N ed Allen, or as he became rather fancifully known once he’d made a few bob in the theatre, Edward Alleyn, was, of course, the original Dr Faustus, chosen partly because his thunderous voice and extraordinary range of gestures suited the ‘high-astounding’ tones of Marlowe’s driving blank verse. According to an apocryphal account, it was because he saw the famous ‘13th devil’ appear on stage that he decided to found a school for ‘twelve poor scholars’ in the manor of Dulwich. Intriguingly, we found that a perfect number of players would indeed have been 13 (although we ended up with 14, just to be on the safe side). Early evidence of the production is found in the Rose Theatre’s record of 1594, but it is possible the play was performed up to four years earlier. It was immediately popular, and there is evidence in Philip Henslowe’s diary (here in our own archives) that it was played again before long. Our production, while intended to be light and comic, also aimed to highlight some of those big ideas that Marlowe was able to dramatise by putting the world’s most learned man and a senior demon on stage together. Is there a God? And if God does not exist, are we not free – free to do as we please? Faustus indeed
experiences the limits of this freedom. Marlowe famously commented ‘all they that love tobacco and boys are fools,’ and he was extremely interested in questioning accepted notions. Nevertheless, he was clever enough to couch these seditious ideas inside a highly complex morality tale, a tale which asks: what happens to the man who thinks he is better that God? What, in essence, is the fate of the ‘overreacher’? There are only two women in the play: Helen of Troy, that cardboard symbol of femininity, and a ‘devil woman’ – so much for half the population, then. Actually, as we rehearsed we realised that this drama, at its heart, is about male friendships: between Faustus and Mephistophilis, Faustus and Wagner (his faithful servant); Wagner and the Clown – the best friend; Cornelius and Valdes, the two nerdy scholars… the list goes on. Even Lucifer and Beelzebub only appear together. Faustus himself cannot believe that ‘eating, walking and disputing’ with his new buddy Mephistophilis is somehow ‘hell’. How men see the world, how men read the world through scholarship, and experience the world through adventure and political intrigue, is what fires the young, brilliant mind of Christopher Marlowe, poet, atheist and spy. What better text is there, then, to inspire Dulwich boys on this most extraordinary of days?
MR ALASTAIR TREVILL
A VERSION OF CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE’S DR FAUSTUS , ADAPTED BY MR ALASTAIR TREVILL AND MISS JO AKRILL, WAS PERFORMED BY PUPILS FROM YEAR 9 AT FOUNDER’S DAY 2013.
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