The Earl of Nottingham's Men and the
A Text of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus
Two quite different versions of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus have survived from the Renaissance time period. These are commonly referred to as the A Text, which has survived in only one copy and was printed in 1604, and the B Text, which also survives in only one copy and was printed in 1616. Since Marlowe died in 1593, long before his play was published, scholars and critics have debated over which of these two printed texts represents Marlowe's original manuscript. Proponents for the A Text argue that the earlier version retains much of the original language that censorship laws established in 1606 forced out of the later printed version. The B text, on the other hand, contains whole scenes and approximately 600 lines more than the A Text.
The arguments for the support of the B Text over A extend back for more than half a century. Leo Kirschbaum, for example, argued in favor of B in 1945; and, more importantly, W. W. Greg's arguments that A was an abridgement of B was "massively influential," and Greg went on to produce the first conflated version of Marlowe's play in 1950 (Simkin 107-08). Greg also went "to considerable lengths to defend the comic scenes and papal-imperial episodes" of the B Text as being much "closer to the play as Marlowe originally wrote it" (Marcus 19).
In the 1960s, Sylvan Barnet (who also favors
the B Text) continued the debate on this issue. Barnet also logically argues against the historical point that the additional lines and scenes were added by hands other than Marlowe's:
Because it is known that a theatrical entrepreneur in1602 paid William Birde and Sam Rowley "for ther adicyones in doctor fostes," it was believed until recently that B contained the un-Marlovian additions, and that A, the shorter text, was closer
to Marlowe's own play. (103-04)
Obviously, the 1602 date indicates that changes made in a version of Marlowe's play would more likely be for that of the A Text of 1604. Because the printing of plays was not an established practice during the Elizabethan era and because plays were often printed after the death of the playwrights who wrote them, printers were often forced to rely on corrupt manuscripts (actors' scripts rewritten and changed by actors or other theater personnel) or in some cases
even on the memories of actors. That appears to be the case with the A Text, and that would thus account for the wide discrepancies that exist between the two texts and explain why entire scenes are thus lacking in the A Text.
Barnet notes that another distinguishing characteristic of the A Text is the inclusion of verbal expressions like "tut" or "tush" inserted throughout the play. Such expressions do not appear in the B Text, and Barnet believes "that they indicate actors' additions" (104). Indeed, such expressions add nothing to Marlowe's Faustus; and Marlowe in his other plays does not make such frequent use of these types of expressions. Thus, the A Text, more than likely, was assembled for a performance sometime between 1602 and 1604, and the actors and theater managers at that time did not have access to an unedited copy of Marlowe's original manuscript.
However, in the latter part of the twentieth century, a substantial number of critics and scholars have returned to favoring the A Text. Many of these critics just cannot accept Marlowe as being the actual author of the comic scenes that involve horseplay and slapstick.
Although the B Text is longer than the other, it is not without its faults. It does not preserve Marlowe's original manuscript intact. As already noted above, England established rather strict censorship regulations in 1606. One of these regulations stipulated that the name of God could not be used. Thus, numerous textual differences between A and B would be of this sort:
O, I'll leap up to my God. (A Text: V, ii: 78)
O, I'll leap up to heaven. (B Text: V, ii: 155)
Since using the name of God was considered an act of blasphemy, the compositors of the B Text endeavored to retain sense or meaning when the actual language itself could not be retained.
To complicate matters a little further, the printer of the B Text appears to have been working from a manuscript that was damaged or illegible on many of the pages, and so he resorted to using a corrupt version of the A Text to correct the unreadable portions of his manuscript. Sylvan Barnet notes that the A Text was reprinted in 1609 (a text then referred to as A2) and again in 1611 (A3). Barnet observes that the only real differences between the A Text of 1604 and the reprinted texts that followed are ones of typographical or textual error. The later printings are just slightly inferior to the 1604 printing. Barnet argues that the printer of B used a copy of A3 to fill in the unreadable portions of the manuscript that was his primary source. Unfortunately, this also meant that the printer of B occasionally copied some of the typographical or textual errors that appeared in A3 (Barnet 104-05). As a result, many modern critics argue that the B Text is inferior because it has these textual errors.
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The proponents of the A Text rest their argument on the basis that the B Text contains material written in a hand by someone other than Christopher Marlowe. To support their argument, they refer to a notation in the diary of Philip Henslowe, a well-known theater manager during the Renaissance. Henslowe records that on November 22, 1602, he paid the sum of four pounds to Samuel Rowley and William Birde for their additions to the play (Henslowe 228). Since the B Text contains over 600 lines that do not appear in the A Text, the assumption is that Birde and Rowley are therefore responsible for the creation of those additional lines.
The argument becomes stronger with the additional fact that the same Samuel Rowley wrote one known play (sometime between 1603 and 1605) entitled When You See Me, You Know Me. This play uses, as one of its sources, a text entitled Acts and Monuments by John Foxe. Foxe's work was also the principal source for the Pope and Bruno episode that appears in the B Text of Doctor Faustus. So, the AText proponents thus conclude that Rowley's familiarity with Foxe's work thus make him the most likely candidate as the writer for the Pope and Bruno episode.
However, these arguments are circumstantial and really require a great leap of faith to conclude so readily that the B Text is a latter creation and does not reflect Marlowe's original plan for the play. First, in regards to the supporting argument regarding the Foxe material, one needs to consider that Acts and Monuments appeared in print in English as early as 1563 (and had actually appeared in France even earlier, in 1554, that draft being written in Latin). Acts and Monuments appeared in three more English editions in 1570, 1576, and 1583; and these extra editions clearly indicate the popularity and success of Foxe's work. Marlowe quite possibly had access to any or even all of these editions, and the fact that other authors used Foxe's work as a source is hardly surprising.
More importantly, the payment made to Birde and Rowley for their additions to the play also needs to be examined from the viewpoints of both printing history and stage history. The payment made to Birde and Rowley came in the latter part of 1602. The printing of the A Text occurred in 1604. The printing of the B Text occurred in 1616. Although the date of printing a play does not necessarily correspond at all to the actual dates of performance and although such printing could occur several decades after the first performance, a printer would more likely and more logically desire to print a version that was consistent with what was being performed on stage at that present time. Thus, a more likely scenario (to be proven below) is that the 1604 text contains the additions made by Birde and Rowley, who contributed to the stage version that was currently being performed in London.
The original title pages of the A Text and B Text provide important clues in the support of this scenario. On the title page of the A Text, just below the title itself, are these words: "As it hath been Acted by the Right Honorable the Earl of Nottingham his servants."1 The acting troupe known as the Earl of Nottingham's Men received that name in the fall of 1597 when their patron received that title (Bevington 48-49). Previously, their patron was the Lord Admiral, and so they were for many years prior to 1597 known as the Lord Admiral's Men. Under their previous name, this acting troupe performed Doctor Faustus in the first recorded performance of
Marlowe's play on September 30, 1594 at the Rose Theater. The person responsible for the building of the Rose Theater was none other than Philip Henslowe, who continued to manage that theater until his death sometime in 1616.
Even more important to the argument that Rowley and Birde contributed to the A Text (and not the B Text) concerns the identity of William Birde. In a contract located in Henslowe's diary and dated on July 11, 1601, Birde identifies himself:
Be it knowne unto all men by this presentes, that I, William Birde, being one of the earlle of nothingam players, doth acknowledge my sealfe to owe and stand firmly ideatted unto phillip Henslow …
(Henslowe 190)
Birde then continues to acknowledge his debt of 23 pounds to Henslow. Both Birde and the A Text are, unquestionably, connected to the Earl of Nottingham's Men. Thus, to assume that Birde and Rowley contributed to the B Text is simply to ignore the facts and jump to the most incorrect of all conclusions. Rather, the A Text is the version that differs greatly from Marlowe's original play.
Of course, this raises a crucial question: why would Philip Henslowe hire Birde and Rowley in 1602 for additions to a play that Henslowe himself had in his possession since 1594 and had staged successfully over a period of many years? A-Text proponents argue that Henslowe still had the rights to the play in 1604 because of the reference to the Earl of Nottingham's Men on the title page of the A Text. But that just does not make sense. If Henslowe had possession of the same play from 1594 to 1604, then how can one explain the business of the payment to Birde and Rowley in 1602?
A more likely supposition is that Henslowe had somehow lost possession of the play sometime in late 1597 or afterwards.
The reference to the Earl of Nottingham's Men on the title page of the A Text is revealing for yet another reason. This acting troupe had a second name change in 1603, when James I acceded to the throne (Bevington 49). In this year their new patron was Prince Henry, and they were then known under their new patron's name when the A-Text was printed in 1604. However, the printer did not refer to the troupe as Prince Henry's Men; and he also did not refer to them as the Lord Admiral's Men. Thus, one can reasonably assume that the A Text represents the performance of the Earl of Nottingham's Men sometime after the fall of 1597 and before the accession in 1603.
But one might also reasonably, and more precisely, assume that the A Text represents a performance by these players sometime between late 1602 and early 1603. Henslowe's diary indicates that by 1596 and 1597 the financial success of Faustus had begun to diminish greatly (Bevington 49). Henslowe was a businessman. As such, he might have been willing to sell the play and move on to more lucrative properties. For that reason or perhaps due to conflict with other acting troupes (such as Pembroke's Men or Lord Strange's Men) who also performed plays by Marlowe (Bevington 49), Henslowe no longer had possession of Faustus in 1602. This would then account for Henslowe hiring William and Birde to produce a new version of the play, one that would be substantially different from that being performed elsewhere.
Of course, this argument is largely conjectural.2 Yet, it is far more consistent with the facts then the scenario and conclusion reached by the A-Text proponents. A quite different argument might be that the 1604 printing represents a performance for a special occasion, such as a court performance, in which the Earl of Nottingham's Men might have needed to cut down the performance time substantially. Birde and Rowley's additions could actually have been more in the nature of editing and deleting. The deletion of the 600 lines as well as the deletion of the "comic horseplay" would certainly make for a much shorter play. But even if this scenario were true, that would still indicate that the A Text is a lesser or different play from the one being performed from 1594 to 1597.
Nevertheless, all historical indications seem to point toward the B Text as being far more representative of Marlowe's original play. Henslowe must have paid Rowley and Birde for their contributions on the A Text, and only the A Text. Henslowe's diary and the cover page of the A Text can lead historians and critics to no other conclusion. Thus, the A Text clearly represents a play much different from that Marlowe had originally written.