A Sweet Friend: Power and Erotics in Doctor Faustus -- A Summary
So, let’s talk male-male relationships in this time, shall we? Hey y’all! I actually am getting around to this now! Now some disclaimers overall: I am an undergrad. I’m not like an expert in any way shape or form. This is just the conclusion I reached in a 9-12 page essay for a 10 week class on renaissance literature. Additionally I feel as though I may have misrepresented the amount of this paper that is explicitly about the use of the word “sweet.” It is an important part of my paper because it complicates the topic in a weird way. I am in no way done with this paper, it’s something I want to continue to research, refine my thesis, and eventually maybe get this shit published. But for now, I’ll talk about the stuff that I have done. Probably gonna put this under a cut because this could get aggressively long.
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‘Dr Faustus’ is gay af, written by a gay man, whose has another play also about gay men and a notoriously gay king - Edward II. I pretty sure I’ve seen critical works on the homoeroticism of Faustus. With its context in mind Marlowe definitely chose this story for a reason, because he knew he could write it and write it well; for one it’s just about two men, or at least Marlowe made it such. And Stophs doesn’t call him sweet, but he does say ‘my faustus’ all the time. And in response one of Faustus’ final requests, he says ‘This, or what else my Faustus shall desire, Shall be perform'd in twinkling of an eye’ - a line the Globe production of the play really laid on as intense and homoerotic.
