addiction over willpower. If Foxe, as noted above, derides those members of the early church who have “never entred into any serious feeling of Gods judgement, nor ever felt the strength of the law & of death,” Marlowe stages Faustus’s willing embrace of such deep feeling, encountering the strength of the law eagerly.66 For Faustus acknowledges that he will be proficient, indeed “great,” only to the extent he gives himself up entirely, donating his soul to another “as his own.” It is when Lucifer claims and owns Faustus’s soul that the magician merges with the devil he follows: “bind thy soul that at some certain day / Great Lucifer may claim it as his own, / And then be thou as great as Lucifer” (2.1.50–52). Far from shying away from such terms, Faustus designs them: he offers Mephastophilis his soul before the spirit has even requested the gift deed. In the play’s first act he tells Mephastophilis, “Go, bear these tidings to Lucifer: … Say he [Faustus] surrenders up to him his soul” (1.3.87–90). Then, in drawing up the contract’s terms in act 2, Mephastophilis’s request of “a certain day” (1.3.91) becomes, under Faustus’s design, “four and twenty years” (2.1.108), while the demand that he “bind [his] soul” (2.1.50) becomes Faustus’s more elaborate offering of “body and soul” (2.1.106) and further, “John Faustus, body and soul, flesh, blood, or goods” (2.1.110). In not just signing the contract but designing its terms, Faustus paradoxically wills away his will, resolving to surrender himself to the greater force of magic. Mephastophilis proves the beneficiary of Faustus’s longing for union and dissolution: “Had I as many souls as there be stars, / I’d give them all for Mephastophilis” (1.3.104).67
Contracted Faustus
Faustus’s contract is notable for its omissions as much as its guarantees. Indeed, the contract has generated significant critical discussion because its rewards for Faustus are so vague. Faustus appears, critics argue, to be unaware of how bad a bargain he constructs. In exchange for essentially two things—the ability to be a spirit and the service of Mephastophilis, both for twenty-four years—Faustus gives his body and soul to Lucifer. While the terms of the contract seem unfavorable to Faustus, it is nevertheless worth asking, what if the contract actually articulates precisely what Faustus seeks? In posing a version of this question, Guenther suggests that Faustus, in discounting the metaphysical realm, embraces the contract without recognizing its repercussions.68 But this chapter answers differently, by saying that if Faustus indeed seeks the devoted union he trumpets, he finds the contract a means of articulating this desire, if not securing it. Faustus’s ostensible goal—to be “great emperor of the world” (1.3.104)—cedes to his deeper aim, which is stated in the contract itself. Rather than securing his own “command” or empyreal power, he instead signs a contract ensuring that his own form will disappear and be supplemented by the continual presence of another. Indeed, he repeatedly insists that the contract include body and soul, even as Mephastophilis seems unconcerned with Faustus’s physical remains. Mephastophilis tells Faustus, “Thou hast given thy soul to Lucifer,” to which Faustus responds, “Ay, and the body too” (2.1.132–33). If his body and soul will be Lucifer’s after death, before that time Faustus will be physically joined to Mephastophilis, who will come—as the contract states—to Faustus “at all times” (2.1.103–4).
Forging a contract securing constant companionship with his magical mentor, on signing Faustus immediately asks (after first enquiring about the location of hell) to be married. He deflects his desire for a mate by claiming, “I am wanton and lascivious” (2.1.142), but this earthly request arguably tips his hand in betraying longing not for empyreal power but for union, precisely what the contract with Mephastophilis offers. Through marriage, as through magic, he seeks companionship on earth, to be overcome by relationship even as he also constructs a metaphysical union. The necromantic contract thus doubly satisfies Faustus, by offering him earthly company and spiritual merger: he enjoys Mephastophilis’s company for twenty-four years and then joins Lucifer, who elevates Faustus’s soul in claiming it as his own.69 For a character so ostensibly preoccupied with his own glory, Faustus proves surprisingly eager to lose himself in his field of study and devotion to the field’s masters. He seeks to be ravished, consumed, and overcome by the study of magic and the companionship of its practitioners. The contract’s terms thus illuminate the paradox of Faustus’s devotion: he is choosing to give up choice; he is exercising his right to surrender himself. Rather than seeking legal protection and securing his own claims, Faustus uses the contract to voice his loyalty, his surrender, and his willingness to give of himself to magic. Through the contract, in other words, Faustus attempts to announce, and secure, his addiction.
It is perhaps not surprising, then, that Faustus takes the contract more seriously than anyone might reasonably expect. The legal scholar Richard Posner puzzles over Faustus’s “sanctity of contract,” exploring the numerous ways Faustus might have wiggled out of his obligation. First, the contract does not involve an immediate exchange but instead relies on Mephastophilis serving Faustus for twenty-four years before Faustus delivers his soul. “Such a contract,” Posner argues, “establishes a long-term relationship; and since not every contingency that might arise over a long period of time can be foreseen, it is understood that the parties will act in good faith to resolve problems as they arise rather than stand on the letter of the contract.”70 Even if Mephastophilis does exercise a “good faith” effort to fulfill every request, the contract remains riven with other weaknesses. As Posner writes, “The law refuses to enforce contracts that are against public policy, and a contract with the devil fits the bill.”71 If challenging the contract at the last moment would seem an unfair gain for Faustus, even here he could have nullified the bargain by offering restitution to the devil in the form of his body, his estate, and his service for the remaining years of his life, as the legal scholar Daniel Yeager argues in his analysis of the play.72 Faustus’s repudiation of the contract would be all the easier given the weakness of Mephastophilis’s position. The legal insistence of Mephastophilis that Faustus sign a contract in the first place might alert audiences—if not Faustus himself, who dismisses law as “too servile and illiberal” (1.1.36)—to the illegitimacy of his argument. “Mephostophilis’s insistence on formalities,” Yeager writes, “reveals his doubt about the validity of the contract.”73 Posner, too, concludes, “The devil could not argue either that he didn’t know that contracts with him were illegal or that the primary wrongdoer was not himself but Faustus…. So Faustus might have wiggled out of his contract after all.”74
Faustus does not seek, of course, to wiggle out of the contract. The question then becomes why Faustus upholds what Posner deems the “sanctity of contract” at all. Why believe the contract is, as Yeager writes of Faustus, “inviolable,” especially when Faustus has studied law and might recognize the legitimate challenges he could mount against Mephastophilis? He upholds the contract, this chapter answers, because this unmistakably legal exchange demonstrates the eagerness with which Faustus seeks—and perceives himself—to be bound. The issue is not, as Posner puts it, the “irrevocability of Faustus’s contract,” but rather Faustus’s perception and desire that his choice should be irrevocable. Once committed, Faustus remains convinced of the legitimacy of this commitment and strains to maintain his half of the bargain.75
If Faustus’s addiction were secure, surely neither he nor Mephastophilis would need a document signed in blood. But Faustus and Mephastophilis turn to these legal measures, one realizes as the play continues, because Faustus’s initial efforts to pursue addiction through willpower and resolve failed. At the start he repeatedly tells himself, “Be resolute” (1.3.14), reassuring Cornelius and Valdes of his commitment. When questioned by Valdes, who tells Faustus he can be a magician only “if learnèd Faustus be resolute,” Faustus responds, “Valdes, as resolute am I in this / As thou to live. Therefore object it not” (1.1.134, 135–36). Resolution to study and life go hand in hand for Faustus. As he conjures for the first time he again repeats: “Fear not, Faustus, but be resolute” (1.3.14). But resolve is not enough. Willpower alone cannot sustain Faustus in his commitment to magic. The contract represents, therefore, his second-order attempt to bind himself, offering more of himself than Mephastophilis demands. He designs a deed that will keep him
