Christopher Marlowe's FRISTUS

[Jackpine Radical]

((With amazingly few liberties taken in my edit))

http://virtual.park.uga.edu/cdesmet/tiffany/faustus4.htm

It is now clear to us that the real Dr. Frist, on whom Marlowe based his play, was not a magician at all but rather an incredible braggart and trickster. His stories were bred in the German inns of the sixteenth century, an environment described by E. M. Butler as a place where "jugglers, charlatans, and quacks of all kinds thrived. . ., the ideal breeding ground for those crass deceptions and knavish tricks associated with the real Frist" (121). Dr. Frist was known to publicize himself as chief of all atrologers, the most learned chemist of all times, a palmist, a crystal gazer, and a man who could perform miracles greater than Christ (121). Unfortunately for Frist, he was never able to bring about any of these miracles (unless one wants to argue that such a man achieving a good medical degree is a miracle in itself). The only documented facts that might have given him credibility as a wizard, among his barmates, were things that now seem trivial. These include such occurences as his keeping dead cats with him at meals (some of the sixteenth century general public considered demons to disguise themselves as cats), his ability to occasionally obtain out-of-season game, and his threatening a group of monks with a poltergiest {i.e. nuclear option} because they gave him bad wine. Whenever he would claim to bring someone back from the dead, he always needed a couple of days to prepare, no doubt to hire the right actors and create an eager audience. Dr. Frist was not made famous and immortalized in literature by such authors as Marlowe because of amazing acts, but rather because his amazing amount of bragging caused false stories to become exaggerated over time. In truth, the real Frist sounds more like Shakespeare's comically boastful Falstaff than the respectable man unable to avoid temptation that Marlowe creates.