Marlowe's Faustus at the Globe

I popped down to the Globe yesterday afternoon to see Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus. It was a lovely afternoon and the production was done very well. It is the play that includes the famous lines "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships (not shops)?" I was sorry that my favourite line was cut, where Faustus says at the end

"See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament.

One drop would save my soul, half a drop. Ah, my Christ!"

They did have a bit I'd forgotten, however, where Faustus asks Mephistopheles who made the world and he won't say because it is, of course, God. They made quite thing of that and it was powerful for me.

I remember reading it in university and enjoying it. It's quite different from Shakespeare in that it employs a lot of stage spectacle. This production did all that very well (there was some limited audience interaction and bawdiness almost inevitably). It must have had quite an impact on the original audiences. Its genius is that it is a real spectacle and good fun but raises the most profound theological questions. Whether we take the play on its own professed terms, those of theological orthodoxy, or look deeper it still raises crucial questions of life and its purpose. Like the last play I saw we ended with the whole cast doing a little dance with the musicians. I really wonder what that is all about.