Playing the Parts

Abstract

For the actor of Faustus, the basic problem obviously lies in reconciling the varying aspects of the character’s complex nature: is his love of horseplay and practical joking a basic facet of his personality, or something which only manifests itself once the bargain with Lucifer is struck? Should the player convey the impression of a noble mind o’erthrown, or of a man in whom noble aspiration and petty desires have been inextricably mixed from the start? Much will depend on the text selected: as we have seen, Poel, Welles, Benthall and others simplified the complexities by eliminating or toning down scenes in which Faustus appears as a mere flashy conjuror or showman for whom the main asset obtained from his contract seems to be the right to fool and bamboozle others with impunity. Yet the complete text can be treated as providing us with a much more interesting if paradoxical case-history, of a man whose loftier intellectual ambitions are compromised by a fatal tendency to cut a dash, to bask in applause, to make fun of the less gifted, to indulge in his own need for sensual gratification. Directors and actors have too rarely sought to assimilate Faustus’s contradictory impulses.