SOURCE: "Demonizing Magic: Patterns of Power in Doctor Faustus," in Spectacles of Strangeness: Imperialism, Alienation, and Marlowe, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993, pp. 111-42.

In the following excerpt, Bartels examines the relation between magic, politics, and Protestantism in Doctor Faustus.

Gi; the European Subject =~ Sthe European Subject

The prologue to The Tragical! History of Doctor Faustus sets the forthcoming material apart from what has come before on the Marlovian stage—from "the pomp of proud audacious deeds," from marches of war and sports of love that "overturn'd" "courts of kings" in Carthage and beyond (prologue 4-5).¹ Though Edward II may be implicated in the latter, the turn marked here is primarily from the broad, cross-cultural landscapes of imperialist competition to "only this" (Prologue 7), the "fortunes" of a man born of "parents base of stock" (Prologue 11), schooled in Germany, and sitting, as the play opens, in his study. While his...