Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England. Rebecca Lemon

attraction to necromancy does not arise solely from his ambitious spiritual goals; as Luke Wilson has argued, he chooses necromancy with an expectation of its returns. He speaks of “gold,” “pearl,” “pleasant fruits,” and “princely delicates” (1.1.83–86). More specifically he seeks to command: necromancy offers servile spirits “to do whatever Faustus shall command” and to be “always obedient to my will.” “I’ll be a great emperor of the world,” he claims (1.3.37, 97, 104).

      Yet scholars have tended to overlook how Faustus—perplexingly and contradictorily—seeks such power through the utter surrender of himself, releasing his own mind into a metaphysical, even divine, relationship. However much he might claim to pursue magic for material gain, his more sustained desire centers on metaphysical union. He seeks this merger through study, searching out the field that promises ravishment and then submitting himself to that field’s masters: Mephastophilis and Lucifer. Just as Calvin counsels ministers to “addict & give themselves wholly to the Church, whereto they are appointed,”⁶¹ so too does Faustus give himself: he “surrenders up to [Lucifer] his soul” (1.3.90). As with Calvin, Marlowe stages the complex exercise of the human will: Faustus strives and seeks, he labors in his field, but he must also surrender himself to it. Even as he proves eager to see if devils will obey him, and even as he celebrates his own skill in conjuring (“who would not be proficient in this art? / How pliant is this Mephastophilis, / Full of obedience and humility, such is the force of magic and my spells!”), ultimately Faustus “dedicates,” “surrenders,” and “give[s]” himself (1.3.28–31, 90, 103). On finding that Mephastophilis serves not himself but Lucifer, Faustus dedicates himself to Lucifer too; on finding his conjuration was per accidens rather than a sign of necromantic skill, Faustus responds not with disappointment but by pledging himself further: “There is no chief but only Beelzebub, / To whom Faustus doth dedicate himself” (1.3.58–59).

      Faustus’s embrace of metaphysical merger appears in two ways: first, in his willingness to forego the logic he has mastered at the opening of the play, and second, in his signing of the contract.⁶² In choosing necromancy and binding himself to its masters, he exhibits the single-minded, exclusive attachment to his calling typical of the lauded addict: he follows faith (however dubious it might be). Aristotle’s logic and Ramus’s methods celebrate reasoning and critical thinking, but Faustus, despite his proficiency in logic and rhetoric, ignores such skills. Instead Faustus wants a “miracle,” he seeks to “be eterniz’d,” and to revel in “heavenly” books (1.1.9,15). This is not the ambition of a logician or lawyer. Imagination, emotion, hope, and faith, not logic, fuel his desires, arguably mirroring the devotion of the Christian faithful whose addiction to God defies earthly reason: “mine owne fantasy, / … will receive no object, for my head / But ruminates on necromantic skill” (1.1.104–6). A. N. Okerlund writes of these lines: “Faustus is telling us his mind is made up and not to be confused by critical analysis…. Distinguishing the valid from the invalid statement is the problem here—the problem to which Aristotle, Ramus, and their scholarly followers devoted their lives. But Faustus apparently cares not at all about the irreconcilable meanings of the Angels’ statements and hears only the words which excite his desires.” As Okerlund concludes, “Marlowe intends to call our attention to Faustus’s deliberate violation of formal logic.”⁶³ While such a failure of logic might seem foolhardy, and indeed damnable, when viewed from the vantage point of addictive dedication Faustus’s illogical willingness to embrace magic appears as a sign of his faith: he refuses to be swayed from his path, in a manner Perkins himself might praise, by the writings of men. “We must no more,” Calvin writes, “be addicted to our selves, but be wholly dedicated.”⁶⁴

      If Faustus’s language of dedication, surrender, and ravishment—the language of addiction—expresses his scholarly ambition to lose himself in his studies, in surprising contrast (and throwing into high relief the scholar’s addictive devotion) Mephastophilis proves a cautious, reasoned, and even logical partner in magic. One finds reason and logic, for example, both in Mephastophilis’s answer to Faustus’s queries (he is, as many critics have noted, disarmingly straightforward in his answers) and in his effort to draw up the contract. Mephastophilis twice demands a “deed of gift” from Faustus (2.1.35, 60). The precision of Mephastophilis’s “deed of gift” is Marlowe’s addition to his source. In the English Faust Book, the term is “covenant,” which has greater resonance with biblical than English or continental law.⁶⁵ Deploying a category of contract in the highly legal phrase “deed of gift” and emphasizing Mephastophilis’s logic rather than obfuscation, Marlowe creates a figure more sympathetic than the trickster of medieval mystery plays. At the same time, Marlowe draws heightened attention to Faustus’s failure—his inability to deduce or even hear the patently evident error of his choice.

      Yet, Marlowe reveals, Faustus’s failure is also a triumph, for it exposes further his desire to addict himself to his field of choice precisely as Seneca and Calvin counsel. He embraces the contract as an opportunity to realize his addictive goals, constructing a document baffling in its terms but satisfying in its potential. This contract is another sign of Faustus’s longing for integration over autonomy, addiction over willpower. If Foxe, as noted above, derides those members of the early church who have “never entred into any serious feeling of Gods judgement, nor ever felt the strength of the law & of death,” Marlowe stages Faustus’s willing embrace of such deep feeling, encountering the strength of the law eagerly.⁶⁶ For Faustus acknowledges that he will be proficient, indeed “great,” only to the extent he gives himself up entirely, donating his soul to another “as his own.” It is when Lucifer claims and owns Faustus’s soul that the magician merges with the devil he follows: “bind thy soul that at some certain day / Great Lucifer may claim it as his own, / And then be thou as great as Lucifer” (2.1.50–52). Far from shying away from such terms, Faustus designs them: he offers Mephastophilis his soul before the spirit has even requested the gift deed. In the play’s first act he tells Mephastophilis, “Go, bear these tidings to Lucifer: … Say he [Faustus] surrenders up to him his soul” (1.3.87–90). Then, in drawing up the contract’s terms in act 2, Mephastophilis’s request of “a certain day” (1.3.91) becomes, under Faustus’s design, “four and twenty years” (2.1.108), while the demand that he “bind [his] soul” (2.1.50) becomes Faustus’s more elaborate offering of “body and soul” (2.1.106) and further, “John Faustus, body and soul, flesh, blood, or goods” (2.1.110). In not just signing the contract but designing its terms, Faustus paradoxically wills away his will, resolving to surrender himself to the greater force of magic. Mephastophilis proves the beneficiary of Faustus’s longing for union and dissolution: “Had I as many souls as there be stars, / I’d give them all for Mephastophilis” (1.3.104).⁶⁷

      Contracted Faustus

      Faustus’s contract is notable for its omissions as much as its guarantees. Indeed, the contract has generated significant critical discussion because its rewards for Faustus are so vague. Faustus appears, critics argue, to be unaware of how bad a bargain he constructs. In exchange for essentially two things—the ability to be a spirit and the service of Mephastophilis, both for twenty-four years—Faustus gives his body and soul to Lucifer. While the terms of the contract seem unfavorable to Faustus, it is nevertheless worth asking, what if the contract actually articulates precisely what Faustus seeks? In posing a version of this question, Guenther suggests that Faustus, in discounting the metaphysical realm, embraces the contract without recognizing its repercussions.⁶⁸ But this chapter answers differently, by saying that if Faustus indeed seeks the devoted union he trumpets, he finds the contract a means of articulating this desire, if not securing it. Faustus’s ostensible goal—to be “great emperor of the world” (1.3.104)—cedes to his deeper aim, which is stated in the contract itself. Rather than securing his own “command” or empyreal power, he instead signs a contract ensuring that his own form will disappear and be supplemented by the continual presence of another. Indeed, he repeatedly insists that the contract include body and soul, even as Mephastophilis seems unconcerned with Faustus’s physical remains. Mephastophilis tells Faustus, “Thou hast given thy soul to Lucifer,” to which Faustus responds, “Ay, and the body too” (2.1.132–33). If his body and soul will be Lucifer’s after death, before that time Faustus will be physically joined to Mephastophilis,