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Faustus as Dunce: The Degeneration of Man and Word

In act 1.2 of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus,1 Wagner calls Faustus’s colleagues a pair of “dunces” (1.2.15–16). The modern-day reader may be tempted to reduce this word to its conventional meaning—“a dullard or blockhead”—and dismiss it as an off-handed insult intended for comedic effect. But the word dunce, originally derived from “Duns-men” or followers of the scholastic theologian and Franciscan friar John Duns Scotus, has a rich history that should not be ignored (“Dunce,” Oxford English Dictionary [OED]). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, what once began as a descriptive term for a “schoolman” or “disciple of Duns Scotus” has steadily devolved into a pejorative term for a “hair-splitting reasoner”; “a dull pedant”; and finally, “a dull-witted, stupid person” (“Dunce,” OED). Though this term was reserved for the scholars in Marlowe’s play (Scholar One and Two), it could just as easily be applied to Faustus, who was a product and purveyor of the same scholastic educational system. In fact, the steady degeneration of the word mirrors Faustus’s own pitiful devolution—from a “thrice learned scholar,” to a man so poisoned by his own sophistry,2 that he is incapable of learning the greatest truth of all: that mercy is the way to salvation (4.1.49). Understanding Faustus as a dunce, in all permutations of the word, will help us better understand the nature of his fall from grace. When we encounter Faustus in act 1.1, he exemplifies the first definition of the term. Though he is not a Duns-man in terms of his theological beliefs, he is a classic “schoolman,” stuck in “the shallows of scholasticism”