Marlowe as a playwright is scandalous in that his dramatic conventions are powerful enough to cause an exceptional level of willing suspension of disbelief in his audiences. Genevieve Guenther’s article “Why Devils Came When Faustus Called Them” analyzes whether (and therefore how) there were genuine magical repercussions of Doctor Faustus performances. She begins by introducing reports of audience members who believed to have seen one too many devils on stage. The thesis appears as the topic sentence of paragraph three, stating that to analyze whether the play could conjure real deities or other magic, the theatre itself and religious beliefs of the time need to be considered. Guenther then compares the text to Protestant tradition, historical performances, and the reform (as a counterargument against magical repercussions). Marlowe’s magic is his attention to aesthetic strategy and dramatic conventions. Historic audiences absolutely had reason to believe that the representation of so much magic on stage could manifest magical things such as physical deities. At the very least, it is agreeable that Marlowe successfully conjured a captivating level of fear and/or enticement in his audiences. In closing, Guenther utilizes a modern understanding of the theatre to state that a play has boundaries, and therefore does not mean anything outside of its own, nonliteral world, as the actors are not magicians intending to conjure deities. However, in this way, Marlowe has theatrical strategy and exploits audiences by allowing them to fear that devils could drag their souls to hell.
Guenther, Genevieve. “Why Devils Came When Faustus Called Them.” Modern Philology:
Critical and Historical Studies in Literature, Medieval Through Contemporary, vol. 109, no. 1, Aug. 2011, pp 46-70. https://web-p-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.mnsu.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=e764df34-c0f5-4d67-b504-c08b47e3e3d9%40redis
