Christopher Marlowe

“ Wonder of Men, thrice Learned Faustus, Renowned Magician, welcome to our Court; and as thou late didst promise us, I would behold the Famous Alexander fighting with his great Rival Darius, in their true Shapes, and State Majestical.
Faust. Your Majesty shall see 'em presently.
Ben. If thou bring'st Alexander, or Darius here, I'll be content to be Actæon, and turn my self to a Stag.
Faust. And I'll play Diana, and send you the Horns presently.
Enter Darius and Alexander; they Fight: Darius falls. Alexander takes his Crown, and puts it on his Head. ”

“ Farce was theoretically unpopular because it relied on the extravagant and unnatural, as opposed to the play of real character found in comedy. And whereas in seventeenth-century comedy the avowed intention is usually to expose and thus to reform the vices and follies of the age, farce uses the grossly physical to draw a laugh; there is nothing to be learned from the slapstick and pigsbladder.
Though sneered at by theorists and subject to endless abuse in the prologues and epilogues of the day, farce continued as pleasing to Restoration audiences as it is today. ”

“ No End is limitted to damn'd Souls: It strikes, it strikes. Now, Body, turn to Air, to Earth, or Water. Oh! avoid the Fire: They come. Oh! mercy, Heaven; ugly Hell gape not. Come not Lucifer; O Mephostopholis. ”

“ Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires;
A sound Magician is a Demi-God:
Here tire my Brains to get a Deity.
Mephostopholis under the Stage. A good and bad Angel fly down.
Good Ang. O Faustus! ”

“ Faustus" gives us an often amusing insight into that much despised, ever-popular bastard-child of the Restoration stage: farce. If the direct influence of the commedia is slight, the spirit of improvisational comedy is embodied in the inspired buffoonery of Leigh and Jevon, reinforced by stage-effect and spots of contemporary satire. The play proved a hit and that undoubtedly was the playwright's sole intention. The farce is workmanlike, and as the "Account" prefixed to the 1720 collected plays observes, "THE Life and Death of Doctor FAUSTUS has a great deal of low, but Entertaining Humour ”

“ In Greenwich Park, Mountfort scored his greatest success. The comedy is a hilarious mixture of the comedy of manners, humours, and farce. The prologue sounds the dominant motif of the play, that of satiric and energetic sex-intrigue: "At Greenwich lies the Scene, where many a Lass / Has bin Green-gown'd upon the tender Grass." The play hits wittily at fortune-hunters, cits, and old fellows who attempt to ignore their age. There is heavy reference to the contemporary London scene. The comedy was produced in April, 1691, with great success ”

“ Mountfort keeps the compact with Mephostopholis, the appearance of good and bad angels, the visit of Lucifer and Beelzebub, the pageant of the seven deadly sins, the cheating of the horse-courser, the admonitions of the Old Man, the summoning of the spirits of Alexander and Darius, the tricking of Benvolio, the final moments of remorse before Faustus is dragged down to hell, and finally, the discovery of Faustus's limbs in his study. ”

“ To H. T. Swedenberg, Junior founder, protector, friend
He that delights to Plant and Set, Makes After-Ages in his Debt. Where could they find another formed so fit,
To poise, with solid sense, a sprightly wit? ”

“ Women are shy you know at the first Sight; but come, Faustus, command me somewhat else.
Faust. Then tell me, is Hell so terrible as Church-men write it.
Meph. No, Faustus 'tis Glorious as the upper World; but that we have Night and Day, as you have here: Above there's no Night.
Faust. Why sighs my Mephostopholis, I think Hell's a meer Fable. ”

“ Let me tell you, Gentlemen, he was as good a Man as ever piss'd, or cry'd Stand on the High-way.
[Scaramouche takes out a Leaf and a Shilling, holds it out, and Harlequin takes it.
He spent a good Estate, 'tis true; but he was no Body's Foe but his own. I never left him while he was worth a Groat. [Again.] He would now and then Curse in his Passion, and give a Soul to the Devil, or so; yet, what of that? He always paid his Club, and no Man can say he owes [23] this. [Again.] He had a Colt's Tooth, and over-laid one of his Maids; yet, what of that? All Flesh is frail. ”

“ Fools that will Laugh on Earth, must Weep in Hell. ”

“ Jevon, as Leo Hughes points out, built up a considerable reputation, chiefly in low comedy roles since his first notice as Osric in a revival of Hamlet in 1673. [12] Having a slight, thin figure, he was noted for his grace of movement and agility on the stage; he played Harlequin. Although Jevon could play such straight roles as Young Bellair in The Man of Mode, he, along with Nokes, Underhill, and Leigh, made his reputation in the boisterous farce of which "Dr. Faustus" is an excellent example.
Anthony Leigh played Scaramouche. ”

“ Edward Phillips wrote in his Theatrum Poetarum, that "of all that [Marlowe] hath written to the Stage his Dr. Faustus hath made the greatest noise with its Devils and such like Tragical sport." [10] Here lies the suggestion that Mountfort was to take up, for as Borgman notes, Marlowe's tragedy has two distinct lines: the mighty verse which makes up the tragedy of an heroic overreacher, and a comic line of farcical lazzi. Mountfort has trimmed away the poetry of Marlowe and, for the most part, retained the farcical elements of the earlier play. ”

“ Mountfort scored his first major success as an actor when he played the title role in Crowne's Sir Courtly Nice. The play's popularity owed much to Mountfort's acting of a part which recalls Etherege's Sir Fopling Flutter. The "Account" of 1720 says that Mountfort "gain'd a great and deserved Reputation, as a Player; particularly in Acting the part of Sir Courtly Nice," and Cibber, who was later to create the great Sir Novelty Fashion, says of Mountfort's Sir Courtly:
There his whole Man, Voice, Mien, and Gesture, was no longer Monfort, but another Person. ”

“ Mountfort—who played a part very much like that in which she was so successful previously, Sir Anthony Love. Mrs. Barry played the passionate Dorinda, a promiscuous and mercenary woman who, at one point in the play, cries out in the best tradition of sentimental comedy: "Oh what a Curse 'tis, when for filthy Gain / We affect a Pleasure in a real Pain." Sir Thomas Reveller, the heavy but comic father, was played by Leigh; Nokes and Underhill played comic cits, and Mountfort himself played opposite his wife as Young Reveller. The play was revived repeatedly, and remains a delightful work. ”

“ In Humour, he lov'd to take a full Career, but was careful enough to stop short, when just upon the Precipice: He had great Variety, in his manner, and was famous in very different Characters.... But no wonder Leigh arriv'd to such Fame, in what was so completely written for him; when Characters that would make the Reader yawn, in the Closet, have by the Strength of his Action, been lifted into the lowdest Laughter, on the Stage (Apology, p. 85-86) . ”

“ At last I was a Horse-courser, made Smithfield too hot to hold me, and rid Post to the Devil? Give me some Gold, Father? [Exit. [11]
Enter Envy.
Fau. What art thou the Third?
Env. I am Envy; begot by a Chimny-sweeper upon an Oyster-wench. I cannot read, and wish all Books burnt. I always curst the Government that I was not prefer'd; and was a Male-content in Three Kings Reigns. I am Lean with seeing others Eat; and I wish the Devil would make a Sponge of thy Heart, to wipe out the Score of my Sins. ”

“ The play is good comedy, but quite serious, as Southerne focuses on the distress of an intelligent, sensitive woman, saddled with a foolish husband who [v] is the perfect representative of a frivolous and malicious society. On Friday, 2 December 1692, Mountford acted what must have been his final role, Alexander in The Rival Queens.
Mountfort's life ended at the height of his fame, in the most spectacular and dramatic murder of its time. The notorious Lord Mohun, then age fifteen, frequented the playhouse in 1692, often in the company of Captain Richard Hill, age twenty. ”

“ Although farce was popular with London audiences during the Restoration, there was considerable controversy as to what it was and what it was worth. In a period in which the canon of English literary criticism was being formed, farce illustrates the disparity between received classical principles and the playwright's actual craft. Dryden, who himself "stooped" to writing farce, nonetheless sneers in his preface to An Evening's Love, or The Mock-Astrologer [1671] :
Farce ... ”

“ Hughes notes that although the commedia influence is obvious, Italian farce is different in style from the English, and that although there were four or five tours by commedia troops between 1660 and 1700, these visits were not enough to influence significantly English farce writing. Furthermore, the Italian's art was improvisational—they used no printed texts, and the English would therefore have even less chance to copy from the commedia. Readers of "Dr. Faustus" will find little trace of commedia influence apart from the conventional names. ”

“ Probably, as Borgman notes (p. 36) , the first Englishmen to play Scaramouche and Harlequin were Griffin and Haynes who had in 1677 appeared with the King's Company in Ravenscroft's Scaramouch a Philosopher, Harlequin a School-Boy, Bravo, Merchant, and Magician. When Aphra Behn's The Emperor of the Moon appeared in March, 1687, Leigh played Scaramouche and Harlequin was taken by Jevon. It seems probable that in order that these two actors might have a further opportunity to appear as these popular characters, a place was found for Scaramouche and Harlequin in Mountfort's farce. ”

“ Unsuccessful at tragedy, Mountfort moved to surer ground, and if tragedy did not sell on the market of the 1680's, farce was surefire. Mountfort's The Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, Made into a Farce ... with the Humours of Harlequin and Scaramouche, is a most interesting example of Restoration [iii] farce. The Queen's Theater in Dorset Garden was well-fitted for stage spectacle and effect, and Mountfort took advantage of his knowledge of the stage and the contemporary audience to produce an amusing and popular hit. ”

“ On his deathbed, traditionally the locale for truth-telling, Mountfort reported that "My Lord Mohun offered me no Violence, but whilst I was talking with my Lord Mohun, Hill struck me with his Left Hand, and with his Right Hand run me through, before I could put my Hand to my Sword" (Borgman, p. 140) . It would seem clear that Hill gave the actor his deathblow and then, while the cry of murder was raised, escaped into the night. Mountfort, fatally wounded, staggered toward his own home in the next street. As Mrs. Mountfort opened the door, her husband fell bleeding into her arms ”

“ Bracegirdle, concluded that she was in fact interested in Mountfort; they had often appeared on the stage together. More than once Hill was heard to utter threats against the actor, although Mohun was apparently on friendly terms with Mountfort Hill, determined to abduct the actress, persuaded Mohun to be his accomplice. They set Friday, 9 December 1692, as the date, and about ten o'clock in the evening, accompanied by some soldiers under Hill's command, they ambushed Mrs. Bracegirdle, her mother and her brother, Hamlet Bracegirdle, along with a man named Page, in Drury Lane. ”

“ Moreover, farcical elements appear regularly in the supposedly elegant and artificial Restoration comedy of manners. [viii]
"Dr. Faustus" is a highly competent putting-together of those components which the experienced actor-playwright knew to be surefire. The date of its premier production is not known and has been assigned to a date as early as 1684 and as late as 1688. The farce was not published until the quarto of 1697, which appeared without cast-list, prologue, or epilogue. ”

“ What have the Rogues left my Pots, and run away, without paying their Reck'ning? I'll after 'em, cheating Villains, Rogues, Cut-purses; rob a poor Woman, cheat the Spittle, and rob the King of his Excise; a parcel of Rustick, Clownish, Pedantical, High-shoo'd, Plow-jobbing, Cart-driving, Pinch-back'd, Paralytick, Fumbling, Grumbling, Bellowing, Yellowing, Peas-picking, Stinking, Mangy, Runagate, Ill-begotten, Ill-contriv'd, Wry-mouth'd, Spatrifying, Dunghill-raking, Costive, Snorting, Sweaty, Farting, Whaw-drover Dogs. [Exit [19]
Enter Faustus. ”

“ Edna C. Davis, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
Jean T. Shebanek, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Typography by Wm. M. Cheney INTRODUCTION
According to "Some Account of the Life of Mr. W. Mountfort" prefixed to the collected plays of 1720, William Mountfort, successful playwright and actor, was born "the Son of Captain Mountfort, a Gentleman of a good Family in Staffordshire; and he spent the greatest Part of his Younger Years in that County, without being bred up to any Employment." ”

“ Faustus Limbs come together. A Dance, and Song."
Farce often verges on satire, and, as he was to demonstrate in Greenwich Park, Mountfort had an eye for contemporary foibles. At the end of Act I, Harlequin and Scaramouche engage in dialogue which suggests similar passages of rough satire in Wycherley. Asked what practice his master, a doctor, has, Harlequin replies:
Why his Business is to patch up rotten Whores against the Term for Country Lawyers, and Attorneys Clerks ”