Dramaturg's Note
Doctor Faustus, a sixteenth century play about a man who sells his soul to the devil in order to achieve unlimited knowledge and power, is perhaps more relevant today than it has ever been. Since the Early Modern period, during which Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare were composing their plays, the West has celebrated the power of individuals to fashion themselves and of human beings to impose their wills on the world. “What a piece of work is a man,” exclaims Hamlet, “how noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In apprehension how like a God!” Doctor Faustus strives to realize this vision, reaching towards a transcendence and autonomy of the self that should resonate with us today, as the internet, AI, and other miracles of science and technology promise the kind of unlimited freedom and power that in the past were associated with magic. Just as Faustus manages to summon a virtual Helen of Troy whose kiss he hopes will grant him immortality, so today the digitization of reality seems to render it endlessly manipulable. We have become masters of our virtual worlds, spanning time and space and creating shifting identities for ourselves.
And yet, to what degree are the freedoms and powers we claim for ourselves real? What do we do with them? What denials do they entail? Immediately after making his deal with Mephistopheles, Faustus confidently claims that “I think hell’s a fable,” believing himself in control though he’s just signed away his soul to a very real devil. How might our own sense of autonomy and control today also be illusory, and what may we have given up for that illusion? Climate change, perhaps, is the very real reckoning we are faced with now after almost two centuries of arrogantly exploiting and tampering with nature. And after the first thrills of virtual self-fashioning, We find ourselves increasingly confined within narrowly defined social media bubbles. If on the one hand with his newly acquired powers Faustus achieves undreamed of knowledge, what he actually does with those powers seems trivial, even sophomoric. He might remind us of Elon Musk, on the one hand grandly circumscribing the globe with satellites and electronic cars, and on the other deploying his “X-powers” to spread various types of disinformation.
Marlowe seems to have presciently understood in the late sixteenth century that as we moved into a future shaped solely by our wills, we would be condemned to sabotage our admirable aspirations and achievements through our equally powerful capacities for self-regard and self-deception. Hamlet, after all, dismisses his own initially glowing description of humankind by grimly concluding: “And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me.” Doctor Faustus leaves us poised between these two perspectives, equally compelling and equally true.
Dr. Anthony Russell, PhD
Associate Professor of English and Italian Studies
Coordinator, Italian Studies Program
University of Richmond
