The mindset of the audience for whom Marlowe was writing.

Skeletal death spreads its wings over the fallen and damned.
Jan van Eyck, Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych, c. 1430–40.

[In the sixteenth century of the original Faust legend and Marlowe’s play too, Europeans believed in the literal Devil who walked the streets. They feared that there were those among them who dealt with the Devil. Protestants did not believe that God would protect them from the Devil and neither did Protestantism offer much defence because it does not accept that any church has any special powers.]


“The common man of the sixteenth century still believed that the devil and his accomplices could be real physical beings. They believed that one could become a magician with an association of the devil. Wizards and magicians were considered men who had made a pact with Satan and, in return for their pledge of allegiance, were given evil aid in performing superhuman acts. Also, Marlowe was regarded as an atheist. Certainly this would cause Marlowe’s peers to view him as hazardous both intellectually and morally. These facts surely caused the audience of the sixteenth century to view Doctor Faustus in a much more serious light than that of today’s audiences. This was not a play of fantasy or make-believe to a Renaissance audience but one with genuine fears and possibilities.

The sixteenth century saw a shift in Christian ideals that added significance to Marlowe’s play. No longer did people believe that God would always be there to protect them from Satan. The sixteenth century brought about a high level of paranoia that Satan was everywhere and that day to day life was an individual duel with the devil, and the individual was left to fend for himself. This way of thinking is far less comforting than the previous view that God acted as a “guardian angel” working to protect Christians from Satan’s attacks. With this view in mind, it is understandable that two of the major literary characters, Macbeth and Doctor Faustus, are faced with moments alone to contemplate their evil actions: Macbeth after speaking with the witches and Faustus before midnight. It is important to note that the devil does not show up to tempt Faustus; he makes his own decision to call for Satan. He destroys his own life. Throughout his play, Marlowe is depicting the Christian ideal of his time, that the individual is responsible for his own fate.”

Renaissance Attitudes Towards Faustus as a Magician

Free will and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer of the (Anglican) Church of England

[On the subject of free will, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the prayer book of the (Anglican) Church of England says that since Adam ate the apple in the Garden of Eden, and was expelled, we don’t have free will, and are unable to have faith without the help of God. Same with Faust.

It helps explain how it is that God is all-powerful and knows everything and knows our outcome, yet all is not lost, even if it seems your salvation is pre-determined; it’s just already known, but by God, not you. Humans can still aspire to something, such as a good will, a right spirit that God can make use of. Of Free Will is one of 39 statements of faith of the Church of England. Other denominations have their own ideas about free will. Catholicism says that humans have the ability to chose to do good.]

X. Of Free Will.
THE condition of man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us that we may have a good will, and working with us when we have that good will.

https://www.anglican.ca/about/beliefs/39-articles/

[In seventeenth Faust stories from Protestant regions, God is absent. Presumably He knows how things turn out, even if Faust doesn’t. Eighteenth century Goethe’s Faust has God debating Faust’s progress. Faust has free will, but Goethe was not Catholic, just Enlightened. Goethe was a major figure in the Enlightenment and raised Lutheran, described himself as ‘non-Christian.’]

Sin is the essence of play

The demons tell us that “Sin is the essence of play.” We don’t know what that means. Probably nothing. They’re both motivated by desire, but what isn’t? Sin is immorality. Play is immoral? Desire is immoral? Earthly desire is immoral! Pleasure is immoral!

We called up to the rafters to ask the demons roosting there, “What is sin?” and they called down “Sin is the essence of play.”

Since we didn’t know what that meant, we ignored it. We’ve since given it some thought.

Most of our demons say they are Protestant. They come from the old countries, same as Faust. It’s odd that demons should have religious faiths, but apparently each faith has its own. Or maybe demons belong to the one true faith, whatever that is, and they pose as the demons of false religions to capture souls. Whatever. Self-identifying-as-Protestant ones argue that pleasure is a sin, and consequently people have demons in their heads that torment them with guilt for it. In that, Protestant demons are no different from any others.

It’s reasonable to want to measure pleasure and repress excess. Pleasure is a commodity that begs to be controlled for productivity and order. Religion has done it well. It corrals people into a productive and orderly life, without explaining yet again, to over-taxed and abused and irritated peasants why they can’t… (…whatever). Explaining why pleasure is a bad thing is a hard sell at times, so simply calling it a sin against divine law gives one a good handle on it from a civil perspective.

“‘A guilt society is one in which the primary method of social control is the inculcation of feelings of guilt for behaviors that the society defines as undesirable. It involves an implicit judgment on the being (rather than just the behavior) of the individual: “You are an evil person if you would do such-and-so.” It also involves creating the expectation of punishment now (when the behavior fails to be kept secret) and/or in the hereafter.”

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt_society

Play is pleasure, and from a perfectly plausible and predictably paranoid Protestant perspective, pleasure is not productive, and worse: it is enjoyment of the Devil’s playthings and a lure into salvation/damnation. Yes, pleasure, beyond what is absolutely necessary (as in procreation), can be associated with the Devil, because the Earth is the Devil’s domain, and the pleasures of the Earth distract from what should be a person’s focus on salvation and the afterlife.

But we know that play has value, in part as simulation. Play is practice. Children play to act out roles. Play has value.

But even that has implications. Play’s value is representative of what might be: actual production, warfare or childcare. Play as simulation is falsehood. The simulation is not real (being a simulation). It produces nothing of use. Its value as a representation makes it useful, but it is a dangerous fantasy to think it is the same as the object it represents, and recalls divine laws against idolatry, against mistaking a representation of God for the divinity, and losing the divinity, ending up worshipping a rock.

It is like mistaking sport for war or tradition and ceremony for war and losing the ability to fight, or mistaking social networks for a real community, and being manipulated or otherwise losing the ability to function naturally in a natural community in a natural world (in a natural reality).

Fantasy is falsehood. Worse, it is magical thinking, and magic carries its own prohibitions and association with the devil. That’s extreme and superstitious to us perhaps, but it wouldn’t have been to Faust, and it remains an ominously relevant remnant warning to a post-Christian successor civilization against making that same mistake.

The Faust story itself is a story, rendered as a play, but intended to warn off good Christians from the lure of desire and fantasy and even idolatry.

Play is a distraction from worship. It ignores, and doesn’t want God.

But it’s ridiculous. God doesn’t want happy, healthy people? What about the children? A sin is breaking divine law. If idolatry is the sin, it requires a god-object, the idol, and what part of play involves an idol? This seems like an overreach. God isn’t served by banning play, surely.

But the danger is false gods, misdirected attention from God. If play is sinful then just about all of western civilization is sinful. Movies, books, art, money, and data are all symbols or representations of something else. The source of our pleasure and objects of desire. Matrix-like, that which is represented (reality (the world))1 is inevitably replaced by its representation (say, virtual reality) and the connection to the truth is lost and re-directed. The Gnostics suspected that over a thousand years ago, and were eliminated by Christians, in large part for just that.

The essence of play is sin. Yeesh.

See:

  1. French philosopher Jean Baudrillard []

Germany: Magic became associated with the Devil….

Germany: Magic became associated with the Devil. Catholics had “magical” rites. Sensibly, magic being diabolical (according to the Church, it shouldn’t be part of the church, but prayer, blessings, sainthood, and other trappings of the (Catholic) Church were very much magical. Protestants protested (literally) that that wasn’t right.]


The Magician in Medieval German Literature
By Jon B. Sherman

Pasted from <https://books.google.com/books?id=1T6huxN6PxwC&pg=PA102&dq=magician+theodas&hl=en&sa=X&ei=X6HlVMX9OMfsoAT7p4G4Dg&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=magician%20theodas&f=false>

“…Ideas of the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries have also shaped our modern perception of the Devil, as well as the connection between the Devil, demons and magic. This is also the period in which necromancy was officially condemned as heresy. During this foundational time in the understanding of the Devil, demons and sorcery, a number of medieval German narratives strove to anchor the connection between magic and demons—and between magic and heretical and unchristian beliefs—in the figure of the magician. In their treatment of their magicians, Rudolf von Ems’s Barlaam und Josaphat. Wirnt von Grafenberg’s Wigalois and Johann von Wurzburg’s Wilhelm von Osterreich prefigure the developments mentioned above and clearly link magic to the Devil, demons and heresy”

Oops. Oh well. Given the corruption at the highest levels of the Church it was inevitable that people would link the Church and Satan eventually. Yes, Protestants have their magical moments too.