Lakhasly

4 DOCTOR FAUSTUS

Safely assume that Doctor Faustus derives from The Damnable Life, and that everything it owes to the German Faust-Book has reached it through the agency of P.F.

P.F.'s own contribution to the legend went beyond supplying additional detail to the record of Faustus sightseeing.He also gave a distinctly stronger emphasis to the intellectual ardour of his hero.We must be careful not to exaggerate here.P.F. was, after all, a translator, and the tale he tells is in the main part that told in its original.

4 DOCTOR FAUSTUS

Safely assume that Doctor Faustus derives from The Damnable Life, and that everything it owes to the German Faust-Book has reached it through the agency of P.F.

P.F.'s own contribution to the legend went beyond supplying additional detail to the record of Faustus sightseeing. He also gave a distinctly stronger emphasis to the intellectual ardour of his hero. We must be careful not to exaggerate here. P.F. was, after all, a translator, and the tale he tells is in the main part that told in its original. But the German gave him no authority, for example, for allowing Faustus in chapter 12 to describe himself as "the unsatiable speculator." By touches of this kind, P.F. was contributing to Faustus' development into the representative Renaissance figure that he was to become in Marlowe's play

The use made in the play of the materials taken from The Damnable Life varied widely from place to place. Occasionally, a few words sufficed to suggest a whole episode, such as Faustus' conference with Valdes and Cornelius in scene i; at other times, as when Faustus meets the Duke and Duchess of Vanholt in scene xvii, the very phrases of P.F. are faithfully echoed. Only a few scenes of clownage, and the passages concerning the rivalry of Pope Adrian and the antipope, Bruno, appear to owe nothing to this source. A scene-by-scene presentation of the passages which appear to have contributed to the composition of Doctor Faustus will help to make this varying relationship clear.