Thursday, September 9, 2010

Marlowe's English

I haven't taken many literature classes at Clark, and absolutely zero English lit, so reading Marlowe's Doctor Faustus was kind of like reading Shakespeare back in high school. I really enjoyed deciphering Marlowe's English. The word snipper-snapper (based on whipper snapper) particularly amused me.

Something I found more confusing was a segment in Act III, Scene I in which Mephistophilis and Faustus visit the Vatican. Mephistophilis describes the Vatican as a place:
"Where thou shalt see a troupe of bald-pate friars,
Whose summun bonnum is in belly cheer."


That's a pretty convoluted way of calling the Catholic Church a bunch of bald, fat monks.

2 comments:

  1. I agree that reading Faust is like reading a weird version of Shakespeare. I took Shakespeare last semester and it takes me about the same amount of time to read Faust as it took to read Shakespeare.

    Anyhow, I don't really have a favorite line. But one did pop out at me... mostly because it was highlighted by the previous owner of my book.

    "Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man."

    They only highlighted like 3 times in the entire play, this being one, and I feel like I'm always going to being trying to figure out why they thought those lines were/are so important.

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  2. @ Morgan: emphasizing his pride, I guess ... that he's just a man, despite being such a big deal professor.

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