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I
Few bibliographical theories are so apparently unassailable and, paradoxically, so constantly assailed as the prevailing belief that the 1604 quarto of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (the "A-text") is a corrupt, memorially reconstructed, "bad" quarto. Ever since the argument was first advanced by Leo Kirschbaum in 1946 and supplemented by W. W. Greg in 1950, the memorial reconstruction theory has enjoyed the status of fact.[1] In 1952, Fredson Bowers was wholly convinced ("we may take it as fully proved that the A-text is a reconstruction from memory of the play as originally performed"), and he remained so in 1973: "facts are facts."[2] Thus dismissed as a "bad" quarto, the A-text has been relegated to the appendixes in nearly every edition of the play completed in the last half-century. And even those who choose to edit the A-text acknowledge that "signs that it has been memorially reconstructed are incontestable."[3]
Though seemingly incontestable, the fact of the A-text's memorial origins has encountered nearly a half-century of contestation. Bowers himself, pointing out that the B-text contains entire scenes that are not in the A-text, observed that "the reporter of the A-text would need to have suffered a complete blackout."[4] Alternatively, Bowers argued that the substantial differences between the two textual versions of Faustus might best be attributed
The theory of the A-text as a memorial reconstruction is further cast into doubt by its enthusiastic critical reception, both early and late. No other "bad" quarto went through three editions in the seventeenth century, and no other supposedly corrupt Renaissance text has found such favor in the twentieth. Although literary interpreters have little use for the "bad" quartos of Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, influential critics such as C. L. Barber and Stephen Greenblatt employ the A-text of Faustus despite its apparently unauthoritative status. As Barber explains, "my experience as a reader runs counter to the conclusions . . . which W. W. Greg arrives at from textual study."[6] So too, if a Shakespearean "bad" quarto text is ever performed it is only as a dramatic curiosity; and yet, both the Royal Shakespeare Company and Chicago's Court Theater chose the A-text of Faustus for their 1989 productions of the play. There appears to be a zeitgeist at work as scholars and theater companies embrace the A-text and so reject (or simply ignore) the rulings of bibliographers. It would seem that the time has come to reappraise the bibliographical facts and re-evaluate the theories surrounding the A-text of Doctor Faustus.
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