translated by Abraham Flemming, he recounts fondly the “knowledge, learning, and exercises, whereunto from my childehoode I haue béen addicted.”8 The Latin original (“iis studiis eaque doctrina, cui me a pueritia dedi”) deploys the term “dedication,” signaling that the early modern translator found “addiction” an adequate cognate. Further epistles underscore Cicero’s attachment to study as a form of addiction. Writing of the “study, to which I was addicted,” Cicero calls scholarship the “letters to which I have ever been addicted.”9 Addiction here signals sustained attachment and devotion, as Cicero expresses his commitment to his course of study and his singular application of his talents. Cicero’s son seems to have inherited, or reproduced, this addiction to study, at least according to a letter to Cicero from Trebonius, who, on seeing Cicero’s son in Athens, reported him to be “a yong man addicted to the best kinde of studie …, and of a passing good reporte of modesty: which thing, what pleasure it ministred unto me, you may wel understand.”10
Seneca, too, describes study as a form of addiction. In the translation by Thomas Lodge, The workes of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, both morrall and natural (1614), the young philosopher pursues his studies, as Faustus himself does, against the wishes of his family: he “addicted himselfe to Philosophie with earnest endeuor, and vertue ravished his most excellent wit, although his father were against it.”11 Just as Faustus challenges the promptings of his professors with his “wit” and finds ravishment in his studies, so too does Seneca (1.1.6, 111). Indeed both descriptions employ the term “ravish” to describe an intense relationship to a field of study. In doing so they suggest the force of scholarship in overwhelming, transporting, or capturing the scholar. Faustus, like Seneca, is carried away, but willingly and pleasurably. For both, the tension between family and worldly concerns, on the one hand, and the dedication to study, on the other, structures their understanding of vocation, further illuminating the exclusivity and captivation of addiction: “I will wholly dedicate my selfe, and … I will addict my selfe unto studie. Thou must not expect till thou have leasure to follow Philosophie. Thou must contemne all other things, to be always with her.”12 This exclusivity—condemning other pursuits for one’s field—separates addiction from mere instruction. Seneca rejects other intellectual, and presumably familial, lures in favor of a singular relation to philosophy. Faustus, too, models such dedication. “I wonder what’s become of Faustus, that was wont to make our schools ring with sic probo,” his friends demand (1.2.1–2). He retreats into necromancy, dismissing, as the opening soliloquy dramatizes, all other fields. Addiction to study is an extreme form of dedication and requires one to clear away all other obligations.
Addiction, as deployed in these early modern classical translations, is a crucial component of scholarship: only with clarity and dedication can the philosopher find his calling. Furthermore, addiction represents a process of culling away rival pressures, be they worldly or even intellectual. Lodge’s translation of Seneca’s essay “The Tranquilitie and Peace of the Mind” reads, for example, “A multitude of bookes burtheneth and instructeth him not that learneth, and it is better for thee to addict thy selfe to few Authrs, then to wander amongst many.”13 Addiction as dedication stands in contrast to flighty, unfocused pursuits: “He then that hath all his commidities in their entyre, may stay in the hauen, and addict himselfe readily to good occupations, rather then make saile and to go and cast himselfe athwart the winds and waves.”14 The scholar is not, Seneca argues, an explorer visiting new ports. One cannot “wander,” but one must hone, cull, and focus. Committing to one location, one “haven,” the scholar studies deeply. Wide-ranging study is a burden and distraction. Better to “addict thy selfe to few Authrs.” So, too, with Faustus, who, in narrowing the available fields, announces he will “sound the depth” (1.1.2) to find a pursuit that will envelop or ravish him. He will “profess” his art, proving a “studious artisan” and a “sound magician” (1.1.2, 56, 63). From this vantage point of addiction, Faustus’s desire to “sound the depth” of his studies, and his interrogation of fields in search of the proper path, seems not fickle but ultimately focused. Rather than choosing necromancy out of a kind of boredom, as Kristen Poole argues—“his descent into the black arts at first seems to be the product of his intellectual ennui, as he searches for new challenges and intellectual heights”—he instead seeks his Senecan “haven.”15 While Poole’s phrase “intellectual ennui” aptly accounts for Faustus’s fear of death and stasis, which is evident in his condemnation of divinity as “hard” (1.1.40), nevertheless he dismisses certain forms of scholarship not out of exhaustion but because he seeks to immerse himself in a limitless field. He needs to aim at the unknown, the unseen, and the unachievable.
Addiction, then, is a particular form of scholarship—it involves commitment, focus, depth, and stillness. Of course, these authors also concede the dangers of such single-minded dedication. Seneca announces the dangerous power of addiction when he writes, for example, that one must be cautious in one’s pursuits: “For the minde being once mooued and shaken, is addicted to that whereby it is driven. The beginning of some things are in our power, but if they bee increased, they carie us away perforce, and suffer us not to returne backe: even as the bodies that fall head-long downeward, have no power to stay themselves.”16 Seneca teases out the complex relationship of surrender and free will in scholastic addiction. Initially, the addict exercises choice: in the beginning “some things are in our power.” One might choose one’s path, as Faustus does—he elects to practice necromancy over divinity. But, Seneca writes, once the mind heads in a certain direction, addiction can carry one away. Addicts “have no power to stay” themselves. Momentum threatens but also fuels the addicted mind. Once on a path, the scholar progresses along it, gains speed, and moves forward even against his or her own will. Thus addiction is at once desirable, since it provides the dedicated resolve that propels the scholar forward, and potentially dangerous, since the power of addiction pulls one along the chosen path, for good or ill. The title of a text by the lawyer William Fulbecke betrays this double link of addiction and study: A direction or preparatiue to the study of the lawe wherein is shewed, what things ought to be observed and used of them that are addicted to the study of the law, and what on the contrary part ought to be eschued and auoyded (London, 1600). If the pursuit of learning is admirable, then the deeper the devotion, the greater the addiction and the more accomplished the scholar proves. “Driven,” “carr [ied] away,” “fall[ing] head-long downward,” the scholar demonstrates a lack of control admirable and overwhelming at once.
Addicted to God
Why does the scholar choose one path and not another? Seneca suggests that scholarly addiction emerges from one’s choices: “The beginning of some things are in our power.” But Marlowe’s contemporaries would answer differently. Addiction—whether to divinity or necromancy, to scholarship or to sex—comes from predispositions that, at least in a post-Reformation Europe influenced by Calvin, come not from human will but from God’s.17
As with Seneca, Calvin praises addiction as a form of careful study, in this case not of philosophy but of scripture: “They are then apt to receive the grace of the Gospell, which not regarding any other delightes, do wholy addict themselves and their studies to the obtaining of the same.”18 Like Faustus, the believer dismisses all other fields and devotes himself to his chosen path. In the case of the Christian reader, the fruits of study lead to addiction to Christ: “Therfore no man shal ever go forward constantly in this office, save he, in whose heart the love of Christ shal so reigne, that forgetting himself, and addicting himself wholy unto him, he may overcome al impediments.”19 Followers of Christ “addict themselves unto him, so that they did acknowledge him to be that Messias.”20 Further, “those are truly gathered into Gods sheepefolde … addict themselves to Christ alone.”21 The singularity of the commitment is clear: one is addicted to Christ “alone” “wholly.” Moreover, addiction to God compels the believer to follow a path, eschewing individual thought or will in favor of discipleship. Calvin writes, “For whosoeuer doe simplye addict themselves to Christe, and doe not strive to adde anye thinge of their owne head to the Gospell, the true lyghte shall never fayle them.”22
