The True Versions

The two versions of Christopher Marlowe’s “Dr.Faustus” have similar storylines but different in the details, such as the university Faustus attended-Wittenberg in A-text, Württemberg in the B-text. In both texts, Faustus obnoxiously gains all of God’s knowledge within the universe by resorting to the Devil’s power. However, the A and B text versions of the play display a separation between radical Protestant and conservative Catholic views in the 1600’s. The most profound difference between the two versions of the play is Faustus’s dramatic death in the B-text versus his subtle exit with Mephistopheles and the Devil in the A-text. The divergence in the educational and astronomical references foreshadows Faustus’s punishment throughout each version of the play. It seems that Marlowe intended to provoke his audience by collectively developing a religious catharsis by utilizing blasphemy. English professor David Anderson explains how Marlowe achieves his audience’s reaction, “Marlowe works in a specifically religious register, playing upon religious difference, inflaming religious antagonism, and complicating the polarities and expectations of mainstream Protestant society” (Anderson 79). Does each version of Dr Faustus represent a response to a shift in religious ideology during the Elizabethan period? I may suggest that the differences between the A and B texts in the final scene reflect cultural tensions during the religious reformation in England.
Marlowe resided in France while he served Queen Elizabeth and was witness to the French religious reformation of Catholicism; this may have influenced the B-text version, written in 1616. In the Norton Anthology of Drama, Shorter Edition, the editors stated, “This ‘service’ surely i...

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