GOTHIC REVIVAL
Our production is set during England's Gothic Revival in the 1850s. Below is some information to help you understand that time.
Evangelicalism, which first took hold in the 1700s, expanded to become one of the most powerful branches of the Anglican Church. Social causes and education remained key issues for Evangelicals, and their moralism was welcomed by Queen Victoria, who took the throne in 1837.
The second most powerful branch of the church of England was occupied by the Oxford Protestants, also called Anglo-Catholics. Growing out of a need to reform power and financial practices in the church, Oxford Protestants were very conservative and sought ways to move Protestantism back in the direction of the Roman Catholic Church.
From Gothic Antiquity by Dale Townshend:
"The architectural and religious revivals which took place during the mid-nineteenth century in Britain offered members of the Anglican Church both a form and a space of worship that had not been publicly practiced since the sixteenth century. The theological discourse brought forth by the Oxford Movement between 1833 and 1845 prepared the ground for complex forms of symbolism to emerge in Victorian sacred art and architecture.
The original purpose of the Oxford Movement was to revive pre-Reformation liturgical practice; that is, it was not to ‘Catholicize’ the Church of England, but rather to educate Anglicans about its ‘already catholic nature’. The Cambridge Camden (later Ecclesiological) Society, contemporary with the Oxford Movement, was specifically concerned with reviving and developing Gothic forms of architecture and church decoration. Thus, one movement was concerned with liturgy and one with the architectural expression of it; the Oxford Movement provided the theological underpinning for the architectural innovations of the Ecclesiologists."
FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
Our time period would find Faustus in a home and religious tradition solidly in Oxford Protestantism. This would be logical for Faustus, as his divinity studies are traditional. It is also likely, that like Marlowe, adhering to those Gothic traditions is a front for exploring knowledge and gaining power. Faustus holds religious views somewhere between irreverent and agnostic. His resentment over the limitations of his work and study to date would make it logical to engage with the Pope, and his mockery is a natural manifestation of his dismissive attitude toward the world in which he was raised since it has not provided the kind of payoff he believes he deserves. This is also why Lucifer, the demons, and even Helen of Troy are all ancient and conservative conjures.
Setting the story in a physical environment the Oxfords would love, on a topic they would hate, is a perfectly Marlovian thing to do. It is intellectually informed and irreverent at the same time.