Belimoth and a Heavy Funeral

In my post That Old Devil Belimoth I discussed the A and B Texts of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, noting that an important difference between the two texts is that the B-text contains lines involving a devil called Belimoth that do not appear in the A-text. Significantly, Guy of Warwick also contains a devil called Belimoth, and is the only other extant play of the period to do so. Further, there are very strong parallels between the lines in which Belimoth appears in Guy and the B-text, making it almost certain that the unique appearance of this devil in these two plays is not coincidental.

This link between Guy and the B-text is potentially of great significance for the dating of Guy. Current scholarship favours the theory that the extra lines in the B-text of Doctor Faustus are the 1602 additions to the play by William Birde and Samuel Rowley recorded in Henslowe's diary. If this is correct, and Guy borrowed the Belimoth lines from this Birde/Rowley version of Faustus, then clearly Guy could not have been written any earlier than 1602.  It is even possible that Guy borrowed the lines directly from the 1616 Quarto of Doctor Faustus, in which case it must have been written in or after 1616, a dating intriguingly consistent with the fact that a play on Guy of Warwick, ascribed to Day and Dekker, was entered in the Stationers’ Register in 1620.

Despite the possibility that the Belimoth link may point to Guy having been written in the 17th century, I suggested in my original post that, given the weight of scholarly opinion placing Guy in the 1590s, there might be an alternative explanation i.e. that both Guy and the B-text "were referencing a common source: a version of Doctor Faustus earlier than that of the A-text, but preserved in the B-text". Under this scenario, Guy could still have been written in the 1590s, and, additionally, the authority of the B-text would be strengthened. In this post, I will discuss another link between Guy and the B-text which supports this interpretation.

In both the A and B texts of Faustus, Faustus's death is followed by the play's Epilogue (“Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight…”). In the B-text, however, there is an intervening ‘scholar scene’, missing from the A-text,  where students discover Faustus's body and pledge to give him a “heavy funeral”:

Well Gentlemen, tho Faustus end be such

As euery Christian heart laments to thinke on:

Yet for he was a Scholler, once admired

For wondrous knowledge in our Germane schooles,

We'll giue his mangled limbs due buryall:

And all the Students clothed in mourning blacke,

Shall waite vpon his heauy funerall.

In Guy of Warwick there is also an intervening scene between Guy’s death and the Epilogue, when Guy’s body is discovered and he, too, is promised a “heavy funeral”:

Athelst. Rainborne 'tis true, sweet Phillis weep no more,

... on his Cave where he hath left his life,

a stately Hermitage I will erect,

in honour of Sir Guy of VVarwicks Name,

passe mournfully along, wee'l follow all

his bloodlesse Corps, and heavy funeral.

What makes the similarity of these scenes especially interesting is the use of the phrase ‘heavy funeral’. It’s actually quite rare. The phrase appears in a few other works of the time (e.g. Homers Iliads, George Chapman, 1616 and The seuen Champions of Christendome, Part 1, Richard Johnson, 1596), but, as is the case for the Belimoth lines, Guy of Warwick and the B-text of Faustus are the only plays of the period in which ‘heavy funeral’ appears. And it appears, of course, in the same conspicuous place in both plays - the last line before the Epilogue.

Given the already strong Belimoth link between Guy and the B-text, it is reasonable to see this ‘heavy funeral’ connection as another, non-coincidental, link between the two plays, and, importantly, one which tends to support the conclusion that both Guy and the B-text are referencing a version of Faustus from the 1590s. The main evidence for this comes from a paper by Robert A. H. Smith, the key part of which I will quote in its entirety.

P. H. Kocher pointed out some years ago some similarities between lines in Faustus and lines in Thomas Lodge’s play, The Wounds of Civil War. There seem to be several passages in the latter work which are reminiscent of parts of Faustus, and in one instance not noted by Kocher two lines occurring near the end of The Wounds of Civil War (V. v. 400-1) resemble very closely Faustus, V. iii. 2111-12.

And Fulvia clad in black and mournful pale,

Will wait upon her father’s funeral.

(Wounds of Civil War)

And all the students clothed in mourning black

Shall wait upon his heavy funeral.

(Faustus)

Lodge’s play probably dates from the 1580s and thus was already an old work when it was published in quarto in 1594. It is impossible to state positively who was the borrower here, but there now appears to be further evidence for assigning this scholar scene in Faustus  to the early 1590s, if not earlier, and to Marlowe or his original collaborator.

Three other possibilities can be rejected. The owners of both plays, The Admiral’s Men, were revising and reviving many of their old works at the turn of the century, and Rowley or Birde may have borrowed the lines at this time. 1602, shortly after the Essex Rebellion, would have been a very suitable date to revive and revise a work with a theme and title such as Lodge’s play. Secondly, Lodge’s work could have been reprinted after 1594. Finally, the revisers could have unconsciously recalled Lodge’s old lines, or even copied out and adapted them. There is in fact no evidence from Henslowe’s diary or elsewhere that any revision or republishing took place; a simple revival would have been unlikely for such an old-fashioned and undistinguished work; the Lord Chamberlain’s Men objected strongly in 1601 when they were asked to revive a much more recent and superior work, Richard II,  because it was ‘so old and so long out of use’. The play had most likely been forgotten about long before 1602.

Robert A. H. Smith, ‘Faustus End’ and The Wounds of Civil War (Notes and Queries, 1985)

In other words, it doesn’t really matter who borrowed from whom here. The likelihood either way is that the ‘heavy funeral’ lines ending the scholar scene in the B-text date from the early 1590s or earlier (if Lodge was the borrower, then it becomes a certainty). If so, it is reasonable to assume that the Belimoth lines in the B-text also date from the early 1590s or earlier, particularly as the probable source for the name Belimoth, Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft, was published in 1584.

This conclusion, if correct, is not just important for our understanding of the B-text, but also for our understanding of Guy. While we cannot rule out the possibility that Guy referenced the Belimoth and ‘heavy funeral’ lines long after the time they first appeared in Doctor Faustus, the more likely  scenario is that it referenced them around that time i.e. in the early 1590s. The seeming inconsistency between this and my proposed dating of Guy to around 1598 is something I will discuss in a later post.

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That Old Devil Belimoth

Scholarly consensus on whether the 1604 or 1616 quarto of Doctor Faustus best represents Marlowe’s original version of the play has swung back and forth over the years. The two texts - known as the ‘A’ and ‘B’ texts, respectively - differ quite significantly. The B-text is about 600 lines longer overall, mainly due to additional lines in Acts 3 and 4.

In his diary for 22 November 1602 Philip Henslowe noted payment of £4 to William Birde and Samuel Rowley for ‘adicyones in doctor fostes’. The simplest explanation for the additional lines in the B-text is that they are these 1602 additions by Birde/Rowley. The majority of late nineteenth and early twentieth century editors accepted this, and consequently gave primacy to the A-text as being closer to Marlowe’s original text. However, the B-text gained scholarly ascendancy in the mid twentieth century, largely through the efforts of Kirschbaum and Greg, who argued that the A-text was a ‘bad quarto’  of the more authoritative B-text. In the last decade or so, the scholarly pendulum has swung back to the A-text, and although there is some dissent,  the B-text is now generally regarded as a revised version of Doctor Faustus, with the additional lines having little or no Marlovian authority.

One of the more notable differences between the A and B texts of Doctor Faustus is that the B-text contains a few devils not present in the A-text. Called 'Belimote', 'Argiron' and 'Asterote', these devils appear in Act 4, Scene 1, summoned by Faustus to punish three gentlemen, Benvolio, Frederick and Martino, for their mockery of him. In Scene 2, Belimote and Asterote (now called ‘Belimoth(e)’ and ‘Asteroth’) reappear to execute Faustus’s further revenge. Belimoth, in particular, is singled out to punish Martino ("Go Belimothe, and take this caitife hence, And hurle him in some lake of mud and durt").

Despite much speculation, the source of the name ‘Belimoth’ in the B-text eluded scholars until very recently. However, Michael Keefer noted in 2007 that "the author of this scene appears to have derived these names…from one or another of the grimoires from which Reginald Scot mockingly quotes in The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584)" [Michael Keefer (ed.), Doctor Faustus, Second Edition, Broadview Press (2007), 202]. The name ‘Belimoth’ actually appears in Scot’s book (as one of three names used "To speake with spirits"), so it doesn't really seem necessary to postulate, as Keefer does, that the Belimoth reference in the B-text was derived directly from a grimoire. Since Scot’s work was published in 1584, the name Belimoth could simply have been lifted from The Discoverie of Witchcraft itself.

The name ‘Belimoth’ appears in only one other work from the period: The Tragical History, Admirable Atchievments and various events of Guy earl of Warwick. If this were all, we could probably just mark it down as ‘curious’ that Guy shares this rare name with the B-text. However, the Belimoth link is far more substantial than this. There are very strong verbal parallels between the passages in which Belimoth appears in Guy and the B-text, which make it virtually certain that one text has influenced the other in some way. The passages where these parallels occur  are shown below:

Faustus B-text

Faustus

...

But wherefore doe I dally my reuenge?

Asteroth, Belimoth, Mephostophilis,

[Ent. Meph. & other Diuels.]

Go horse these traytors on your fiery backes,

And mount aloft with them as high as heauen,

Thence pitch them headlong to the lowest hell:

Yet stay, the world shall see their miserie,

And hell shall after plague their treacherie.

Go Belimothe, and take this caitife hence,

And hurle him in some lake of mud and durt:

Take thou this other, dragge him through the woods,

Amongst the pricking thornes, and sharpest briers,

Whilst with my gentle Mephostophilis,

This Traytor flies vnto some steepie rocke,

That rowling downe, may breake the villaines bones,

As he intended to dismember me.

Fly hence, dispatch my charge immediatly.

Guy of Warwick

Sultan. O speak Zorastes, what Divel or Man is that,

which in his Fury confounds such heaps of men?

Zorast. My Lord I cannot tell, but this I know,

neither Turk nor Saracen can withstand his blow,

our Souldiers fly like chaff before the Wind,

and none can stand against his Conquering sword.

Sultan. Canst thou not tell me what he is?

nor by thy Magick charmes confound the slave?

Zorast. I can do both as you shall streight behold;

Bellemoth, Asteroth Ascend.

Spirit. Quid me vis?

Zorast. I charge thee tell me truly who it is,

that in his rage confounds and spoiles our men.

Spirit. 'Tis Guy of Warwick that is hither come,

of holy zeal to see his Saviour Tomb.

Zorast. But never shall he see that Marble Grave,

go Bellemoth, and in a fierce flame,

hoyse him aloft into the vacant Air,

and throw him headlong into the Neighbouring Seas.

There can be little doubt that these passages are connected. The words are not identical, but they are consistently close thematically and verbally: ‘Go Belimothe’/‘go Bellemoth’; ‘fiery backes’/‘fierce flame’ ; ‘mount aloft’/‘hoyse him aloft’; ‘pitch them headlong’/‘throw him headlong’. It surely cannot be coincidence that in the only two plays from the period that mention Belimoth at all we also have such close verbal parallels.

That there should be such strong verbal connections between Guy and Doctor Faustus is not in itself remarkable. Marlowe’s play was one of the most famous of the period, and it would not be surprising to see allusions to it in Guy. What makes the connection intriguing is that all the connections are to lines that exist only in the B-text. This has potentially significant implications for our understanding of the provenance and dating of both Guy and the B-text. If, for example, the Belimoth lines in Guy are an allusion to Doctor Faustus, and the corresponding Belimoth lines in the B-text are the Birde/Rowley additions of 1602, then Guy cannot have been written any earlier than 1602. This would mean, of course, that my dating of Guy to 1598 (or, at the latest, 1601 when Dekker’s Satiromastix was entered in the Stationers' Register) is simply wrong.

No doubt, many would be happy to accept this conclusion. However, the implications are wider than just my dating being wrong.  Under this interpretation, all datings of the play to the 1590s or earlier (Harbage, Cooper, Duncan-Jones etc) would be wrong. This is not impossible, but before making such a drastic conclusion we should look more closely at the assumptions behind this particular interpretation.

Firstly, it is assumed that the shared Belimoth lines are due to Guy alluding to Faustus, rather than the other way round. This is a  natural assumption: Faustus was famous, Guy was not, and I have argued myself that the latter play seems to go out of its way to allude to other works, notably Mucedorus and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Nevertheless, many a famous play has borrowed lines from an obscure one (and no play is famous at the time of writing, anyway),  so we can certainly not rule out that the direction of influence for the Belimoth lines could have been from Guy to the B-text. On balance, though, it seems a reasonable assumption that the Belimoth lines in Guy allude to, or borrow from, Doctor Faustus.

Secondly, although there is currently a general consensus that the additional lines in the B-text are the Birde/Rowley additions of 1602, this does not bind us to the assumption that all the additional lines in the B-text  were the original work of Birde/Rowley. Keefer, in particular, has argued against such an assumption. While agreeing that the B-text is generally a revised version of the more authentic A-text, he puts forward evidence that some of the lines in the B-text  preserve readings earlier than those of the A-text [Michael Keefer, ‘The A and B Texts of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus Revisited’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, June 2006, 227-257].

If it turns out that Guy is indeed a play from the 1590s or earlier, it will have the important implication that the Belimoth lines in the B-text cannot be the original work of Birde/Rowley in 1602, since the corresponding lines already existed in Guy. While it would be possible that the lines originated in Guy, and Birde/Rowley borrowed directly from that play, the more likely scenario would be that Guy and the B-text were referencing a common source: a version of Doctor Faustus earlier than that of the A-text, but preserved in the B-text.

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