in his sincerity, is an actor who counterfeits.
Refracting the relation of actor and addict, the plays under discussion defend theater through the resulting dramatic effects: pitting the character of the counterfeit actor against the devoted addict, these plays uphold the addict who, in his or her sincerity and vulnerability, is overcome. The addict, whether in the form of Faustus, Olivia, Falstaff, or Othello, asserts the power of theater to move and transform the audience against the theatrical rival, a condensation of anti-theatrical concerns. In pitting—or even reconciling—the actor and the addict, the counterfeiter and the devotee, these plays draw on the model of addiction to recuperate the theater and produce devotion from the audience, shaping an actor-addict so sincere and dependent upon us that we allow ourselves to be moved.
Chapter 1
Scholarly Addiction in Doctor Faustus
Faustus, being of a naughty mind and otherwise addicted, applied not his studies, but took himself to other exercises.
—The English Faust Book
What does it mean to say, as The English Faust Book does in 1592, that Faustus is “addicted”? Faustus, it seems, should apply himself to the study of divinity but is otherwise inclined, embracing alternate fields as the infamous version of the legend by Christopher Marlowe depicts in detail. Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus opens with Faustus weighing the merits of divinity, a field in which he “profits,” “the fruitful plot of scholarism grac’d.”1 But his very talents snare him, for, “excelling all” his peers, he becomes “glutted” with “learning’s golden gifts” and begins to seek another form of scholarly sustenance, ultimately “surfeit[ing] upon cursed necromancy” (1.1.18, 24, 25).
If Faustus’s appetite for scholastic heights differs from narcotic addictions, his surfeit nevertheless resonates with modern notions of addiction as pathology. As Deborah Willis writes in her study of the play, “It is not hard to draw an analogy between Faustus’s evolving relationship to magic and modern narratives of addiction.”2 Marlowe’s play, she argues, anticipates modern, medical definitions of the addict in staging the diminishing will of the individual in the face of compulsive behavior. Yet early modern addiction, as this chapter will explore, also appears in Faustus and in a series of sixteenth-century tracts to be beneficial and even laudable. As a result of what could be called compulsive addiction, but which one might equally deem devotion or dedication, Faustus proves an able and talented scholar, adopting a profession for his “wit” and excelling in it (1.1.1–2, 11). He thus fulfills the Latin root of the word addīcere, which was discussed in the preface: in Roman law to addict was to bind someone to service or to affix or attach oneself to a person, party, or cause. In Latin writings more broadly the term “addict” came to connote giving oneself over, or dedicating oneself, to a master, lord, or a vocation. Following these Latin origins, sixteenth-century writers use “addict” to designate service, debt, dedication, and devotion. In chronicling scholarly pursuits, for example, early modern translations of Cicero and Seneca invoke addiction to help account for the devotion necessary to follow an academic path, as this chapter reveals. So, too, with Reformation theological texts from Jean Calvin through English reformers such as John Foxe and William Perkins, in which addiction signals the state of deep dedication and surrender through which the believer receives grace.
Marlowe attended Cambridge at the height of the controversy over Calvinist theology, and his reaction to his education deeply marks his play.3 In exploring the influence of Calvin and Calvinist-minded Cambridge divines on Marlowe, scholars have debated the play’s staging of the doctrine of predestination and election, asking whether Faustus’s damnation serves as a warning for spectators or a critique of Calvinist determinism.4 Reading the play as a drama about election (whether or not it endorses Calvinist theology) proves challenging, however, because as Alan Sinfield has noted, “The predestinarian and free will readings of Faustus … obstruct, entangle, and choke each other.”5 The play does not make its representation of reprobation or election clear, but instead elusively hints at and refuses to resolve this question.
Given the play’s provocative but at times contradictory presentation of theological doctrine, it is worth considering the question of free will and determinism from a different vantage point. As the following pages will explore, the Calvinism of Marlowe’s education proves useful because it illuminates not only the theological influences on his play but also, more broadly, how he might have understood the nature of scholastic and theological commitment itself. Calvin, like his English followers Perkins and Foxe, outlines the doctrine of predestination and election through reference to—and celebration of—a single-minded devotion deemed addiction.6 Faustus is, in line with this form of devotion, addicted to study, giving himself entirely to his chosen field: he signs a legal contract, professes his dedication, and exclusively commits himself to his studies. Marlowe stages scholastic devotion as a laudable addiction, drawing on classical and Christian evocations of the term, even as Faustus’s choice of necromancy illuminates one of the dangers of such devotion: attachment to the wrong faith or field. Marlowe’s Calvinist contemporaries acknowledge precisely this danger, suggesting how the surrender and release associated with addiction, while potentially saving, can lead to damnation when directed to the wrong spirits or forces. Thus, one might be addicted to sin or carnal pleasures, or more frequently, suffer from addiction to idolatry and popery, a condition Calvin writes of enduring before his conversion by God.
Tracing the invocations of addiction in the theological writings influential to Marlowe, this chapter thus approaches Doctor Faustus not as a drama of election but as one about the challenge of commitment. In drawing on and questioning contemporary invocations of addiction, Marlowe stages Faustus’s perilous attachment to bad religion while never condemning his title character for his devotional aptitude in the first place. The tension of the play lies precisely in how Faustus’s devotion and surrender to necromancy might have signaled his predisposition to what his contemporaries deemed a positive addiction, namely to God. To condemn Faustus’s constancy to Mephastophilis, or to necromancy more generally, disregards the very predisposition for addiction that might have led him to God, for it is Faustus’s paradoxical willingness to forego the exercise of free will, and his resolve to release into the supernatural, that marks him as open to receiving grace. His dedicated resolve might have flourished in the proper direction, as the play’s epilogue notes—Faustus might have “grown full straight” (epilogue). Instead, he follows magic—and as a result, the moralizing voice of the chorus attempts to frame Faustus’s path as pathological or sinful, deeming him a glutton who surfeits on necromancy.
Yet the play vigorously depicts Faustus’s relation to magic as a sign not of his compulsive appetite, but of his scholarly drive.7 Even as the Chorus warns that Faustus serves as an emblem, an Icarus burned by magic or a fierce God, the play itself stages a different (albeit related) drama, one not preoccupied with magic—after all, Faustus’s magic tricks have proved disappointing to generations of audiences—but with the struggle inherent to devotion. Overpowering dedication, and the individual release of oneself to an external force, is at once necessary, dangerous, and potentially pathological. If to early modern writers such surrender is often laudable and desirable, Marlowe, through Faustus, pushes early modern conceptions by staging both the wonder and terror of addictive release. That grace might enter in the form of the devil proves the play’s most haunting challenge to Calvinist invocations of addiction. The drama of addiction thus hinges on the longing for, yet also the regret surrounding, true faith, as Faustus finds himself—through the very process that might have offered salvation—contractually bound to hellish companions instead.
Addicted to Study
Tracking the first appearances of the term “addiction” in English reveals
