the Roman world, Martial was compelled to make the comparison between Laureolus and Prometheus. The most famous crucifixion in the ancient Roman world was the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and on that ground modern scholars and artists are sometimes drawn to a comparison between Christ and Prometheus. However, in the early Christian world, on the few occasions when Prometheus and Christ were compared (and, as Justin Glenn observes, this has been vastly exaggerated),¹ the comparison is made not on the basis of the similar punishment, but because, as divine beings, each figure commanded supernatural powers. It is thus important at this stage in the investigation to introduce the magus figure, as he will lead not only from antiquity to the Middle Ages and beyond, but from Prometheus to Faustus.

Consideration of the magus tradition has always been essential in studies of Faustus. A number of scholars have elected to begin their investigations by considering the prototypes in such early figures as the biblical Simon Magus, or in Cyprian of Antioch, or Theophilus. Others have investigated the occult-science tradition of the later Middle Ages and early Renaissance, and found Faustian typologies in those students of the Hermetic and Cabalist books who sought to raise the dead or inspire statues with life. The present study has enlarged the parameters of the investigation by stepping back to pre-Christian times and considering Prometheus as an archetype for the Faustus of drama. While the debt to the magus tradition already has been established for Faustus by others, it is important to consider the magus tradition as a bridge connecting the Greek Titan with the Germanic overreacher.

The magus figure owns a long and ancient pedigree. E. M. Butler has argued convincingly for the prehistoric origins of the magus as a ritual hero, and she has investigated the shadowy historical emergence of the Magi, an ancient Median tribe, renowned for its esoteric learning. Her study, which follows the magus through his manifestation in the Hebrew and Greek sages of antiquity, the magicians and sorcerers of the medieval, Renaissance, and Enlightenment periods, and beyond into the twentieth century, demonstrates the power magic wields over human imagination. Among the important conclusions Butler reaches is the idea that the Christian church, in sustained efforts to stamp out heresy or heterodoxy, ultimately succeeded in transforming "the pagan deities into devils, and their priests into black magicians" (264), thus ensuring their banishment and consignment to outlaw status. As religious studies experts have argued, a strong orthodoxy was established early on at Rome, and efforts quickly materialized to stamp out heterodoxy.² The magus of the early Christian era, therefore, like his pre-Socratic forbear lived and worked on the outside of mainstream, traditional religious ideas. However, while the early heretics were often hounded by the Roman church, just as certain pre-Socratic philosophers were persecuted by Greek cities (one thinks of Anaxagoras's forced peregrinations), unlike their ancient Greek predecessors, heretics from the high Middle Ages onwards were charged formally with a crime defined particularly by Christian canon law. For the moment I reserve further comment about heresy as a crime and will move to a discussion of the first heretic mentioned in the Christian tradition.

The figure named Simon Magus, who is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (8.9 - 13), is the earliest character in the history of occult science who is relevant to the study of Faustus. In the biblical account, Simon captivates the people of Samaria with his magic, and the people in turn name Simon "the Power of God which is called 'The Great Power.'" Simon thus presents himself as a rival to Christ. However, the biblical Simon is converted. Over the course of the second and third centuries, this heretical Simon seems to have been confused with another Simon, a Gnostic prophet, whose story was combined with that of the Simon known from the biblical Acts.³ This composite figure appeared in various writings of the ante-Nicene Fathers, where he is depicted typically (as in the Acts of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul) as a "magician" who could change shapes and who had "the devil as his servant" (Palmer and More, 1936: 29). "Simon the enchanter" was also known in the popular collection of saints' lives, the Legenda Aurea (Palmer and More, 1936: 11 - 12 and 12 n.1 1; 35 - 41). This Simon not only was a heretic, but also claimed to have magical powers, referred to himself with the Latin cognomen Faustus ("the lucky one" or "the fortunate"), and traveled around with a former Tyrian whore named Helena, whom he claimed to have saved and, moreover, whom he claimed was the Helena of Homeric fame (Jonas, 1963: 111).⁴

Thus, in Simon Magus one finds a magician active on classical soil during late antiquity or the early Middle Ages (depending on how one chooses to analyze the legend). Like Prometheus, he claims to have special knowledge and special powers of animation. Especially interesting on this score is Simon's alleged creation of a boy out of air, an accomplishment of which Simon boasts since he claims God's creation, man, was only made from earth.⁵ Finally, Simon not only shares a name with the later conjurer Faustus; he also shares his paramour.

Cyprian of Antioch, another figure known from the Legenda Aurea, also figures in attempts to find Faustian prototypes.⁶ Cyprian's alleged ability to conjure and command spirits, and his attempts to use spirits to assist him in seducing a young virgin (Justina) connect him with the Faustus story. Also significant are the legends about Theophilus, a pious Christian led into a pact with the devil, who is ultimately saved by appealing to the Virgin Mary.⁷ An especially interesting aspect of the Theophilus story is the blood pact that appears to have become a feature of the story for the first time in Germany during the thirteenth century in the Hohes Lied of Brun von Sconebeck.⁸

The stories of Simon Magus, Cyprian of Antioch, and Theophilus establish archetypal patterns that those who wrote the early Faust-Bücher exploited in their accounts of the scholar who had made a pact with the devil in exchange for magical powers. Yet, these three figures, like the legendary Faustus, are themselves somewhat hazy and are surrounded by plenty of myths. Consideration of the influence of these legendary figures on another legendary figure is an interesting and useful exercise in comparative studies. However, one should not forget to consider those historical figures who share close affinities to Faustus, since they may help us to gain a deeper understanding of various layers of the legendary character of the Faust-Bücher and Marlowe's play. Therefore, one needs to look at the lives and deeds of the later Hermetic and neo-Platonic magicians, actual men active in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, who worked within the then-nebulous area between occult science and natural science.⁹

Marsilio Ficino was one of the earliest of those whose studies moved between occult and natural science. Ficino, incidentally an early translator of Hesiod's Theogony (Raggio, 1958: 57 n.71), was the author of a neo-Platonic book of magic. He was especially fascinated with the passage in the ancient occult book Asclepius, attributed to "Hermes Trismegistus" which notes the Egyptian construction of talking, walking statues of gods (Mebane, 1989: 24 - 25). Ficino, however, still professed himself a Christian; he even took pains to describe the difference between good magic (magie) and evil magic (goetia; Mebane, 1989: 31). Ultimately, however, he was unable to reconcile orthodox Christianity with neo-Platonism and Gnosticism. As Mebane notes, "Daemonic magic … is … a rival religion and cannot be tolerated.… Moreover, the neo-Platonic and Gnostic religions were in some respects fundamentally opposed to [Christianity]" (33).

In spite of Ficino's failure to bring magic, science, and Christianity successfully and harmoniously together, others tried to accomplish the same task. Pico della Mirandola is one such figure. Like Ficino, Pico was Christian and shared the earlier researcher's obsession with the ancient occult tradition described by "Hermes Trismegistus" on the animation of idols (Mebane, 1989: 44). Pico's contribution to occult science was the introduction of the Jewish Cabala into Christian-inspired magic (38). For Pico, Cabala was one means of uniting the Jewish and Christian traditions. He hoped to use Cabala to enhance his understanding of the Judeo-Christian God. One Cabalistic figure in particular greatly interested him: namely, Adam Kadmon, the archetypal human who was inspired by "the Word." The figure of Adam Kadmon thus stands in a similar relation to God as does Jesus Christ who is "the Word made flesh" in Christian theology (47 - 48). The end towards which Pico aimed in his Cabalist undertakings was a balance between human freedom and creativity, and human submission to God (50).

The studies and writings of Cornelius Agrippa are perhaps the most important of the medieval and Renaissance occult science works because through them the Hermetic and Cabalist magic traditions described by Ficino and Pico were introduced to Northern Europe and have been shown to have influenced, among others, Marlowe and Goethe (Mebane, 1989: 53). It is also worth noting that Agrippa was a contemporary of the historical Faustus, and dedicated one of his books, De occulta philosophia, to Johannes Trithemius, the first man known to have mentioned Faustus in extant documents (64). Agrippa, however, was no mere translator or transmitter of an earlier, foreign tradition. He elaborated the powers of "transitive" magic, the magic one works on another, and developed magic, not as a means solely for understanding the Christian God but for gaining personal goals. This alone makes Agrippa and his ideas on the use of magic comparable to the Faustus of Marlowe and Goethe. Yet, Agrippa's vacillation in regards to magic as witnessed in his later book, De incertitude et vanitate scientiarum atque artium (1526) which may be a recanting of De occulta philosophia also invites comparison with Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, who throughout the play wavers between delight in magic and regret for his bargain with Lucifer.¹⁰

Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, more easily known as Paracelsus, is the last important historical occult scientist to consider before moving to a discussion of Faustus himself. His story warrants mention for, like the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedokles, he seems to have been a polymath; Paracelsus was a physician in addition to being an occult scientist and author. Moreover, while Paracelsus did not go as far as Empedokles who claimed he was a god, he did claim to be a prophet. Thus, in Paracelsus one encounters a figure who is a master of arts and sciences, a figure like the earlier Empedokles who may have been, as I argued in Chapter 3, one of the models for the Aeschylean Prometheus. However, Paracelsus, operating in the early modern era and in a specifically Christian ethical system, cannot escape comparison with Faustus, whose insatiable intellectual curiosity leads him to a rebellion against the Christian God.

Consideration of a number of influential magus-figures from late antiquity to the Renaissance seems to supply one bridge between the Prometheus and the Faust traditions. Simply put, the occult scientists, from the time of Simon Magus, seem to continue the work of the pre-Socratic philosophers in challenging established values in science, technology, religion, and even politics. In the case of the pre-Socratic philosophers, the rebellion was directed against a narrow view of the gods which in turn threatened the aristocracy and the tyranny that often looked to the old religion to justify its claims to power. Aeschylus, I suggested, was in part inspired by the progress of the philosophers in his creation of Prometheus.

In the case of the medieval and Renaissance occult scientists, who were Christians, the revolt, although latent in most cases, was still at least deviation from Christian orthodoxy. In asserting the belief that humans could control magical powers, even in so-called "white magic" or beneficent theurgy, the occult scientists claimed powers comparable to those of the triune God. Furthermore, in some cases, occult scientists asserted that the aristocracy used its hold on Christianity to keep the masses in its power (Mebane, 1989: 78 - 80). As the aristocracy, especially the princes, often claimed to rule by divine right, an attack on an established view of religion amounted to a twofold revolt: one against religion and one against the state. The occult scientist, therefore, was a breaker of both religious and secular law, in his rebellion against orthodox religion and its use in the service of the state.¹¹ One recalls at this point the situation facing some of the early philosophers in the Greek world; however, an important difference separates the hubristic Greek philosopher from the transgressing occult scientist. Although many gods in the Archaic and Classical Greek world were pan-Hellenic, worship varied from polis to polis. Orthodoxy and dogmatics in the modern sense were unknown in the ancient, polytheisticGreek world. Only absolute atheism in the form of failing to worship the gods was punishable; it was such a charge that was leveled against Socrates.¹² The ancient Greek philosopher thus rebelled against traditional religious ideas or state-sponsored religious tradition, but not against a canonical holy law. The situation was much different during the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Western, Christian Europe. Rome provided the supreme religious authority and a highly developed canonical law which, although distinct from secular authority and secular law, was still recognized and respected by secular authority. Therefore, in their rebellious activities, the occult scientists, unlike their pre-Socratic forbears, ran the risk of committing a specifically defined moral crime: heresy. Robert Grosseteste, writing during the thirteenth century, had defined heresy as "an opinion chosen by human faculties, contrary to holy Scripture, openly taught and obstinately defended" (Cullen, 1985: 203). Much of occult science would qualify as heresy under this definition. Later, Thomas Aquinas defined heresy in the Summa Theologia¹³ as "a kind of unbelief attaching to those who profess faith in Christ yet corrupt his dogmas" (2a2ae, q.l1, a.1), and specified that obstinate resistance against Church authority was the "formal element in heresy." Aquinas would permit the one accused of heresy to abjure and be reconciled with the Church. However, the one refusing to change his opinion was to be excommunicated and handed over to the secular authorities. Moreover, Aquinas, and many medieval theologians, held the opinion that the heretic was diseased, and asserted that the duty of the secular authorities was to execute such a person (Cullen, 1985: 203 - 204).

The occult scientist, therefore, presented a double threat. He was both a heretic and an outlaw. I have discussed some of the most important historical figures in the Hermetic and Cabalist tradition. The time has come to discuss the historical Faustus, an occult scientist of particular infamy, who became, in his transition into a character of the Faust-Biicher and then the drama, a composite symbol, an amalgam of occult scientists in general.

The Historical Faust

Contemporary accounts of Faustus exist from the first decade of the sixteenth century onward, and, while they are not abundant, and after 1540 less reliable as biographical evidence,¹⁴ they provide enough material to form at least a biographical outline for Faustus. After the middle of the sixteenth century, the many and various legends that surround and obscure the historical figure are codified in the Historia von D. Johann Fausten, which ultimately influences the creation of Marlowe's character, Doctor Faustus.

Mention of the historical Faustus occurs for the first time in written records in a letter written by the Catholic scholar and mystic Abbot Johannes Trithemius to the mathematician Johann Virdung in Heidelberg (Mahal, 1982: 101 - 102: Palmer and More, 1936: 83 - 86).¹⁵ The letter, dated 20 August 1507, refers to a certain Magister Georg Sabellicus Faust der Jiungere and outlines the boastful claims he has made. Trithemius calls him a vagrant and a fool, but notes that Faustus refers to himself as a necromancer, astrologer, the second magician, palm-reader, aeromantic, pyromantic, and hydromantic. Moreover, Faustus boasts of his great memory, whereby he claims that should all the works of Plato and Aristotle disappear from human memory, he would be able to restore them. Christ's miracles are not astonishing for him, and he claims to be able to do whatever Christ had done as often and at will. Trithemius notes further that alchemy is another subject that Faustus claims to have mastered in its entirety. Finally, Trithemius states that this Faustus was offered a position as a schoolmaster at Kreuznach, for which Franz von Sickingen, the famous knight, interceded on his behalf. However, as Faustus was "urging the most shameful lechery" on the schoolboys, he quickly escaped from town before the scandal and punishment caught up with him.

A number of interesting factors emerge from Trithemius's account which invite immediate comparison with the Prometheus legend. Even at this early stage, one discerns the importance of polymathy for the Faustus story. Like the Prometheus who claims that "all arts which mortals practice are from Prometheus" (Prometheus Bound, 506), Faustus claims a comprehensive knowledge of various fields, and caps his hyperbolic claim by professing to greater power than Christ. (This claim also marks both Prometheus and Faustus as rebels against Zeus and God, respectively.) One also discerns a variation on Promethean "foresight," and an echo of Mnemosyne's gift (memory) in the claim that Faustus's prodigious memory would be able to restore all the works of Plato and Aristotle, should they be lost to human memory. Finally, with Trithemius's anecdote about the "most shameful lechery" which Faustus urged on his schoolboys, one notes a change from Prometheus's philanthropy to Faustus's alleged pederasty, which hints at the rape of youths by an adult; not the kindly love of a father, but an authoritarian's sexual abuse of those committed to his care. Regardless of the role of pederasty in certain philosophical schools in fifth- and fourth-century Athens, in the context of sixteenth-century Christian Germany, it had no place.¹⁶

One finds traces of an historical Faustus documented elsewhere. Records show that in 1509 the University of Heidelberg granted a Bachelor's degree in Divinity to a Johann Faust. This is problematic on two accounts, for this person's first name and the first name of the person in Trithemius's letter are not identical, and, the degree dates two years after the letter in which Faustus is first mentioned (Palmer and More, 1936: 81 - 83; 86-87).¹⁷ Four years later, a letter dated 7 October 1513 from Canon Mutianus Rufus to Cloister Administrator Heinrich Urbanus makes reference to "Georgius Faustus Helmitheus Hedelbergensis" (Mahal, 1982: 102; Palmer and More, 1936: 87 - 88). Mutianus Rufus calls this Faustus a "boaster and a fool," whose "physiognomy is lighter than a water spider," yet, who is able to fill the stupid folk with wonder. An entry in a Bamberg accountbook dating from 1520 lists the pay made to a "Doctor Faustus" for making an astrological forecast for the Lord of Bamberg (Mahal, 102; Palmer and More, 88-89); an entry in Prior Kilian Lieb's weather-diary for 5 June 1528 records mention of another astrological service rendered by "Georgius Faustus helmstet," in which a prophet's birth is predicted (Mahal, 103; Palmer and More, 94 - 95). That same year, two acts of the Ingolstadt Council mention the expulsion from that town of "one who calls himself Dr. Jorg Faustus von Heidelberg" (Mahal, 103; Palmer and More, 90); a similar act is recorded in Nuremberg in 1532 (Mahal, 103; Palmer and More, 90). Two letters make further mention of Faustus. The authors Joachim Camerarius, on 4 August 1536 (Mahal, 103; Palmer and More, 92), and Philip von Hutten, 16 January 1540 (Mahal, 104; Palmer and More, 95 - 96), however, add nothing substantially new to the tradition. For the year 1539 Philipp Bergardi's "Index sanitatis" also mentions Faustus (Mahal, 103; Palmer and More, 94 - 95); from the way in which the past tense is used to refer to him, scholars infer that the historical figure must have died around this time. A sermon by the Swiss Protestant pastor Johannes Gast in 1548 also helps date Faustus's death, as does the Zimmerische Chronik of 1565, which also adds that he died "at or not far from Staufen in Breisgau" (Mahal, 105; Palmer and More, 82; 96 - 98; 103 - 105; see also Henning, 1982b: 38).

Available evidence points to the death of Faustus by 1540. After this point, therefore, one may begin to note the rise of Faustus legends. Martin Luther, for example, in his Tischreden (Table Talk), mentions "Faustus, who called the devil his brother-in-law" and who, claims Luther, was capable of destroying a man merely by clasping his hand. Luther then goes on in the same conversation to tell three short anecdotes of sorcery, versions of which all later appear in the Faust-Books and in Marlowe's play. These anecdotes include the story of a man in Nordhausen named Wildfever who devours a peasant, his horse, and wagon, and later restores them in a hole in a country road (Historia, 40; English Faust-Book, 35); a story of a monk who bets a peasant that he will be able to eat as much hay as possible from the peasant's wagon, and who then proceeds to eat more than half until the peasant drives him off (Historia, 44; cf. English Faust-Book, 35); and the story of a debtor who causes a Jew's leg to be torn out (Historia, 42, cf. 43; and cf. English Faust-Book, 34; Luther, Table Talk, vol. 54, 241; cf. Palmer and More, 1936: 92 - 93).

Luther's colleague and disciple, the Hellenist Philip Melanchthon, also told stories about Faustus. One of these interesting stories appears in a publication by Melanchthon's student Johann Manlius. In this story, which is not organized chronologically, Melanchthon refers to Johannes Faustus of Kundling who went to school in Cracow and learned magic there. He then relates Faustus's desire to fly to Venice to produce a show, as well as the story of his death in Württemberg (not Staufen, as in other accounts), and his companionship during his life with dogs who were, in fact, devils. Two of Faustus's escapes, one from Wittenberg (before his death, when Prince Johann had ordered his capture) and another from Nuremberg, are also mentioned, as well as his boast that all the victories of the Kaiser's troops in foreign lands were brought about by his magic (Mahal, 1982: 104 - 105; Palmer and More, 1936: 101 - 103).

The miscellaneous contemporary references to Faustus help form the structure of a biography that permits us to chart the steps in the transformation of an actual person into a mythic and finally dramatic character. In spite of its status and reputation as a mere Volksbuch, the anonymous Historia von D. Johann Fausten represents the most fully developed and most sophisticated non-dramatic prose Faust narrative of the sixteenth century, which also proves most influential upon Marlowe's treatment of Faustus. Published in 1587 at Frankfurt am Main by Johann Spies, himself a supporter of a conservative form of Lutheranism (Strauss, 1989: 32), the Historia adopts a strictly orthodox Lutheran view, especially in the sense that none of Faustus's late attempts to save himself is effective; God's grace alone saves humans (Henning, 1982a: 97; Strauss, 1989: 35). A 1599 version of the Faust-Buch (an alternative name for the Historia), written by Georg Widmann, also adopts a Protestant viewpoint (Smeed, 1975: 4). These Faust-Bücher were best sellers, written by educated reformers for the religious instruction of an increasingly literate Germany. Strauss has counted twenty-two editions of Spies's book alone (Strauss, 1989: 37,31; cf. Baron, 1989: 22, and Henning, 1982a: 99).

The English translation of the Historia as The Historie of the damnable life and deserued death of Doctor John Faustus … by P. F. Gent[leman] appeared in 1592 the last year of Christopher Marlowe's life, and presumably the year in which he wrote Doctor Faustus.¹⁸ As Smeed has noted, Marlowe's play utilizes the so-called English Faust-Book's "main sequence of events … using the chorus for those parts that do not lend themselves to dramatization"; Smeed also keenly observes that the pattern of events first developed by the Faust-Bücher persists or influences later versions through the twentieth century (5). Thus, the basic shape of the Faustus story is set during the last thirteen years of the sixteenth century.

The elaborate sophistication of Marlowe's learned scholar from Wittenberg is remarkable, given the relatively short time separating Marlowe's play from the shadowy, historical figure, and given the much lengthier time over which Prometheus developed. In the case of the German character, one may attribute the speedy development in part to his particular suitability for the propaganda of the Reformation's pastors and in part to the invention of the printing press, which helped speed the process of printing.¹⁹ Prometheus took longer to mature as a character, but the fullest development of the Titan occurs in drama, too. Now it is time to turn to Marlowe's play in order to try to arrive at a better understanding of how the Prometheus myth circa 1592 informs the play The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus.²⁰

The Sound Magician As Demi-God

In 1940 Frederick S. Boas, a great Marlovian scholar, wrote in his book Christopher Marlowe: A Biographical and Critical Study:

Though Homer's Iliad looms large before Marlowe, there is no clear evidence that he read the Greek epics in the original… of the glories of Attic tragedy there is not the faintest echo throughout his work (17 - 18).

Although I cannot prove that Marlowe read Homer or the Greek tragedians, I disagree with Boas regarding the "echo" of Attic tragedy. In fact, I believe there is an agonized rebel scream that calls across the centuries, uniting the Titan and the scholar of Wittenberg in spirit.

Marlowe's Faustus is not a simplistic figure who can readily be condemned for his transgressions. The playwright leaves room for debate as to whether the damnation of Faustus is a just end for a sinner or an injustice against a sage who had every right to question the world and limitations imposed by man and God.²¹ Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, while engaging in many of the activities documented in the German and English Faust-Bücher, is more fully realized. No longer merely a wandering scholar, Marlowe's Faustus holds a doctorate from Wittenberg (Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, prologue, 16), where he is a professor. Smeed believes that Marlowe's improvement on the Historia involves his portrayal of a Faustus who is "psychologically convincing" and whose learning is stressed not just to emphasize Faustus's arrogance, but also to show "learning criticizing itself for its own inadequacies" (5). Henning similarly describes the Marlovian Faustus's yearning for knowledge as "almost boundless" (1982a: 99).

This yearning appears at the very outset of the play as Faustus discusses the academic faculties that he has studied, mastered, and now rejects out of boredom: first logic (or philosophy, 5 - 10); medicine (11 - 25); law (25 - 34); and theology (35 - 46). However, metaphysics and necromancy prove to be the fields that attract him because of their promise of profit, delight, power, honor, and omnipotence.²² As he notes:

emperors and kings
Are but obeyed in their several provinces
But his dominion that exceeds in this [magic]
Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man:
A sound magician is a demi-god!
(55 - 59)

There is no delay for Marlowe's Faustus about the initial course of action he must take. He has taken all he can from the Christian European university's four great faculties; only the forbidden knowledge of the occult sciences remains. Faustus is especially cognizant of the power that will be his once he has harnessed black magic, and stresses this in the line "a sound magician is a demi-god." As a magician, Faustus will be able to separate himself from other mortals; and, if he is still unable to shed all of his human characteristics, or is unable to equate himself with the triune God who rules the ethical system in which he lives, at least he will forge a place for himself in that other sphere between earth and heaven where the demigods and Titans such as Herakles and Prometheus hold sway.

Mephostophilis, Faustus's companion and foil, similarly resists a simplistic interpretation. Like Faustus, his genealogy stretches into remote antiquity; in fact, Mephostophilis's ancestors are arguably older. One discerns similarities between the one who tempts Faustus to sign away his soul and the serpent in the garden of Eden who tempts Eve to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge saying eritis sicut Deus scientes bonum et malum. Mephostophilis is not Lucifer, since the authors of the Faust-Bücher and Marlowe take such pains to highlight the difference between the light-bearing angel who was thrown out of heaven and the particular evil spirit whom Faustus conjures, and who will serve Faustus during the period of the contract. Earlier, I mentioned the Etruscan demon Charun's role in the development of the medieval devil. The seductive side of Mephostophilis does not reflect the ugly, violent Etruscan figure. However, the Mephostophilis who wants to torment Faustus and drag him to hell can claim Charun of the Roman amphitheater as his progenitor. With Spies's Historia, the devil specifically named "Mephostophilis" debuts, and his fortune becomes ever-after permanently linked to that of Faustus.²³

Turning from the two chief characters to Marlowe's play itself, I am struck by the way in which Faustus's opening monologue reads like a cynical version of Prometheus's speeches on the civilizing arts (1.1.1.- 60; cf. Prometheus Bound 436 - 471; 476 - 506). One would do well to recall that since the earliest literary treatments Prometheus has always been a character defined by metis, "cunning intelligence" (Detienne and Vemant, 1991: 58). Faustus, like the early Hesiodic Prometheus, is defined by cunning, a word he uses to describe himself:

I, that have with subtle syllogisms
Graveled the pastors of the German church
And made the flow'ring pride of Wittenberg
Swarm to my problems as th'infernal spirits
On sweet Musaeus when he came to hell,
Will be as cunning [my emphasis] as Agrippa was,
Whose shadows made all Europe honor him.
(1.1.106 - 112)

Of course this cunning has a price. Faustus will pay for it with his soul and by Act Five will lament his decision in acting against God, something the Greek Prometheus does not do. Faustus says to the scholars just before his downfall: "O gentlemen, / I gave them [i.e., Lucifer and Mephostophilis] my soul for my cunning" (5.2.64 - 65).

It is significant that the soul is the commodity that Faustus uses to bargain for more powers. Faustus envisions himself as a latter-day pagan Greek whose reality is fixed in pre-Christian times, and he declares this proudly to Mephostophilis:

This word "damnation" terrifies not me
For I confound hell in Elysium:
My ghost be with the old philosophers!
(1.3.57 - 59)

He echoes this statement after he signs the fatal contract, once again in words addressed to Mephostophilis: "I think hell's a fable." (2.1.133)

Under night's cover, Faustus begins the incantation in Latin addressed to Belzebub [sic] and Demogorgon²⁴ in order to conjure Mephostophilis. He succeeds and Mephostophilis appears. Since the shape repels him, Faustus commands the devil to change "and return an old Franciscan friar: / That holy shape becomes a devil best" (1.3.27-28). This particular command stresses once again the anti-Catholic stance of the Faust legend. In addition, Frances Yates is probably correct in asserting that mention of the Franciscans is an allusion to Francesco Giorgi, the Franciscan monk of Venice who dabbled in the occult (Yates, 1979: 118). In any case, Mephostophilis complies and returns transformed, whereupon Faustus commands the spirit to serve him. Mephostophilis, however, explains that this cannot presently be so, for he is answerable to Lucifer and may not serve without his permission. We learn in fact that, although Faustus raised Mephostophilis with the spell, Lucifer's servant was already interested in Faustus because he had abjured the Holy Trinity.

In spite of Mephostophilis's warnings, Faustus is not persuaded to turn away from further dealings with hell, but instead proposes a contract:

Go bear these tidings to great Lucifer:
Seeing Faustus hath incurred eternal death
By desperate thoughts against Jove's deity,
Say he surrenders up to him his soul
So he will spare him four and twenty years,
Letting him live in all voluptuousness,
Having thee ever to attend on me,
To give me whatsoever I shall ask,
To tell me whatsoever I demand,
To slay mine enemies and to aid my friends
And always be obedient to my will
(1.3.86 - 96)

Mephostophilis agrees to deliver the commission. Faustus emphasizes his willingness to enter into the contract, and Mephostophilis departs.

The scene in which Faustus binds himself to Lucifer by contract is probably the most famous scene not only in Marlowe's play, but in the Faust tradition in general: it is present in puppet shows, parodies, and chapbooks right up to the time of Goethe's drama.²⁵ The scene is important in the present dis-cussion for its analogous relationship to the most famous scene in the Prometheus tradition: the binding of the defiant Titan. For it is Prometheus bound, whether to a pillar (as in Hesiod and certain sixth-century B.C. vase paintings) or the Caucasus (as in Aeschylus and two millennia of his imitators), whether known from sixth-century Attic black figure vase painting, sixteenth- or seventeenth-century editions of Andreas Alciati's emblemata, or the Pieter Paul Rubens and Frans Snyders oil on canvas masterpiece …, who haunts the Western world's poetic imagination.

Once Marlowe's Faustus has decided to cast his allegiance with the infernal powers, Mephostophilis returns ready to offer a deal to Faustus. Mephostophilis promises to wait on him during his lifetime in exchange for Faustus's soul. Faustus agrees. Mephostophilis then demands the scholar sign a contract in his own blood:

Then, Faustus, stab thy arm courageously
And bind [my emphasis] thy soul that at some certain day
Great Lucifer may claim it as his own.
And then be thou as great as Lucifer!
(2.1.50 - 53)

Once Faustus stabs himself, his blood begins to flow, and he prepares to write. However, his blood soon congeals, and Mephostophilis goes to fetch fire to dissolve the congealed blood (presumably held in some type of flask [Barnet, 1969: 41]).

Two relevant parallels with the Promethean myth are to be found in this scene. "Binding" and "fire" are terms of the comparison. Faustus, by signing the contract offered by Mephostophilis, binds himself to Lucifer. This action of binding unites the scholar with Lucifer, and after twenty-four years of the contract's terms, Doctor Faustus will become, in a sense, "Faustus bound," a passive object. However, by the terms of this same contract, Mephostophilis is bound to Faustus and must serve the scholar for the twenty-four years he has left among mortals. Faustus, for his part, does not hesitate to remind his diabolical companion of the submissive role he has agreed to play. In Act Two, scene two, when Mephostophilis refuses to tell Faustus who made the world, Faustus commands him: "Villain, have not I bound thee to tell me anything?" (2.2.76; my emphasis) For the remaining three acts of the play, Mephostophilis will never be far from Faustus.

Together with binding, fire provides the other link between Faustus in Act Two, scene one, and the Promethean persona. Like a musical motif, the theme of fire is introduced in this scene of Marlowe's play, both uniting the German figure with his Hellenic forbear and drawing him further into the realm of Northern European devilry. As I noted earlier, fire has a longstanding history as a symbol for knowledge, technology, or creative power. In Hesiod, fire plays an important role, for Prometheus uses fire to cook meat and to make sacrifice to the gods, two things humans had never done before (Theogony, 535 - 557; 565 - 569; Works and Days, 42 - 52). In Aeschylus, too, Prometheus's present of fire to man is linked by association to the other civilizing gifts Prometheus has given humans (Prometheus Bound, 254 - 256). Associations between fire and power and knowledge remain operative in the Marlovian drama: in Act Two, scene one, Mephostophilis fetches fire to dissolve the congealed blood with which Faustus will sign the contract. The fire does indeed cause the blood to become liquid again, and after signing his name, Faustus glances at the contract where the words Homo fuge! (flee, o man!) appear. The fire has been a transforming agent, which has enabled Faustus to sign away his soul and enter a contract that will make him an heir to forbidden knowledge and power. There is a double irony here: flowing blood is usually a sign of life; here the flowing blood is used to sign the contract that will lead to Faustus's death and that also magically warns him with a Latin message. Moreover, and also ironically, fire enables Faustus to enter a world of magic and power, (in other words by fire he becomes master of fire), while at the same time fire also helps bind him, and fire plays a part in his destruction. Act Five opens with the stage direction Thunzder and Lighttning. As Detienne and Vernant have suggested, in archaic Greek poetry, thunder and lightning are associated with the fire of Zeus (1991: 78-79); and, the magic power of binding is incorporated in the thunderbolts that Zeus hurls at his enemies (79-82). At the end of Prometheus Bound, Prometheus describes a cataclysm that will engulf him in the earth and that is accompanied by severe meteorological activity sent from Zeus, the master of the universe. Marlowe's Faustus, too, will be engulf-ed by the tempest, specifically the thunder and lightning, and by supernatural forces. Once again the Titan and the Wittenberg scholar travel the same path.

There is one final association to make between Prometheus, fire, and Faustus. In the Greek tradition, fire can represent many things, from the brilliance of intelligence to the spark of life to the flame of love, all positive associations. In a Christian context, fire often carries negative associations with the flames of hell, the devils, and, significantly, the most powerful creature in hell, Lucifer. Lucifer, as Marlowe's Faustus learns, is "Arch-regent and commander of all spirits" (1.3.62) and was once God's most beloved angel whom God "threw from the face of heaven" because of his "aspiring pride and insolence." Mention of Lucifer and his crimes at once alerts us to a significant tie with the Prometheus legend on two grounds. First, the name Lucifer is etymologically significant, for it is formed from the Latin words for "light" (lux) and "to bear or to carry" (ferre), and means "the light-bearer." Light is one of the effects produced by fire; and as fire has come to stand for intellectual enlightenment, so, too, has light. In fact, it is worth noting at this point the importance of the sun, which "Hermes Trismegistus" calls the secundus deus (a second god) in the Hermetic tradition (Yates, 1964: 152-153). Second, one will remember that Lucifer was punished for his "aspiring pride and insolence, / For which God threw him from the face of heaven" (Dr. Faustus, 1.3.66), which again invites comparison with the crime of the Hesiodic Prometheus. Moreover, after his expulsion from heaven, Lucifer and his servants tempt man, which reminds one of the Aeschylean Prometheus's endeavoring if not to tempt man, at least to draw him into his sphere of protection. Lucifer, moreover, promises man great things, not least of which is enlightenment, which is to say, he promises to bring the divine light (forbidden knowledge) to man, just as Prometheus had brought fire (and all it actually provides and symbolically represents) to man.

Among its many manifestations, "Promethean fire" can represent metaphorically the fire or heat of sex. Shakespeare twice uses the metaphor "Promethean fire" to refer to the magic spark in women's eyes (Love's Labors Lost, 4.3.298 - 300, 347 - 348), and has Othello speak of "Promethean heat," meaning "the life force," at that ambiguous moment between dire hate and jealous love when the Moor is about to kill Desdemona (Othello, 5.2.7 - 13).²⁶ While Marlowe does not use the phrase "Promethean fire" in Doctor Faustus, sexual fire glows in the scene in which Faustus orders Mephostophilis to present him the "fairest maid in Germany," for he states that he is "wanton and lascivious and cannot live without a wife" (2.1.46 - 48). Mephostophilis produces a fireworks-bearing woman devil, which causes Faustus to decide he would rather not have this "hot whore" (2.1.152) Here one detects a further connection to an aspect of the Prometheus myth, specifically to the gods' gift Pandora, a woman who is beautiful to look at but whose appearance conceals an evil being. Moreover, the punishment by fire, symbolized by fireworks in the scene in Doctor Faustus, should not be overlooked, as it foreshadows Faustus's ultimate fate, while recalling the punishment Zeus calls down on Prometheus. However, as Faustus abandons thoughts of marriage, Mephostophilis praises him, promising instead to supply the scholar with any woman he desires even

were she as chaste as was Penelope,
As wise as Saba, or as beautiful
As was bright Lucifer before his fall.
(2.1.158 - 160)

Given the alleged pederasty of the historical Faustus, it is interesting to note that the spirit Lucifer, referred to here by the male pronoun, is grouped with two female figures who are, moreover, exemplars of womanhood. This seems to suggest that not only the heat of female sexuality, but also of male sexuality, will be made available to Faustus.

Astrology and geography, subjects that Prometheus had mastered (and about which he had told his audience probably more than they had wanted to know), also interest Marlowe's Faustus. Faustus discusses "divine astrology" with Mephostophilis (2.2.31 - 70). The review of "astrology" (= astronomy) reminds one both that the Aeschylean Prometheus boasts of having taught mankind how to read the stars (Prometheus Bound, 498 - 499) and that Faustus, like Prometheus, is always ready to display his learning or enter into intellectual discourse with an interlocutor on scientific topics that would have been of relevant current interest to many in the audience watching the play.²⁷ Later, the Chorus enters and relates how Faustus set out on a voyage through the universe "to find the secrets of astronomy" (3.2), a feat he accomplished in eight days. Having returned home, he set out again on a new jour-ney, this time "to prove cosmography" or map making (3.20); at this juncture one thinks of the Aeschylean Prometheus's intimate knowledge of geography.

Magic is the hallmark of the Faust legend, and while Faustus deals with magic throughout the play, Marlowe reserves the most extended display of Faustus's magic for Act Four. The Chorus opens the act with a summary in which he relates that Faustus, having seen the courts of the world, returned home, where he was welcomed by his friends and was questioned about astrology. Faustus's fame in learning spread and ultimately brought him to the court of Charles V, incidentally one of the historical figures who appears in the play. The final two lines of the Chorus's speech are noteworthy:

What there he did in trial of his art
I leave untold, your eyes shall see performed
(4.16 - 17)

The Chorus refers to Faustus's actions at the court of Charles V in the past tense. He is not opening the window to present actions, but is showing the audience a magic window that looks in on the past actions of Doctor Faustus.

The action of the first scene of Act Four moves quickly and establishes the atmosphere of wonder at the court as the nobles Martino and Frederick hasten to the emperor's court to watch the conjurations of Faustus. They try to arouse the interest in their noble peer, Benvolio; but Benvolio, who awakens sluggishly from a hangover, prefers to stay indoors and at his window above where he can look down on the proceedings.

Faustus's actions in the second scene of Act Four show him at last to be a master magician. Earlier, he had been merely an apprentice to Mephostophilis who performed magic for him (when he conjured up the woman devil) or who suggested magical pranks (as in Rome), or Lucifer (who called for the Seven Deadly Sins). Now Faustus stands on his own, and although he calls upon Mephostophilis to carry out his requests (such as conjuring up the shades of Alexander the Great, Darius, and Alexander's paramour, 4.2.56 s.d.), Faustus is in charge, making the decisions, and commanding Mephostophilis, as if the infernal spirit were an extension of himself.

Faustus's magic, like fire in Promethean myths, has both creative and destructive capabilities. In Act Four, Faustus uses both creative and destructive magic. One may count the conjuring up of Alexander, Darius, and Alexander's paramour as creative magic. However, Faustus also practices destructive magic in this scene. When Benvolio, the knight with the hangover, expresses disbelief in Faustus's powers thusly:

And thou
bring Alexander and his paramour before the
Emperor, I'll be Actaeon and turn myself to a stag
(4.2.52 - 54)

Faustus responds in an aside:

And I'll play Diana and send you the horns presently
(4.2.55)

He then makes good his threat, for when Benvolio next appears, his head sports a pair of stag's horns (4.2.75 - 77). Generally in Renaissance drama, the image of a man with horns on his head signifies the comic cuckold; however, the reference to Actaeon prevents a purely comic reaction to the situation.²⁸

Faustus makes use of magic's destructive possibilities repeatedly in the remaining scenes of Act Four. In the third scene of Act Four, he calls upon a trio of spirits, Asteroth, Belimoth, and Mephostophilis, to punish Benvolio, Martino, and Frederick, who had tried to ambush him; in the fourth scene the three knights appear each with a pair of horns on his head and complaining of the violent treatment received while in the clutches of the evil spirits. In the fifth scene Faustus cheats the horse-courser by selling him an enchanted horse that turns into a bundle of hay when the horse-courser rides it into the water; the short bridge scene (4.6) shows Robin, Dick, the Horse-courser, and a Carter comparing stories of how Faustus has abused them with his infernal powers. In the seventh and final scene of Act Four, when this band of rustics intrudes upon Faustus in the Duke's palace, Faustus strikes dumb the four rustics and the Hostess who has come with them to collect the bar tab.

In spite of the important role played by binding and fire in both the Prometheus myth and Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, there is one point in Marlowe's play in which Faustus shows himself to be quite unlike Prometheus. Act Five, which one might initially read as a compressed, sixteenth-century Christian Prometheuts Bounid,²⁹ ultimately presents the "titanic" Faustus as a fearful man on the verge of repentance, diametrically opposed to the "old philosophers," whether the Prometheus of myth or Socrates of fifth-century Athens, who stress their indifference to pain and (in the case of a mortal like Socrates) a readiness for death. Perhaps especially in contemporary iconography, one notes that Prometheus is absolutely defiant in the face of his tormentor, the eagle of Zeus. The Rubens masterpiece [Plate 5] most clearly illustrates this where the Titan, strapped to the mountainside, endures the attack of the eagle with a stern, agonized determination, but with no trace of fear. The Marlovian Faustus, on the other hand, spends Act Five in fear and trembling. He realizes the folly of his actions, and accosts himself, "Wretch, what hast thou done!" (5.1.53), words that he repeats significantly a few lines later:

Accursed Faustus! Wretch, what hast thou done!
I do repent, and yet I do despair:
Hell strives with grace for conquest in my breast!
What shall I do to shun the snares of death?
(5.1.67 - 70)

Later, as he speaks with the scholars, Faustus claims he "pant[s] and quiver[s]" as he remembers his thirty years in Wittenberg. Finally, in his powerful final monologue (5.2.140 - 197), Faustus spends his last hour on earth wishing that time would stand still and that he might repent, while he anticipates the hor-rors of hell. Like Prometheus, who asks the elements to look down on his suffering, Faustus calls out to god: "My God, my god! Look not so fierce on me!" (5.2.194); but unlike the Titan, who remains firmly the enemy of Zeus at the end of Prometheus Bound, Faustus ambiguously calls out first to God and at last, the very last, calls to Mephostophilis.

There are other parallels between the fifth act of Doctor Faustus and Prometheus Bound. The thunder and lightning described in the opening stage directions foreshadow Faustus's impending doom while at the same time reminding one of the storm that accompanies Prometheus's descent into Hades at the close of the Aeschylean play. After Wagner's opening speech, in which he remarks "I think my master means to die shortly," Faustus appears in the company of Mephostophilis and a group of scholars (5.1.9 s.d.), just as Prometheus, at the time when he was bound, was accompanied by his persecutors.

At the scholars' request, Faustus has Mephostophilis conjure up Helen of Troy. Helen is a curious figure. In Doctor Faustus she is like a negation of lo, not the one who is punished, but the one who punishes, and thus is similar to that other female figure of the Prometheus myths, namely, Pandora. Pandora is a punishment, the "beautiful evil" (kalon kakon) as far back as Hesiod; and as Pandora caused Epimetheus to burn with lust, so too does Faustus bum with lust for Helen. Therefore, it is ironical that Helen, the "reward" Faustus receives after he puts aside his thoughts of repentance out of fear of being punished, is, in fact, another punishment.

In Act Five, Faustus remains a captive of his study; his travels are done, and his doom approaches. Like the Prometheus of the Greek play, the now-passive Faustus receives visitors, many of whom are sympathetic but powerless to help or ultimately unpersuasive in their counsel. The Good and Bad Angels appear and might be likened to the chorus of Okeanids which wavers in its opinions about Prometheus and his actions, and which has little influence over the Titan. The scholars, too, lament Faustus's fall and express the wish that he had come to them sooner, but are unable to effect any change. Even the Old Man, somewhat reminiscent of Okeanos, the aged counselor in Prometheus Bound (but without the ironic humor that seems to be part of Okeanos's character), tries to bring Faustus to repent but is unable to do so. Ultimately, Mephostophilis, whose function is similar at this point to that of Hermes at the end of Prometheus Bound, comes to tell Faustus he is damned:

now thou hast no hope of heaven.
Therefore despair! Think only upon hell,
For that must be thy mansion, there to dwell
(94 -96).

The Good and Bad Angels come to Faustus briefly, the first to lament Faustus's fall and the second to gloat over Faustus's damnation and suggest to him the torments that are about to be his. Faustus stands alone for the remainder of the scene, until the devils come to drag him off to hell. Like Prometheus who calls out to the elements, he calls out to the "ever-moving spheres of Heaven" (5.2.143) to stand still and prevent the hour of his damnation from ever coming. As Prometheus had called to the sympathetic gods to witness his suffering, Faustus calls out to God and Christ (5.2.152 - 160); and, as Prometheus's supplications are unable to bring about his immediate release, so, too, does Faustus's lamentation fall on ears that do not hear. Faustus wishes that the earth might open and hide him from hell, or that "the stars which reigned at [his] nativity" might draw him up into a cloud, that although his body will not be saved, his soul might rise to heaven (5.2.162 - 170). After the half hour strikes (5.2.170 s.d.), he begins to think about the pain in store for him. He wishes that he could imagine an end to pain; one is reminded of Prometheus's punishment which his tormentors threaten will be ceaseless.

At last, the clock strikes twelve (5.2.189 s.d.), and devils come to drag him away. Faustus calls upon God again, then orders the "adders and serpents" of hell to "let [him] breathe awhile," to "gape not," and bids Lucifer to stay away (5.2.195-196). Faustus's last line captures the essence of his character in its vacillation between renouncing ambitious pursuits and calling on the infernal powers for help. It contains both the promise that he will recant his entire life's work and a final invocation of his fiendish helper: "I'll bum my books!—O Mephostophilis!" (5.2.197). The first half of this line seems symbolically to turn the destructive fire against the creative fire of learning. At the last, Faustus has negated his own existence with his words, even as he is himself negated from life and the promise of after-life by the gaping mouth of hell and the devils who pull him into it.

The character traits that Faustus and Prometheus share offer the most significant cause for reflection. The search for knowledge is a key issue. While later ages have valued the pursuit of knowledge, and Goethe's era was such an age, too much knowledge has not always been an enviable or morally just thing. The sixteenth-century attitude towards knowledge was ambivalent. The historical Faustus lived as a contemporary of Luther, Erasmus, and Dürer, men who devoted themselves to lives of questioning and the pursuit of knowledge. Yet, while the humanists sought knowledge, they realized the danger of crossing the boundary from learning into presumption and irreligious ambition. Men such as Luther, Erasmus, and Diirer knew the Living God as the highest authority and were able to recognize the point at which for them it was no longer permissible to venture. The Book of Genesis, with its story of the Tree of Knowledge and its forbidden fruit, gave sixteenth-century Christian humanists reason to refrain from knowing too much. The definitions of heresy, provided by Robert Grosseteste and Thomas Aquinas, narrowed the parameters of orthodoxy.

However, the boundary was not always so easy to discern, especially for the occult scientists whose lives seem to have influenced the creation of the Faustus myth: men like Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Comelius Agrippa, and Paracelsus. These men recognized no boundary between what was permissible to know and what was forbidden, and for their studies in the occult, although conducted ostensibly for the sake of expanding Christian knowledge, they came dangerously close to heresy. Some who dabbled in the occult received the formal charge of heresy and were unable to save themselves from being burned at the stake. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), the famous occult philosopher born shortly after the death of the historical Faustus, was one such unlucky figure.³⁰ The Doctor Faustus of Marlowe's play becomes the final extension of the knowledge-seeker, and he is the one who, to use Harry Levin's term (1952), becomes the "overreacher," the one whose quest finally takes him beyond the permissible into the forbidden, and who remains ambitious. In lines from his opening monologue, Faustus recognizes the vast powers that belong to the one who controls magic, claiming a larger realm for the magician than the political ruler. At the same time one remembers that Prometheus, as a Titan, belongs to that race of pre-Olympian beings whose very name, Titan, Hesiod connects with the idea of ambitious stretching and presumptuous sin (Theogony, 207 - 210). The titanic overreacher provides the essential equation between the Promethean and the Faustian figures; and Marlowe's Faustus recognizes this when he proudly claims, "A sound magician is a demigod!" (1.1.59) Faustus sins, therefore, before he ever signs the contract with Mephostophilis, for he has mastered all knowledge available to humans, itself a super-human feat, and still craves more. With Faustus the search for knowledge beyond that of his fellow humans becomes a challenge to God. Like the Hesiodic Prometheus, Faustus strives to match wits with God.

Intellectual mastery, then, provides a concrete link between Prometheus and Faustus. Here comparison gives way to actual intersection. Both Prometheus and Faustus have mastered all that is knowable, and, in the dramatic versions of their stories, tell their audiences so. Both figures are astrologers and geographers. Both know the power of words: Prometheus, who gave the written word to humans as a gift, has as his secret weapon the story he knows about Thetis and Zeus, a story he learned from his mother. With words, Faustus is able to conjure Mephostophilis; with words he enters the contract with Lucifer; and he emphasizes the power of words in the line he speaks to the scholars before he conjures the shape of Helen: "Be silent, then, for danger is in words" (5.1.27).

The ability to create human beings represents a special case in a review of the common knowledge between Prometheus and Faustus. Faustus, in the drama and the non-dramatic tradition, is a necromancer and thus has the power to recreate human and mythological beings. Prometheus, on the other hand, does not always have the power to create or re-create life. In Hesiod, the sham sacrifice Prometheus assembles from dead animal parts, fat and bone, may be a mock creation or reminiscent of creation. The protagonist of Prometheus Bound, while able to assist in forming human intellect and technology, never lists as one of his accomplishments the formation of human beings. It is rather in post fifth-century versions of the story that Prometheus first becomes the creator of humans. This version of the story prevails, however, for a long time in ancient art, in medieval visual arts, especially illustrated texts of Ovid, and in the early modern retellings of the myth. Of special interest are two illustrations from the Italian Renaissance, one by Leonardo da Besozzo and another in the Florentine Picture Chronicle [Plate 3]. In each illustration Prometheus appears "as a bearded sage" (Raggio, 1958: 52), who wears a scholar's cap and gown. This Prometheus holds an image of man in his left hand and blesses (or admires?) him with the other (in da Besozzo) or animates him with a touch of his index finger (in the Florentine Picture Chronicle) in a gesture inviting comparison with Michelangelo's Creation fresco.³¹ By the early eighteenth century, Prometheus the creator, and a scholarly creator at that, had become an integral part of the myth.

The rebellion against God and the subsequent punishment defines another area in the common ground shared by Prometheus and Faustus. Like Prometheus, who had once been an ally to Zeus, indeed, who had fought on Zeus's side during the Titanomachy, Faustus, as an academic and student of theology, had once been God's servant. Like Prometheus who steals fire from the gods and who brings intellectual and technological gifts to humans, Faustus steals from the Judeo-Christian God's prerogative on knowledge and, in his ventures in necromancy, ignores the mandate that forbids the creation of anything in heaven or earth. Just as Prometheus seals his fate as a rebel with the theft of fire and receives the painful, never-ending punishment, Faustus's involvement in the black arts will earn him consignment to the flames of hell and eternal torment.

The specific form of punishment that Prometheus receives, however, differs enough from that received by Faustus and requires a momentary pause in the chain of comparisons. Prometheus's punishment might be compared to a crucifixion, the characteristic punishment for criminals in the Roman world such as Laureolus, to whom I pointed as one example of the Roman Prometheus. The process of representing Prometheus's punishment as a crucifixion is also known in the ancient visual arts (Raggio, 1958: 45 - 46), and a comparison between Prometheus and Christ cannot be avoided. Christ and Prometheus were, in fact, compared by the early Christian writer Tertullian (Against Marcion, 1.1.247).³² Yet, as Raymond Trousson has remarked, there was ultimately no place for Prometheus in medieval Christianity because Prometheus, as a creator, competed with God (81). It was more usual to find Prometheus cited as the father of idolatry for his creation of clay figures than as a beneficent creator (Raggio, 1958: 51 - 52).

The comparison of Prometheus with Christ brings Faustus back into the picture. In spite of the medieval rejection of a comparison between Prometheus and Christ, Prometheus can be reinterpreted within the Christian tradition as an allegory both of a divinity who suffers on behalf of the human race at the will of God and of one who suffers punishment from human governors because he is a human who claims to have special powers. Some Church Fathers, in fact, saw Prometheus as a "prefiguration" of the Christ who suffered so much for the sake of humanity. Of course, the "prefiguration" is ultimately dismissed for its triviality compared to Christ's sacrifice (Trousson, 1976: 69 - 70). Similarly, Faustus, through his contract with the opponent of God, significantly through Lucifer the light-bearer, stands opposed to the Christian ethical system and is punished by God for his human presumption and ambition, as much as he is punished for his actual dealings with Lucifer. Yet, Faustus draws sympathy because he is a human character. His rebellion is human rebellion, whereas Prometheus could only rebel on behalf of humans; Christ, although human, is also part of the Holy Trinity and thus also intercedes on behalf of humans. Nevertheless, Faustus is tom apart by demons, and his soul is dragged off to hell, where punishment is without end.

The question remains as to precisely when and how Prometheus and Faustus were brought together. The common character traits outlined above offer some explanation. Yet, this connection is one made by modern scholars analyzing the two figures. The authors of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance (and Marlowe can be included in their number) never specifically made this link. Marlowe never specifically uses the name "Prometheus" or the adjective "Promethean" in Doctor Faustus.³³ In fact, although Marlowe received a Classical education at Cambridge, there is no certain evidence that he ever read Prometheus Bound either in Greek or in Latin translation. Perhaps, however, the search for a causal relationship between Marlowe's Classical reading and his writing of Doctor Faustus is not so important. Perhaps it is even more significant and speaks more to the universality of the Promethean idea if Marlowe never read Prometheus Bound and yet wrote a character so remarkably akin to the rebel Titan.

Yet, it is likely that Marlowe, during the course of his education, at least came upon the name "Prometheus" in the Latin poems of Vergil, Ovid, or Seneca. Studies such as that conducted by Dewitt Talmage Starnes and Ernest William Talbert in the volume Classical Myth and Legend in Renaissance Dictionaries have also shown the debt of Renaissance English poets and dramatists to various Classical dictionaries, especially the dictionary of Robert and Charles Stephanus, which were available at English schools and universities (Stames and Talbert, 1973: 9). These dictionaries included short entries for various figures of Greco-Roman myth. The description of Prometheus is telling, for it represents a culmination of the various stories from Hesiod onwards, with a preference for the late version of the myth in which Prometheus is both the creator of humans and a sage. Variations exist from one dictionary to another, but the prototype of the Classical dictionaries of Renaissance England, the Elucidarius Poeticus of the Dutch scholar Herman Torrentinus (first edition, 1498; eleven editions through 1518) describes Prometheus as the son of lapetos, who fashioned images from clay and later created men. In addition, according to Torrentinus, Prometheus went to heaven and stole fire with which he gave his men life. These actions angered Jupiter [sic] who thereafter caused Prometheus to be bound to the Caucasus and sent the eagle to eat his heart [sic] (Stames and Talbert, 1973: 8). Especially interesting is the last point, the remark that Jupiter's eagle was sent to eat Prometheus's heart. A later English Classical dictionary, compiled by Thomas Cooper in 1565, explained the eating of the heart as signifying that "[Prometheus] was studious and a great astronomer" (123). The figure of Prometheus as astronomer harkens back to the Aeschylean play; at the same time, one is tempted to see in the figure of the sixteenth-century astronomer a Renaissance manifestation of Prometheus.

The aspect of the Prometheus legend that remains constant throughout the Renaissance, regardless of whether Prometheus is a creator of men, is the punishment in the Caucasus. The binding of Prometheus to the mountainside and the attack of a great bird sent by Zeus, whether eagle or vulture, remain constant in the Greco-Roman sources and figure not only in the dictionaries, encyclopedias, and the like which the Renaissance dramatists are likely to have used, but also in illustrated works such as Andrea Alciati's Emblemata, especially editions with commentary by Claudius Minos (Claude Mignault), and the previously mentioned painting by Rubens and Snyders from 1618.³⁴ Also of interest is an illustration in a 1510 edition of Cicero's Tusculanae Quaestiones, printed in Venice, which shows a standing Prometheus, tied to a rocky edge and attacked by the eagle. The Prometheus of this illustration looks less like a Greek Titan and, with his beard, cap, and gown, more like a Renaissance humanist or scientist.³⁵

The icon of the defiant Prometheus bound to a rocky cliff and attacked by an eagle is powerful and potentially useful both to those who sympathize with the rebel and those who sympathize with the forces of law and order. The attitude of a given culture towards intellectually motivated rebellion against God, the state, or both, is reflected in the type of Prometheus myth it produces. Thus, the mid-fifth-century B.C. conception seems to have placed emphasis on Prometheus as the unjustly persecuted rebel, whereas the Imperial Roman productions, perhaps especially during the Flavian era, tried to emphasize the just punishment of an anarchistic rebel at the hands of a just state. The Germanic Titan in the anonymous Historia von D. Johann Fausten (Frankfurt am Main, 1587) reflects an orthodox Lutheran view in which Faustus is bound to fail, for he attempts to take his destiny in his own hands, something only God can do. Moreover, in spite of Faustus's late talk of repentance, he still despairs of grace and thus, as Butler notes, "was incapable of real repentance" (1952: 6; see also 10 - 11). Furthermore, one detects pride in this despair: Faustus views his own sins as so great that not even God can forgive them. In his role as the English Prometheus, Faustus reflects the progressive mentality of the sixteenth century which questioned not only the rebel, but also the ethics operating in the system against which he rebelled (Mebane, 1989: 114; 122 - 123; 124). How-ever, unlike the Greek Prometheus who is ultimate-ly reconciled with Zeus, no Faustus until Goethe's Faust (and one must wait until Part Two of that play) is saved.

While iconography helps link the Classical figure of Prometheus to the medieval and Renaissance figure of Faustus, in the Faust-Bücher the Renaissance figure is linked to his Classical prototype.³⁶ An allusion to Prometheus, or at least to Tityos, whose case I shall discuss momentarily, in the Caucasus appears in the history of the Faust legend and is recorded, with minor variations, in both the Historia (Chapter 27) and the English Faust-Book (Chapter 23). In this segment of the Faust-Biucher, Faustus, together with Mephostophilis, visits the Caucasus. Faustus stands in the mountains and beholds many lands and kingdoms. He looks over all the world and beyond, hoping to see Paradise, but dares not tell Mephostophilis of his desire. He looks into India and Scythia, and sees fire coming from heaven. He also sees four rivers. At last, he asks his diabolical companion about the rivers. Mephostophilis answers that Paradise lies in the east, that the fire Faustus sees is the defense of the garden, the clear light is an angel with a fiery sword, and the water, the rivers of Paradise. Moreover, he tells Faustus that, although he appears to be close to Paradise, he has never been so far away.

The story of Faustus in the Caucasus as related in the Faust-Bücher seems to be the first concrete linking of the two traditions. The connection is made by means of an allusion, but the allusion is significant. Regardless of the relative obscurity of developed primary sources about the exploits of the Titan, an allusion to the Caucasus in the mind of any educated person during the Renaissance would have been enough to call forth at least the simplified figure known from Roman poetry and secondary sources such as the Classical dictionaries, encyclopedias, and illustrated manuals. From this simple recognition, the reader of the Historia or the English Faust Book would easily have made a number of associations. He would have recognized that, like Prometheus, Faustus at this point in his career has become a polymath. His climb in the mountains symbolically underlines his elevated position above his peers: he stands above the world and above all men symbolically and actually, and he can survey all human accomplishments. However, like Prometheus, the fate of being in the Caucasus also makes clear his status as an outcast, one who is not quite human any more, but who is also separated from the divine sphere and, indeed, is punished by God. The punishment of Prometheus in the Caucasus, the point emphasized in the Classical handbooks and illustrated in Alciati's widely known work, would finally have underlined the similarities and suggested a likely end for Faustus's own hubristic activities.³⁷ The similarities between the tempting view Mephostophilis offers Faustus and the temptation of Christ by the devil known from the Gospel of Matthew (4.8 - 9) and the Gospel of Luke (4.5 - 7) would also have been evident to the Renaissance reader.

Classical mythology, however, also provides the history of another Titan who was punished in the Caucasus. This figure is Tityos, whom Apollo bound in the Caucasus for the attempted rape of Latona. Tityos, like Prometheus in some late versions, was attacked by a vulture who ate his liver. The story is not widely known in its own right; no major author seems to have devoted an entire work to this figure, but his story is mentioned in a number of major poems, not the least of which is Vergil's Aeneid (6.595ff), a poem with an uninterrupted history of influence from antiquity onward. With the similarity in the names "Titan" and "Tityos," and the similar punishment in the same location, confusion or association between Prometheus and Tityos in the popular imagination is easily made (Scherling, RE, Band VI A,2, cols. 1597 - 1598). The confusion occurs among artists and art historians as well: Erwin Panofsky notes the confusion of modern scholars regarding Michelangelo's drawing of Tityos, which he remarks is sometimes misquoted as Prometheus. Tellingly, Panofsky reports that Rubens used the Michelangelo drawing of Tityos for his painting Prometheus Bound (216 - 217).

A reiteration of the connection made between Prometheus-Tityos and Faustus in the Caucasus Mountains occurs, interestingly enough, in two plays presented in Frankfurt am Main about a century and a half after the appearance in that town of the original Faust-Buch: Unfortunately, one in 1742 October and 1767.³⁸ Unfortunately, neither play text is extant, though announcements of the shows survived, complete with details of scenes that were to be presented (Palmer and More, 1936: 249 - 251). In both the 1742 and the 1767 productions, Faustus conjures tableaux from antiquity to amuse the Duke of Parma. The 1742 announcement lists the "vulture of Tityos" as one of Faustus's conjurations, and the 1767 announcement lists the "martyrdom of Titius" [sic; sc. "Tityos"]. Moreover, in many of the seventeenth-century Faust plays and some of the puppet shows, Faustus's conjuration of shapes from Classical antiquity ultimately ends with the conjuration of Helen of Troy, just as in Marlowe's drama. Might the conjuration of Tityos-Prometheus foreshadow the conjuration of Helen and also serve as a warning to Faustus, which he does not heed, of the dangerous path he is following? I believe this is the case, and with the scene in the Caucasus in the Faust-Bücher and the "martyrdom of Tityos" in the Frankfurt Faust plays the Prometheus legend intersects the Faustus legend concretely.

The road from the Caucasus to Wittenberg stretches many miles and takes many years to travel, especially when one is tracking a polymorphous Titan and an elusive magician. However, there are many useful signs along the way from Hesiod to Marlowe which enable the persistent tracker to follow the transformation of the Prometheus myth. The development of Prometheus as a magician and scientist during the Middle Ages allies him closely with the occult scientists. With the emergence of the shadowy but historical figure Faustus, and the rapid, posthumous rise of legends about his magical activities, ground is prepared for a link with Prometheus. The Historia von D. Johann Fausten makes the first concrete link, although it is a link anticipated by iconography which shows Prometheus in garb reminiscent of medieval and Renaissance scholars. Finally, in Christopher Marlowe's full-length drama Doctor Faustus, one sees the sixteenth century's most profound treatment of titanic ambition and the sound magician as a demi-god.

Notes

¹ See Justin Glenn's article "Prometheus and Christ," The Classical Bulletin, 62 (Winter 1986) 1: 1-5. Glenn examines early Christian commentary on Prometheus and Christ, reviews the points of comparison between the two figures, and finally considers a few modern theories that attempt to explain the parallels. See also Trousson's study which includes a chapter entitled "Prometheus Christus?"

² Opinions about the date at which an orthodoxy was established at Rome are divided. See James McCue's article, "Bauer's Rechtgldubigkeit und Ketzerei" in the volume Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, edited by Metz, Schillebeeckx, and Lefebure (1987: 28 - 35). McCue reviews Bauer's standard work on the early church and heresy, and enters into a debate with Bauer's study.

³ See Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, (1963: 103) for the possibility of two figures named Simon.

⁴ Professor Peter Reid of Tufts University has point-ed out to me that St. Augustine in The Confessions (5.3, 6-7) discusses a famous Manichean named "Faustus," whom Augustine believed was "the devil's decoy."

⁵ See Palmer and More (1936: 16, 18) for a translation of the passages in Clementine Recognitions in which Simon makes these claims. Butler, who reviews this passage (1948: 80 - 81), links Simon's efforts at creation to the Pauline concern about the "evil" nature of matter, the perennial questions about a God who would create evil, and the later Gnostic and occult-science search for ways of creating life artificially[.]

⁶ See Palmer and More (1936: 41-42); but cf. Butler (1948: 88) who does not privilege Cyprian as a prototype for Faustus.

⁷ See Palmer and More (1936: 58 - 59), and Butler (1948: 91-94).

⁸ See Palmer and More (1936: 76 n.10); cf. Butler (1948: 92).

⁹ The inexact boundary between occult science and natural science plays an important part in John S. Mebane's study Renaissance Magic and the Return of the Golden Age (1989), and receives specific mention on pp. 37 - 38. See also Yates (1964: 155) for evidence of the "shifting and uncertain … borders between genuine science and Hermeticism in the Renaissance.

¹⁰ Mebane notes (1989: 61-62) that Agrippa's intentions in De incertitude et vanitate scientiarum atque artium are problematic, and discusses the possibility that the book may be extended irony. Mebane later suggests a comparison between Agrippa's alleged vacillation and the vacillation of Marlowe's Faustus (71-72).

¹¹ Lester Brune (1983) notes, incidentally, that arguments used by the Church to attack magic were also used against science, since both disciplines seemed to dispense with the orthodox view of religious truth (59) and apparently placed "human control at the center of man's knowledge" (56).

¹² See Snell (1982: 24 - 27). Snell notes that ideas such as "faith," "dogma," and "heresy" were "foreign to the Greeks," and remarks that asebia, "an outrage committed against something sacred," was the "crime for which the death penalty could be demanded" (26). He goes on to claim that for the Athenians "Socrates was not a heretic or a dissenter, but an atheist" (26).

¹³ Bernard Cullen, in his article in the Dictionary of the Middle Ages (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1985: 203), calls Thomas Aquinas's account of heresy "the classic analysis of heresy in the Middle Ages." The passages from both Grosseteste and Aquinas which I have cited are cited and translated by Cullen in this article.

¹⁴ Smeed suggests that "[a]ccounts dating from later than 1540 should be treated with extreme caution" (I n.1). The traditional year of Faustus's death is 1540; after this time, Faustus tends to appear in polemical literature against the devil and witchcraft. In addition, the Faust-Buch is an example of a work that, while claiming to be historia, might be compared favorably with the prose novel. See Baron (1989: passim) for the Faust-Buch as polemical tract and prose fiction.

¹⁵ The most important contemporary passages relevant to the historical Faustus are collected on pages 101 - 15 of Der historische Faust, edited by Günther Mahal (1982). Palmer and More have collected these passages and others, and generally print the original text (Latin or German) and provide English translations.

¹⁶ Professor Laurence Senelick of Tufts University has pointed out to me the medieval Roman Church's equation of deviant sexual conduct with heresy, and notes the derivation of the English word "bugger" from words relating to the Bulgarians, who during the Middle Ages were widely held to be heretics. Moreover, he has called my attention to "a facetious humanist tradition" in which pederasty, together with the method of question-and-answer, was considered to be one aspect of Socratic teaching. Finally, he notes that those convicted of sodomy, like those convicted of other heresies, were burned alive.

¹⁷ Butler (1948: 122) offers an intriguing answer to the puzzle posed by the two different names. She speculates that Johann and Jorg might have been "brothers and possibly even twins."

¹⁸ The date at which Marlowe wrote Doctor Faustus, whether he completed the play during his lifetime, and the publication history of the play, are questions of perennial interest for Marlovian scholars. Clifford Leech (1987: 16 - 20) takes up many of these issues. Most recently, Mebane (1989: 120) has reasserted the belief that 1592 is "the most probable date of the composition of Dr. Faustus."

¹⁹ Henning (1982a: 85j fits the invention of printing into his review of Faust in the sixteenth century. Moreover, there was confusion at an early date between Faustus, the scholar-conjuror, and Fust, the printer and assistant of Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press. The confusion stems in part from the similarity of the names and the alternative spelling of "Fust" as "Faust." On the title page of one of the Bibles he printed, Fust's name appears as "Dr. Fust," presumably an abbreviation for something like "Druck von Fust," imprint by Fust, but from this misunderstanding of the abbreviation, one can see how Fust might be confounded with Faust and be made a doctor in the process. See Smeed's entire chapter on this curious aspect of the Faust legend (1975: 99 - 109, esp. p. 102).

²⁰ Regarding Marlowe's play I make two assumptions: first, that the original play was written in 1592, and, second, that the so-called B-text of 1616 is the more authentic edition. All my citations are from Sylvan Barnet's edition of the play which favors the B-text.

²¹ Mebane, in the chapter of his book on Renaissance magic entitled "Vision and Illusion in Marlowe's Dr. Faustus," identifies three general categories of scholarly opinion on "Marlowe's attitude toward the subversive currents of thought which are evoked in the play," These are: (1) Marlowe's beliefs are mirrored in both Faustus and Mephostophilis; (2) Marlowe offers Faustus as a character who has sinned and deserves damnation, an "entirely orthodox" interpretation of the play; and (3) Marlowe is ambivalent (1989: 115).

Jonathan Dollimore offers an alternative view in his book Radical Tragedy (1993). For Dollimore, Marlowe's play is "an exploration of subversion through transgression" (109), and he believes that rather than stopping further inquiry, Faustus's discovery of limits provokes subversive questioning (110).

As noted above, I believe Marlowe's attitude is ambivalent.

²² This opening, incidentally, will become a standard feature of both puppet plays and other dramas dealing with Faust.

²³ The etymology of the name "Mephostophilis" is obscure. Attempts have been made to explain the name as if it came from the Greek me photo philes ("no friend to light)" or me Fausto philes ("no friend to Faust") or from the Hebrew mephir ("destroyer") and tophel ("liar"), or mephostophiel ("destroyer of the good"). Scholars are not united in accepting one etymology, and the name's origin remains shrouded in mystery. See Butler (1948: 132) and the article "Mephisto, Mephistopheles" in Brockhaus Enzyklopddie (Zwolfter Band. MAI-MOS. Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1971).

Orthographically, the name can cause confusion. "Mephostophilis" or "Mephostophiles" refers to the character in the Faust-Bücher and Marlowe's play; "Mephistopheles" and the shortened form "Mephisto" are the usual spellings from Goethe's time on.

²⁴ Demogorgon has occasionally played a part in the complex history of the Prometheus legend. Beginning with Theodontius and continuing in Boccaccio, Demogorgon, a figure who never appears in any Classical source, crops up as the progenitor of the gods and, in this role as creator, plays his part in the Prometheus myth at least through Shelley's Prometheus Unbound. Trousson notes that the name "Demogorgon would be the corruption of Demiourgos [from the Greek], creator of the world since the neo-Platonic philosophers" (324 n. 78). Seznec puts it best when he writes: "Demogorgon is a grammatical error, become god" (1953: 222). See Seznec (222; 227; 235 n.56; 282; 306; 312; and 317) and Trousson (89; 321; 325; 328 - 29; 331; 332-333) for further details.

²⁵ Otto Heller (1931: 40 - 42) deals with the pact scene chiefly as it develops between Marlowe's play and Goethe's; but he, too, considers the pact scene as one of the traditional elements in the Faust legend.

²⁶ See Starnes and Talbert (1973: 120 - 123) for references to and discussion of Shakespeare's limited use of the Prometheus myth. The authors also mention a passage in Titus Andronicus in which the proper noun "Prometheus" is used, again in a context where sexual relations are important. Aaron speaks of Tamora and remarks that she is "faster bound to Aaron's charming eyes / Than is Prometheus tied to Caucasus," (2.1.16 - 17).

²⁷ Smeed remarks that in the Historia printed by Spies "it requires some effort of the imagination" for moderns to realize that Faustus possesses knowledge "unlawfully" (1975: 59). Following Dedeyan, whom he cites, Smeed (82 n.2) notes that "Mephisto's replies to Faustus [in Marlowe] show no more than the wisdom of a sixteenth-century Humanist." Mebane echoes this idea in his claim that Marlowe's play points to the absurdity and tyranny of suppressing scientific research and persecuting the scientist-philosopher.

²⁸ An alternative interpretation of the horns is possible and may supplement my primary suggestion. The stag in Christian iconography often represents Christ: one thinks of the legend of St. Eustace and of Albrecht Durer's print from c. 1501 on the conversion of Eustace after he has seen a stag with a Crucifix between its horns. Perhaps Faustus's transitive magic used against Benvolio unveils Benvolio's Christianity, and shows symbolically the distance between a Christian knight of the Holy Roman Empire and Faustus, the liege of Hell.

²⁹ There are a number of parallels between the final act of Marlowe's play and the Aeschylean Prometheus Bound as a whole. Faustus, like Prometheus, is "bound" and cannot move from his location or his circumstances. Others, such as the scholars, the Good and Bad Angels, the Old Man, and Helen, come to visit the passive subject, Faustus, just as the chorus of Okeanids, Okeanos, and lo come to visit the passive Prometheus. Moreover, each of these Marlovian characters has a reflection in Aeschylus's play. Faustus's final visit from Mephostophilis, an agent of a more powerful being directly responsible for Faustus's fate, announces the doom about to fall on him, just as Hermes, sent by Zeus, announces the ruin about to fall on Prometheus.

³⁰ For a concise account of Giordano Bruno, see the chapter "Giordano Bruno in Legend and History," in Michel (1973). Yates's discussion in Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964) is a full account, and includes details on Bruno's predecessors.

³¹ See Raggio (1958: 52) and her Plate 7c for a reproduction of da Besozzo's illustration.

³² Trousson (1976: 73) calls the citation from Tertullian "the only phrase to my knowledge, which seems to authorize the thesis of assimilation [between Prometheus and Christ before modern times]." Modern comparisons are not lacking, and seem to date from remarks made in 1663 by Thomas Stanley in the edition of Aeschylus's Greek texts he published in London. The comparison spread thereafter to France where d'Holbach and then Edgar Quinet furthered its dissemination. See Trousson (73 - 76) for a discussion of the Prometheus-Christ comparison in the modern world and for references. More recently Justin Glenn (1986) has investigated the associations.

³³ The Historia makes no mention of Prometheus or for that matter the Titans, as Levin notes (1989: 5), although he calls attention to a reference in the Historia of the rebellion of the Giants against the Olympian gods.

³⁴ The first edition of the Emblemata, printed in Augsburg, dates to 1531. Raggio notes that the illustration of Prometheus can be compared to a 1497 Italian woodcut representing the punishment of Tityos, which is found in an edition of the Metamorphoses. The definitive edition of Alciati's Emblemata was published in 1534 in Paris by Christian Wechel (Raggio 1958: 55 - 56).

Alciati's book was valuable for providing an image of Prometheus Patens; but it also helped confound the stories of the theft of the fire and the creation of man. Stames and Talbert note that in particular the 1608 edition of Alciati with Minos's commentary, as well as Erasmus's De Conscribendis, Calepine's Dictionarium, Stephanus's Dictionarium, and Cooper's Thesaurus, added to the confusion. The authors also remark that an oral tradition probably influenced the transmission of the myth (Starnes and Talbert, 1973: 122).

³⁵ See Raggio (1958: 53).

³⁶ Panofsky, in his thought-provoking introduction to Studies in Iconology (1967) writes about the "active interest in classical themes regardless of classical motifs, centered in the northern region of Europe" as a "proto-humanistic movement" (24). He has the visual arts in mind, and his theory of the proto-humanistic movement in Northern Europe finds support in the representations of Prometheus mentioned above. I find it fascinating that the reverse is true for Faustus, who, in a literary work, the Historia, is connected with the Classical figures of Prometheus and Tityos.

³⁷ For a discussion of Prometheus in the visual arts from antiquity to the eighteenth century, see Raggio's article (1958) and the accompanying illustrations. She provides commentary on the origins of the visual tradition and pursues the topic to 1762. The strength of her contribution lies in the sections on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The introduction is somewhat cursory, as is the history of Prometheus-related art works after the seventeenth century.

³⁸ I would like to take this opportunity to correct an earlier error. In the article "A sound magician is a demi-god (Marlowe, Dr. Faustus [1.1.59]): Faustus as the Renaissance Prometheus" which I published in Shakespeare and Renaissance Association of West Virginia Selected Papers 17(1994): 37-55, reference is made to "two puppet shows presented in Frankfurt am Main … one puppet show in 1742, and another in October 1767, during the eighteen-year old Goethe's residence in that city" (49). I erred in referring to these shows as "puppet shows"; in reality, each show was performed by a troupe of actors. The performance of 1742 was given by the Hochteutsche Comodianten (High-German Comedians), and in 1767 in Frankfurt a troupe directed by Joseph Felix von Kurz performed a Faust play (Creizenach, 1878: 9-12); Palmer and More, 1936: 249-251). Moreover, Creizenach claims that Goethe would have been unable to attend the 1767 performance because he was in Leipzig at that time (183); but since I have been unable to find a precise date for the performance and the precise whereabouts of Goethe for the entire month of October 1767, it still seems possible to me that the eighteen-year-old Goethe may have seen the Kurz production of Faust.

Bibliography