Textual Analysis of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus with Director's Book Stage Action as Metaphor

This study establishes the critical need for stage action in order to understand fully the theme of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. Marlowe's primary intent is to invert the morality play, illustrating the distortions and ambiguities of a systematized religion and to establish the human dilemma when man is faced with moral choices, using emblematic action for an effect opposite to that of the traditional moralities. Chapters consider textual problems inherent within any study of Doctor Faustus; the importance of audience response; a critical review of historical staging practices (including stage size, costuming, and special effects); a scene by scene analysis of the text with special attention to the action as metaphor; and a final chapter which is a separate director's book, with the text reproduced, together with the researcher's marginal notes on specific blocking, and with footnotes emplacing and expanding on the metaphorical action as it appears in the text.