The Instability of Faustus (1964)

Abstract

If Faustus is a great work, it is also a flawed one. It is not merely a matter of two poor scenes and two which degenerate into nonsense, a sequence of trivial episodes and two occasions where the climax is disappointingly followed up. There is also, more seriously, a lack of sustained concentrated writing in places where one might have hoped for it, and often, by Shakespearean standards at any rate, a poverty of poetic texture. Sometimes, as one is thinking how to describe something in the play, a Shakespearean phrase comes to mind: Faustus, for instance, might be described as

destil’d

Almost to Ielly with the Act of feare.

(Hamlet, I 11)