^ - F ?.OK'! -TH E - Li BRAPvY • Or KONRAD-BUPDACH- ^1 (X \ €lm\iM "^tm Btm DOCTOR FAUSTUS, AND Greene's honourable history of FRIAR BACON AND FRIAR BUNGAY. A. W, WARD. Honlron HENRY FROWDE OXPOED UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE 7 PATERNOSTER ROW OLD ENGLISH DRAMA SELECT PLA YS MARLOWE'S TRAGICAL HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS ^\ AND GREENE'S HONOURABLE HISTORY OF » FRIAR BACON AND FRIAR BUNGAY EDITED BY ADOLPHUS WILLIAM WARD, M.A. .^ Fcllo-w of PekrhoHse, Cambridge, and Professoy of History and English Literature in the Owens College, Manchester AT THE CLARENDON PRESS M DCCC LXXVIII \^All rights reserved'] BURDACH PREFACE. /hA/a; It may be well to state that this edition was under- taken before I became aware that my distinguished friend, Professor Wilhelm Wagner of Hamburg, had in the press an edition of Doctor Faustus, which has since been published by Messrs. Longmans, Green, & Co. Of this excellent edition the plan differs in several respects from that of my own; but it would have been a poor compliment to the labours of Professor Wagner not to make such use of them as I could. The special feature of his edition is the Critical Commentary on the Text, which has been of the greatest service to myself. The courtesy of the authorities at the Bodleian, to whom I return my sincere thanks, has however en- abled me to supplement Professor W^agner's labours on this head, by means of a personal inspection of the unique copy of the 1604 edition of Doctor Faustus in that Library. I have also to thank Mr. T. H. Ward, Tutor of Brasenose, and several of my colleagues and friends at Manchester, for information as to various matters on which 1 consulted them in connexion with the notes to my edition. I am under special obligations to Professor R. Adamson and Mr. T. N. Toller, upon whose learning and kindness I have largely drawn. Mr. Toller was good enough to read through the whole of the proof- sheets of this edition; and much of whatever value it may prove to possess will be due to his suggestions. A. W. W. The Owkns College, Manchestek, Jinie ^rd, 1878. ^'!34*<^718 CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction ^ The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus . i The Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay 47 Notes on Dramatis Personae of Doctor Faustus i 1 1 Notes on Doctor Faustus . . • . . . 121 Notes on Dramatis Personae of Friar Bacon AND Friar Bungay 193 Notes on Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay . 196 INTRODUCTION, The internal connexion between the two plays reprinted 'Doctor^ in this volume is indisputable. There is, as will be seen, no and 'Friar evidence amounting to certain proof as to the priority of p^^°" ^"^ 'riar Bun- either of them to the other in date of composition; and it gay.' The is highly probable that both were written and performed for between the first time, if not within the same year, at least without ^nd^the ""' more than a brief interval between them. Thus as Marlowe /^zw« was born in 1564 (N.S.), and Greene probably not long before dTflference 1560 (for he took his Bachelor of Arts' degree in 1578), the J'hg^^^" two plays belong to not very different stages in the lives of their respective authors, and offer fair materials for a com- parison between their gifts and powers as dramatic poets. While, however. Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay has doubtles', come down to us very much as it was written by its authoi-. and has indeed been described by a comparatively early tradi- tion ^ as one of the two plays of which Greene was sole author, the earliest copy we possess of Doctor Faustus contains addi- tions, and possibly other alterations, from other hands than Marlowe's. None of his plays, except Edward II (for Dido Queen of Carthage was written conjointly with Nash), is to be regarded as the unadulterated expression of Marlowe's art - ; and least of all the tragedy before us. Yet on no other are the marks of his mighty genius more visibly impressed ; although it is impossible, were it only for the reason given, to term Doctor ^ Edward Phillips, in the Theatnim Poetarum, 1675. See R. Simp- son, The School of Shakspere, ii. 339. The other play, Faire Em, is almost certainly not by Greene. ^ See W. Wagner, Emendationen und Bemerkungen zu Marlowe, in Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, xi. (1876) 73-75. b 11 INTRODUCTION. Faustus, what Friar Bacon may be unhesitatingly termed, the masterpiece of the dramatist whose name it bears. Relations That jealousy of rivals which is the bane of all but the Greene and highest kinds of artist-lifc has never raged with greater fury Marlowe, ^^i^^ j^^ Robert Greene. His relations with Christopher jealousy Marlowe, who was, like him, University (Cambridge) bred, nof n^e^ce^^ scem to havc varied at different periods in his career. Their sarily pro- plays wcre mostly written for different companies, in which however the same managers might have an interest ; thus Friar Bacon was, so far as we know, first performed by Lord Strange's company, which afterwards became absorbed into the Lord Chamberlain's; while Faustus was probably from the first performed, like most of Marlowe's plays, by the Lord Admiral's (the Earl of Nottingham's) Servants ^ But the rivalry between the theatrical companies was not clearly marked till the year 1594, from which time two great com- panies (the Lord Chamberlain's and the Lord Admiral's) included the chief actors and commanded the services of competing dramatists^; and our first notice of Doctor Faustus is in a list of plays performed by the Lord Admiral's and the Lord Chamberlain's men, ' beginning at Newington,' where they acted either together, or more probably on alternate days or at different hours in the same day ^. There is ac- cordingly nothing to show that — after a fashion which after- wards became common, and of which the history of the English theatre continues to this day to furnish examples — either of our two plays was brought out in opposition to the other. Proofs of But Greene's jealousy of Marlowe needed no such additional jeatoUsy of stimuLint. The success of Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great Marlowe, (produced not later than 1587, and probably in 1586, or even in 1585) had suggested the composition of Greene's Comical History of Alphonsus King of Arragon (as to the date of which there seems to be no external evidence), which was in- contestably designed to challenge a comparison. Not long ^ See Henslowe's Diary; and compare Fleay, Shakespeare Manual, p. 88. ^ R. Simpson, u.s., i. xviii. ^ See Henslowe's Diary, p. 35 in Collier's edition, and Collier's note. INTRODUCTION, 111 afterwards in his prose-tract, Perimedes the Blacksmith (1588), Greene, referring to some remarks about a change made by him in the motto which, after the fashion of the time, he was accustomed to append to his publications, wrote as follows : * I keepe my old course, to palter vp something in prose, vsing mine old poesie still, Omne tulit punctum ; although latelye two gentlemen poets made two mad men of Rome beate it out of their paper bucklers, and had it in derision, for that I could not make my verses iet vpon the stage in tragicall buskins, euerie worde filling the mouth hke the faburden of Bo-bell, daring God out of heauen with that atheist Tamburlan, or blaspheming with the mad priest of the Sonne: but let me rather openly pocket vp the asse at Diogenes hand than wantonlye set out such impious instances of intollerable poetrie, such mad and scoffing poets that haue propheticall spirits as bred of Merlins race. If there be anye in England that set the end of scollarisme in an English blanck- verse, I thinke either it is the humor of a nouice that tickles them with selfe-loue, or too much frequenting the hot-house (to use the Germaine prouerbe) hath swet out all the greatest part of their wits, which wasts gradatim, as the Italians say poco a poco. If I speake darkely, gentlemen, I craue pardon, in that I but answere in print what they haue offered on the stage ^.' The reference to Marlowe in this passage explains itself; and it is just possible that the expression ' scollarisme ' may have been suggested by the occurrence of that word in the Opening Chorus of Doctor Faustus (16). Greene returned to the attack in the Epistle prefixed to his Farewell to Folly (not known to have been published before 1591, though possibly written earlier ^). Here his assertion that the whole impression of a previous tract by him, England's INIourning Garment, had been sold, is accompanied by a sneer to ^ Quoted by Dyce, in the Account of R. Greene and his Writings, in the Works of R. Greene and G. Peele, 35. Compare Simpson, u. s., ii. 351- ^ See below, p. xciv. b 2 iv INTRODUCTION. the effect that the pedlar, finding it too dear, had been forced to buy ' the Hfe of Tomlivolin, to wrap up his sweet powders in those unsavoury papers.' In this passage ' Tom- livohn' has been with obvious probabihty interpreted as a misprint for ' Tamburlan,' which had been first printed in 1590. And, in the Epistle ' to the Gentlemen Students of both Universities ' prefixed by Thomas Nash to Greene's Menaphon (1587), there can be little doubt that Nash had rushed in to support the claims of Greene as against Marlowe, and that, while he insinuates a compliment to Greene by inveighing against 'the alchemists of eloquence who (mounted on the stage of arrogance) think to outbrave better pens with swell- ing bombast of bragging blank-verse ^,' it is to Marlowe he contemptuously alludes as an ' art-master ' — a degree which Marlowe had taken at Cambridge in the very year when Nash had been obliged to quit the University in disgrace. Here, again, I will merely point out as curious the choice of the expression ' alchemists,' and the phrase describing these alchemists as ' mounted ' on a stage of arrogance, as the alchemist Doctor Faustus in Marlowe's play ' mounts him up to scale Olympus' top.' (Chorus before sc. vii, 1. 3.) His post- The bitterness of Greene against Marlowe came to an end waning to —driven out, may be, by that greater bitterness of which the iji"™' , expressions have done more to provoke the ill-will of posterity against Greene's name than all the errors for which he so loudly did penance. In his tract, A Groatsworth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance, published in 1592 by Henry Chettle soon after its author's miserable death, Greene addresses 'those gentlemen his quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making playes,' wishing them ' a better exercise, and wisedome to preuent his extremities.' And the first of those whom, in a passage often quoted, he entreats ' to take heed,' is beyond all doubt Marlowe. 'Wonder not (for with thee will I first beginne), thou famous gracer of tragedians, that Green, who hath said with ^ See W. Bernhardi, Robert Greene's Leben und Schriften (1874"), 48, 49 ; and compare Collier, History of English Dramatic Poetry, iii. 110-112. INTRODUCTION. V thee, like the foole in his heart, '' There is no God," should now giiie glorie vnto his greatnesse; for penetrating in his power, his hand lyes heauy vpon me, he hath spoken vnto me with a voyce of thunder, and I haue felt he is a God that can punish enemies. Why should thy excellent wit, his gift, be so blinded that thou shouldest giue no glory to the giuer? Is it pestilent Machiuilian policie that thou hast studied? O peevish follie ! what are his rules but meere confused mockeries, able to extirpate in small time the gene- ration of mankinde ? for if sic 'volo, sic iubeoy holde in those that are able to commaund, and if it be lawfull/:?j et nefas, to doo any thing that is beneficiall, onely tyrants should possess the earth, and they, striuing to exceed in tiranny, should ech to other be a slaughterman, till, the mightyest outlining all, one stroke were left for Death, that in one age man's life should end. The brocher of this dyabolicall atheisme is dead, and in his life had neuer the felicitie he aymed at, but, as he beganne in craft, lined in feare, and ended in dispaire. Quam inscrutabilia sunt Dei judicial This murderer of many brethren had his conscience seared like Cayne ; this betrayer of him that gaue his life for him inherited the portion of Judas ; this apostata perished as ill as Julian ; and thou wilt, my friend, be his disciple ? Looke vnto mee, by him per- swaded to that libertie, and thou shalt finde it an infernall bondage. I know the least of my demerits merit this miser- able death ; but wilfull striuing against knowne truth ex- ceedeth all the terrors of my soule. Deferre not (with mee) till this last point of extremitie ; for little knowest thou how in the end thou shalt be visited ^.' In a subsequent passage (addressed to Peele) occurred the and Mar- celebrated attack upon Shakespeare. Both he and Marlowe cepdon'^o'f naturally took offence at the publication, the exhortations in "• which may have been needed by Marlowe, but are delivered in a ranting tone not surpassed by Tamburlaine or Barabas themselves. Hereupon Chettle, in a statement prefixed to his * Qnoted by Dyce, Some Account of Marlowe and his Writings, Works of C. Marlowe, xxvii. vi INTRODUCTION. Kind-Harts Dreame (1592), made a handsome apology to Shakespeare ; but Marlowe, after observing that he was not acquainted with him and ' cared not if he neuer be,' merely requests in no very gracious terms to excuse his indiscretion — 'For the first, whose learning I reuerence, and, at the perusing of Greenes booke, stroke out what then in con- science I thought he in some displeasure writ, or, had it beene true, yet to publish it was intollerable, him I would wish to vse me no worse than I deserve' — pleading haste as his defence \ It is known how awful a comment on his unhappy friend's well-meant but not unnaturally ill-taken warnings ]\Iarlowe's sudden end was speedily to furnish. On June I St, 1593, he was killed in a shameful quarrel. This summary of the known facts as to the relations be- tween our two dramatists suggests the conclusion, that their two plays before us, which must have been brought out at a time preceding their reconciliation, such as it was, were not written in a spirit of friendly emulation. It likewise, inasmuch as no external evidence as to priority of date exists, suggests that Friar Bacon was written after Doctor Faustus, to which it was in some sense intended to be a rival play. It has indeed been pointed out^ that a line occurs in Doctor Faustus which seems to have been taken from a passage or passages in Friar Bacon, while there is no similar plagiarism in the latter from Marlowe's tragedy. In Doctor Faustus (i. 86) the hero says: ' I '11 have them wall all Germany with brass' ; in Friar Bacon (ii. 30) Burden says : ' Thou mean'st ere many years or days be past To compass England with a wall of brass'; and ib. (ii. 177) the Friar says himself: 'And hell and Hecate shall fail the friar, But I will circle England round with brass.* ^ See Dyce, ib., xxix, and compare Dr. Ingleby's Introduction to Part I. of the Shakspere Allusion-Books printed for the New Shakspere Society, which contains both the Groatsworth of Wit and Kind-Harts Dreame. ■•^ By Bernhardi, u. s., 39, who recognises the inadequacy of the evi- dence, but inclines to the conclusion which he thinks it suggests. INTR OD UC TION. VI 1 But even if this be regarded as a plagiarism on the part of the one or the other play, the fact manifestly goes for nothing, in the case of a play which like Doctor Faustus is known to have received ' additions,' of which the above passage may be one. But there can be no question of plagiarism in lines expressing in the most natural way, and in similar though not identical terms, a traditional boast which was probably quite familiar from the story-book of Friar Bacon ^. There is accordingly no reason for differing from the Probabi- generally received view, that Greene's play was suggested prTa?^^ by Marlowe's. Coincidences of vocabulary and phraseology Bacon was r ^ • •^ • c 1 • ^ • Written were, in consequence of the similarity or their subjects, after inevitable in the two plays ; but the coincidences go no JJ"^"^*"^- ^11 1 !• • Difference further than this. On the other hand, it seems going too of charac- far to say, that 'just as in his Alphonsus Greene attempted [^'"een'the to outdo Tamburlaine, ... he attempted to outdo Faustus two plays. by his Friar Bacon ^.' In a happier moment than that in which he had conceived the possibility not only of out- Heroding Herod (the phrase is not inapposite, for both the Scythian shepherd and the ' haughty Arragon ' have a smack of the old mystery-style about them), but of pitting his life-like vigour against the torrent of Marlowe's passion, Greene seems to have resolved upon an altogether distinct treatment of a theme cognate with that of his rival's tragedy. In Faustus (the buffoonery apart, for which Marlowe cannot be held more than partly responsible), awe and terror are inspired by the treatment of the story ; in Friar Bacon, as Tieck has observed, joviality is the predominating element, but a joviality refined by a truly poetic vein. Instead of the terra incognita of German localities, apparently not familiar in name even to the author himself (or at least to his printer^). ^ In The Jew of Malta, i. 2 : ''T would have moved your heart, Though countermined with walls of brass, to love,* the primary allusion is of course to the ' turris ahenea ' of Danae. ^ See Wagner, Introduction to Doctor Faustus, xxxvii. 3 Rhodes (Roda) ; Wertenberg (Wittenberg) ; Vanholt (Anhalt). viii INTRODUCTION. and of a Rome which he knew only at secondhand, we have here English scenery peopled by figures and called by names familiar to the poet's youth ; instead of journeys through the air to foreign climes and into the empyrean, postings from Suffolk to Oxford ; instead of a tragic catastrophe, a prompt and satisfactory repentance in the hero and a brace of wed- dings to close the honourable history. Friars Bacon and Bungay are not magicians who would be ' uncanny to meet'; and the representative of Darkness himself is bantered as a ' goodman friend.' On a legend which in itself he treats with so light a touch, Greene has engrafted a charming love- idyll, fresh with the sparkling dew of the meadows ; there is nothing sombre in the action, even where it takes us into the Friar's cell ; the play ' has all the leisurely beauty of an Eng- lish summer day, while Marlowe's is like a tropical thunder- storm, intense, brief and unrelieved ^.' Thus Greene sought rather to rival than to outdo Marlowe; not to surpass Faustus on his own ground, as Friar Bacon surpasses the ' German ' Vandermast, but to produce an original play resembling Marlowe's tragedy in nothing but the primary aspect of their main themes. Of plagiarism there is therefore here as little question as of parody; and of essential similarity no question at all. Even in the comic passages there is no imitation ; Miles is of the same family as Wagner, but has grown up in his own way. Greene's work is in a word altogether of a distinct kind from Marlowe's, from whose genius his own was widely apart — neither of them coming near to Shakespeare except where they dif- Resem- fercd altogether from one another. In one point however styk be-° the two plays agree, namely in the peculiarities of style which tween |^g]p |-q niark the difference between the group of dramatists to which both Marlowe and Greene belonged, and the great master who was soon to outshine all his predecessors and contemporaries. Both these plays are not only full of bom- ^ I have taken the liberty, and given myself the pleasure, of borrowing one or two phrases from an interesting paper on Greene, entitled ' An Early Rival of Shakespere,' contributed by^ Professor J. M. Brown to a recent number of the New Zealand Magazine. INTR OD UC TION. 1 X bastic diction and ultra-classicality of phrase and figure — the former being a sign of the immaturity which still characterised the poetic style of our dramatists, not yet masters of the secret reasons of their own effectiveness ; the latter a con- scious endeavour to prove to the world the academical scholarship which seemed the proudest of literary distinctions. But they are also still tinged with an artificiality of manner betraying itself in affectations and oddities of construction and vocabulary which seek to emphasise the difference be- tween the poetic style and the common speech, — such as the omission of the article before the substantive^, and the forma- tion of new and high-sounding words ; and again the habit of making the personages of the action address themselves by their proper names or speak of themselves in the third person, as if conscious of their unreality, instead of simply using the first personal pronoun like Hving human beings^. These are however merely the fashions of a school or of an age, worth noting, but not worth dwelling upon, in comparison with the distinctive characteristics of individual genius which are its own, and which in the case of Marlowe and Greene a critical analysis of these dramas, such as cannot be attempted here, would find occasion to mark in glorious abundance. The main themes of both these plays are derived from Legends of that vast and infinitely interwoven body of legend which magicians : deals with magicians — men who have become possessed of ^ Compare Doctor Faustus, xi. 40; xiii. 90; Friar Bacon, x. 143, 154; xiii. 8. ^ The late Mr. Simpson has some extremely striking remarks on this practice, of which numerous examples will be found, passim, in both our plays, and which is a curious combination of artificiality and childlike- ness. Perhaps however he urges a point rather too far when he says : * With our earher dramatists the principles of the dumb show, or rather puppet show, affect the whole form of their dramas. As poets, they speak rather like interpreters to the puppets than as dramatists.' See The School of Shakspere, ii. 394. Professor Wagner likewise adverts to the peculiarity of Marlowe's use in Doctor Faustus of ' a proper name where a pronoun would be commonly substituted.' In one passage, iii. 94, the change from the third to the first person has an unpleasingly abrupt effect. Compare also xi. 39-44. X INTRODUCTION. powers and are capable of performances not admitting of explanation by any of the ordinary conditions of humanity. The magician or sorcerer is a conception distinct from that of the witch, who was looked upon as an ignorant instrument in the hands of the Evil One, and whose practices brought with them little but persecution in this world, and damnation in the next^. The magician, on the other hand, was usually regarded as having acquired and as exercising his art for pur- poses of his own, not merely nor essentially from an inclination or tendency towards doing evil and inflicting harm. Hence in the popular belief pre-eminent success in any of the paths which human ambition follows, especially if achieved with extraordinary rapidity or in the teeth of unusual difficulties, was associated with the possession of supernatural powers ; while the pursuit of studies and occupations of which the objects and conditions were unintelligible or obscure to the multitude, especially if carried on under conditions of isolation or of other apparent mystery, was similarly accounted for. These notions were not peculiar to the Middle Ages ; but in this period they passed through peculiar phases, and took a peculiar colouring from its dominant ideas and ways of in pagan life. Pagan antiquity had regarded these supposed super- antiquity, jj^^^j-j^i qj. magical powers as the gift of the gods, and those who exercised them as theurgi, human executants of divine works. The prototype of these magicians of Classical anti- quity was Pythagoras, to whose mysterious fame both the Doctor Faustus " and the Friar Bacon ^ of our plays make in the early appeal. On the overthrow of heathen polytheism, its gods Ages. ^ were converted by the Christian world into maleficent daemons, whose agency was controlled but not extinguished by the new Dispensation. The magicians of the earlier Middle Ages were thus regarded as the conscious servants of the Powers of Evil, who, in return for the promise of their souls after death, helped them, or those whom they wished to serve, to the good things of this world. They stood ^ See T. Wright, Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, i. I-5. ^ Compare Doctor Faustus, xiv. 105. ^ Compare Friar Bacon, ix. 30. INTR OD UC TION. XI outside Christian life, and were therefore often Jews or Mahometans ; while at the same time, mediaeval legend clustered round some of the most popular names of Classical antiquity, such as Hippocrates the physician under the cor- rupted form of * Ypocras V and more especially the Roman poets, Horace, Ovid, and above all Vergil 2, and attributed to these sages a variety of magical exploits. It was usually Legends by means of contracts with the Devil, in which Jews were withThe frequently said to have acted as brokers, — occasionally by l^^^''- a close personal relationship with him (that of son to father), — that in a number of mediaeval legends men were said to have obtained a full command over the objects of those passions which it was the task of the Christian religion to repress or expel. Thus men were thought to have been enabled to drink to the dregs the cup of sensual indulgence, to satisfy the cravings of earthly ambition, to glut the accursed hunger for gold and for all that gold can buy, and to gratify the desire for knowledge of all things good and evil and for the power which knowledge ensures. But against this Devil's magic the Christian Church was not deemed to be powerless. Her spells were more potent than those of the Prince of ^Darkness; her magic outshone with its whiteness the Black Art of her adversary. Her holy offices and her blessed Sacra- ments offered a sure refuge against the assaults of the Enemy ; Guardian Angels hovered round those who trusted in their care; the Saints vouchsafed their protection to the pure, and their aid to the penitent ; \ and the Mother of God mediated between the sinner who prostrated himself _ at her feet and the Divine wrath provoked by his guiltiness -'. \ These conceptions pervade a variety of legends, which partly are reproductions of their predecessors, partly attach themselves to historic figures, partly are consciously elabo- rated by later literary treatment. Among these legends those 1 Compare note to Doctor Faustus, viii. 21. 2 Compare note to Doctor Faustus, vii. 13. ^ For a suggestive treatment of this part of a wide subject, see sect. iv. of a comprehensive essay on Goethe's Faust by Kuno Fischer, in the Deutsche Rundschau for October, 1877. Xll INTRODUCTION. may here be left aside, which do not contain the element of a contract with the Devil, but account for the possession of supernatural gifts or powers by the supposition of a filial relationship towards him. It is, however, noteworthy that in two of the best-known of this class, in the story of Merlin which belongs to the Arthurian cycle of romance, and in the legend of Robert the Devil, the saving power of Grace is in both cases exercised by the Blessed Virgin. The contract-stories differ from one another as to the objects which in the several instances the human party to the bar- gain designed to secure by it; but they all adhere to the fundamental idea, that the obligation is invalid against the . interposition of the Divine Mercy on behalf of the repentant| sinner, if Such is the significance of one of the earliest, which also became one of the most widely-spread of these legends ', and which no commentator on the Faust-legend has failed to notice. Theophilus was a bishop's seneschal or 'vice- dommus at Adana in Gilicia in the reign of the Emperor Justinian. Filled with anger and dismay by unmerited dismissal from his office, he sought through the agency of a Jew the help of the Devil, with whom he sealed a contract, renouncing the Saviour and His Mother, and acknowledging the Devil as his lord. Immediately he was restored to his post. But soon terror of soul fell upon him ; for forty nights he fasted and prayed to the Blessed Virgin, till at last she appeared to him at midnight and lent ear to his agony. Assured of a hope of mercy, he proclaimed his penitence and the miracle of his preservation before the congregation ; the infernal contract was cast into the flames ; soon he passed away in peace, and the Church inscribed his name on the roll of her saints as that of Theophilus the Penitent. ■* The story, told by Theophilus' pupil Eutychianus as a living witness, was translated into Latin by Paulus Diaconus, and spread in a variety of versions through Eastern and Western Christendom. Hrotsvitha, the learned abbess of Gandersheini, narrated it in leonine hexameters ; it was introduced into the Golden Legend ; a French trouvere of the thirteenth century brought it on the miracle-stage ; it appears in early English narra- tive and Low German dramatic literature. The name, but not the story, of Theophilus, was used by Massinger in his tragedy of The Virgin Martyr. INTRODUCTION. Xlll Of this legend that of Militarius ^ is a reproduction— the story of the soldier who, to prolong a life of jollity, entered ( (likewise through the agency of a Jew) into a contract with the Devil, but was finally saved by his refusing to renounce the Blessed Virgin, although he had already renounced her Divine Son. In other stories, sensual indulgence re-appears as the motive of the unholy compact ; such is, to give only one later example, the significance of the tradition of the original Don Juan (Tenorio), who has a literary history second in interest only to that of Faustus himself, and who was said to have been the associate of King Pedro the Cruel of Castile (i 350-1 355) ""• In the legend of Cyprian of Antioch, which seems even earlier in its origin than that of Theophilus, and which early in the seventeenth century Calderon took for the theme of a drama that no student of Marlowe or Goethe will pass by — El Magico Prodigioso^ — the thirst for knowledge appears as the primary, though not as the only, motive for Cyprian's contract with the Devil. Still here, as in the Italian Miracolo di Nostra Donna, which belongs to the close of the fourteenth or the beginning of the fifteenth century *, the conditions of the conflict of which a human soul is the subject are still the same; and that Divine Grace of which the Church is the steward is consistently victorious over its natural enemy. As the course of mediaeval history slowly but surely ^^Jf^J^g.°^ progressed towards its close, marked in a wide variety of tics as ma- ways by those co-operating but not identical movements si^ans. which we speak of as the Renascence and the Reformation, the popular conceptions of magic and of magicians were affected both by sentiments which the multitude could not avoid and ^ It was treated by Gotefridus Thenensis (Gottfried von Thienen) in a narrative in leonine hexameters, of which a specimen is given by Professor von Reichlin-Meldegg in his elaborate treatise reprinted in Scheible's Kloster, xi, 256. ^ As to Don Juan, see the collection of materials in vol. iii. of Scheible's Kloster. 3 For analyses of this drama see Lewes' Life of Goethe or Hayward's Translation of Goethe's Faust. * Klein, Geschichte des Drama's, iv. 174. xiv INTRODUCTION. by phenomena which it could not understand. On the one hand, the worldliness of life and manners exhibited by pre- lates and popes, and the prominence which they more and more asserted in struggles actually or seemingly directed to the acquisition of secular power, — the profligate lives of many who had taken religious vows, whether as knights or as monks, — and more especially the shortcomings of the latter, with whom the multitude was most familiar, — all these things could not fail to exercise their natural effect. Already of a famous ecclesiastic of the tenth century, Gerbert, it had been told that he had sold himself to the Fiend in return for the promise of the papacy, which he afterwards held under the name of Sylvester II; in his case an Arabian philosopher, with whom Gerbert associated at Toledo, was reported to have acted as intermediary ^ A still more illustrious op- cupant of St. Peter's chair— Gregory VII — was believed to have been furnished by the Devil with a magic glass, and to have paid the last penalty of his familiarity with evil arts. That the pious Protestant'^ who assiduously collected a variety of such illustrations for his version of the Faust- legend, should have found no lack of them in the history of the Popes nearer to the Reformation, may hardly seem to warrant a belief in the earlier prevalence of these traditions. But, apart from such well-known historical facts as the charges of diabolic sorcery which, together with other accusations of impiety and crime, served as a pretext for the ruin of the Knights Templars early in the fourteenth century, it is evident that in the popular mind the conviction was gaining ground that the profession of religious vows was frequently combined with the nefarious practice of magic. Old popular fancies may have helped in maturing the idea that the Devil was wont to make his appearance in the shape of a monk ^ ; but the association could not have suggested itself to an age full of reverence ^ See Wright, n. s., 3 2 Widmann. See the passage in his Commentary in Scheible's Kloster, ii. 770 seqq. 2 See note on Doctor Faustus, iii. 26. INTR ODUC TION. XV for the monastic orders. The stories of compacts between the Evil One and monks or bishops were by no means the products of the Reformation, though they were eagerly cherished by its champions and adherents. If these tales never found their way to the pre- Reformation stage, this may be easily accounted for by the control which the Church so largely exercised over it. On the other hand, the age of miracles had long passed away in the consciousness of the people ; and we know with what suspicion or ridicule popular poetry and fiction treated the vendors of religious charms pretending to mysterious powers. Thus, everything was in readiness for the audacity with which the Reformers proclaimed the existence of a direct connexion between the Black Art and the old ecclesiastical system. The interpreta- tion seemed clear of the warning of Holy Writ ^ against the ministers of the Evil One ' transformed as the ministers of righteousness.' Luther meant no metaphor when he de- scribed the clergy of the Church of Rome as the Devil's priests, and the monk's hood as the proper way of Satan himself; and Calvin was in earnest when he termed ne- cromants and magicians the agents of Hell, and the Papists their slavish imitators ^. It was thus that in an age when the belief in magic and witch- Scientific craft not only survived, but was to assume new and more associated revolting proportions, the popular conceptions of the safe ^^^'^^ refuge suggested by the Church against these forms of sin had partly grown faint, partly been changed into a feeling of hostility against the system which had formerly found in these beliefs a powerful support of its influence over the minds of men. But long before this, ignorance and superstition had combined their brute forces to associate suspicions and tra- ditions of magical powers with intellectual efforts and tenden- cies largely indeed in contact with theological speculation and therefore with religious belief and conduct of life, but primarily directed to different ends. It has been seen how the love of knowledge, a passion of all passions the least explicable to the ^ See ii. Epistle to the Corinthians, xi. 13-15. 2 See Reichlin-Meldegg, ti. s., 239-247. XVI INTRODUCTION. vulgar, had from an early time been assigned as a motive for supposed compacts with the Powers of Darkness. The history of mediaeval science contains hardly a page without the blot upon it of this long ineradicable popular miscon- struction. And in this case aid was not to be sought from the influence of the Church, which would alone have been able to introduce the gentle light of tolerance and kindle from it that of intelligence ; it was but fitfully given by the hand of temporal power, rarely extended to protect, oftener to repress ; nor was it generally to be found where its proper source should have lain, in the organised and repre- sentative seats of learning, the Colleges and Universities of Europe. For besides the ignorance of the ignorant there lay as a stumbling-block in the path of a freer scientific research that unwillingness of the learned to learn new things in new ways, which has often brought the apostles of progress to the verge of despondency. ' Because men,' wrote Roger Bacon, * do not know the uses of philosophy, they despise many magnificent and beautiful sciences ; and they say in derision, and not for information : " What 's the worth of this science or of that ? " They are unwilling to listen ; they shut out, therefore, these sciences from themselves, and despise them. When philosophers are told in these days that they ought to study optics, or geometry, or the languages, they ask with a smile: "What is the use of these things?" insinuating their uselessness. They refuse to hear a word said in defence of their utility ; they neglect and condemn the sciences of which they are ignorant. And if it ever happens that some of them profess a willingness to learn, they abandon the task in a few days, because they do not see the use of these things ^' This apathy on the part of the scholastic philosophisers was a sure ally of the suspicious ignorance of the vulgar, who confounded the search after hidden knowledge with a desire to know forbidden things, and to whom experi- mental science in particular seemed undistinguishable from the Devil's magic, the Black Art. ^ Opus Tcrtium, c. vi. The passage is translated by Brewer, in his Introduction to Yi. Rogeri Bacon Opera Inedita, i. xxi, xxii. INTRODUCTION. XVll In the Middle Ages, two branches of study, the votaries Astrology of which were necessarily to a large extent groping in the alchemy, dark or unsteadily moving in the twilight, were specially adapted to attract enquiring minds, and to excite the sus- picions of the ignorant. These were astrology, which in the terminology of the Middle Ages included what we call astronomy, but which also occupied itself with speculations on the supposed influences of the heavenly bodies upon the inhabitants of the earth and their destinies, as well as with their actual or supposed influences upon the earth itself; and alchemy or chemistry, the speculative part of which treated of the production of all things out of the elements, while the practical part sought to rival or outdo nature in the production of colours and of many other things, but more especially of precious metals. The connexion which both these sciences thus assumed with common life, with its chief events and most cherished objects, could not fail to impress and excite the wild imagination of common men ; and the isolation in which these studies have to be carried on, the loneliness of the observatory and the laboratory, added a peculiar element of mystery. In Scientific these and in other sciences the instruments used or invented a"nd "ns*t?u- by their professors seemed a machinery of a more than human ments re- ' 1 1 1 • T garded as character and origin. All these studies and their appliances magical. were regarded as magic and as appliances of magic by the vulgar, who could not, like the philosophic mind, distinguish the mighty powers of nature and the still mightier powers of art which uses nature as its instrument, from that which passes beyond the powers of nature and art, and is therefore either suprahuman, — or fiction and imposture. ' For there are persons,' writes the thinker and student already quoted, 'who by a swift movement of their limbs or by changing their voice or by fine instruments or darkness or the cooperation of others produce apparitions, and thus place before mortals marvels which have not the truth of actual existence. Of these the world is full .... but in all these things neither is philosophic study concerned, nor does the power of nature consist ^' ^ See Roger Bacon's Epistola de Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturae, et C XVIU INTRODUCTION. Roger Bacon. The historical Roger Bacon. Thus true, though imperfect, science and honest though often misdirected research, were rudely elbowed and discredited by the competition of imposture, and confounded with their counterfeits in the mind of the people. Wherever, then, in the INIiddle Ages scientific pursuits, especially of the kinds referred to, sought to assert them- selves by the side of the scholastic philosophy and theology which were the ordinary mental pabulum of students, there the popular suspicion of magic found an opportunity for introducing itself. One out of many instances of this familiar phenomenon is that of the group or school of enquirers to which Roger Bacon, the hero of the legend on which one of our plays is founded, belonged. In the pages of a narrative of English history unsurpassed as a vivid picture of such episodes in the progress of our national civilisation ^, may be read a summary of Bacon's attempt to give a freer and wider range of culture to the University of Oxford where he resided, and of its failure. The suspicion of magical practices was not indeed the main cause of his persecution, but appears to have contributed to it; and we have his own complaint that to speak to the people of astronomy, was to cause oneself to be imm.ediately clamoured against as a magician, and that not only laymen, but most clerks regarded as wonderful things for which philosophy had a simple explanation ^. With Roger Bacon the studies he had pursued passed away from his University, and his own name, as will be seen, was long enveloped in the haze of 'a popular myth. Of the historical Roger Bacon no more need be said here than will suffice to explain the basis and some of the details of the legend which, at all events in the form in which it supplied Greene with materials for his play, seems to belong to a much later age than that in which the philosopher lived ^. Roger de Nullitate Magiae, cap. i. (Brewer, 7t. s., pp. 523-524). Compare L. Schneider, Roger Bacon, 99. * Mr. J. R. Green's History of the English People, i. 259 seqq. ^ See the references to the Opus Majus and the Epistola de Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturae, in L. Schneider, Roger Bacon, 3 ; and com- pare ib., 4. ^ For the known facts of Roger Bacon's life and for summaries of his INTRODUCTION. XIX Bacon, born in 12 14 near Ilchester in Somersetshire, sprang from a well-to-do family ; for he speaks of his brother as wealthy, and was himself able to spend considerable sums on books and instruments. But the troubles of Henry Ill's reign interfered with the prosperity of the family, and drove some members of it into exile. After carrying on his studies at Oxford and (as is said) taking orders in the year 1233, Bacon resided at Paris, where the rivalry of the Franciscan and Dominican Orders was then attracting public attention. But the theological discussions in which this rivalry found expression, the philosophy which while pretending to base itself upon Aristotle neglected a complete and careful survey of the very author to whom it consistently appealed, and the disregard of experimental methods in the cultivation of so-called physical science, were alike unsatisfactory to his mind ; and when, in or before 1250, he returned to Oxford, he may be held to have fully determined upon his own courses and methods of study. It seems to have been about this time that, after taking at Paris the degree of doctor of theology, he entered the Franciscan Order. His fame as a teacher rose so high that, according to the fashion of the age of scholas- ticism, he was known by the distinctive appellation of ' doctor mirabilis' About 1257, however, his lectures were interdicted by the General of his Order, and he was commanded to quit Oxford for Paris, where he was placed under strict super- vision, and prohibited from writing for publication. But on the accession in 1265 to the Papacy of Clement IV, that Pope, a friend of the sciences, requested Bacon to send him a treatise on them ; and in eighteen months Bacon completed his Opus Majus, Opus Minus, and Opus Tertium, and de- spatched them by a friendly hand to the Pope. Soon (in 1267) writings see, in addition to the notices in Mr. Brewer's hitroduction to the Opus Tertium and other previously unpublished works of the philo- sopher, E. Charles, Roger Bacon, sa vie, ses ouvrages et ses doctrines (Paris, 1861); L. Schneider, Roger Bacon Ord, Min. (Augsburg, 1873); and Professor R, Adamson's article on Roger Bacon in the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which last I have used without cere- mony. C 2 XX INTRODUCTION. permission was given to him to return to Oxford, where he continued his studies, and in 1271 produced his Compendium Studii Philosophiae. The attacks contained in this work, not only upon the insufficiency of the existing studies, but upon the ignorance and vices of the clergy and monks, were the main cause of the persecution which now befell him. His books were condemned by the General of his Order, and in 1278 he was thrown into prison, where he appears to have remained for fourteen years. In the year of his release, 1292, he produced what is probably his latest work, the Compendium Studii Theologiae ; and it would seem that two years afterwards he died. To the two later periods of Bacon's residence at Oxford, from 1250 to 1257, and from 1268 to his imprisonment, may be assigned the origin of such local legends as came to cluster round his name, and of his popular fame in England at large. Among those with whom he had been intimate as a student was the famous Robert Grosseteste, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, whom popular tradition asserted to have been like Bacon the inventor of a Brazen Head^; and among the faithful companions of his researches was Friar Thomas or John de Bungaye '^, 'Xvhose name is coupled with that of Friar Tradi- Bacon in the fictions of the Elizabethan story-book. Friar nexbn^of " Bacon's conucxion with Brasenose College, on the other hand. Bacon with must be mvthical — for the best of reasons. Brasenose College Brasenose. ' q i i . was not m existence m the thirteenth century "^ ; but there is no reason why Bacon should not be supposed to have resided in or near one of the halls out of which the College grew. These halls or houses may have been of very ancient date, and it is just possible that one of them may have already in Bacon's time borne the name of Brasin- or Brazen-house. In any case, already in the Elizabethan age. Miles Windsore, whose manuscript notes Hearne reproduced in a volume of his ^ So Butler in Hudibras, Part II. canto iii, speaks of Old Hodge Bacon and Bob Grosted.' (The same satirist refers to Friar Bacon's ' noddle of brass,' ib.. canto i.) ^ See Friar Bungay in notes on Dramatis Personae of Friar Bacon. ' See as to Brasenose College, note on Friar Bacon, ii. II. INTRODUCTION. . XXI Diary \ connected the story of Friar Bacon's wonderful Brazen Head with the well-known ' brazen nose ' in the face over Brasenose College gate, from which nose the college was supposed to have derived its name; and reported that a likeness, either of Bacon or of the Head, was kept in the secret recesses of the j^ula, i. e. the ylula Pbilosopbiae, which once occupied part of the site of the present Brasenose College. His chemical studies the Friar was said to have His places carried on in one of the secluded places of retreat then anJnear" common at Oxford, and his astrological in an observatory Oxford, in the tower of the church in the neighbouring village of Sunningwell. See Hearne's Diary, vol. civ. pp. 166-169: 'Tbe second commaundment is ffore this