DR Faustus Critical Analysis

The Tragical History of
DOCTOR FAUSTUS
Christopher Marlowe
(1564-1593)
“Marlowe made momentous and innovatory

contributions to English drama: he fashioned
genuine blank verse and resolutely established it
as the most appropriate medium of poetic drama,
he pioneered English romantic tragedy, and he
inscribed the first ever great English history play.”
Prof. Amar Bil Adal
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Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678
qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, qaisarjanjoa@yahoo.com
LIFE AND WORKS OF CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Born in Canterbury in 1564, the same year as William Shakespeare,
Christopher Marlowe was an actor, poet, and playwright during the reign of
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth I (ruled 1558–1603). Marlowe attended Corpus
Christi College at Cambridge University and received degrees in 1584 and
1587. Traditionally, the education that he received would have prepared him
to become a clergyman, but Marlowe chose not to join the ministry. For a
time, Cambridge even wanted to withhold his degree, apparently suspecting
him of having converted to Catholicism, a forbidden faith in late-sixteenth-
century England, where Protestantism was the state-supported religion.
Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Council intervened on his behalf, saying that
Marlowe had “done her majesty good service” in “matters touching the
benefit of the country.” This odd sequence of events has led some to theorize
that Marlowe worked as a spy for the crown, possibly by infiltrating
Catholic communities in France.
After leaving Cambridge, Marlowe moved to London, where he became
a playwright and led a turbulent, scandal-plagued life. He produced seven
plays, all of which were immensely popular. Among the most well known of
his plays are Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta, and Doctor Faustus. In his
writing, he pioneered the use of blank verse—nonrhyming lines of iambic
pentameter—, which many of his contemporaries, including William
Shakespeare, later adopted. In 1593, however, Marlowe's career was cut
short. After being accused of heresy (maintaining beliefs contrary to those of
an approved religion), he was arrested and put on a sort of probation. On
May 30, 1593, shortly after being released, Marlowe became involved in a
tavern brawl and was killed when one of the combatants stabbed him in the
head. After his death, rumours were spread accusing him of treason, atheism,
and homosexuality, and some people speculated that the tavern brawl might
have been the work of government agents. Little evidence to support these
allegations has come to light, however.
Marlowe was able to give his audiences an impression of greatness; he
made them tremble with enthusiasm. Together with the discoveries of the
great seafarers, these figures on the stage enlarged, in men’s minds, the
bounds of the possible. These plays were a paean to the infinity of military
power, of knowledge, and of wealth. The subjects Marlowe borrowed, the
heroes he moulded, were no more than this mouthpiece, voicing his
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exorbitant dreams. Like him they sought the infinite and like him were never
sated.
Marlowe is regarded as a rebel and a pioneer. He raised the standard of
revolt against the convention of writing plays in rhyme and against the
“clownage” of popular comedy. He seized upon blank verse as the ideal
medium for drama.
He was the father of genuine romantic tragedy, as regards both plot and
character. Before him, the characters in plays had to often been mere lifeless
puppets. Marlowe informed his central characters and the whole of his
dialogue with life and passion. He was an admirer of Machiavelli whose
ideal as understood by that age was the superman who, having decided what
his goal is to be, presses on to it regardless of scruples of conscience. Such is
the hero of both parts of Tamburlaine, who seeks to conquer the world,
trampling humanity mercilessly beneath his in his resistless course. Such is
Faustus, whose ideal is boundless and lawless knowledge for the sake of
universal power; such is Barabas, The Jew of Malta, revelling first in his
prodigious wealth and then in the very ecstasy of revenge on those who had
deprived him of it; such are Mortimer, in Edward II, and the Guise in the
Massacre at Paris, both monsters of unscrupulous ambition and resolution.
One character dominates the stage throughout in Marlowe’s plays. A
necessary effect of this quality is that the other characters, vividly drawn as
some of them are, tend to be dwarfed; and that, as the masculine element
predominates, the feminine characters become mere foils to it. The very
insignificance of the minor characters, however, serves as an effective
contrast, throwing the major characters into high relief.
The place and the value of Christopher Marlowe as a leader among
English poets would be almost impossible for historical criticism to over
estimate. To none they all, perhaps, have so many of the greatest among
them been so deeply and so directly indebted. Nor was ever any great
writer’s influence upon his fellows more utterly and unmixedly an influence
for good. He first, and he alone, guided Shakespeare into the right way of
work; his music, in which there is no echo of any man’s before him, found
its own echo in the more prolonged but hardly more exalted harmony of
Milton’s. He is the greatest discoverer, the most daring and inspired pioneer,
in all our poetic literature. Before him there was neither genuine blank verse
nor a genuine tragedy in our language. After his arrival the way was
prepared, the paths were made straight, for Shakespeare.
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A CRITIQUE OF DR. FAUSTUS
Marlowe lived in a time of great transformation for Western Europe.
New advances in science were overturning ancient ideas about astronomy
and physics. The discovery of the Americas had transformed the European
conception of the world. Increasingly available translations of classical texts
were a powerful influence on English literature and art. Christian and pagan
worldviews interacted with each other in rich and often paradoxical ways,
and signs of that complicated interaction are present in many of Marlowe’s
works. England, having endured centuries of civil war, was in the middle of
a long period of stability and peace.
Not least of the great changes of Marlowe’s time was England's
dramatic rise to world power. When Queen Elizabeth came to power in
1558, six years before Marlowe’s birth, England was a weak and unstable
nation. Torn by internal strife between Catholics and Protestants, an
economy in tatters, and unstable leadership, England was vulnerable to
invasion by her stronger rivals on the continent. By the time of Elizabeth’s
death in 1603, she had turned the weakling of Western Europe into a power
of the first rank, poised to become the mightiest nation in the world. When
the young Marlowe came to London looking to make a life in the theatre,
England's capitol was an important centre of trade, learning, and art. As time
passed, the city’s financial, intellectual, and artistic importance became still
greater, as London continued its transformation from unremarkable centre of
a backwater nation to one of the world’s most exciting metropolises. Drama
was entering a golden age, to be crowned by the glory of Shakespeare.
Marlowe was a great innovator of blank verse, unrhymed lines of iambic
pentameter. The richness of his dramatic verse anticipates Shakespeare, and
some argue that Shakespeare’s achievements owed considerable debt to
Marlowe's influence.
Like the earlier play, Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus is a play of deep
questions concerning morality, religion, and man’s relationship to both.
England was a Protestant country since the time of Queen Elizabeth I's
father, Henry VIII. Although theological and doctrinal differences existed
between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, the former
still inherited a wealth of culture, thought and tradition from the latter.
Christianity was a mix of divergent and often contradictory influences,
including the religious traditions of the Near East, the heritage of classical
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Greco-Roman thought and institutions, mystery religions, and north
European superstition and magic.
Sorcery and magic were part of widespread belief systems throughout
Europe that predated Christianity. These early beliefs about magic were
inextricable from folk medicine. Women in particular used a mix of magic
and herbal medicine to treat common illnesses. But as Christianity spread
and either assimilated or rejected other belief systems, practitioners of magic
came to be viewed as evil. In the fifth century CE, St. Augustine, perhaps
the most influential Christian thinker after St. Paul, pronounced all sorcery
to be the work of evil spirits, to distinguish it from the good “magic” of
Christian ritual and sacrament. The view of the sorcerer changed
irrevocably. Magic was devil-worship, outside the framework of Church
practice and belief, and those who practiced it were excommunicated and
killed.
The Protestant Reformation did not include reform of this oppressive
and violent practice. Yet magic continued to keep a hold on people's
imaginations, and benign and ambiguous views of magic continued to exist
in popular folklore. The conceptions of scholarship further complicated the
picture, especially after the Renaissance. Scholars took into their studies
subjects not considered scientific by today's standards: astrology, alchemy,
and demonology. Some of these subjects blurred the lines between
acceptable pursuit of knowledge and dangerous heresy.
As this new Christian folklore of sorcery evolved, certain motifs rose to
prominence. Once Christ was rejected, a sorcerer could give his soul to the
devil instead, receiving in exchange powers in this life, here and now.
Numerous Christian stories feature such bargains, and one of the most
famous evolved around the historical person Johanned Faustus, a German
astrologer of the early sixteenth century. Marlowe took his plot from an
earlier German play about Faustus, but he transformed an old story into a
powerhouse of a work, one that has drawn widely different interpretations
since its first production. Marlowe's Doctor Faustus is first great version of
the story, although not the last. In the nineteenth century, the great German
writer Johann Wolfgang van Goethe gave the story its greatest incarnation in
Faust. Faustus’ name has become part of our language. “Faustian bargain”
has come to mean a deal made for earthly gain at a high ethical and spiritual
cost, or alternately any choice with short-lived benefits and a hell of a price.
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The chronology of Marlowe’s plays is uncertain. Doctor Faustus’s
composition may have immediately followed Tamburlaine, or may not have
come until 1592.
Two versions of the play were printed, neither during Marlowe’s life.
The 1604 version is shorter (1517 lines), and until the twentieth century was
considered the authoritative text. The 1616 version is longer (2121 lines),
but the additions were traditionally thought to have been written by other
playwrights. Twentieth century scholarship argues that the B text (of 1616)
is in fact closer to the original, though possibly with some censorship. The
Penguin Books edition used for this study guide uses the longer B text as the
basis while incorporating sections of A that are recognizably superior.
Doctor Faustus was probably written in 1592, although the exact date of
its composition is uncertain, since it was not published until a decade later.
The idea of an individual selling his or her soul to the devil for knowledge is
an old motif in Christian folklore, one that had become attached to the
historical persona of Johannes Faustus, a disreputable astrologer who lived
in Germany sometime in the early 1500s. The immediate source of
Marlowe’s play seems to be the anonymous German work Historia von D.
Iohan Fausten of 1587, which was translated into English in 1592, and from
which Marlowe lifted the bulk of the plot for his drama. Although there had
been literary representations of Faust prior to Marlowe’s play, Doctor
Faustus is the first famous version of the story. Later versions include the
long and famous poem Faust by the nineteenth-century Romantic writer
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as well as operas by Charles Gounod and
Arrigo Boito and a symphony by Hector Berlioz. Meanwhile, the phrase
“Faustian bargain” has entered the English lexicon, referring to any deal
made for a short-term gain with great costs in the long run.
Doctor Faustus, a well-respected German scholar, grows dissatisfied
with the limits of traditional forms of knowledge—logic, medicine, law, and
religion—and decides that he wants to learn to practice magic. His friends
Valdes and Cornelius instruct him in the black arts, and he begins his new
career as a magician by summoning up Mephistopheles, a devil. Despite
Mephistopheles’ warnings about the horrors of hell, Faustus tells the devil to
return to his master, Lucifer, with an offer of Faustus’s soul in exchange for
twenty-four years of service from Mephistopheles. Meanwhile, Wagner,
Faustus’s servant, has picked up some magical ability and uses it to press a
clown named Robin into his service.
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Mephistopheles returns to Faustus with word that Lucifer has accepted
Faustus’s offer. Faustus experiences some misgivings and wonders if he
should repent and save his soul; in the end, though, he agrees to the deal,
signing it with his blood. As soon as he does so, the words “Homo fuge,”
Latin for “O man, fly,” appear branded on his arm. Faustus again has second
thoughts, but Mephistopheles bestows rich gifts on him and gives him a
book of spells to learn. Later, Mephistopheles answers all of his questions
about the nature of the world, refusing to answer only when Faustus asks
him who made the universe. This refusal prompts yet another bout of
misgivings in Faustus, but Mephistopheles and Lucifer bring in
personifications of the Seven Deadly Sins to prance about in front of
Faustus, and he is impressed enough to quiet his doubts.
Armed with his new powers and attended by Mephistopheles, Faustus
begins to travel. He goes to the Pop’s court in Rome, makes him invisible,
and plays a series of tricks. He disrupts the pope's banquet by stealing food
and boxing the pope’s ears. Following this incident, he travels through the
courts of Europe, with his fame spreading as he goes. Eventually, he is
invited to the court of the German Emperor, Charles V (the enemy of the
pope), who asks Faustus to allow him to see Alexander the Great, the famed
fourth-century B.C. Macedonian king and conqueror. Faustus conjures up an
image of Alexander, and Charles is suitably impressed. A Knight scoffs at
Faustus’s powers, and Faustus chastises him by making antlers sprout from
his head. Furious, the knight vows revenge.
Meanwhile, Robin, Wagner’s clown, has picked up some magic on his
own, and with his fellow stable hand, Rafe, he undergoes a number of comic
misadventures. At one point, he manages to summon Mephistopheles, who
threatens to turn Robin and Rafe into animals (or perhaps even does
transform them; the text isn’t clear) to punish them for their foolishness.
Faustus then goes on with his travels, playing a trick on a Horse-courser
along the way. Faustus sells him a horse that turns into a heap of straw when
ridden into a river. Eventually, Faustus is invited to the court of the Duke of
Vanholt, where he performs various feats. The horse-courser shows up there,
along with Robin and a man named Dick (Rafe in the A text), and various
others who have fallen victim to Faustus's trickery. But Faustus casts spells
on them and sends them on their way, to the amusement of the duke and
duchess.
As the twenty-four years of his deal with Lucifer come to a close,
Faustus begins to dread his impending death. He has Mephistopheles call up
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Helen of Troy, the famous beauty from the ancient world, and uses her
presence to impress a group of Scholars. An Old Man urges Faustus to
repent, but Faustus drives him away. Faustus summons Helen again and
exclaims rapturously about her beauty. But time is growing short. Faustus
tells the scholars about his pact, and they are horror-stricken and resolve to
pray for him. On the final night before the expiration of the twenty-four
years, Faustus is overcome by fear and remorse. He begs for mercy, but it is
too late. At midnight, a host of devils appears and carries his soul off to hell.
In the morning, the scholars find Faustus’s limbs and decide to hold a
funeral for him.
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MAIN THEMES
MAN'S LIMITATIONS AND POTENTIAL
The possible range of human accomplishment is at the heart of Doctor
Faustus, and many of the other themes are auxiliary to this one. The axis of
this theme is the conflict between Greek or Renaissance worldviews, and the
Christian worldview that has held sway throughout the medieval period. As
Europe emerged from the Middle Ages, contact with previously lost Greek
learning had a revelatory effect on man’s conception of himself. While the
Christian worldview places man below God, and requires obedience to him,
the Greek worldview places man at the centre of the universe. For the
Greeks, man defies the gods at his own peril, but man has nobility that no
deity can match.
Doctor Faustus, scholar and lover of beauty, chafes at the bit of human
limitation. He seeks to achieve godhood himself, and so he leaves behind the
Christian conceptions of human limitation. Though he fancies himself to be
a seeker of Greek greatness, we see quickly that he is not up to the task.
PRIDE AND SIN
Pride is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, arguable the one that leads to all
the others. Within the Christian framework, pride is a lethal motivation
because it makes the sinner forget his fallen state. For Christians, men are
fallen since birth, because they carry with them the taint of original sin. A
men made haughty with pride forgets that he shares Eve’s sin, and must
therefore be saved by the gift of grace. Only God, through Christ, can
dispense this grace, and the man who forgets that fact deprives himself of
the path to salvation.
Faustus’ first great sin is pride. He does not stop there. Reflecting the
Christian view, pride gives rise to all of the other sins, and ends ironically
with the proud man’s abasement. Faustus goes quickly from pride to all of
the other sins, becoming increasingly petty and low.
FLESH AND SPIRIT
The division between flesh and spirit was stronger in Greek thought
than in Hebrew thought, but Christians adapted the divide into their own
belief system. While Westerners now take this conception of being for
granted, the flesh/spirit divide is not a feature of many of the world's major
belief systems. Nor is the flesh/spirit divide necessary for belief in the
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afterlife: both Hindus and Buddhists conceive of the human entity
differently, while retaining belief in life after death.
In Christianity, flesh and spirit are divided to value the later and devalue
the former. Faustus' problem is that he values his flesh, and the pleasure it
can provide him, while failing to look after the state of his soul.
DAMNATION
Damnation is eternal. Eternal hell is another concept that Westerners
take for granted as part of religion, but again this belief’s uniqueness needs
to be appreciated. While the Jewish view of the afterlife was somewhat
vague, Christians developed the idea of judgment after death. Moslems
adapted a similar conception of hell and heaven, and to this day eternal hell
and eternal heaven remain an important feature of Christianity and Islam.
While Buddhists and Hindus have hell in their belief systems, for the most
part in neither religion is hell considered eternal. For example, an eternal
hell in Mahayana Buddhism would contradict Buddhist beliefs about
transience and the saving power of Buddha’s compassion.
Not so in Christianity. If Faustus dies without repenting and accepting
God, he will be damned forever. As we learn from Mephistopheles, hell is
not merely a place, but separation from God’s love.
SALVATION, MERCY AND REDEMPTION
Hell is eternal, but so is heaven. For a Christian, all that is necessary to
be saved from eternal damnation is acceptance of Jesus Christ's grace. Even
after signing away his soul to the devil, Faustus has the option of repentance
that will save him from hell. But once he has committed himself to his own
damnation, Faustus seems unable to change his course. While Christianity
seems to accept even deathbed repentance as acceptable for the attainment of
salvation, Marlowe plays with that idea, possibly rejecting it for his own
thematic purposes.
VALUING KNOWLEDGE OVER WISDOM
Faustus has a thirst for knowledge, but he seems unable to acquire
wisdom. Faustus' thirst for knowledge is impressive, but it is overshadowed
by his complete inability to understand certain truths. Because of this
weakness, Faustus cannot use his knowledge to better himself or his world.
He ends life with a head full of facts, and vital understanding gained too late
to save him.
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TALK AND ACTION
Faustus is, with no exceptions, beautiful when he speaks and
contemptible when he acts. His opening speeches about the uses to which
he'll put his power are exhilarating, but once he gains near-omnipotence he
squanders twenty-four years in debauchery and petty tricks. This gap
between high talk and low action seems related to the fault of valuing
knowledge over wisdom. While Faustus has learned much of the Greek
world's learning, he has not really understood what he’s been reading. He
can talk about potential and plans in terms of a Greek worldview, but he
lacks the internal strength to follow through on his purported goals.
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DETAILED SUMMARY WITH CRITICAL COMMENTRY
PROLOGUE AND ACT ONE, SCENES 1-2
SUMMARY
PROLOGUE
The Chorus announces that the story will not be wars, love affairs in
royal courts, or great deeds, but the tale of Faustus. Faustus was born of
ordinary parents, in Rhodes, Germany. When he came of age he went to
Wittenberg to live with relatives and study at the university. Due to his great
talent, he quickly completed his studies and became a doctor of divinity,
known for his brilliance in theological matters. But alluding to the story of
Icarus, the Chorus says that Faustus’ “waxen wings did mount above his
reach” (l. 21). He has begun to study necromancy, the black arts, and loves
magic more than theology. This is the man now sitting in his study.
Scene 1.1. Sitting alone in his study, Faustus considers the different
fields of knowledge. He considers logic, personified in Aristotle. But when
he reads “to dispute well logic's chiefest end” (1.1.7) he says disdainfully,
“Affords this art no greater miracle?” (1.1.9). He has mastered this art and
achieved its goals already. In likewise fashion he considers other disciplines.
Medicine, personified in the ancient physician Galen: though Faustus has
become a great physician, he still has no power over life and death. Law,
personified in the codifier of Roman law, Justinian: Faustus considers law a
field with a petty subject. Divinity: Faustus reads in different places that the
reward of sin is death, and that all men sin. He reasons that all men sin, and
so all men must die, and dismisses this doctrine as “Che sera, sera.” He bids
Divinity farewell.
He turns to magic. Delighted by the art, he points out that even kings’
powers are limited within territories. But with the help of magic, Faustus can
become a demi-God.
Faustus’ servant Wagner enters and Faustus bids him summon his
friends, Valdes and Cornelius. Wagner goes.
Faustus declares that the advice of his friends will be helpful in the
pursuit of magic. A Good Angel and Evil Angel enter. The Good Angel tells
Faustus to put the evil book of magic aside, and the Evil Angel tells Faustus
to pursue magic will lead to power on earth. The angels exit.
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Faustus thrills at the thoughts of the strange wonders he'll perform with
his sorcery. Cornelius and Valdes enter. He tells them that their advice has
won him over: he will practice the magical arts. He will also pursue magic
because he has realized it is the only subject vast enough for his mind.
Valdes is delighted, and thinks that Faustus brilliance combined with their
experience will make them all lords of the earth and the elements of nature
itself. Cornelius tells him that his learning is sound foundation for
necromancy, and with magic they will be able to find hidden treasure in the
seas and earth. Valdes suggests some books, Cornelius suggests method, and
Faustus invites them to dine with him. He vows to conjure that very night.
Scene 1.2. Two scholars wonder where Faustus is. They spot Wagner,
and ask the location of Wagner’s master. Wagner toys with them, mocking
the language of scholars, before finally telling them that his master is with
Valdes and Cornelius. Wagner leaves. The scholars are horrified, because
Valdes and Cornelius are well known to be necromancers. They decide to go
to inform the Rector. The First Scholar worries that nothing can help Faustus
now, but the Second Scholar says that they must do what they can.
ANALYSIS
The Prologue gives us Faustus’ biography, up the point that the story
starts. The lines are delivered by a Chorus, an homage to Greek tragedy, but
unlike Greek tragedy the Chorus in this play is not an integrated character. It
acts instead like a narrator, appearing only at the beginning and end of the
play.
The Prologue makes prominent mention of the classical world. The
Chorus mentions the god Mars, the Battle of Thrasimene, the Carthaginians,
and alludes to the story of Icarus. Marlowe was well versed in the Latin
authors, and in particular loves making allusions to Ovid throughout his
plays. The allusion to the story of Icarus foreshadows Faustus’ own fate.
Icarus, who escaped from an island tower with the help of artificial wings
crafted by his father Daedalus, ignored his father's warning not to fly too
close to the sun. Icarus ignored the order, and the wax binding the wings
melted. The young man plunged to his death. The story has become a
symbol for hubris, and the danger of overreaching the limits of man. The
limitation of man is a central theme of the play, and the theme is seen by the
late of both classical and pagan worldviews.
Faustus has been spoiled by his own gifts. The Chorus tells us that the
young man is brilliant, but that brilliance has made him impatient with
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human learning, and now he has moved on to magic. Faustus' long soliloquy
is a revealing introduction to the character. The sin of pride is an important
theme of the play, as pride is arguably the mother of all other sins. No form
of knowledge is satisfactory to him, and his dissatisfaction comes from
pride. He does not wish to be constrained by human limits. His
condemnation of medicine is telling: Faustus is not pleased by his
accomplishments as a physician, though by him “whole cities have escaped
the plague, / And thousand desperate maladies been cured” (1.1.21-2).
Saving lives is not enough. Faustus wants supernatural power: “Yet art thou
still but Faustus and a man. Coudst thou make men to live eternally, / Or
being dead, raise them to life again, Then this profession were to be
esteemed.” Faustus is expressing a deeply sacrilegious thought. Within the
Christian belief system, power over life and death belongs to God.
Resurrection of the dead is for Christ, and within God’s power at the end of
time. Through Christ's sacrifice, death has already been conquered, and
through God's grace even a sinner can be reborn. Faustus is not interested in
this kind of salvation. He seeks a base, earthly mortality. He therefore is
unsatisfied with being mortal, i.e., subject to the laws of nature and God.
This sin is Faustus’ greatest transgression, replicating the sin of Satan
himself. According to the Christian tradition, Satan originated as one of the
angels, but defied God and led a rebellion in heaven. Satan and his angels
were defeated and cast into hell. Christian theology, particularly in the
medieval Scholastic tradition, had devoted considerable attention to the
nature of Satan’s sin. (The Scholastic tradition sought to combine pagan
learning and methods, i.e. reason and philosophy, inherited from the
classical Greek and Roman thinkers, with the revealed [given by divine
revelation] knowledge of the scriptures.) Christian theologians had a high
estimate of angelic intellect and judgment. Satan, many of them argued,
could not have believed that a rebellion against God could succeed. Satan’s
sin was not that he tried to replace God, but that he sought an independence
from God. This attitude was summed up much later, in Milton’s famous line
for Satan: “Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven.” Satan seeks an
existence apart from God’s dominion, even if it means the agonies of hell,
foremost of which is separation from God’s love.
Faustus’ sin parallels that of the archfiend. He seeks deification, a
power apart from God’s and not subject to him. Faustus’ problem is that he
refuses to accept limitation on human potential. He also rejects, on every
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count, the fundamental values of Christianity. Serving others, e.g. as a
physician, is not enough.
Faustus’ goals are a warped form of classical thoughts about human
potential. Like Alexander the Great, who wept when there were no more
lands to conquer, Faustus cannot be satisfied with anything less than the
absolute. If the rediscovery of classical learning in the Renaissance led to
new appraisals of human potential, Doctor Faustus reveals tension between
the classical view of humanity and the Christian. While human beings can
still overreach themselves in the Greek worldview, as in Greek tragedy, they
do so in a moral framework quite different from that of Christianity. The
gods of the Greeks can be made to seem petty and cruel, and often seem to
be personifications of the indifference or downright hostility of nature. Even
when the gods are depicted piously in Greek tragedy, a human being can be
tragically flawed and retain his nobility. But in the Christian worldview, a
man who defies God, and who refuses to accept humble human limitations,
is a terrible sinner.
The play makes Faustus impressive, but he can only hold to his views
because of imperfect or selective understanding. Faustus’ shortcoming is
that he values knowledge over wisdom. When he thinks about divinity, he
considers the words, “If we say that we have no sin, / We deceive ourselves,
and there is no truth in us” (1.1.42). The lines are from the First Letter of
John, and Faustus omits the very next passage: “If we confess our sins, he
who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all
unrighteousness” (1 John 1.9). Ignoring the forgiving aspect of Christianity
suits Faustus’ temperament: to be forgiven, one must subject himself to God,
and we have already seen that Faustus rejects all such limitation.
Faustus takes the selected passages from scripture, and makes them
appear comic. When he reads “The reward of sin is death” (1.1.40), quoting
Romans 6.23, his laconic “That’s hard” usually gets a laugh from the
audience. And by putting that together with the passage from the First Letter
of John, Faustus paints a picture of a sour and dour Christianity. He is able
to write it off, laughing, as his Biblical quotes in Latin are followed by his
Latin interpretation: “Che sera, sera.” Marlowe’s writing here produces
some very complicated effects. On one hand, Faustus is mocking everything
that’s sacred. His picture of Christianity is clearly biased and selective, not
to mention impious. On the other hand, Faustus is being funny, and the
audience is laughing along with him in his sacrilege. We are being charmed
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by Faustus, even as we are being shown clear signs of his moral
shortcomings.
In an exuberant speech, he describes the wondrous feats he’ll perform
with magic. This Faustus is the classical Faustus, the one at home with the
wonder and strength of Greek humanity. Later, Faustus will fall far short of
these goals.
In 1.2, Wagner’s mockery of scholarly language is in prose, as opposed
to blank verse. As in many of Shakespeare’s plays, Marlowe switches to
prose for Wagner to suggest the course nature of the speaker. But Wagner’s
lines are funny, and provide relief from the serious topic of damnation.
PROLOGUE AND ACT ONE, SCENES 3-5
SUMMARY
Scene 1.3. Enter Lucifer and Four Devils. Faustus invokes them,
performing the necessary incantations to make Mephistopheles appear. He
commands Mephistopheles to depart, as his devilish form is too ugly to
attend on Faustus. He is to return in the guise of a friar. When the devil
departs to change his form, Faustus is delighted at the creature’s obedience.
Mephistopheles asks Faustus’ will; when Faustus demands that the devil
serve him, Mephistopheles informs him that his master is Lucifer, and he
cannot serve Faustus without his lord’s leave. It was not Lucifer who
charged Mephistopheles to appear. The devil came of his own will, when he
heard Faustus’ profane incantations. So do all devils make haste at the sound
of sacrilegious magic, in hopes of winning the profaner’s soul.
Faustus is all too eager to swear allegiance to Lucifer. He denies
judgment after death, and he asks Mephistopheles a series of questions. The
devil informs Faustus that Lucifer was once an angel, beloved of God, who
by aspiring pride and insolence earned banishment from heaven. The devils
with Lucifer in hell are those who conspired with him against God. When
Faustus hears that they are banished to hell, he becomes curious: how can
Mephistopheles be before him now, outside of hell? The devil informs him
that he is always in hell, for true hell is separation from God. He begs
Faustus to leave him alone with these questions, which “strike a terror to my
[Mephistopheles’] fainting soul” (1.3.82).
Faustus chides the demon, telling him to take lessons from Faustus
when it comes to manly fortitude. He bids Mephistopheles fly down to
Lucifer to tell him that Faustus is ready to sell his soul. In exchange he
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wants twenty-four years of power and luxury, with Mephistopheles in
complete obedience to his whims. Mephistopheles exits.
In soliloquy, Faustus exclaims that even if he had “as man souls as there
be stars” (1.3.92), he’d sell them. He thrills at the power he’ll soon have.
Scene 1.4. Wagner sees a poor Clown, and seems intent on making the
Clown his servant. He jests that the Clown’s poverty would compel him to
sell his soul for a raw shoulder of mutton. The Clown replies that the mutton
would have to be cooked and with good sauce. After some banter, during
which the Clown refuses to serve, Wagner offers the clown some money.
When the Clown takes the money, Wagner sees the acceptance as
compliance to servitude, and begins to give orders. The Clown tries to give
the money back. To break the Clown’s resistance, Wagner summons two
devils, Baliol and Belcher. The terrified Clown agrees to serve Wagner.
Wagner take the devils away, and the impressed Clown follows him, asking
if in exchange for service he can learn to summon devils. Wagner promises
that he will teach the Clown how to change himself into an animal, and the
clown bawdily says that he would like to be flea, so he can tickle the slits of
women’s skirts. Keeping alive the threat of summoning the demons again,
Wagner bids the Clown to follow him, and the Clown obeys.
Scene 1.5. Faustus seems to be having second thoughts, unable to
decide whether he should sell or keep. The Good Angel and Evil Angel
appear again, the Good Angel telling him to think of heaven, and the Evil
Angel telling him to think of wealth. The thought of wealth makes up
Faustus’ mind. Mephistopheles returns, exhorting Faustus to sign away his
soul in a contract written in his own blood. Faustus asks Mephistopheles
why the devils want his soul, and the heart of Mephistopheles’ answer is
this: ”Solamen miseris, socios habuisse doloris” (1.5.42). (“Comfort in
misery is to have companions in woe.”)
When Faustus cuts his arm for the contract, the blood congeals too
quickly to make good ink. While Mephistopheles is gone to fetch the fire to
liquefy his blood again, Faustus wonders if his very blood is trying to stop
him. But the devil returns, and Faustus signs. The deal is done.
On his arm, the inscription “Homo fuge” (“Fly, oh man”) has appeared.
The message disturbs Faustus, but Mephistopheles leaves and fetches devils
to delight him. They crown Faustus, bedeck him in riches, dance, and then
leave. Mephistopheles returns.
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Faustus declares the terms of the agreement. Faustus can take spirit
shape in “form and substance.” Mephistopheles is subject completely to his
whim, and must stay nearby, invisible. In exchange, after twenty-four years,
the devils will have his soul.
He questions Mephistopheles about hell, asking where it is.
Mephistopheles tells him that hell is not so much a set place: “Hell hath no
limits, nor is circumscribed / In one self place” (1.5.124-5). Furthermore, “. .
. when all the world dissolves / And every creature shall be purified, / All
places shall be hell that is not heaven” (1.5.127-129). Faustus doesn’t seem
to understand, and dismisses hell as a fable. Mephistopheles’ reply is
chilling: “Ay, think so still, till experience change thy mind” (1.5.131). They
continue to talk, but Faustus can’t seem to grasp what the devil is saying
about the nature of hell.
He demands that Mephistopheles bring him a wife. Mephistopheles
brings him a devil dressed as a woman, and tells him that rather than bring
him a wife, he’ll bring him many different women, one for every moment of
desire.
Faustus asks for knowledge: he demands books on all manner of
incantations, astrology, and botany, and Mephistopheles provides all of this
on demand.
ANALYSIS
Marlowe makes the summoning scene more effective by placing the
devils onstage from the start. When Faustus addresses the invisible beings of
hell, the audience sees those creatures there in the flesh. Their presence
emphasizes what Mephistopheles tells Faustus moments later: devils eagerly
wait for people to call on them, hoping to win souls. Faustus believes he's
the one in control. When he forces Mephistopheles to leave and re-enter in a
Franciscan monk’s garb (a little jab at Catholics that the Protestant audience
would have found gratifying), he revels in the power he thinks he has:
“Now, Faustus, thou art conjuror laureate: / Thou canst command great
Mephistopheles” (1.3.32-3). He doesn’t seem to understand the implications
of what Mephistopheles tells him. The devil does not come because the
incantations have power over him. He comes because the sorcerer is ripe
prey.
Throughout the whole scene, Faustus seems unable to understand the
forces with which he deals. When he questions Mephistopheles about hell,
he does not understand that hell is primarily a state of the spirit.
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Mephistopheles is always in hell, even when he appears on earth, because
true hell is separation from God. The devil is actually hurt by Faustus’
questions, and cannot bear to think of his state: “Oh Faustus, leave these
frivolous demands, / Which strike a terror to my fainting soul” (1.3.81-2).
The “frivolous demands” are the curious questions about hell's nature. Like
an amateur scholar who collects facts but cannot penetrate his subject
deeply, Faustus seeks knowledge about hell; when the devil tells him about
it, he doesn’t understand it. He has knowledge, but no wisdom, and prizing
the first over the latter is a grave mistake, and a theme of the play. For
Mephistopheles, the experience of hell is painful and continuous, and not
some scholar’s trivia.
Sandwiched between two rather disturbing scenes, scene 1.4 is a bit of
comic relief. Summoning demons becomes comic rather than serious (one of
the demons is named “Belcher”. These comic scenes are ambiguous. They
have been criticized as irrelevant to the action and in poor taste; other
audience members feel them to be a welcome relief from the serious subject
of damnation. This scene also serves to juxtapose Wagner’s petty ends to
Faustus’ overreaching ambition. As the play progress and Faustus sinks into
debauchery, Faustus will come to seem as loutish and uninspiring as
Wagner.
The final scene of the act shows Faustus having last doubts. But the Evil
Angel’s advice is taken over the Good, and Faustus seems ready for hell.
Even the writing on his arm (“Fly, oh man,” presumably to God) is quickly
forgotten, when Mephistopheles distracts Faustus with a dance of devils.
The need for distraction suggests that Faustus can still repent, and save
himself from hell; alternately, it might suggest that Mephistopheles feels an
odd sympathy for Faustus, and wishes to distract him, just this moment,
from anxiety.
He asks Mephistopheles again about hell, and still can’t grasp what the
devil says. “And to be short, when all the world dissolves / And every
creature shall be purified, / All places shall be hell that is not heaven”
(1.5.127-9). Faustus responds that he thinks hell is a “fable”.
Mephistopheles’ reply: “Ay, think so still, till experience change thy mind”
(1.5.131). The devil knows how this story will end. He understands his
answers, even if Faustus does not. The theme of mistaking knowledge for
wisdom continues at the end of the scene, when Faustus is delighted by the
tomes of knowledge Mephistopheles provides. He craves information on
astrology and botany, but cannot grasp the spiritual truth of what hell is.
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Mephistopheles’ presentation of the devil dressed in woman’s garb is
more than a moment of black humour. It also suggests that already, the devil
is calling the shots even in the meager details. Faustus’ wish for a wife isn’t
granted, and even now with the twenty-four year term just started,
Mephistopheles is willing to deceive him.
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PROLOGUE AND ACT TWO
SUMMARY
Scene 2.1. Faustus is in his study with Mephistopheles. He cursed the
devil, for depriving him of heaven. Through shallow logic, Mephistopheles
proves that heaven is inferior to man. The Good and Evil Angel enter,
repeating their old advice. The Good Angel tells him there is still time to
repent, and the Evil Angel tells him that as he is a spirit now, God cannot
pity him.
Faustus speaks of the conviction that he cannot repent. The despair of
that fact would drive him to suicide, if it weren’t for the pleasures he has
seen. Homer has performed for him, and Amphion (a character from Greek
myth) has played his music. He distracts himself now by asking
Mephistopheles a series of questions about the structure of the heavens.
When his questions about astronomy have been answered, he asks who
made the world. Mephistopheles doesn’t like this question, and when
Faustus speaks of God, the devil flees.
The Good Angel and Evil Angel arrive, repeating their advice about
repentance. They depart, and Faustus calls out to Christ to help him. Lucifer,
Beelzebub, and Mephistopheles arrive to intimidate Faustus. They say he
injures them by saying the name of Christ, and he agrees to say it no more.
To entertain him, they parade the Seven Deadly Sins before him. Faustus is
delighted. Lucifer promises to show Faustus hell that night, and gives him a
book on shape shifting.
Scene 2.2. The Clown, here called Robin, has gotten one of Faustus’
magic books. He's with Dick, apparently a servant, and two men banter. The
Clown has the magic book, but apparently cannot read it. The scene ends
with the two men going off to get a drink.
ANALYSIS
Faustus is torn by the fear that even if he did repent, it would do no
good. For the second time in the play, his Evil Angel warns him that he is
too far gone. Lucifer arrives and gives Faustus the same advice: “Christ
cannot save thy soul, for he is just” (2.1.88). But this advice comes from
Evil. Both the Evil Angel and Lucifer are interested in bringing Faustus into
damnation; if it really were too late, they would be less concerned with
Faustus’ prayers.
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Faustus is damned because he does not understand the nature of
Christian redemption, a central theme of the play. If Faustus repents, and
asks forgiveness, then he can still be saved; the Good Angel promises as
much. The Good Angel may be interpreted as a dramatic representation of
Faustus’ better judgment, or it may be a literal character, Faustus’ “guardian
angel”. Many Christian theologians, since the time of the first Doctors of the
Catholic Church, had held the opinion that each human on earth had a
guardian angel as protector and possible guide. Either way, the advice of the
Good Angel is sound. Given the distress of the devils, and their concern
about keeping Faustus damned, an observant audience sees that there is no
real ambiguity about whether or not repentance would be too late; only
Faustus is unsure.
Faustus, though a great scholar, continues to prize knowledge without
acquiring wisdom. He distracts himself with questions about the heavens,
but does not understand the nature of God’s heaven. He understands the
forms of the heavens, but not the force behind them. Because he is human,
and flawed, he fails to understand the divine mystery of God’s forgiving
nature. He believes himself damned, and so he finally gives in to the devil’s
pageantry of sin, and tries to enjoy being damned. Although scholars
generally hold that Marlowe did not write the segment where the Seven
Deadly Sins (Pride, Covetousness, Envy, Wrath, Gluttony, Sloth, and
Lechery), the spirit at the end of the scene is basically the same. Faustus
agrees to “think on the devil,” and throw himself into being hell bound.
Scene 2.2. is another bit of comic relief. It includes bawdy jokes, good-
natured humour, and content wholly free from the serious subject matter
surrounding it. Some argue that the comic relief scenes, taken together,
constitute a counterpoint to the main story of the play. According to this
view, the main play is an exercise, Marlowe enjoying his craft, and he
undercuts the sincerity of the themes with a running series of scenes
mocking the whole idea of demon summoning. The comic scenes and their
import would have served as an inside joke, maybe even a private one only
enjoyed by Marlowe himself. However, this interpretation might be making
too much of a few short moments of comic relief. This interpretive reading
of the comic scenes is strongly coloured by Marlowe’s biography; but trying
to read a play by what is believed about the author is always a difficult and
uncertain method. The opinion of this study guide scribbler is that there is no
conflict between Marlowe the rebellious atheist (if the hearsay about him
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was true) and the story of Doctor Faustus. For that reading, see the analysis
for Act Four, scenes 5-7.
PROLOGUE AND ACT THREE
SUMMARY
Scene 3.1. The Chorus describes how Faustus went to the top of Mount
Olympus, and in a chariot drawn by dragons, studied the stars and the
celestial structure. He then rode a dragon’s back to study cosmography, the
shapes of coasts and kingdoms, and is now flying to Rome, where the feast
honouring St. Peter is about to be celebrated.
Scene 3.2. Mephistopheles and Faustus arrive in Rome, Faustus
describing the places he’s been. They wait in the Pope’s own private
chamber for him, as Mephistopheles describes Rome’s wonders. When
Faustus wants to see them, Mephistopheles restrains him, so that they can
torment the Pope and his subordinates.
The Pope enters with cardinals, Bishops, and Raymond, King of
Hungary, and Bruno, a man in chains. Bruno is a man whom the Emperor of
Germany tried to make Pope, and he is now vanquished. The Pope makes
Bruno bow as his foot stool and abuses him verbally. The Pope sends
cardinals to proclaim the statutes naming Bruno's fate. Faustus, who watches
with Mephistopheles, unseen, orders Mephistopheles to follow the cardinals
to the consistory and magically put them to sleep. He plans to restore
Bruno’s liberty and return him to Germany. The Pope informs Bruno that the
Emperor and he are to be excommunicated, in order that the Pontiff’s
supremacy might be made clear.
Faustus and Mephistopheles re-enter, magically disguised as the
cardinals who are now sleeping, under Mephistopheles’ spell. They declare
the sentence of the Synod (council of Bishops). They take Bruno away,
supposedly to be burned at the stake. The Pope blesses them, which
Mephistopheles loves (“So, so, was never devil blessed thus before”
[3.3.197]), and they take Burno away.
Scene 3.3. Faustus and Mephistopheles look forward to the confusion
when the cardinals awake and return to the Pope. They make themselves
invisible, and the antics continue.
All goes according to plan. The unfortunate cardinals return, and
confusion breaks out when it becomes clear that they don’t know where
Bruno is. As the Pope is sitting for his meal, Faustus speaks blasphemies (an
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invisible man talking) and snatches the Pope’s food and wine. A Bishop
suggests that the villain might be a ghost come from Purgatory. Faustus
starts to hit the Pope, who exits with his train. Friars return, with bell, book,
and candle to perform rites that will rid the room of the evil presence.
Faustus and Mephistopheles beat up all the friars, throw fireworks, and
leave.
The Chorus returns to tell us that Faustus returns home, where his vast
knowledge of astronomy and his abilities earn him wide renown. He
becomes a favourite of Emperor Carolus the Fifth (Charles V, 1515-56), and
his feats in that court we will presently see.
Scene 3.4. Robin the Clown, here working as an ostler (a person who
takes care of horses) promises his friend Rafe that with his magic book, he
can perform pleasure-giving feats. They steal a silver cup from a Vintner;
when the Vintner arrives Robin summons Mephistopheles to deal with him.
The devil puts squibs (sizzling fireworks) in the backs of Robin and Rafe,
and they run around like loons. Rafe returns the cup to the Vintner, who
seems unable to see Mephistopheles.
Mephistopheles is furious at having been summoned all the way from
Constantinople to perform tricks, and he tells Robin and Rafe that he will
turn one into an ape and the other into a dog. He leaves. Robin and Rafe, as
yet untransformed, seem thrilled at the idea of getting to be animals.
ANALYSIS
The choice of Mount Olympus as a launch pad (3.1) is symbolic. Mount
Olympus is the abode of the gods in Greek myth, and Faustus reaching its
summit suggests the nobility and glory due to man in the Greek worldview.
From there, Faustus ascends into the heavens themselves, reaching beyond
the ”Primum Mobile,” beyond the planets. Renaissance astronomy
conceived of the heavens as a series of concentric spheres, centre ed on the
earth. The Primum Mobile was the first sphere to move, the mover of all the
others. In the physical world, Faustus has found a limit to human
knowledge: the primary source, the prime mover, of the heavens. His mind,
trained in traditions that have their roots in Greek method and learning,
methods that place man and his mind at the centre of the universe, has
reached new heights. Taking off from Mount Olympus is as close to divine
(in one sense of divine) as a human can get.
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But the descent comes rather quickly. Faustus moves from studying
astronomy to cosmography (study of the earth) almost immediately,
foreshadowing his descent.
The scene in Rome shows Faustus at his worst. He does nothing here
but play cheap pranks, wasting time in a way that benefits humanity in no
way. The scene allows Faustus to be sacrilegious without offending his
Protestant audience, because the object of scorn here is the pope. The
depiction of the pope would have been gratifying to the Protestant audience:
he comes off as cruel, power-hungry, and as far from a holy man as a man
can be.
Also, there are jabs here at Catholic belief. When one of the cardinals
suggests that the invisible attacker might be a spirit come up from purgatory,
his incorrect guess brings particular pleasure to Protestant viewers. Ghosts
existed in Catholic teaching, and were thought to be spirits of purgatory (a
place where sinners are punished, but not eternally). Protestants rejected
such teaching, and held that ghosts were not the souls of people they claimed
to represent, but devils in disguise.
Likewise, when the friars return with “bell, book, and candle,”
Mephistopheles’ reaction is a kind of mock-concern: “Now Faustus, what
will you do now? / For I can tell you, you’ll be cursed with bell, book and
candle” (3.3.91-2). Protestants flattered themselves with the belief that
Catholics were superstitious. A more grounded charge was that Catholics
were too idolatrous of priestly authority. Note that the incantations of the
friars (a fairly inaccurate parody of an exorcism) do nothing. Faustus also
laughs at the friars: “Bell, book and candle, candle, book and bell, / Forward
and backward, to curse Faustus to hell” (3.3.93-4). Here is another jab at
Catholic authority; in 3.1, the Pope says to Bruno, with relish, that he will
excommunicate Bruno and the Emperor for their defiance.
Excommunication was exclusion from the community of the believers; to
Catholics, it meant a sure sentence to hell. But as the friars enter, cursing
Faustus, it becomes clear that they have no power over him. Faustus will be
going to hell, but not because of a priest's authority. Man is damned by his
own action, and not by the authority of a priest. From the Protestant point of
view, the friars perform a superstitious ritual cursing two beings who are
already cursed.
Once again, in 3.4 we have a scene of sheer foolery. Robin and Rafe
seek magic for no greater use than drunkenness and sexual pleasure.
Mephistopheles does not seem particularly interested in getting Robin and
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Rafe to sell their souls, and he also is furious at having been called. His
irritation undercuts his earlier statement that on the sound of magic
incantations, he comes not because magic compels him, but because he is
eager to capture any man’s soul (1.3). The likeliest explanation is that this
comic scene is outside the more serious scope of the main story, and is
therefore outside the main story’s rules.
But Robin is at least honest about his motivations. While Faustus once
claimed he would use magic to change the world, in 3.2-3 he used it for
rather cheap tricks. The nobility of initial intention apparently lacks real
integrity. At the end of 3.3, the Chorus has told us that Faustus’ knowledge
has made him a bit of celebrity. Faustus has used his magic, not to benefit
mankind, but to do a bit of social climbing.
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PROLOGUE AND ACT FOUR, SCENES 1-4
SUMMARY
Scene 4.1. Martino and Frederick, two nobles at the court of the
German Emperor, converse about recent events. Bruno, the Emperor's
choice for pope, is back, having ridden home on a demon’s back. They are
excited about the imminent performance of Faustus the conjuror for the
pleasure of the court. They try to rouse their sleeping lush of a friend,
Benvolio, to come see the show, but he refuses to come. He’ll watch from
the window.
Scene 4.2. Charles, the German Emperor; Bruno, Saxony, Faustus,
Mephistopheles, Frederick, Martino, and Attendants are in the court.
Benvolio’s at the window. The Emperor welcomes Faustus, thanking him
for delivering Bruno, and Faustus fawns on the Emperor, promising
wonders. Benvolio voices his scepticism, saying that if Faustus can conjure
spirits, Benvolio is just as likely to become a stag, like the mythical
character Acteon. Faustus conjures Alexander the Great, the Persian
Emperor Darius, and Alexander’s paramour, delighting the Emperor, who
has to be restrained by Faustus from embracing Alexander. Faustus also
makes antlers grow on the head of Benvolio. He threatens to summon
hunting dogs (paralleling the death of Acteon), but Benvolio appeals to the
Emperor for help, and the Emperor asks Faustus to restore Benvolio’s
human shape. Benvolio plots revenge. The Emperor commends Faustus and
promises him high office.
Scene 4.3. Enter Benvolio, Martino, Frederick, and Soldiers. Martino
tries to stop Benvolio from making a move against Faustus. Benvolio won’t
be persuaded, and his friends resolve to stand with him. Frederick leaves to
place the soldiers for ambush, and returns to warn them that Faustus is
coming. The three friends attack, and Benvolio cuts off Faustus’ head. They
plan to desecrate the head, and put horns on it . . . but Faustus’ body rises.
Because he made his deal with the devil and was promised twenty-four more
years of life, he cannot be killed. He summons his devils, at first
commanding them to fly with them up to heaven before dragging them down
to hell. Then he changes his mind, because he wants men to see what
happens to his enemies. He tells the devils to drag the three friends through
different parts of the wilderness. The devils drag off the trio. The ambush
soldiers arrive, but Faustus defeats them by commanding the trees and
summoning an army of devils.
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Scene 4.4. Benvolio, Martino, and Frederick find each other in the
woods. They all have horns on their heads. They decide that attacking
Faustus is futile, and so they retreat to Benvolio’s castle, to live hidden from
the world until the horns go away; if the horns remain, they’ll stay at the
castle forever.
ANALYSIS
Faustus descends further. His warning to the Emperor reveals that he is
not presenting the real Alexander the Great, but merely an illusion: “. . .
when my spirits present the royal shapes / Of Alexander and his paramour . .
.” (4.2.45-6, italics mine). While he spoke in Act One of using magic to be a
great man, and reigning as sole king, here he’s content to put on a light
show.
The delighted reaction of the Emperor to this suggests a cynicism about
men of the world. No one at court is horrified by Faustus’ connections to the
devil. Even Benvolio's opposition to him is motivated by personal insult
rather than principles. The Emperor tries to embrace Alexander the Great,
even though he has just been told (between the lines) that what he sees is
mere illusion. All are impressed by Faustus’ power, and fail to see what a
misguided and unprincipled creature he is. Having given the Catholic
Church a send-up, Marlowe is critiquing the men of the world. And it is
precisely the men of the world that Faustus is now hoping to impress. He has
no real power, and his excessive punishment of Benvolio and his cohorts
shows that.
Glorying over the Pope, even if it took the form of cheap tricks, at least
took on an upscale target. In 4.2-4.4 he takes gratuitous pleasure in beating
down a trio of run-of-the-mill courtiers. Marlowe makes the friends
sympathetic. Frederick and Martino agree to stand with Benvolio, rather
than let their friend stand alone (4.3.14). And the sight of the three friends,
beaten and covered with dirt, and now comically deformed, can be played
for laughs, for pathos, or for both.
Horns to Marlowe's audience would have been a particular mark of comic
shame, as a man whose wife cheated on him was called a cuckold, and
cuckolds were represented in art as having horns. Incidentally, there was a
long tradition in literature of mistrusting scholars. In many bawdy tales, a
man became a cuckold by taking on a poor young scholar as a boarder. The
youthful and vigorous scholar would proceed to seduce the man’s wife.
Hence Benvolio’s reaction to the magical horns he grows, which can be
taken in two ways: “blood [an oath, short for Christ’s blood’], and scholars
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be such cuckold-makers to clap horns of honest men’s heads o’ this order,
I’ll ne’er trust smooth faces and small ruffs more” (4.2.115-118). The double
entendre refers back to a long literary tradition, and would have given
pleasure to the audience.
But the horns incident shows that Faustus’ desperate situation. When
first he enchants Benvolio, it is because Benvolio says that if Faustus can
conjure spirits, Benvolio will turn into a stag, like Acteon (4.2.53). Acteon is
a character from Greek myth, which would have been known to Marlowe via
the great Roman poet Ovid. Acteon the hunter offends the goddess Diana.
She transforms him into a stag, and he is torn to pieces by his own hounds.
Faustus manages to prevent Benvolio and company from tearing him to
pieces, seeing clearly that such was their intent (4.3.93). But Faustus will be
torn to pieces later, due to supernatural power, as Acteon was. The parallels
are developed in 4.2, when Benvolio, panicking, likens Faustus’ devils to his
dogs (4.2.102-3). As Acteon was murdered by his own dogs, Faustus will be
murdered by his own devils. Faustus’ gruesome end will be at the hands of
the very creatures he now commands.
PROLOGUE AND ACT FOUR, SCENES 5-7
SUMMARY
Scene 4.5. Faustus, reflecting to Mephistopheles that his years are
nearly elapsed, decides to return to Wittenburg. A Horse-courser arrives,
trying to buy Faustus' horse. Faustus agrees to the offer, and warns the man
not to take the horse into water. The man asks Faustus if he would do the
horse's urinalysis if the horse became ill, and Faustus tells the man to go.
Faustus reflects on his quickly disappearing time, and falls asleep. The
Horse-courser return, wet, because he rode his horse into water and it turned
into straw. Mephistopheles tells the man not to bother Faustus, but the man
tugs at Faustus’ leg, which comes off. Faustus screams, as if in pain, and
Mephistopheles threatens to take the man to the constable. The boy promises
he’ll pay forty dollars more, if they let him go, and Mephistopheles tells him
to go away. After the man is gone, Faustus seems to be fine. He has his leg
again, and seems to have been playing a few tricks to swindle the boy out of
money.
Wagner enters, to tell Faustus that the Duke of Vanholt desires Faustus’
company. Faustus decides that he wouldn’t mind serving the Duke, and off
they go.
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Scene 4.6. Enter Clown, Dick, Horse-courser, and a Carter. The Hostess
enters. The Clown (Robin) voices to Dick his worry that the Hostess will
remember that he owes money. She does remember, but doesn’t seem to
mind, and goes to fetch them so beer.
They talk about Faustus. The Carter complains that Faustus cheated
him. When Faustus met the Carter while the latter was carting hay to
Wittenburg, the former paid a pittance for as much hay as he could eat.
Faustus ate all the Carter’s hay. The Horse-courser tells them about how he
was swindled, including a modified ending where he bravely went to his
house and ripped his leg off. They think Faustus is legless, and so they
decide to drink some more before going to find the good doctor.
Scene 4.7. Enter the Duke of Vanholt, his Duchess, Faustus, and
Mephistopheles. The Duke thanks Faustus for his magic, which conjured the
sight of a castle in the air. When Faustus asks the Duchess to request what
she will, she asks for ripe grapes, although it be January. Faustus sends
Mephistopheles to fetch them. The Duke wonders, and Faustus gives a
lecture on how the seasons are reversed in the southern hemisphere. Robin,
Dick the Horse-courser, and the Carter bang on the gates. They apparently
want Faustus, and he tells the Duke to let them in.
They enter, all having various scores to settle with Faustus. Faustus toys
with them a bit (since they think he’s missing a leg). The Hostess enters,
with drink, apparently hoping to get paid. Faustus uses magic to strike the
Clown characters speechless, one at a time. They exit. The Hostess asks
who'll pay, and Faustus strikes her speechless too. She goes. The Duke and
his Lady are delighted.
ANALYSIS
Just when you think Faustus can’t go any lower, lower he goes. The
play has been criticized as a bad jumble of clownish scenes, and the B text in
particular certainly has plenty of moments of uninspiring silliness. But
Marlowe is making an incisive critique of power and wish fulfilment.
Faustus’ opponents become more pathetic as the play progresses. Papal
power, even when wielded by an ass, presents some kind of target. Knights
at a court, when they threaten one’s life, might seem like sport. But Faustus
now has degenerated to swindling peasants out of money. These are the uses
to which he puts his vast power.
Once Faustus has omnipotence, but a definite end to it, he has no
incentive to grow as a human being, and he seems too lazy to look beyond
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his lifetime. Leaving behind an empire, or an improved world, just don’t
hold any interest for him, just as being a doctor, in his pre-Faustian bargain
days held no interest for him. Magnified powers haven’t magnified Faustus’
capacity for care, or his love of humanity.
Faustus only reflects on his own diminishing time: “What are thou,
Faustus, but a man condemned to die?” (4.5.41). Knowledge of a final end
paralyses him, and Faustus seems what modern people would call depressed.
But his rhetorical question shows how poor his understanding is of the
Christian God, and God’s plan for mankind. He is more than a man
condemned to die. He is a child of God, ransomed by Christ’s blood, and
invited to take part in eternal life.
Scholar RM Dawkins argues that Faustus is a “Renaissance man who
had to pay the medieval price for being one.” But the play itself would
suggest that Faustus is not a true Renaissance man. He is someone incapable
of living up to the standards of the medieval era, and he is equally incapable
of living up the Greek-influenced standards of the Renaissance. He rejects
the submissive morality of Christianity, cutting himself off from goodness,
but he cannot live up to Renaissance greatness. Faustus fails to live up the
standards of a tragic hero. He has amathia aplenty, a necessary ingredient in
the constitution of a tragic hero. Amathia is a Greek word, meaning a man's
failure to recognize his own nature. But Faustus lacks nobleness, and from
the start his interest in selling his soul seems to come from boredom and
restlessness. In Act One, he makes long-winded boasts about the uses to
which he’ll put his power. What we learn subsequently is that Faustus’
amathia is a bit of a letdown. He fails to recognize that he’s a lazy slob. He
is all talk, and no action.
In his finest moments, Faustus speaks to the desire for freedom in us.
He gives voice to the Greek desire to defy Necessity, and live as master of
one’s own fate, even for a short time, even if it means disaster. Like
Prometheus, he accepts eternal torture as the ransom for a prized goal. But
Prometheus sacrifices himself for the benefit of the human race. While
Faustus initially pretends to have an interest in greatness, his actions
undercut the fine speeches, and he spends his twenty-four years as a
lascivious and pathetic loser.
The diminishment of Faustus’ targets (pope to knights to peasants) also
undercuts Faustus’ status as an anti-hero. Some scholars label him as an anti-
hero, but the pre-occupation of the play with silly pranks suggests otherwise.
Even if Faustus rejects both Christian goodness and Renaissance/Greek
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excellence, to qualify as an anti-hero he still needs to make a good hell
raiser. Tamburlaine, the Asian conqueror in the Marlowe play of the same
name, is such an anti-hero. Tamburlaine’s sacrilege and cruelty contribute
perversely to his charisma. But Faustus, by wasting his time on unworthy
opponents, undercuts the sympathy of a passionate audience. Even the Satan
of the ultra-religious Milton is a more sympathetic character.
If Marlowe was in fact a fearless rebel and atheist, this temperament
does not bar him from writing a cautionary tale for would-be rebels. Doctor
Faustus suggests this: if you’re going to reject authority and society’s moral
norms, be sure that you’re man enough to replace those things with
something better, or at least something striking. To rebel is not enough. To
question authority is insufficient, if you can't forge a meaningful existence
when free of authority.
The theme of seeking knowledge without gaining wisdom lurks behind
Faustus’ failings. Faustus’ knowledge at the start of the play not only
excludes the wisdom of religious tradition, but it has failed to deepen his
understanding of himself. When he makes his fateful decision in Act One, he
does not realize that he'll be spending his years of omnipotence swindling
peasants.
PROLOGUE AND ACT FIVE, SCENE 1
SUMMARY
Scene 5.1. Wagner tells the audience that he thinks Faustus prepares for
death. He has made his will, leaving all to Wagner. But even as death
approaches, Faustus spends his days feasting and drinking with the other
students.
Wagner exits, and Faustus, Mephistopheles, and three Scholars enter. At
their request, he conjures the sight of Helen of Troy. Ravished, the Scholars
leave, thanking Faustus. An Old Man enters, warning Faustus to repent,
saying there is still time. Faustus seems shaken and moved, knowing that his
hour approaches quickly. He seems to think that he is doomed.
Mephistopheles gives him a dagger. Faustus tells the man that his words
have brought comfort, and asks him to leave, so that Faustus can
contemplate his sins.
Faustus seems ready to repent, but Mephistopheles threatens him with
physical violence. Faustus begs pardon, and orders Mephistopheles to go
torment the old man. Mephistopheles tells Faustus that he cannot touch the
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Old Man's soul, but he can harm the Old Man's body. Faustus asks
Mephistopheles to bring Helen of Troy to him, to be his love, and
Mephistopheles readily agrees.
The devil brings forth the shape of Helen, and leaves. Faustus gives the
most famous speech of the play:
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul: see where it flies.
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell for heaven is in those lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena. (5.1.97-103)
The Old Man re-enters, watching, as Faustus speaks of how he’ll relive
the myths of Greece, with Helen as his love and himself playing Paris of
Troy. He leaves with her.
The Old Man watches, and knows Faustus is lost. The devils eznter, to
torture him, but he is completely unshaken. They cannot harm what matters,
and he faces them without fear.
ANALYSIS
Marlowe sets up an evil parallel of the Christian trinity in the three
devils (Lucifer, Mephistopheles, and Beelzebub). The devils of hell make an
occasion out of winning the single soul of Faustus. Just as Christ is the Good
Shepherd, who goes in search of one lost sheep to save it, the devils take
great pains even to damn just one soul.
The conjuration of Helen of Troy, in addition to providing occasion for
some of the play’s finest lines, also resonates strongly with the central
themes of the play. The scholars’ delight reflects Faustus’ old infatuation
with the beauty of Greek thinking and literature.
The Old Man offers Faustus yet another chance to repent, and makes
clear that Faustus can still be saved. But Faustus chooses instead to take a
lover-spirit in the shape of Helen of Troy. His speech is beautiful, but as
usual Faustus is all talk. He seems unable, or unwilling, to realize that his
poetic praise is only a damned man’s fantasy. Helen of Troy is not there:
Faustus makes love to a dream.
Even within his fantasies, Faustus reveals his failure. Though he
fantasizes about being Paris, the Trojan prince who causes the war by
abducting Helen, he chooses not to remember that Paris is traditionally
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depicted as a coward and moral failure. Faustus speaks of battling for Helen:
“And I will combat with weak Menelaus, / And wear thy colours on my
plumed crest. / Yes, I will wound Achilles in the heel, / And then return to
Helen for a kiss” (5.1.106-7). The language is beautiful, but Faustus has
altered his source story. Paris did indeed fight Menelaus, but the Greek king
was far from “weak”. Only the intervention of the gods saved Paris, and by
allowing himself to be saved, Paris doomed his city and his people to
destruction. Faustus imagines himself as a Greek hero, with a touch of the
chivalric lore. His talk of wearing Helen’s colours on his crest was a
knightly tradition. But shooting Achilles in the heel was not a knightly act. It
was an example of weak man beating a far better one, by exploiting a unique
weakness. This speech shows Faustus’ problem. He seems to know the
Greek stories, and loves their beauty, but he doesn’t understand them.
Though he rejected the Christian God in part because he thought to aspire to
Greek greatness, his understanding of the Greek worldview is selective and
shallow.
He loses his last chance at redemption, and he also wastes his remaining
time on lechery. He also orders his devils to attack an old man who only
tried to help him. But the Old Man’s spirit is untouchable, and the wounds to
his flesh are insignificant. Faustus, on the other hand, caves quickly when
Mephistopheles threatens him with physical violence. By prizing flesh over
spirit, Faustus betrays both Greek and Christian values. He escapes physical
harm for now, but Faustus, and not the Old Man, is the one who’ll know true
suffering.
PROLOGUE AND ACT FIVE, SCENE 2 AND EPILOGUE
SUMMARY
Scene 5.2. Thunder. Enter Lucifer, Beelzebub, and Mephistopheles.
Tonight is the night when Faustus will give up his soul, and the unholy three
seem to be looking forward to it.
Faustus and Wagner enter. Faustus asks Wagner how he likes the will,
which (as we learned in 5.1) leaves all to Wagner, and Wagner expresses
gratitude.
The three scholars enter. They notice that Faustus looks ill. When they
suggest bringing a doctor, Faustus tells them he is damned forever. Tonight
he is to lose his soul. The scholars advise him to repent, but Faustus thinks
it’s too late. He regrets having ever seen a book. The scholars and Wagner
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do not sense the presence of the devils. Faustus tells them that he cannot
even raise his arms up to God, for the devils push his arms down.
The First Scholar asks why Faustus did not speak of this before, so that
they might pray for him, and he answers that the devils threatened him with
bodily harm. Faustus tells them to leave him, to escape harm when the devils
come. The Third Scholar considers staying with him, but his colleagues
convince him not to invite danger. They go to the next room to pray for
Faustus. The Scholars exit.
Mephistopheles taunts Faustus. Faustus blames Mephistopheles for his
damnation, and the devil proudly takes credit for it. Mephistopheles exits,
leaving with the line, “Fools that will laugh on earth, must weep in hell”
(5.2.106).
The Good and Evil Angels arrive. The Good Angel laments that Faustus
has now lost the eternal joys of heaven. Now, it is too late: “And now, poor
soul, must thy good angel leave thee: / The jaws of hell are open to receive
thee” (5.2.124-5). The Good Angel exits.
The gates of Hell open. The Evil Angel taunts Faustus, naming the
horrible tortures seen there. Faustus is terrified by the sight, but the Evil
Angel reminds him gleefully that soon he will feel, rather than just see. The
Evil Angel exits.
The Clock strikes eleven. Faustus begins his final monologue. He pleads
beautifully, and futilely, for time to stop its forward rush. He realizes time
cannot stop, and delivers these memorable lines: “Oh, I’ll leap up to my
God: who pulls me down? / See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the
firmament. / One drop would save my soul, half a drop. Ah, my Christ!”
(5.2.156-8). He has a vision of an angry God. He pleads with different
aspects of nature to help him, but they can’t.
The clock strikes for half past the hour. He pleads that God will shorten
his time in hell to a thousand, or even a hundred thousand years. But he
knows that hell is eternal. He wishes that Pythagoras’ theory of
transmigration of souls (reincarnation) were true. He wishes that he could be
an animal, whose souls are not immortal. He curses his parents, then curses
himself, and finally curses Lucifer. The clock strikes midnight. With thunder
and lightning scarring the skies, he cries aloud for his soul to dissolve into
the air, or drops of water, so that the devils cannot find it. The devils enter.
As Faustus begs God and the devil for mercy, the devils drag him away.
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Scene 5.3. Enter the three Scholars. They’ve been much disturbed by all
of the terrible noise they heard between midnight and one. They find
Faustus’ body, torn to pieces.
EPILOGUE
The Chorus emphasizes that Faustus is gone, his once-great potential
wasted. The Chorus warns the audience to remember his fall, and the lessons
it offers.
ANALYSIS
Faustus lacks the high dignity of a great tragic hero, but he seems
nevertheless to be well liked by his fellow men. Wagner seems concerned
about his master, and the three scholars like Faustus. The cynical audience
member might argue that the three scholars only like Faustus because he
conjures great wonders for them, and that Wagner likes Faustus because the
damned scholar is leaving him all his wealth. But this cynical view does not
square with what we actually see on stage. Wagner’s opinion of his master
may have improved after he was named Faustus’ heir, but he seems
genuinely concerned for Faustus. He certainly doesn’t seem to be looking
forward to Faustus’ death. And the Scholars all seem to be upstanding men,
the Third Scholar going so far as offering to stay with Faustus when the
devils come.
The clock striking eleven might suggest the parable told by Jesus in
chapter 20 of the Gospel of Matthew. But the point of Christ’s parable is that
those who accept him in the eleventh hour can still be saved, while Faustus
at this point seems to be irrevocably damned. Before the clock strikes
eleven, Faustus’ Good Angel abandons him. What is Marlowe suggesting?
Marlowe possibly may not have the Gospel of Matthew in mind. The
chiming clock may only be there to heighten suspense by giving Faustus an
agonized last hour before a dramatic midnight death. But another possibility
is that Marlowe is playing loosely with the Christian framework, in order to
make his own point. If Marlowe is indeed using Doctor Faustus to suggest
that rejecting traditional systems of morality has to be followed by replacing
those systems with something valid, then repentance right before the end
would most definitely be meaningless. Faustus' potential is squandered.
But the play draws from the great richness of the Christian worldview.
Faustus’ beautiful lines about Christ’s blood streaming in the firmament
show how well Marlowe can use, and transform, Christian imagery. The
whole final monologue is quite rich, and would make an excellent choice for
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a close reading paper. Faustus is doing more than making a powerful last
lament before his death and damnation. Within 57 lines, the speech leaps
from concept to concept, spanning vast centuries and idea systems that are
worlds apart. Though a close reading seems beyond the scope of this study
guide, attention should be paid to the different sections of the monologue.
Faustus makes an odd and distinctive appeal to the forces of nature (5.2.163-
174); he alludes to various theories and conceptions of the soul (5.2.177-
189); even when despairing, toward the monologue’s end, he uses striking
imagery.
Much of Faustus’ despair comes from the fact that he has no one but
himself to blame. He curses his parents for giving birth to him, but quickly
realizes where the real fault lies: “Cursed be the parents that engendered me!
/ No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer / That hath deprived thee of the
joys of heaven” (5.2.190-192). Faustus knows that he at least shares the
responsibility for his own damnation, even if he partly implies that the devil
made him do it. His last moments show a pathetic, terrified man.
The Chorus emphasizes the lost potential represented by Faustus’
failure. He is the cut “branch that might have grown full straight” (5.3.20).
They close with the conventional admonition to obey the commands of
heaven.
Doctor Faustus can be read convincingly as a Christian text, with an
authentic and literal Christian core. Reading the play as an atheistic or ironic
work is much harder to justify, and seems unduly coloured by Marlowe’s
vague and ambiguous biography. But Doctor Faustus may be something else
entirely: a cautionary tale, certainly, but one that uses the Christian
framework, respectfully and admiringly, for issues concerning Marlowe.
The play is very difficult to perform now, because contemporary
audiences are separated from the complex worlds Marlow drew upon to
create his play. Religion, obviously, was a much stronger part of the
audience’s life during Marlowe’s time, and the concerns and new conflicts
of the Renaissance were once current cultural waters rather than movements
and concepts to be studied in class. But Doctor Faustus is invaluable as a
text because it helps the reader to understand the times in which Marlowe
lived and wrote. The play also has many fine speeches, and Marlowe’s work
helps us to better appreciate Shakespeare.
For those who make the effort to understand his plays within the context
in which they were produced, Marlowe needs no apology. Marlowe’s
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supposed recklessness is famous, but works like Doctor Faustus and
Tamburlaine show a deep moral seriousness, and a great mind at work.
These qualities transcend the texts’ value as cultural documents, and will
continue to bring pleasure to those readers who make the effort to appreciate
Marlowe on his own terms.
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MOST EXPECTED QUESTIONS
Q: DISCUSS DR. FAUSTUS AS TRAGEDY?
Q: GIVE A DETAILED DISCUSSION ON THE TRAGIC FATE OF
MARLOWE'S TRAGIC HERO.
Ans:
In the world of theatre, there are many plays in which the central figure
is one who harnesses extreme personality traits above all others. For
example, Sophocles’ Oedipus is a fatherly king with great ambition and
strength; and Shakespeare’s Macbeth is evilly ambitious, while Romeo and
Juliet are driven solely by their love for one another. These traits give these
characters unbelievable success ... for a time. In these stories, these attributes
bring about each character’s downfall and death, qualifying each as a tragic
hero, one whose strength leads to weakness. Christopher Marlowe’s Dr.
Faustus is a definite member of this class of characters, an arrogant yet
impressively ambitious scholar who desires grandiose knowledge without
the help and guidance from the world’s major religion, Christianity. In Dr.
Faustus, Marlowe uses tragic irony concerning Faustus’ misunderstanding
and rejection of God to illustrate the downfall of this tragic hero.
Faustus’ character is established with his first soliloquy in the very first
scene. Desiring to acquire knowledge, he distrusts logic, medicine, and law,
claiming that he “hast attained [the] end[s]” and mastered these areas. When
he considers religion, “divinity,” he quotes Romans, which says, “The
reward of sin is death,” and continues with, saying that everyone sins and
therefore there is “no truth in us”. From this, Faustus concludes that there is
no reason in believing in a seemingly hopeless faith where the only outcome
is death, and so with a haughty goodbye he says, “What doctrine call you
this? ... Divinity, adieu!”.
Faustus is entirely too quick to form conclusions. If he wants
knowledge, the last action he should take is not learning all about a possible
flaw. Modern journalist Lee Strobel says in his faith-strengthening book The
Case for Faith about difficult questions people pose about the Bible,
“[Because someone isn’t] able to answer them [doesn’t] mean there [aren’t]
answers”. The astounding irony of this scene is Faustus’ failure to read the
next verse after “If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just and will
forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness”. Faustus’
arrogance and conceit will not let him become fully knowledgeable to see
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hope, and therefore he has personally lost all hopes for his dreams by
painting Christianity in a negative light.
Faustus further condemns himself by looking to magic in order to be a
“demi-god,” but even more so by believing a pact with the highest devil,
Lucifer, will give him his dreams. He gives a message to Mephistopheles, a
devil, that says:
He surrenders up to [Lucifer] his soul, So he will spare him four and
twenty years, Letting him live in all voluptuousness,. To give [him]
whatever [he] shall ask.
In his pursuit of knowledge, now believing his soul-selling has proven
successful, Faustus asks Mephistopheles questions about the planet, and the
heavens, which are very readily answered. However, when Faustus asks,
“[T]ell me who made the world,” Mephistopheles replies, "I will not". Now
that Faustus believes he has been granted all knowledge, the irony exists in
his inability to discover the answers to the ultimate questions of how the
universe came to be, and more important, who made the universe. If he
knew this, his knowing it would lead him directly back to God the Creator,
and therefore to all knowledge whatsoever. But Faustus is now detached
from God, unable to acquire the knowledge he desires.
By the end of the play, Faustus is so far detached from God that he
literally has no chance of salvation. Faustus, of course, doesn’t believe this.
Although he recognizes his impending end (“What art thou, Faustus, but a
man / condemned to die?”), he assumes he can have salvation at the last
second, for “Christ did call the thief upon the cross,” alluding to Christ’s
forgiving of a thief the day of Christ’s (and the thief's) crucifixion (271, lines
36, 40). But as the sky runs with Christ's blood at Faustus’ end, and as he
cries out,
O, I'll leap up to my God...
See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul, half a drop! Ah, my Christ!
It becomes apparent that Faustus is doomed, unworthy of God’s free
grace as he is taken to Hell. His tragic end reiterates his misunderstanding of
Christianity by taking out of context the passages from Romans and 1 John.
If Faustus really were knowledgeable, he would have known Jesus’
statement:
I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will
acknowledge him before the angels of God. But he who disowns me
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before men will be disowned before the angels of God. And everyone
who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but
anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.
(Luke 12: 8-10)
Faustus lived for twenty-four years completely devoted to Lucifer, the
chief opposition to God, never choosing right, thus signing his eternal death
warrant.
Marlowe details the life of someone who misses completely the idea of
God. The Christian faith does not teach a hopeless future that was given to
Faustus through his ambition and stubborn delusion of grandeur. Instead,
there is hope and was for Faustus. The Good Angel appears to Faustus to tell
him to return to God, because “if [Faustus] hadst given an ear to [him], /
Innumerable joys [would have] followed [him]”. Also, the Old Man who
comes to Faustus near his end urges him to repent, telling him to “call for
mercy and avoid despair”. God’s power is implied to be frightfully stronger
than that which Lucifer gives, as when Faustus is in Rome with the devil
Mephistopheles, who says even he fears the friars’ chants from God. Faustus
continually contemplates his decision to sell his soul, whether it was right or
if he has condemned himself, however, he ultimately chooses to keep his
satanic pact. Marlowe emphasizes through his tragic hero that no matter how
condemned and sinful one feels, there is always a chance for salvation if one
is willing to see it.
Q: DR. FAUSTUS IS A TRAGIC HISTORY OF A MAN OF
LEARNING, WHO IS UNDONE BY HIS PRIDE. DO YOU
AGREE?
Ans:
We first notice Faustus at the peak of his worldly career. He is already
master of all the existing knowledge and skills. He is a famous physician,
honoured by whole cities and held in reverence by his students. Why, then
did he become restless? Why was he unwilling to remain “but Faustus, and a
man”? Why did he feel an urge to command “all things that move between
the quiet poles”? It is because a tragic hero feels the compulsion to realize
himself fully in the face of all the odds, and that the test of his heroism is the
degree of the risk he is willing to take. In this sense, the tragedy of Faustus is
the tragedy of Adam. To Adam, paradise was not enough. He sought
knowledge, and this was of forward step in the direction of self realization.
To the orthodox people, Adam’s action is surely sinful, just as Faustus’s
action is wholly devilish in the eyes of the Chorus who opens and closes the
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play. Faustus’s opening soliloquy also represents his action as sinful
because, after he has dismissed all studies but necromancy (which he thinks
to be the key to his self realization), the Good Angel tells him to put aside
the damned book of magic, while the Evil Angel urges him to go forward in
that famous art.
Marlowe sees the whole case not only as Good or Evil would see it but
as it would be seen by a man of flesh and blood, the man who takes the risk
and is prepared to face the consequences. The meaning of the play is not
only that Faustus’s act was sinful and foolish. The meaning is in all that
Faustus says, does, and becomes. The meaning in the total yield of the
situation into which Faustus walks of his own free will, in accordance with
the mysterious, tragic urge of his times. Faustus’s first move after deciding
upon necromancy as the field of his research is one of arrogant and impatient
lust for power.
Marlowe sets his hero’s mind completely free to range forbidden
realms. Faustus’s words here give a marvellous expression to the external
elements of the Renaissance. “How am I glutted with conceit of this!” cries
Faustus, as he gloats over the power that he expects to acquire through
magic. It is true that he speaks in a random manner here, and his desires
grow fantastic and vain glorious. But his absurd egotism all ambiguities,
read strange philosophy, rid his country of the foreign domination and
fortify it with a wall of brass, clothe the school-boys in silk. When Valdes
warns him that he must be resolute, Faustus’s courage is tested and he
responds like a hero: “Valdes, as resolute am I in this/As thou to live:” He
rebukes the Devil’s own messenger, Mephistopheles, whose heart faints as
he anticipates Faustus’s awful fate. Faustus here speaks of his own “manly
fortitude”, he scorns Mephistopheles’ warning; he rejects all hope of
heavenly joys; and he offers his soul to Lucifer for twenty-four years of his
heart’s desires. With this decision come new energy, new power, and new
command. Faustus ridicules such notions as hell and damnation. He is elated
with the success of his first conjuring.
By the time of his second conjuring, even before the signing of the
bond, he confesses doubts. “Something sounds in mine ears: Abjure this
magic, turn to God again!” he says. And he asks himself why he is wavering.
He feels like turning to God again, but thinks that God does not love him. In
this dialogue with the Good and Evil Angels, immediately following, the
tone in which he speaks of “contrition, prayer, and repentance” is hesitant
and uncertain. “Sweet Faustus…” pleads the Good Angel, and Faustus
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seems for a moment to yield, only to revert to his ungodly ways by the Evil
Angel’s reminder of the “honour” and the “wealth” which now lie within his
power. But the doubts will not vanish, and Faustus lives out his twenty-four
years as the first modern tragic man, part believer, part unbeliever, wavering
between independence, and dependence upon God, now arrogant and
confident, now anxious and worried, justified yet horribly unjustified.
Faustus is forced constantly to renew his choice between two
alternatives. In contrasted moods, he sees greater heights, and he experiences
greater terror. Soon the gentle voice that sounded in his ears, urging him to
give up his magic and return to God, takes the shape of “fearful echoes”
thundering in his ears; “Faustus, thou art damned”. What he is learning is the
truth of his own nature, that he is a creature as well as a creator, a man and
not a god, a dependent and a responsible part of a greater whole. He learns
that his soul is not a mere trifle which he can use as a commodity, and that
contrition, prayer, repentance, hell, and damnation are not just “illusions” (as
the Evil Angel told him).
Between the high-soaring scholar of the first scene and the agonized
figure of the final scene, there is a notable difference. In the final scene,
Faustus enters with the Scholars, and for the first time in the play he has
normal, compassionate discourse with his fellows. His role of demi-god is
ever; he is human once more, a friend and befriended. “Ah, gentlemen, hear
me with patience”, says he who had been only recently acting as if he were
the lord of all creation. His friends now seem more “sweet” (he uses this
word thrice for them) than any “princely delicate”, or the “Signiory of
Emden”. Although the thrill of his exploits still lingers (in his recollection of
“the wonders he has done”), he is humble and repentant. He longs to weep
and pray but finds himself prevented by the devils from doing so. He
confesses to the Scholar the cause of all his misery. Knowing his doom is
near, he refuses their help and asks them not to talk to him but save
themselves and depart. They retire, leaving him to meet his fate alone.
In his last despairing moments, Faustus asks why he was not born a
creature lacking in a soul, or why his soul had to be immortal. Medieval
theology held that man is because he believes. To this the answer of the
Renaissance was that man is because he thinks and acts and discovers.
Neither view, as Marlowe presents Faustus’s dilemma, is wholly right or
wholly wrong. In the world of tragedy, the hero can only take the road of
experiment. He must follow his bent, take action, and live it through.
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Q: DISCUSS DOCTOR FAUSTUS AS A MORALITY PLAY?
Q: THOUGH DR. FAUSTUS IS WRITTEN IN AN AGE OF
WORLDLINESS BUT IT PREACHES A SERIOUS MESSAGE OF
MORALITY AND SALVATION, ELABORATE?
Ans:
Doctor Faustus marks the culmination of the English morality tradition.
As a morality, it vindicates humility, faith, and obedience to the law of God.
Indeed, an eminent critic has described this play as the most obvious
Christian document in all Elizabethan drama. Far from being iconoclastic,
this play is wholly conventional in its Christian values, and it enforces and
illuminates the very basic tenets of Christianity. It preaches the basic
Christian values and should therefore be regarded as morality play.
The Prologue, or first Chorus, sets Faustus, his character and his doom
before us in clear, emphatic terms. We are here told that Faustus, swollen
with pride in his attainments, meets a sad end because he has preferred
forbidden pursuits to the pursuit of salvation. Then, at the very beginning of
Faustus’s temptation, the Good Angel urges Faustus to lay aside the damned
book of magic and to read the scriptures. The Good Angel is the voice of
God, and the voice of Faustus’s conscience. But Faustus listens to the Evil
Angel, who is the emissary of Lucifer and who encourages Faustus to
continue his study of magic.
It would be wrong to regard the self – deluded, foolishly – boastful
Faustus as a superman. We must not also forget what Faustus wants in return
for selling his soul to the devil. He wants to live for twenty-four years “in
him all voluptuousness”, to have Mephistopheles attend on him always, to
bring him whatever he demands, and tell him whatever he wants to know.
Utter satisfaction of the will and utter satisfaction of the senses are what
Faustus desires. And this man, who towards the end shudders and trembles
with fear of his doom, now becomes eloquent at the prospect of what he
hopes to get even through he is eventually to be damned:
“Had I as many souls as there be stars,
I’d give them all for Mephistopheles”.
We see Faustus; his emotional and intellectual instability is fully
revealed. He wavers between God and the devil. At first he is conscience-
stricken: “Now Faustus, must thou needs be damned, and canst thou not is
saved”. But in a moment he is once more the user of egocentric hyperbole:
“The god thou servest is thine own appetite,
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Wherein is fixed the love of Beelzebub
To him I will build an altar and a church
And offer lukewarm blood of new-born babes”.
The struggle between Faustus’s uncontrolled appetites and the powers
of heaven continues. The Good Angel and the Evil Angel re-appear, the
former urging him to give up magic, and the latter are encouraging him to
“go forward in that famous art”. Faustus has free will, free choice, and the
ability to affirm or deny God. He cannot blame any one but himself for his
act and its consequences. That is made clear by Faustus himself when, after
his blood has congealed so that he cannot sign the document, he says that his
soul is his own and that, therefore, he has every right to pledge it to the
devil. After signing the document, Faustus says: “Consummatumest” (this
finished), which were the last words of Christ on earth according to the
Gospel magician by putting these blasphemous words in Faustus’s mouth.
Jesus died that Faustus’s soul might live; Faustus flings away this priceless
gift for certain material benefits and sensual pleasures. But the words are
also true in a more literal sense: the good life; the possibility of reaching
heaven, are indeed being finished for Faustus. Immediately afterwards,
God’s warning “Homo fuge” (man, fly) appears on Faustus affirms the God
whom he has just denied and gets into turmoil of conflicting impulses:
“Homo, fuge: whither should I fly?
If unto God, he’ll throw me down to hell.
My senses are deceived; here’s nothing writ:
I see it plain; here in his place is writ
Homo, fuge: yet shall not Faustus fly”.
Thus Faustus consciously and deliberately sets his will against God’s.
But as he is in this state, Mephistopheles summons a few devils that offer
crowns and rich garments to Faustus. In other words, Mephistopheles offers
Faustus sensual satisfaction in order to distract his mind from spiritual
concern (which might, of course, lead to repentance on his art). Whenever
there is danger, from the devil’s viewpoint that Faustus will turn to God’s
mercy, the powers of hell will deaden their victim’s conscience by providing
him with some satisfaction of the senses. But sometimes Faustus will ask for
the opiate himself.
When Faustus says that he thinks hell to be a mere fable,
Mephistopheles contradicts him by asserting that hell does exist. Faustus
requests an opiate for his uncomfortable conscience by asking for a wife.
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Instead of giving him a proper wife, Mephistopheles promises to satisfy
Faustus’s appetite with beautiful courtesans.
In the scene that follows, Faustus and Mephistopheles are again
together. Faustus goes through another of his struggles between repentance
and non-repentance. He blames Mephistopheles for his misery and says, “He
will renounce this magic and repent”. Thus Faustus does recognize that
repentance is still possible. And the Good Angel confirms Faustus’s feeling
by saying; “Faustus, repent; yet God will pity thee”. But continued exercise
in sin is robbing Faustus of his will power. So he says: “My heart is
hardened, I cannot repent”. This, too, must be taken as an egocentric
conclusion. He tells us that no sooner does he think of holy things, than all
kinds of instruments of death are placed before him. And he says that he
would have made use of these instruments—swords, knives, poison, guns,
etc. – and killed him if “sweet pleasure had not conquered deep despair”. As
has already been pointed out, sensuous pleasure is always Faustus’s remedy
for spiritual despair. Has he not made Homer and Amphion sing for him?
And now the very thought of such pleasures drugs his conscience: “Why
should I die then, or basely despair”? / I am resolved; Faustus shall never
repent. Mephistopheles tells Faustus: “Think thou on hell, Faustus, for thou
art damned”. And Faustus once more characteristically blames
Mephistopheles for his wretched condition; “This thou hast damned
distressed Faustus soul”. And so again Faustus is in spiritual distress. The
Good Angel tells him that there is still time to repent. But the Evil Angel
tells him that there is still time to repent. But the evil Angel gives him the
threat that, if he repents, devils will tear him to pieces. Faustus calls upon
Christ to save his soul, whereupon Lucifer, Beelzebub, and Mephistopheles
appear. Lucifer reminds him of promise, and the irresolute hedonist once
more vows “never to name God, or to pray to him”. Again the devil gets
Faustus out of his melancholy by providing him with some satisfaction of
the senses; this time it is the parade of the Seven Deadly Sins.
Hell strives against heaven, and despair strives against repentance. But
as soon as Mephistopheles threatens to tear Faustus’ flesh for disobediently
to Lucifer, the weak-willed voluptuary quickly surrenders. Faustus now begs
the devil’s pardon and offers to confirm with blood his former vow. Blaming
the Old Man for his treason, he brutally begs Mephistopheles to torture the
Old Man “with greatest torments that our hell affords.”
Faustus now asks Mephistopheles to bring Helen so that, by making
love to her, she should be able to drive out from his mind any thoughts of
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revolt against Lucifer. In other words, he again seeks a drug (sensual
pleasure) to deaden his spiritual instincts and the pangs of his conscience.
For the sake of bodily pleasure, Faustus gives up the last possibility of
redemption. And he aggravates his sin by making love to a succuba.
But there are also some silent protests against the official Christianity of
the play. Theologically speaking, Helen of Troy is only a spirit who lures
Faustus away from thoughts of repentance. Yet Faustus’ passion for her
glows with some of Marlowe’s finest poetry. She is a symbol of the idea of
beauty of ancient pagan Greece, which Marlowe loves so much. In the same
way, all the meditations, the discontents, we condemn the high soaring
ambitions of Faustus as evil because they lead to Faustus’ fall. Yet the
poetry here too throbs with joy, and the ideas and emotions are the same as
those, which inspire Marlowe’s other heroes, and were in all probability
experienced by Marlowe himself.
However, it would be wrong to suppose that the highest poetry of the
play is confined to passages of rebellion against Christianity. Surely there
has seldom been a nobler expression of the sense of failure and the pain of
everlasting damnation than Mephistopheles’ lament. “Why this is not hell,
nor is I out of it”, act. Equally eloquent are Mephistopheles’ later words.
“Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed in one self place”, etc. In other
words, while taking into account Marlowe’s anti Christian ideas, we should
not fail to take into account the fact that thoughts of hell (meaning
everlasting banishment from God) could cause much spiritual unrest to
Marlowe.
Q: DR. FAUSTUS IS A MAN OF RENAISSANCE, DISCUSS?
Q: MARLOWE IS TRUE REPRESENTATIVE OF HIS AGE,
ELABORATE?
Ans:
Rebel and pioneer though he was, Marlowe was yet a product of his
own age. The introduction of the Good and Bad Angels, of the minor devils,
of the Seven Deadly Sins in Faustus links the drama with the later middle
Ages. Faustus’ inexhaustible thirst for knowledge, his worship of beauty, his
passion for the classics, his scepticism, his interest in sorcery and magic, his
admiration for Machiavelli and for super-human ambition and will in the
pursuit of ideals of beauty or power, or whatever they may be, prove the
author to be a man of Renaissance”.
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Faustus appears as a man of the Renaissance in the very opening scene
when, rejecting the traditional subjects of study, he turns to magic and
considers the varied uses to which he can put his magic skill after he has
acquired it. He contemplated the “world of profit and delight, of power, of
honour, of omnipotence” which he hopes to enjoy as a magician. In dwelling
upon the advantages which will accrue to him by the exercise of his magic
power, he shows his ardent curiosity, his desire for wealth and luxury, his
nationalism, and his longing for power. These were precisely the qualities of
the Renaissance, which was the age of discovery.
A number of allusions are employed to give us the sense of the enlarged
outlook and extended horizons of that great period of English history.
Faustus desires gold from the East Indies, pearls from the depths of the sea,
pleasant fruits and princely delicacies from America. His friend Valdes
refers to the Indians in the Spanish colonies, to Lapland giants, to the
argosies of Venice, and to the annual plate-fleet, which supplied gold and
silver to the Spanish treasury from the New World. Thus Faustus’ dream of
power included much that had a strong appeal for the English people
including Marlowe himself.
Faustus certainly embodies the new enquiring and aspiring spirit of the
age of the Renaissance. Marlowe expresses in this play both his fervent
sympathy with that new spirit and, ultimately, his awed and pitiful
recognition for the danger into which it could lead those who were
dominated by it. The danger is clearly seen in Faustus’ last soliloquy in
which Faustus offers to burn his books. No doubt these books are chiefly the
books of magic, but we are surely reminded of his exclamation to the
Scholars earlier in this scene: “O, would I had never seen Wittenberg, never
read book!” Thus we get the impression that Faustus attributed his downfall,
partly at least, to his learning.
Doctor Faustus is not only the first major Elizabethan tragedy, but the
first to explore the tragic possibilities of the direct clash between the
Renaissance compulsions and the Hebraic Christian tradition. Tamburlaine
symbolizes the outward thrust of the Renaissance, (and Marlowe conceived
of this play as a tragedy because of its pictures of suffering and destruction,
and its spectacle of death overtaking in the end even the mightiest of worldly
conquerors). But in Doctor Faustus, Marlowe turned the focus inward. Here
he depicted the human soul as the tragic battle-field and wrote the first
“Christian tragedy”.
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Faustus put into an old legend a new meaning. He inserted into the old
medieval or Christian moral equation the new and ambiguous dynamic of
the Renaissance. He treated the legend of Faustus in such a manner as to
give it a fascination and a dignity never realized in previous treatments of
the story. The story of this twenty four year action, compressed by Marlowe
in a few vivid scenes, represents a soul torn between the desire to stretch to
its utmost limit its new mastery and freedom on the one hand, and, on the
other hand, the claims of the old teachings a defiance of which meant quilt
and a growing sense of alienation from society.
The legend of Faustus was believed to be a terrible and ennobling
example, and a warning to all Christians to avoid the pitfalls of science,
pleasure, and ambition, which had led to Faustus’ damnation. But it has to
be noted that the entire Renaissance valued is represented in what the devil
has to offer, and one is left wondering whether it is the religious life or the
worldly life that is more attractive. All that the Good Angel in this play has
to offer is “warnings”. For instance, the Good Angel warns Faustus against
reading the book of magic because it will bring God’s “heavy wrath” upon
his head, and asks him to think of heaven. To this the Evil Angel replies:
“No, Faustus, think of honour and of wealth”. At another point in the play
the Evil Angel urges Faustus to go forward in the famous art of magic and to
become a lord and commander of the earth. There can be no doubt that the
devil here represents the natural ideal of the Renaissance by appealing to the
vague but healthy ambitions of a young soul which wishes to launch itself
upon the wide world. No wonder that Faustus, a child of the Renaissance,
cannot resist the devil’s suggestion. We like him for his love of life, for his
trust in Nature, for his enthusiasm for beauty. He speaks for us all when,
looking at Helen, he cries:
“Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?
And burnt the topless towers of Ileum?”
In a word, Marlowe’s Faustus is a martyr to everything that the
Renaissance valued—power, curious knowledge, enterprise, wealth, and
beauty. The play shows Marlowe’s own passion for these Renaissance
values.
Q: “CONFLICT IS THE ESSENCE OF DRAMA” WHAT IS YOUR
ASSESSMENT?
Q: DR. FAUSTUS PRESENTS THE UNIVERSAL PHENOMENA
THAT IS FACED BY MAN, WHAT IS THAT?
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Ans:
Conflict in drama is of two sorts: external and internal. External conflict
occurs between the hero and his outer circumstances, which may be
unfavourable or hostile to him. These circumstances include, of course,
certain individuals who try to thwart his aspirations or endeavours or with
whom he may come into clash on account of their opposed aims and objects.
Inner conflict means the conflict in the hero’s own mind. This internal
conflict takes place because the hero finds himself pulled in opposite
directions or torn between two possible alternatives one of which he must
choose. In a tragedy the hero meets his downfall, because in spite of a strong
will-power and determined efforts, he proves unequal to the force (outer and
inner) opposing him.
In Doctor Faustus, there is practically no outer conflict, because Faustus
does not come into clash with any hostile individuals or any hostile
circumstances. But Faustus experiences an inner conflict, which occurs at
various stages in the course of his career. There is no point in the course of
the play where we can stop and say that Faustus’s mind is no longer divided
and that he is pursuing a particular line of action without any mental
disturbance. Faustus is throughout dogged by uncertainty, doubt,
apprehension, and fear, which in the later stages become painful and
agonizing.
When we meet Faustus first, he is debating the merits and demerits of
various branches of study. He promptly dismisses logic, medicine, law, and
divinity, and decides in favour of magic, which seems to offer him “a world
of profit and delight”. He feels quite elated to think of the power that magic
to “tire his brains to gain a deity”. There is no conflict here, and it seems that
Faustus has mediated upon this subject even before the play begins. We get
the feeling that he is already pre-disposed towards magic, and that he has
now merely rationalized his preference.
The very next moment, however, the Good Angel and the Evil Angel
appear. There two Angels represent two country impulses in Faustus. The
Good Angel Symbolizing Faustus’ conscience, tries to dissuade him from
the practice of magic but the Evil Angel, symbolizing the evil instinct that
exists the every human being, urges him to “go forward in that famous art”.
Here is inner conflict, then. The Good an Angel and the Evil Angel should
not be regarded as forces outside Faustus, but contrary natural tendencies in
him, with the evil impulse proving more powerful. But this conflict is very
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brief and with the exit of the two Angels, we again find Faustus feeling
exultant over his dreams, of what the spirits will do for him.
When Faustus goes into a grove at night in order to conjure, he feels just
a momentary hesitation but quickly recovers his composure, and says, “Then
fear not, Faustus, but be resolute. And try the uttermost magic can perform”.
He feels so happy with the success of his conjuring that even
Mephistopheles’ account of hell and of his torture after his banishment from
heaven does not dampen Faustus’ enthusiasm. On the contrary, he says. In a
soliloquy, that, even if he had as many souls as there are stars, he would give
them all for Mephistopheles.
When Faustus proceeds to write the bond, his blood congeals and he can
write no more. This is another warning to him from his own soul. But he
asks himself if he does not have full authority over his own soul: “Is not thy
soul thy own?” When Mephistopheles has brought a chafer of coals to
dissolve the blood, Faustus resumes his writing of the bond, but yet another
warning comes in the words: “Home fuge”. This, too, is his inner voice
urging him not to go headlong to his damnation. But whither should he fly?
“If unto God, He’ll throw me down to hell”. And he concludes that there is a
no need for him to fly. The bond is accordingly signed, and Faustus begins
to interrogate Mephistopheles regarding hell. Faustus’ conflict is, for the
time being, over and he goes so far as to say that if hell were what
Mephistopheles has described it to be, he would willingly be damned.
We find Faustus regretting his loss of the joys of heaven. Speaking to
Mephistopheles, he says:
“When I behold the heavens, then I repent,
And curse thee, wicked Mephistopheles,
Because thou hast deprived me of those joys.”
Mephistopheles tries to divert his thoughts from heaven, but the Good
Angel and the Evil Angel appear, once again externalizing the inner struggle
that has started in him. The Good Angel urges Faustus to repent in order to
seek God’s mercy, but the Evil Angel dissuades him from such a course of
action. The Angels depart, and Faustus expresses his disturbed state of mind.
His heart is so hardened that he cannot repent: and yet his thoughts often
turn to salvation, faith, and heaven. He would have killed himself by now in
this state of mind if “sweet pleasure had not conquered deep despair”. He
recalls how, by his magic power, he made blind Homer sing to him and
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Amphion play on his melodious harp. And once again he concludes that he
need neither kill himself nor fall into a state of despair:
“Why should I die, then, or basely despair?
I am resolved; Faustus shall never repent.”
He questions Mephistopheles regarding astronomy and, when he goes
on to asks who made the world, he gets a disappointing and annoying reply.
Mephistopheles leaves, but Faustus’ mood has again changed to one of
despair. He feels that it is too late for him to repent. The Good Angel and the
Evil Angel appear once again, the former urging him to repent, and the latter
threatening him with dire consequences if he repents. Faustus appeals to
Christ to save his soul:
“Ah, Christ, my Saviour/Seek to save distressed Faustus’ soul!”
An Old Man appears and tries to awaken Faustus’ conscience to the
heinous sin, which he has committed by his contract with the devil. There is
still time for Faustus to seek God’s mercy. Christ’s blood alone can wash
away Faustus’ guilt. This exhortation by the Old Man may also be regarded
as an embodiment of the inner voice of Faustus who has apparently been
quite happy in the exercise of his magic powers but whose conscience is not
absolutely dead. On hearing the Old Man’s exhortation Faustus immediately
becomes aware of his predicament and says to himself:
“Where art thou, Faustus? Wretch, what hast thou done?
Damned art thou, Faustus, damned; despair and die!”
We find the Old Man scolding Faustus for having excluded himself
from the grace of heaven. In the following scene, we find Faustus telling his
woeful story to the Scholars and deeply regretting his compact with the
devil. He tells them that there is only this one night between him and his
damnation. Then, of course comes Faustus’ last soliloquy in which his
mental agony at his fast-approaching fate is so pathetically expressed:
“Ah, Faustus.
Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damned perpetually!”
He would like time to stand still so that the hour of midnight (when
Mephistopheles will take away his soul) should not come. He sees a vision
of Christ’s blood in the sky. One drop, nay half a drop, of that blood can
save him. But Lucifer would not let him call on Christ. Faustus would like
mountains and hills to descend upon him in order to hide him “from the
heavy wrath of God”. He would like to take shelter in the depths of the earth.
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He would like to mingle with the clouds. His agony becomes unbearable
when he thinks that there is to be end to his life in hell. He deplores the fact
that he has an immortal soul. He wishes that he were a beast. He curses the
parents who begot him. He would like his body to turn into air. He would
like his soul to be changed into little water-drops, which may mingle with
the waves of the ocean, never to be found. But all these means of escape are
vain. The devils enter, looking at him fiercely. He offers to burn his books if
he could keep away Lucifer. Then comes that heart-rending cry of horror
from him: “Ah, Mephistopheles”! The tormented soul of Faustus is taken by
the friends to hell to endure everlasting torment.
Q: DESCRIBE IN YOUR OWN WORDS MARLOWE’S
CONTRIBUTION IN ENGLISH LITERATURE?
Q: WHAT ARE THE REAL MERITS OF CHRISTOPHER
MARLOWE?
Ans:
Marlowe’s merit is that in his short career he set the stage on fire with
flame of his passion. He was less versatile than the other prominent
playwrights of his day. He was less able than they to conceive of
multitudinous feelings distinct from his own emotions. He was less quick
than some of them to catch the scenic side of things. He did not have the
same capacity as several others had for dramatic construction and for writing
supple and nimble dialogue. He had little attitude for delineating women. In
spite of these shortcomings, Marlowe possessed a supreme quality, which
enabled him to lift drama into the sphere of high literature. Above all,
Marlowe established the supremacy of blank verse as the appropriate metre
for dramatic work.
Marlowe was able to give his audiences an impression of greatness; he
made them tremble with enthusiasm. Together with the discoveries of the
great seafarers, these figures on the stage enlarged, in men’s minds, the
bounds of the possible. These plays were a paean to the infinity of military
power, of knowledge, and of wealth. The subjects Marlowe borrowed, the
heroes he moulded, were no more than this mouthpiece, voicing his
exorbitant dreams. Like him they sought the infinite and like him were never
sated.
Marlowe is regarded as a rebel and a pioneer. He raised the standard of
revolt against the convention of writing plays in rhyme and against the
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“clownage” of popular comedy. He seized upon blank verse as the ideal
medium for drama.
He was the father of genuine romantic tragedy, as regards both plot and
character. Before him, the characters in plays had to often been mere lifeless
puppets. Marlowe informed his central characters and the whole of his
dialogue with life and passion. He was an admirer of Machiavelli whose
ideal as understood by that age was the superman who, having decided what
his goal is to be, presses on to it regardless of scruples of conscience. Such is
the hero of both parts of Tamburlaine, who seeks to conquer the world,
trampling humanity mercilessly beneath his resistless course. Such is
Faustus, whose ideal is boundless and lawless knowledge for the sake of
universal power; such is Barabas, The Jew of Malta, revelling first in his
prodigious wealth and then in the very ecstasy of revenge on those who had
deprived him of it; such are Mortimer, in Edward II, and the Guise in the
Massacre at Paris, both monsters of unscrupulous ambition and resolution.
One character dominates the stage throughout in Marlowe’s plays. A
necessary effect of this quality is that the other characters, vividly drawn as
some of them are, tend to be dwarfed; and that, as the masculine element
predominates, the feminine characters become mere foils to it. The very
insignificance of the minor characters, however, serves as an effective
contrast, throwing the major characters into high relief.
Marlowe made momentous and revolutionary contributions to English
drama: (I) He created genuine blank verse and firmly established it as the
most appropriate medium of poetic drama. (ii) He founded English romantic
tragedy. (iii) He wrote the first great English history play.
Marlowe also discovered the immense possibilities of blank verse. He
discarded the rhyming lines, which had been employed by his predecessors,
and he established blank verse as the most appropriate medium for the
writing of plays. Blank verse had certainly been used him, but he improved
upon it and enriched it. Blank verse prior to him consisted of lines, each
ending with an accented monosyllable; each line standing by itself. There
was monotony in this kind of blank verse. Marlowe varied the rhythmic
pauses, altered the accents, and made the metre suit the subject, instead of
fitting the subject to the metre. In the words of his prologue to Tamburlaine,
he bade farewell! to the
“Jigging veins of rhyming mother wits, and such conceits as clownage
keeps in pay”
By
It was because of what he did with the blank verse that his successors,
especially Shakespeare, were able to discover the infinite variety of this
metre. He taught his successors to play upon its hundred stops, if he himself
could not play upon them.
Marlowe’s achievement may then be summed up thus: (1) He glorified
the matter of the drama. This is seen in his choice of subjects. (2) He
vitalized the manner and matter of the drama. This is seen in his
characterization. (3) He clarified and gave coherence to the drama. This is
seen in his verse. It goes to Marlowe’s credit that he was able to see that the
romantic type of drama was suited to the needs of the English people, and
that no other form of drama was suited to the needs of the English people,
and that no other form of drama could express so well their abundant,
concrete life. And he saw also that, to make the romantic drama more
beautiful and forceful, the medium of blank verse must be chosen.
The ecstatic quality of Marlowe’s work finds its best illustration in
Faustus’s address to Helen: “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships”.
The same ecstatic quality is found earlier in the play when Faustus says;
“Had I as many souls as there be stars I’d give them all for Mephistopheles”.
The ecstatic note is found in Tamburlaine the Great and even in Barabas. Of
course, we do not have in Marlowe’s work that emotional profundity which
we have in Shakespeare, but Marlowe is certainly moved to exuberance and
rapture by certain appeals to the imagination, such as the appeal of beauty. It
was his vitalizing energy that redeemed Tamburlaine the Great from
absurdity. The same vitalizing energy lifted his Doctor Faustus to a high
level. Marlowe is not content with vague description, but gives a concrete
shape to ideas –as in the pageant of the Seven Deadly Sins in Doctor
Faustus. Many medieval poets had written about the Seven Sins, but
Marlowe gives them life and reality. Cheap and childish though some of the
theatrical effects in Marlowe’s plays are, they are simply the overflowing of
a strong and vital imagination.
The place and the value of Christopher Marlowe as a leader among
English poets would be almost impossible for historical criticism to
overestimate. To none they all, perhaps, have so many of the greatest among
them been so deeply and so directly indebted. Nor was ever any great
writer’s influence upon his fellows more utterly and unmixed an influence
for good. He first, and he alone, guided Shakespeare into the right way of
work; his music, in which there is no echo of any man’s before him, found
its own echo in the more prolonged but hardly more exalted harmony of
By
Milton’s. He is the greatest discoverer, the most daring and inspired pioneer,
in all our poetic literature. Before him there was neither genuine blank verse
nor a genuine tragedy in our language. After his arrival the way was
prepared, the paths were made straight, for Shakespeare.
By

DR Faustus Critical Analysis

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The Tragical History of

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