CHARACTER OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS

Introduction:
The Tragic Hero
All the tragic heroes of Marlowe are towering figures of superman size rising head and shoulders above
all other minor characters of the plays and completely dominating over them. By the side of these titanic
characters the minor ones look like tiny Lilliputians moving around towering Gulliver.
Marlowe seems to have conceived his titanic heroes more or less in keeping with Aristotle‟s conception of
a tragic hero. The hero should essentially be a superior person and according to Aristotle he must have
some „tragic flaw‟—that is some great defect-which ultimately brings about his ruin and disaster. His
destiny or choice is to go down fighting rather than submit to insurmountable odds and thus to pluck a
moral victory from a physical defeat. So in Doctor Faustus also we find Marlowe concentrating all his
powers of delineation of character on Faustus. Mephistophilis may get a little bit of care but all other
characters pale into insignificance before Faustus‟s dazzling and dominating personality. “Each and all of
these subordinate characters are dedicated to the one main purpose of expressing the psychological
condition of Faustus from various points of view.”
Doctor Faustus and His Tragic Flaw
Before the drama opens we know from the Chorus that Faustus was born in a town in Germany and his
parents were „base of stock‟. We also come to know that he got his higher education at Wittenberg and
got his degree of doctor of Divinity from there. He also excelled all those who liked to take part in
discussions relating to theology. The Chorus also tells us that he became puffed up with pride for his vast
knowledge and scholarship and started indulging in black art of magic to attain super-human powers. As a
result he was destined to have a great fall just like Icarus who tried to fly too near the sun with „his waxen
wings‟.
So in the very first scene of the drama we find that Faustus is disappointed with all branches of
knowledge that he has so far mastered. Physic, Philosophy, Law and Divinity—all are absolutely
inadequate for his purpose.
The soul of Faustus is afire with inordinate ambition yearning for limitless knowledge and with a craze
for superhuman powers and supreme sensuous pleasures. So herein lies the great tragic flaw in his
character: he wants „to gain a deity.‟ In spite of all his greatness and other humane qualities we sadly
witness how this great flaw or drawback in his character brings about his ultimate doom and destruction.
He perfectly knows that to achieve his purpose he will have to abjure God and the Trinity. He was also
not void of conscience and that is why we find the Good Angel and the Bad Angel, the symbols of virtue
and vice in his soul making their first appearance just after Faustus‟s final decision in favour of cursed
necromancy. In spite of all scepticism and atheistic bias of Faustus—and Faustus is decidedly a self-
portrait of Marlowe, his emotional attachment to the medieval doctrines of Christianity is too deep to be
rooted out. So the Good Angel, his voice of conscience, urges him to shun „that damned book‟ and to read
the scriptures. But the Evil Angel, the voice of his passion, scores a victory by luring away Faustus with
the assurance that by mastering the black art of magic Faustus will be: “Lord and commander of the
elements.” He has firmly made up his mind to sell his soul to the Devil to gain limitless powers with the
help of Mephistophilis as his abject slave and „to live in all voluptuousness‟ for twenty-four years. Then
in the first scene of Act II we find Faustus finally surrendering his soul to the Devil and writing the bond
with his own blood. It may be noted that Marlowe was a child of the Renaissance with its dreams and
desires and Faustus expresses the ideas and aspirations of his creator quite faithfully.
Spiritual or Inner Conflict
Before accomplishing the abject act of surrendering his soul to the Devil, Faustus experiences the prick of
conscience and the two angels appear again to externalise the spiritual conflict in his soul between vice
and virtue, between will and conscience. And henceforth, we find that the entire action of the play is
fluctuating between the weak and wavering loyalties of Faustus to these two opposing forces. Generally
this inner conflict takes place when a man is faced with two alternatives one of which he must have to
choose but finds himself pulled in opposite directions. A. Nicoll has rightly observed: “In Doctor Faustus
Marlowe attempted something new, the delineation of struggle within the mind of the chief figure. This
struggle is certainly somewhat primitive in its expression but it is a foretaste of those „inward
characteristics‟ towards which drama in its development inevitably tends. Faustus in this respect is
unquestionably the greatest tragic figure in sixteenth century literature outside the work of Shakespeare.”
In fact there is very little external action in this play—the delineation of a psychological or spiritual
conflict in the mind of the hero is the chief thing. And with what great dramatic skill Marlowe has
depicted this spiritual struggle, these waverings and vacillations in his mind! To gain limitless power and
pelf, Faustus may discard godly order, may denounce the doctrines of Christianity and may take to
necromancy.
Faustus may discard and denounce God and the Trinity, but he is definitely attached to them emotionally.
So a guilty conscience dogs him from the beginning to the end. And the heart of Faustus turns out to be
the field where the forces of good and evil are trying to overwhelm each other. We can follow this tragic
conflict and troubled career of Faustus to its terrible end.
Eternal Damnation
In the closing scene of the drama the spiritual conflict of a doomed and dejected soul reaches its climax
and then culminates in an overwhelming catastrophe. Faustus realises to his utter dismay that he is
doomed to eternal damnation with the least hope for redemption. The poignant soliloquy of Doctor
Faustus starting just before an hour of his final doom reveals in a very forceful manner the deep agony of
a horror-struck soul facing its impending doom.
And when the final hour strikes, there is thunder and lightning and the Devil‟s disciples come and snatch
away the trouble torn soul of Faustus to hell to suffer eternal damnation.
To conclude we may quote the very relevant remarks of E.A. Baker regarding this great tragedy:
“This great symbolic tragedy deals with a theme which was part, not only of the author‟s inner experience
but of the very stuff which nourished the Renaissance spirit. The pride of intellect by which both the
Faustus of Marlowe and the Lucifer of Milton fell, was the most subtlest and dangerous temptation of the
age. After wandering for centuries through the mists of ignorance, man found himself once more before
the tree of knowledge.”
Role and Significance of Dr. Faustus in the Play
Marlowe concentrates all his attention and all his powers of subtle character-portrayal on Faustus. He has
achieved the very difficult task of laying bare Faustus‟s mind at some extraordinary and critical moments.
The play opens with Faustus in his study, taking stock of his accomplishments and considering the plans
he should pursue in the future. Faustus realises how logic, law, physics and divinity which have yielded
up their treasures to him, have not been able to quench his intellectual thirst. Dissatisfied with mere
knowledge and philosophy, Faustus recognises the power of magic—„a sound magician is a mighty God.‟
Valdes and Cornelius, professed magicians, are sent for by Faustus to help him in his efforts at mastery of
magic. Meanwhile the Good Angel and the Bad Angel—„who dramatically objectify the double impulses
of appetite and conscience‟—appear on the scene, the one discouraging and the other encouraging his
resolve. Valdes and Cornelius serve the purpose of inflaming Faustus further, „with the splendid pictures
of material pomp and sensual delights‟ they present. They lend him books and instruments of magic with
instructions for their proper use at the proper time.
At night, in a solitary grove, Faustus begins his incantations to conjure forth Mephistophilis. As the spirit
appears, Faustus realises the virtue in his heavenly words, the efficacy of his spells and the force of
magic. His vanity is inflated, and he hails himself as a conjurer-laureate who can command great
Mephistophilis. Faustus brushes aside the timely warnings of conscience and enters into a compact with
the Devil, signing the bond with his own blood.
Faustus takes the utmost possible advantage of the service of Mephistophilis. It is this fallen angel with
his sinister sincerity and unaffected frankness that resolves for Faustus the doleful problems of damnation,
and indirectly helps to heighten the intrepidity of the sin-steeped scholar and his spiritual arrogance. It is
Mephistophilis that clears Faustus‟s doubts in astronomy and cosmography, helps him to ride
triumphantly in a chariot round the world, scanning the planets in the firmament and the Kingdoms of the
earth. It is with the help of Mephistophilis, the embodiment of his dearly purchased power, that Faustus
surfeits his sense with carnal pleasures, not coarse delights, however, but highest and deepest enjoyments.
His longing is for the fairest maid of Germany, for the beauty of Helen that makes man immortal with a
kiss. Faustus‟s mind is delighted with the dumb-show of Devils that Mephistophilis presents before him.
Even the repulsive masque of the Seven Deadly Sins attracts and soothes him for the time being.
Travelling far and wide, Faustus displays his new-won power. The horror of damnation seizes him every
now and then. It increases with the passing of years and the drawing near of the end. He is unable to take
advantage even of the last chance that is given to him by the Old Man.
Faustus‟s own pleasant vices turn into instruments to plague him. The last scene in which Faustus is torn
between conflicting feelings, is the best of its kind, the most memorable in Marlowe‟s plays, the most
poignant in English tragedy. The Good Angel and the Bad Angel— „Faustus‟s own thoughts
objectified‟—do their duty for the last time. Faustus spends the last hour in bursting out in a powerful
soliloquy—counting the minutes by the „sand-grains of his agony.‟
One is always alone in suffering. Faustus‟s fate is not different. No response is there to his cries of
anguish and his appeals for mercy. He longs to leap up to Heaven. In the heat of his anguish, he beholds
Christ‟s blood streaming in the firmament. One drop of that blood, he realises, will save him.
He curses himself, his birth, his parents, and Lucifer. There is no more salvation for him, only damnation.
As the clock strikes twelve, Faustus is borne away to hell by the devils and we recall his words: The
reward of sin is death: that‟s hard.‟
Faustus is a tremendous figure of terrible tragic stature as delineated by Marlowe. The well-versed
Wittenburg scholar rises to be the ally of Lucifer and the enemy of God. Insatiable hunger for knowledge
and the power that knowledge gives is the dominant passion of Faustus. And this becomes as fatal a
passion as the consuming lust of power is in the case of Tamburlaine. “Faustus is the Paracelsus of
Marlowe. Over the soul of the Wittenburg doctor the passion for knowledge dominates, and all influences
of good and evil, the voices of damned and of blessed angels reach him faint and ineffectual as dreams, or
distant music or the suggestions of long forgotten odours, save as they promise something to glut the
fierce hunger and thirst of his intellect.” It is interesting to note how in Faustus, the scholar never
disappears in the magician. He is ever a student and a thinker. He wants all ambiguities to be resolved,
and all strange philosophies explained. Even in the last scene, when the two scholars take leave of him,
Faustus retains about him an „atmosphere of learning, of refinement, of scholarly urbanity.‟ Faustus is
made of the stuff of which heroes are made. He has an unbridled passion for knowledge infinite, a
limitless desire for the unattainable, a spirit of reckless adventure and a tremendous confidence in his own
will and spirit. He has dignity, tenacity, patience, profundity, and a vein of unsuspected humanity and
tenderness. But all these are thrown into the background by the isolation of his position and the horror of
the course he pursues. He weaves the threads of his tragedy with his own hands, signs his own death
warrant. Himself the battlefield for one of the greatest mental conflicts of man, Faustus creates in us a
feeling of loss and a sense of waste. Missing the honour of a master-mind, he has only the recognition of a
magician. He would have been a scholar-prince, but he chose to be a conjuror-laureate.

“The over-reacher”—is that an apt description of Marlowe‟s heroes? Discuss with reference to Doctor
Faustus.

Faustus the protagonist who falls through his own will

Faustus is the central figure of Marlowe‟s Doctor Faustus. Faustus is a character ideal to be the hero of a
tragedy where man alone is the maker of his fate, good or bad. He falls, not by the fickleness of fortune or
the decree of fate, or because he has been corrupted by Mephistophilis, the agent of Lucifer, the Devil, but
because of his own will.

Faustus: no king or prince, but a great scholar

Faustus is an ordinary German of parents base of stock‟ who goes to Wittenberg for higher studies,
mainly supported by his kinsmen. But in course of time, he graces the golden field of learning and before
long obtains a Doctor‟s in Divinity for his unsurpassed skill in dispute on heavenly problems. He has
attained mastery over various branches of study. Thus Faustus is a break from the traditional concept of
the tragic hero to the extent that he is not of royalty or any noble parentage. But he is great all the same,
because of his scholarship.
Faustus is a man of extraordinary calibre
He possesses rich imaginative faculty. He cherishes the idea that as a magician he will be greater than
emperors and kings, and his dominion will stretch “as far as doth the mind of man.” He will become a
mighty God. Endowed with exceptional imaginative power, he visualizes as a magician the bright dreams
of his future.
Faustus is a born poet
Poetry is an innate gift with him. He makes blind Homer sing to him of the love of Paris and Oenone, and
he makes Amphion produce ravishing music from his melodious harp. In the final soliloquy, Faustus calls
upon the heavenly spheres to stop moving so that time ceases and midnight never comes. But the most
wonderful among his passages is his apostrophe to Helen. His speech to Helen bespeaks of his high
imaginative faculty and is pregnant with mythological allusions.
Faustus like Icarus running too high: Presumption the cause of his tragedy
Faustus is not satisfied with his vast knowledge in various subjects of the university, for still he is an
ordinary man. Faustus wants to be a superman; he wants to be a “mighty God.” He is “swollen with
cunning and of a self-conceit”—to such an extent that he becomes the “Icarus” of classical mythology.
And he aspires on the artificial wings of his knowledge to soar above human limits, to reach the status of
a “Jove in the sky.” Pride is the sin for which the angels fell, and in consequence of it, heaven conspires
the overthrow of Faustus.
Faustus: the child of Renaissance
Faustus, with his yearning for knowledge, proceeds to study necromancy. He responds to the suggestions
of the Evil Angel, to attain the position of a „Lord and Commander‟ of the world. He tries his brain “to
gain a deity” and he commits a sinful act. But he is not at all terrified of „damnation.‟ He does not believe
in pains after death. He sells his soul to Mephistophilis to acquire unlimited power to probe the secrets of
the universe.
Faustus‟s mental conflict: a study of his mind
Faustus‟s choice of necromancy is made after inner conflict. The appearance of the Good Angel and the
Bad Angel side by side are the personifications of his good and evil impulses. His conventional heart is
opposed to his self-damnation and this is clearly hinted when his blood congeals as he proceeds to write:
“Faustus delivers his soul to the Devil.” But he ignores these warnings and completes the scroll. But the
conflict arises again in his mind—the conflict between his impulse to fly to God and his resolution to
stick to the pledge made to the Devil. As the time rolls on, he becomes more and more disillusioned about
the profits he expected from Magic, and the growing sense of loss and of the wages of „damnation‟ begins
to sting him like a scorpion:
When I behold the heaven, then I repent,
And curse thee, wicked Mephistophilis,
Because thou hast deprived me of those joys.
But it is he himself, and not Mephistophilis who is to blame.
Faustus the complex character dominated by ambition
The more Faustus turns towards God, the greater becomes the force of the Devil to drag him back into his
trap. Faustus is an inordinately ambitious hero. He denounces God, blasphemes the Trinity and Christian
doctrines, and sells his soul to the Devil to gain superhuman power and to live a life of voluptuousness for
twenty-four years. The death is cast in his very first monologue Faustus bids Divinity adieu. He turns a
deaf ear to the earnest appeal of the Good Angel to lay that damned book aside, and is carried away by the
allurements of the Evil Angel.
Faustus: moment of crisis and self-realization comes late as to all tragic heroes
Faustus is isolated from his surroundings. He does not die suddenly. And before dying, Faustus reaches
that point of horror, when even pride is abandoned. Faustus would like to retrace his steps and repent of
his surrender to the Devil. But Lucifer, Belzebub and Mephistophilis appear and demand the fulfilment of
the conditions to which Faustus had agreed by signing a bond with his blood. Finding no other way,
Faustus begs the forgiveness of the devils and vows never to mention God or pray to Him or to look to
Heaven. But Faustus‟s 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.
Faustus‟s inner conflict reappears in a more acute and agonising form.
Sensual-gratification
Faustus is unsurpassed in his magic idealisation of that which is essentially base and carnal. He seeks
immortality in the kiss of Helen—a spirit. “Faustus is not one consumed with a thirst of knowledge”, says
Arnold Wynne, “for we see him exercising his supernatural gifts in the most puerile and useless fashion.
It is impossible, therefore, to regard his ambition as a lust for knowledge in the usual meaning of that
term, differentiating it from sensual experience. If Faustus is to be liable according to his dominant trait,
then let us describe him as embodiment of sensual-gratification.”
Marlowe‟s Faustus, the legendary German scholar, is an insatiable speculator. Faustus aspires to unlawful
knowledge because it is an instrument of power. It is the passion for omnipotence rather than omniscience
that urges Faustus to summon Mephistophilis by incantation to his side. Wagner‟s narration of his aerial
voyages for cosmography and Faustus‟s discussion on geography with his attendant spirit—all this
exemplifies the insatiable passion of Faustus for knowledge, but he seeks knowledge because knowledge
is power. Faustus employs his magical power not only to acquire knowledge but also for his sensual-
gratification. He is a sensualist from the moment he takes up the book of magic to ponder over what it
may bring him.
Faustus not fit to be a tragic hero according to some critics
The element of sensuality is so much emphasised in the character of Faustus that some critics have gone
to the extent of regarding him as an incarnation of lust and as such, unfitted to support tragedy. His
creator inspires him with his own Bohemian joy in mere pleasure, his own thirst for fresh sensations, his
own vehement disregard of restraint—a disregard which brought Marlowe to a tragic and unworthy end.
But, as if in mockery, he degrades him with unmanly, ignoble qualities that excite our derision. His mind
is pleased with toys that would amuse a child; at the conclusion of an almost incredibly trivial show of the
Seven Deadly Sins, he exclaims “O, how this sight doth delight my soul!” His practical jokes are
unworthy of a court jester. The congealing of his blood agitates his superstitious mind far more than the
terrible frankness of Mephistophilis. “Miserably mean-spirited, he seeks to propitiate the wrath of the
fiend by invoking his torments upon an old man whose disinterested appeal momentarily quickened his
conscience into revolt. In his vacillations we see, not the noble conflict of good and evil impulses but an
ignoble tug-of-war between timidity and appetite” as Wynne observes.
Faustus, though proud as he is, lacks firm determination; he wavers and vacillates; “his character is in fact
not one of fixed determination, as it is so often asserted; he constantly wavers, and his purposes change.”
Sometimes he sounds immovable, but at other moments he is furiously torn by conflict.
Tragedy of Faustus is symbolic
Faustus stands not for a character, not for a man, but for Man, for Everyman. The grim tragedy that
befalls him is not a personal tragedy, but a tragedy that overtakes all those who dare “practice more than
heavenly power permits.” The terrible conflict that goes on in his mind is not particular to him alone, but
common to all who waver between opposites. In the character of Faustus “there are no details, no personal
traits, no eccentricities or habits, nothing that is intimate or individual. Marlowe was concerned only with
the part of him which was common to all men, yet in virtue of which he exceeded all men, his mind. And
that mind is Marlowe‟s—the limitless desire, the unbridled passion for the infinite, a certain reckless, high
confidence in the will and spirit of man.” The doubts and fears which rock the mind of Faustus are not of
one character alone: these doubts and fears about hell, heaven, God, salvation and damnation have been
experienced by all inquisitive men in all ages.
Faustus wavers between his Good and Evil angels, between God and Devil, so we may see Marlowe
hesitating between the submissive acceptance of a dogmatic system and a pagan simplicity of outlook to
which instinct and temperament prompted him. It will be hard to condemn Marlowe as an atheist. His
sceptical and rebellious temperament was not simply his personal tendency; rather he was impressed by
the prevailing tendency for free thinking on religious matters. In the same sense, Faustus, with all doubts
and fears about hell and damnation, believes in Christ and God. Faustus in the beginning is a bold, defiant
and adventurous spirit of the Renaissance but at the approach of his doom he reaffirms his faith in Christ
and God. A person who believes in the blood of Christ as the ransom for all the sins of the human, or that
turns to God after having once abjured him, cannot be regarded as an atheist. Faustus discovers that
intellectual pride and insolence of man are responsible for dragging him away from God and true religion.
“Faustus‟s passion for knowledge and power is in itself a virtue, but diverted from the service of God it
threatens to become totally negative and self-destroying.” as O.P. Brockbent says.