Interview with an actor

 

This is a 12 minute video of an actor called Gareth Kannerley who played Dr. Fautus in a play. He shares his experience in the shoes of the ambitious scholar who fears for his life in the end. The actor tapped into emotions felt by the Dr. Fautus through the words of the play and describes how the emotions were. It is very informative as it is like the closest personal account of Dr. Faustus that we can still attain.

Vimal.

Dr. Faustus : A Reenactment of Students.

The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus from jack on Vimeo.

In the video, a group of high school students made a short movie about The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus with minimal actors and props. The usage of the background music is remarkable and it captures the suspense in the play. Though they do not use the exact same words of the play, their reinterpretation enables everybody, including non-literature students and children to understand the play, at the same time get a scare and laugh out of it.

Vimal.

The Winter's Tale : A Play Commentary

Backstage at the Goodman: Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale from turgical on Vimeo.

This is a video-commentary of the Shakespearean play, A Winter's Tale that was staged in the 1990s. The play is directed by Frank Galati, a passionate director and also an actor. His direction of Grapes of Wrath in Chicago gained him a Tony Award for Best Play, later transferring it to Broadway, where he gained another Tony for Best Direction of A Play.

In this play, the seasoned Frank Galati looks at the play from a very personal manner. Rather than thinking of the Shakespearean play as a masterpiece and keeping a very professional demeanour in directing it, Frank approaches it very personally. He relates the play to the consistency of mankind and how certain things in life does not change, be it in works of literature or in real life. For example, in the video, Frank explains that Shakespeare's plays are usually either comedic or tragic, but in this play, Shakespeare combines both elements, resulting in a play everyone could relate to. The combination of happiness and tragedy is life. There will be moments of joy yet tragedy would not be very far away. Life is unpredictable and full of ups and downs. That is what Frank Galati as a director tried to capture in his version of the play.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Galati
http://vimeo.com/10989968


Vimal.

The Devil and Demon in Dr. Faustus

The Devil in Dr. Faustus has always been Lucifer himself. Being the prince of Demons, with many servants, he sends one of his servant, Mephistopheles to secure the deal with Dr. Faustus. Lucifer is only after the Dr's soul and gives him 24 years time to live life before he is damned to hell forever. The Devil personifies Faustus the seven deadly sins as an acknowledgment of the sins of Dr. Faustus yet he does not realise the severity of it. 

Besides Lucifer, the main demon role in the play is played by Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles is a loyal servant of Lucifer. Yet based on his words, it seems Mephistopheles regrets being in Hell. Mephistopheles is able to relate to Dr. Faustus's situation and sympathises him. The demon tries its subtle best to change Dr. Faustus's decision but unfortunately to no avail. In the end Mephistopheles collects Dr. Faustus's soul .

Mephistopheles is a very popular demon from the German folklore. The demon originally appeared in literature as the demon in the Faust folklore and later on becoming a stock character for the devil himself. Though the Devil i s Lucifer, Mephistopheles is identified as the Devil instead because the demon's infamy. 

 

Mephistopheles

Vimal.

Faust

Christopher Marlowe's "The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus" is a play written based on an ancient German folklore that revolves around a man called Faust. The play was published 11 years after Christopher Marlowe's death, in the year 1604 and 12 years after the first performance of the play.

The German folklore is a story about an ambitious man called Faust who exchanges his soul with the Devil for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. This storyline has been the basis for many other literary, artistic, musical and cinematic works. The term 'deal with the devil' is now used as an idiom for the act of giving up one's moral integrity for power and success. The term is also used for people with unquenchable thirst for knowledge.

There is also another play based the same folklore, other than Marlowe's Dr. Faustus. The other play is by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who is a German playwright and his play is called 'Faust'. The final version of his play, though published after his death, is a pride of German literature. 

The image is the depiction of Faust and the demon, Mephistopheles by Harry Clarke, the Irish artist.

Vimal.

Themes, Motifs and Symbols of Dr Faustus

Themes

"Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work."

Sin, Redemption, and Damnation

Insofar as Doctor Faustus is a Christian play, it deals with the themes at the heart of Christianity’s understanding of the world. First, there is the idea of sin, which Christianity defines as acts contrary to the will of God. In making a pact with Lucifer, Faustus commits what is in a sense the ultimate sin: not only does he disobey God, but he consciously and even eagerly renounces obedience to him, choosing instead to swear allegiance to the devil. In a Christian framework, however, even the worst deed can be forgiven through the redemptive power of Jesus Christ, God’s son, who, according to Christian belief, died on the cross for humankind’s sins. Thus, however terrible Faustus’s pact with Lucifer may be, the possibility of redemption is always open to him. All that he needs to do, theoretically, is ask God for forgiveness. The play offers countless moments in which Faustus considers doing just that, urged on by the good angel on his shoulder or by the old man in scene 12—both of whom can be seen either as emissaries of God, personifications of Faustus’s conscience, or both.
Each time, Faustus decides to remain loyal to hell rather than seek heaven. In the Christian framework, this turning away from God condemns him to spend an eternity in hell. Only at the end of his life does Faustus desire to repent, and, in the final scene, he cries out to Christ to redeem him. But it is too late for him to repent. In creating this moment in which Faustus is still alive but incapable of being redeemed, Marlowe steps outside the Christian worldview in order to maximize the dramatic power of the final scene. Having inhabited a Christian world for the entire play, Faustus spends his final moments in a slightly different universe, where redemption is no longer possible and where certain sins cannot be forgiven.

Power as a Corrupting Influence

Early in the play, before he agrees to the pact with Lucifer, Faustus is full of ideas for how to use the power that he seeks. He imagines piling up great wealth, but he also aspires to plumb the mysteries of the universe and to remake the map of Europe. Though they may not be entirely admirable, these plans are ambitious and inspire awe, if not sympathy. They lend a grandeur to Faustus’s schemes and make his quest for personal power seem almost heroic, a sense that is reinforced by the eloquence of his early soliloquies.
Once Faustus actually gains the practically limitless power that he so desires, however, his horizons seem to narrow. Everything is possible to him, but his ambition is somehow sapped. Instead of the grand designs that he contemplates early on, he contents himself with performing conjuring tricks for kings and noblemen and takes a strange delight in using his magic to play practical jokes on simple folks. It is not that power has corrupted Faustus by making him evil: indeed, Faustus’s behavior after he sells his soul hardly rises to the level of true wickedness. Rather, gaining absolute power corrupts Faustus by making him mediocre and by transforming his boundless ambition into a meaningless delight in petty celebrity.
In the Christian framework of the play, one can argue that true greatness can be achieved only with God’s blessing. By cutting himself off from the creator of the universe, Faustus is condemned to mediocrity. He has gained the whole world, but he does not know what to do with it.

The Divided Nature of Man

Faustus is constantly undecided about whether he should repent and return to God or continue to follow his pact with Lucifer. His internal struggle goes on throughout the play, as part of him of wants to do good and serve God, but part of him (the dominant part, it seems) lusts after the power that Mephastophilis promises. The good angel and the evil angel, both of whom appear at Faustus’s shoulder in order to urge him in different directions, symbolize this struggle. While these angels may be intended as an actual pair of supernatural beings, they clearly represent Faustus’s divided will, which compels Faustus to commit to Mephastophilis but also to question this commitment continually.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Magic and the Supernatural

The supernatural pervades Doctor Faustus, appearing everywhere in the story. Angels and devils flit about, magic spells are cast, dragons pull chariots (albeit offstage), and even fools like the two innkeepers, Robin and Rafe, can learn enough magic to summon demons. Still, it is worth noting that nothing terribly significant is accomplished through magic. Faustus plays tricks on people, conjures up grapes, and explores the cosmos on a dragon, but he does not fundamentally reshape the world. The magic power that Mephastophilis grants him is more like a toy than an awesome, earth-shaking ability. Furthermore, the real drama of the play, despite all the supernatural frills and pyrotechnics, takes place within Faustus’s vacillating mind and soul, as he first sells his soul to Lucifer and then considers repenting. In this sense, the magic is almost incidental to the real story of Faustus’s struggle with himself, which Marlowe intended not as a fantastical battle but rather as a realistic portrait of a human being with a will divided between good and evil.

Practical Jokes

Once he gains his awesome powers, Faustus does not use them to do great deeds. Instead, he delights in playing tricks on people: he makes horns sprout from the knight’s head and sells the horse-courser an enchanted horse. Such magical practical jokes seem to be Faustus’s chief amusement, and Marlowe uses them to illustrate Faustus’s decline from a great, prideful scholar into a bored, mediocre magician with no higher ambition than to have a laugh at the expense of a collection of simpletons.

Symbols: Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Blood

Blood plays multiple symbolic roles in the play. When Faustus signs away his soul, he signs in blood, symbolizing the permanent and supernatural nature of this pact. His blood solidifies on the page, however, symbolizing; perhaps, his own body’s revolt against what he intends to do. Meanwhile, Christ’s blood, which Faustus says he sees running across the sky during his terrible last night, symbolizes the sacrifice that Jesus, according to Christian belief, made on the cross; this sacrifice opened the way for humankind to repent its sins and be saved. Faustus, of course, in his proud folly, fails to take this path to salvation.

Faustus’s Rejection of the Ancient Authorities

In scene 1, Faustus goes through a list of the major fields of human knowledge—logic, medicine, law, and theology—and cites for each an ancient authority (Aristotle, Galen, Justinian, and Jerome’s Bible, respectively). He then rejects all of these figures in favor of magic. This rejection symbolizes Faustus’s break with the medieval world, which prized authority above all else, in favor of a more modern spirit of free inquiry, in which experimentation and innovation trump the assertions of Greek philosophers and the Bible.

The Good Angel and the Evil Angel

The angels appear at Faustus’s shoulder early on in the play—the good angel urging him to repent and serve God, the evil angel urging him to follow his lust for power and serve Lucifer. The two symbolize his divided will, part of which wants to do good and part of which is sunk in sin"." (Spark Notes)

Characters in Dr Faustus and Analysis of major characters

Faustus  -  a brilliant sixteenth-century scholar from Wittenberg, Germany, whose ambition for knowledge, wealth, and worldly might makes him willing to pay the ultimate price, his soul to Lucifer in exchange for supernatural powers.

Mephastophilis  -  A devil whom Faustus summons with his initial magical experiments. Mephastophilis’s motivations are ambiguous: on the one hand, his oft-expressed goal is to catch Faustus’s soul and carry it off to hell; on the other hand, he actively attempts to dissuade Faustus from making a deal with Lucifer by warning him about the horrors of hell.

Old Man  -  An mysterious figure who appears in the final scene. The old man urges Faustus to repent and to ask God for mercy. He seems to have replaced the good and evil angels, who in the first scene, try to influence Faustus’s behavior.

Good Angel  -  A spirit that urges Faustus to repent for his pact with Lucifer and return to God. The Good Angel represents Faustus’s conscience.

.

Evil Angel  -  A spirit that serves as the counterpart to the good angel and provides Faustus with reasons not to repent for sins against God. The evil angel represents the evil half of Faustus’s conscience.

Lucifer  -  The prince of devils, the ruler of hell, and Mephastophilis’s master.

Wagner  -  Faustus’s servant. Wagner uses his master’s books to learn how to summon devils and work magic.

Clown  -  A clown who becomes Wagner’s servant. The clown’s antics provide comic relief; he is a ridiculous character, and his absurd behavior initially contrasts with Faustus’s magnificence. As the play goes on, Faustus’s behavior comes to resemble that of the clown.

Robin  -  An innkeeper, who is like a clown, provides a comic contrast to Faustus. Robin and his friend Rafe learn some basic conjuring, demonstrating that even the least scholarly can possess skill in magic.

Rafe  -  Also an innkeeper and a friend of Robin.

Valdes and Cornelius  -  Two friends of Faustus, both magicians, who teach him the art of black magic.

Horse-courser  -  A horse-trader who buys a horse from Faustus, which vanishes after the horse-courser rides it into the water, leading him to seek revenge.

The Scholars  -  Faustus’s colleagues at the University of Wittenberg. Loyal to Faustus, the scholars appear at the beginning and end of the play to express dismay at the turn Faustus’s studies have taken, to marvel at his achievements, and then to hear his agonized confession of his pact with Lucifer.

The pope  -  The head of the Roman Catholic Church and a powerful political figure in the Europe of Faustus’s day. The pope serves as both a source of amusement for the play’s Protestant audience and a symbol of the religious faith that Faustus has rejected.

Emperor Charles V  -  The most powerful monarch in Europe, whose court Faustus visits.

Benvolio  -  A German nobleman at the emperor’s court, a knight. He is skeptical of Faustus’s power, and Faustus makes antlers sprout from his head to teach him a lesson. He seeks revenge on Faustus and plans to murder him.

Bruno  -  A candidate for the papacy, supported by the emperor. Bruno is captured by the pope and freed by Faustus.

Duke of Vanholt  -  A German nobleman whom Faustus visits.

Martino and Frederick  -  Friends of Benvolio who reluctantly join his attempt to kill Faustus. 

 Analysis of Major Characters

 

Faustus

Faustus is a contradictory character, capable of tremendous eloquence and possessing awesome ambition, yet prone to a strange, almost willful blindness and a willingness to waste powers that he has gained at great cost. When we first meet Faustus, he is just preparing to embark on his career as a magician, and while we already anticipate that things will turn out badly, there is nonetheless magnificence to Faustus as he contemplates all the marvels that his magical powers will produce. He imagines piling up wealth from the four corners of the globe, reshaping the map of Europe (both politically and physically), and gaining access to every scrap of knowledge about the universe. He is an arrogant, conceited man, but his ambitions are so grand that we cannot help being impressed, and we even feel sympathetic toward him. He represents the spirit of the Renaissance, with its rejection of the medieval, God-centered universe, and its embrace of human possibility. Faustus, at least early on in his acquisition of magic, is the personification of possibility.

But Faustus also possesses an ignorance that becomes apparent during his bargaining sessions with Mephastophilis. Having decided that a pact with the devil is the only way to fulfill his ambitions, Faustus then blinds himself happily to what such a pact actually means. Sometimes he tells himself that hell is not so bad and that one needs only “fortitude”; at other times, even while conversing with Mephastophilis, he remarks to the disbelieving demon that he does not actually believe hell exists. Meanwhile, despite his lack of concern about the prospect of eternal damnation, -Faustus is also overwhelmed with doubts from the beginning, setting a pattern for the play in which he repeatedly approaches repentance only to pull back at the last moment. Why he fails to repent is unclear: -sometimes it seems a matter of pride and continuing ambition, sometimes a conviction that God will not hear his plea. Other times, it seems that Mephastophilis simply bullies him away from repenting.

Mephastophilis

The character of Mephastophilis is one of the first in a long tradition of sympathetic literary devils. Marlowe’s Mephastophilis is particularly interesting because he has mixed damnation. Indeed, he openly admits it, telling Faustus that “when we hear one rack the name of God, Abjure the Scriptures and his savior Christ, We fly in hope to get his glorious soul” (3.47–49). It is Mephastophilis who witnesses Faustus’s pact with Lucifer, and it is he who, throughout the play, steps in whenever Faustus considers repentance to persuade or threaten him into staying loyal to hell. Yet there is an odd ambivalence in Mephastophilis. He seeks to damn Faustus, but he himself is damned and speaks freely of the horrors of hell. When Faustus carelessly declares that he does not believe in hell, Mephastophilis insists that hell is, indeed real and terrible, as Faustus comes to know soon enough. Before the pact is sealed, Mephastophilis actually warns Faustus against making the deal with Lucifer. In an odd way, one can almost sense that part of Mephastophilis does not want Faustus to make the same mistakes that he made. But, of course, Faustus does so anyway, which makes him and Mephastophilis kindred spirits. It is appropriate that these two figures dominate Marlowe’s play, for they are two overly proud spirits doomed to hell.

Source

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doctorfaustus/canalysis.html