Calvinist conceptions of hell in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus

Notes and Queries

Volumn 47, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 430-432

  Streete, Adrian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF STIRLING   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 77951907069     PISSN: 00293970     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/nq/47-4-430     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. See for example, Lily B. Campbell, 'Doctor Faustus: a Case of Conscience', PMLA, lxvii (1952), 219-39
2. Paul Kocher, Christopher Marlowe: A Study of his Thought, Learning, and Character (New York, 1962)
3. Wilbur Sanders, The Dramatist and the Received Idea: Studies in the Plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare (Cambridge, 1968)
4. Pauline Hon-derich, 'John Calvin and Doctor Faustus', MLR, lxviii (1973), 1-13
5. Alan Sinfield, Literature in Protestant England 1560-1660 (London, 1983)
6. Martha Tuck Rozett, The Doctrine of Election and the Emergence of Elizabethan Tragedy (Princeton, 1984)
7. John Stanchniewski, The Persecutory Imagination: English Puritanism and the Literature of Religious Despair (Oxford, 1991)
8. A. D. Nuttall, The Alternative Trinity: Gnostic Heresy in Marlowe, Milton and Blake (Oxford, 1998)
9. See Kocher, Christopher Marlowe, 15-111
10. and Anthony Brian Taylor, 'Tamburlaine's Doctrine of Strife and John Calvin', English Language Notes, xxvii (1989), 30-32
11. Leah S. Marcus, Vnediting the Renaissance: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton (London and New York, 1996), 41
12. All references are to Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus. A-and R-texts (1604, 1616), ed. David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen (Manchester, 1993)
13. John Calvin, A Harmony of the Gospels, trans. A. Morrison (Michigan, 1995), 117
14. On the decline of the belief of hell as a physical place, see Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1991), 202-203
15. Richard Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Michigan, 1985), 229
16. Sir John Hayward, The Sanctrarie of a troubled Soule (London, 1604), 37
17. G. M. Pinciss has shown in his article 'Marlowe's Cambridge Years and the Writing of Doctor Faustus', SEL, xxxiii (1993), 249-264, that Marlowe was exposed to the writings of Calvin and contemporary Calvinists during his time at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. The concerns of theologians such as William Perkins are comparable to those explored in the play, as Pinciss shows
18. Debora Shuger, The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice and Subjectivity (Berkeley and London, 1998), 89
19. For these texts, see E. D. Pendry and J. C. Maxwell's edition, Christopher Marlowe. Complete Plays and Poems (London, 1976)
20. John Calvin, Commentary on 1 John, trans. T. H. L. Parker (Michigan, 1994), 240
21. The idea that the devil might employ Scripture for his own purposes was part of a much larger discursive field in the early modern period. In the drama, see Antonio's comment on Shylock in The Merchant of Venice: 'The devil can cite scripture for his purpose', The Merchant of Venice. The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (New York and London, 197), I.iii.94. The idea is also widespread in theological writings
22. See, for example, Calvin's 28th' Sermon on the 1st. Epistle to Timothie which states: 'But see howe the diuell transformeth him selfe and putteth on a vizard, and disguiseth him selfe to make men beleue that he speaketh in Gods name: to be short, he playeth the Ape. and counterfeteth what so euer God hath ordeined for our saluation', John Calvin, Sermons of M. John Caluin, on the Epistles of S. Paule to Timothie and Titus (London, 1579), 343
23. Or as William Perkins notes, 'the devil hath a great desire to imitate God in his glorious works so that he may disgrace the works of God', William Perkins, The Combat Betweene Christ and the Devill displayed: Or A Commentarie Upon The Temptations of Christ (London, 1631), 397. 1 am grateful to John Drakakis for his comments on this footnote