Elisabetta’s father had been scratching at his stubble. He never shaved on his days off. ‘So the B text is a third longer than the A text. What else is different?’
Harris looked surprised. ‘I’m impressed you know that!’ he said. ‘I thought your field was mathematics.’
‘My father has eclectic interests,’ Elisabetta said quickly, begging him with her eyes to stay quiet.
‘Well, to be precise,’ Harris said. ‘The B text omits thirty-six lines of the A text but adds 676 new lines.’
‘Who made the changes?’ Elisabetta asked. ‘Marlowe?’
‘That we don’t know. Perhaps he wrote a second version. Perhaps an unknown collaborator or hired hand made changes to suit the Elizabethan audience after Marlowe’s death. As a playwright of his era, Marlowe would have had nothing to do with the publication of his plays and only a very limited control over the content of the performances. Scenes could have been added or deleted by another writer, by actors – by anyone, really. Unless future handwritten manuscripts turn up we may never know.’
‘What would you say are the truly significant differences between the A text and the B?’ Elisabetta asked, conjuring the envelope note in her mind: B holds the key.
Harris took a deep breath. ‘Gosh, where to start? Dissertations have been written on the subject. I myself have made some contributions to the field. I will be happy to send you a detailed bibliography so that you can delve as deeply as you like. In a broad sense, let me say, however, that the similarities far outweigh the differences. In both, our Doctor Faustus summons the demon Mephistopheles from the underworld and strikes a pact to have twenty-four years on Earth with Mephistopheles as his personal servant. In exchange he gives his soul over to Lucifer as payment and damns himself to an eternity in Hell. At the end of these twenty-four rather excellent and sinful years, though filled with fear and remorse, there’s nothing Faustus can do to alter his fate. He’s torn limb from limb and his soul is carried off to Hell.
‘As to the differences, textual differences occur in all of the five acts but the preponderance of additions lie in Act III. In the B text, Act III is far longer and becomes a rather concentrated anti-Catholic, anti-Papist tract – which in and of itself isn’t terribly surprising in the Protestant hotbed that England had become under Elizabeth. Faustus and Mephistopheles travel to Rome and observe the Pope, his cardinals, bishops and friars acting like scandalously greedy buffoons. It must have been a real crowd-pleaser in its day.’
‘What’s your opinion about the reason for this addition?’ Elisabetta asked.
‘On that we can only speculate. In the A text, Faustus’s visit to Rome was there but was quite abbreviated. Perhaps whenever it was performed and the Pope appeared on stage, the audience jeered and stamped and carried on so much that Marlowe or someone else embellished Act III as part of the B rewrite to milk the sentiment thoroughly.’
Elisabetta jotted some notes on a pad. ‘May I ask about astrology in the play?’
Harris nodded enthusiastically. ‘Of course. Another subject dear to my heart. Well, astrology was extremely important in Marlowe’s day. The Queen had her own court astrologer, John Dee. In Faustus, Marlowe would have certainly been influenced by the classic ecclesiastical account of witchcraft, the Malleus Maleficarum, which posits – and I’m almost embarrassed to say that I’m able to quote from memory – “demons are readier to appear when summoned by magicians under the influence of the stars, in order to deceive men, thus making them suppose that the stars have divine power or actual divinity.” And we see the direct result of these ideas in Act 1, Scene 3 of Faustus when Faustus begins to conjure from inside his magic circle:
‘Now that the gloomy shadow of the Earth,
Longing to view Orion’s drizzly look,
Leaps from th’Antarctic world unto the sky
And dims the welkin with her pitchy
breath, Faustus, begin thine incantations.”’
Harris paused and smiled in a self-deprecatory way. ‘I could go on and on.’
Elisabetta looked up from her note-taking. ‘I’m curious about the astrological symbols depicted in the magic circle. Do they have a particular significance?’
Harris furrowed his brow at the question. ‘Stephanie, may I see the book?’
It was still on her lap. Meyer passed it carefully to him. He opened it to the title page. ‘Well, it’s the standard zodiac, I suppose. Constellations, planets. To be honest, I’ve never thought about it in a rigorous way.’ He looked up, blinking. ‘Maybe I should.’
Perhaps sensing an opening, Meyer broke her long silence. ‘I’m sure you’ve been wondering why I came to Rome with Professor Harris,’ she said.
‘I don’t know about my daughter, but I’ve been wondering why you’re here,’ Carlo said undiplomatically. Elisabetta cringed and waited expectantly for the answer.
‘Let me be open with you,’ Meyer said. ‘I’m here on behalf of the University. We want this book. We want it badly. It represents a tremendous gap in our library collection. Christopher Marlowe was a Cambridge man, one of our most illustrious and colorful graduates. Yet we do not possess a single copy of one of the early quartos of this, his most famous play. Oxford has one and we do not! This must be remedied. As a friend of the University and a supporter of the humanities I have pledged my personal resources to facilitate the acquisition of this book. Is it for sale, my dear?’
‘How much?’ Carlo chirped.
‘Papa! Please!’ Elisabetta begged, staring him down. She turned to face Meyer. ‘I don’t know what to tell you. I’m so honored that the two of you came all the way to see me. Frankly, it’s not something I’ve thought about.’
‘But the book is clearly yours,’ Meyer said, pressing on. ‘I mean, it’s yours and the decision to sell it rests with you, does it not?’
‘I have no personal possessions,’ Elisabetta said. ‘I was given the book as a gift to the Church. I suppose if someone were to buy it, the funds would go to my Order.’
Meyer smiled politely. ‘Well, then. Now that we’ve seen it and Professor Harris is initially happy with its authenticity and condition, perhaps when we return home we can send you an offer in writing. Would you then entertain a formal offer?’
Elisabetta flushed. ‘You’ve been so kind to come and speak with me. Of course. Send me a letter. I’ll speak to my Mother Superior. She’ll know how to respond.’
When the visitors were gone, Elisabetta slumped wearily on the sofa, surrendering to her fatigue. She removed her tight veil, ran a hand through her short hair and massaged her throbbing scalp. Her father shuffled back with a fresh cup of coffee and a look of paternal concern on his face.
‘You need to sleep. No one goes through a night like you had without a need for rest. Have your coffee. Then go to your room.’
Elisabetta took the cup. ‘You sound like you did when I was a child. “Go to your room, Elisabetta, and don’t come out until you’re ready to say you’re sorry.”