Christopher Marlowe’s THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND DEATH OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS
“Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.
(It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery.)”
Mephistopheles in Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus
We cannot pass up Christopher Marlowe’s birthday without a quote from Dr. Faustus, the mythic parable about all of us when we sell our souls to the Devil for knowledge, power, glory, fame, or success. Faustus is a highly esteemed German scholar who becomes bored with academia and decides to dabble in magic, substituting a dangerous dalliance for his usual, normal life. It is the ultimate clash of good versus evil. It is what we all battle every day when we know what is right and brilliant, and yet we choose what is wrong and stupid.
Student actors Dan Neil (Mephistophilis) and Jeff Gilliam (Faustus) in Samford University Theatre’s Dr. Faustus in 1986.
Having produced the play with a magnificent group of students, directed by Charles Reese (an alum), many lines from Faustus often come to my mind — the work is overflowing with gems. But I have chosen “It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery,” taken from the writings of a fourteenth century Italian historian Dominici de Gravina.
We don’t always subscribe to this philosophy. My theatre professor, WT Chichester drove around town with a megaphone advertising a comedy we were performing, proclaiming: “Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone!”
“Misery loves company” is how most people express de Gravina’s idea. English naturalist and botanist John Ray, who lived from 1627 to 1705, not too long after Christopher Marlowe died in 1593, is credited with that specific rendering of the sentiment, along with an additional timeworn phrase, “Blood is thicker than water.”
Two different Enneagram trainees with whom I am working are caretakers for their rapidly aging mothers who have dementia, as I had previously done. At our recent Enneagram retreat, one friend reminisced about how her mother had chastised her about her weight all her life. While taking her turn assisting her mom the week before our gathering, she was again upbraided about extra pounds.
Surprisingly, my friend’s mother scolded her, and then immediately apologized (something she had never done before). She told her mom the remarks were forgotten. A few minutes later, her mom asked for pardon again, and again she was forgiven. Then later, her mother said, “I am really sorry about the comment.” My friend broke down in tears relating the story of the trifold apology, and what amounted to a long overdue expression of regret for a lifetime of tongue-lashing, and a possible recognition of the pain she had caused.
I recalled to them why I had been so stalwart last August when I was training with them, and had gotten the call that my mother had died. Her actual passing from this life to another was really a calm and tranquil time for me, because I had left my mother’s house a few months before her death, and had boohooed for three solid days. I woefully knew I had forever lost the person I had always called “Mama.” She knew me, but she was literally fading like members of the McFly family in the photograph in Marty’s wallet in the Back to the Future films.
As we all talked about reconciling (or not) with our mothers, and losing them at this stage of life, we definitely thought, “It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery.” Sometimes they really do know very nearly what you are going through.