Marlowe's Dr Faustus was an Elizabethan spine-chiller. People came for thrills, and early productions pulled out all the stops to provide them. 'Shagge-hayred devills' ran 'roaring over the stage with squibs in their mouthes'. Drummers thundered backstage. Stage-hands hung aloft to 'make artificiall lightning in their heavens'. At times the play seemed to generate a power more than dramatic. At one performance in Shoreditch the wooden walls of the theatre suddenly 'crackt' and 'frighted the audience.' At another, in Exeter, the players stopped dead in the middle of the conjuration scene, 'for they were all perswaded there was one devell too many amongst them.' They explained the situation to the audience, and said they 'could go no further with this matter'. The audience promptly fled - 'every man hastened to be first out of dores' - and the players spent the night in unaccustomed prayer and meditation.

LRB 8 March 1990 | PDF Download