‫اﻟﻤﻌﺮﻓﺔ واﻟﻘﻮة‬

Faustus is identified as a character by his status as a doctor (that is,

someone with a doctoral degree), and the backdrop of much of the
play is the university environment in which Doctor Faustus lives. It
is thus no surprise that issues of formal education are of great
importance to the play, in which even magic spells are learned from
a kind of text-book. Systems of education obviously exist to help
people learn, but Marlowe also explores the associations of formal
education with power and social hierarchy. Education helps people
position themselves in higher social classes. It is through education
that Faustus rises from his humble origins and that the play's
scholars differentiate themselves from lowly clowns like Robin and
Rafe. And when Wagner promises to teach a clown magic, he uses
his superior knowledge as a way to gain power over the clown,
.getting him to agree to be his servant

But not everything can be learned in school and from books. In his
opening soliloquy, Faustus rejects traditional areas of study and,
although his magic does rely on a spell-book, what he seeks from
Mephastophilis is knowledge that he can't attain in traditional ways.
For the ambitious Faustus, even beyond the implications of
educations affect on social hierarchy, knowledge means power. He
desires limitless knowledge largely because of the massive riches
and power that come with it. And indeed whatever power Faustus
possesses with his magic is due entirely to his knowledge of certain
magic incantations. This close connection between knowledge and
power can be contrasted with the idea of knowledge for its own
.sake, which ideally characterizes learning in universities

Ultimately, Marlowe's play suggests that there are limits to proper

knowledge and education. The desire to learn is not inherently bad,
but Faustus goes too far and seeks to know too much. He himself
seems to recognize this, as his last line in the play contains a
promise to burn his books (XIII, 113) and thus repudiate his

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ambition for learning. The chorus that delivers the final lines of the
play sums up the moral of Faustus' story: “Regard his hellish fall, /
Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise / Only to wonder at [i.e.
be amazed at but don't seek to understand] unlawful things,”
(Epilogue, 4-6). But even if this moral is clear-cut, where to draw the
line between appropriate subjects of study and “unlawful things”
that we shouldn't seek to know is unclear. Knowledge is power, but
how much is too much

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 ‫ﺣﺪود اﻹﻧﺴﺎن‬
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 center 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

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 ‫اﻟﻘﺪر واﻹرادة اﻟﺤﺮة‬
Destiny versus Free Will The theme of destiny versus free will is
related to that of damnation versus salvation. Faustus appears
unable to repent. Even in moments of greatest despair, when he
teeters on the brink of repentance, he ultimately pulls back and
renews his allegiance to Lucifer, assuring his doom. Too late he
renounces pursuit of magic in the last line of the play with a final,
desperate cry, "I'll burn my books." Playwright Christopher Marlowe
uses Faustus's apparent helplessness to explore the idea of
predestination posed by French-born Protestant theologian John
Calvin. Calvin reasoned that God, being omniscient, knows from the
outset who will be saved and who will not. Therefore, human action
and choice are not the keys to salvation. That end is predetermined.
Whatever action or choice a human makes has been set up in
advance by God. This suggests that no matter how free Faustus
seems in his choice to pursue magic or reject redemption, he is
simply playing out a script already written. His natural defiance and
rebellion guide him to fulfill his destiny. On the other hand Marlowe
also suggests that Faustus may have a choice. On numerous
occasions in the play, he considers the possibility of asking God to
forgive his sins, allowing him to change his spiritual path from
damnation to one of salvation. The Good Angel, the Bad Angel,
Mephastophilis, the old man, and other characters chime in to
encourage him to save himself or give in and go to hell. Faustus
himself goes back and forth, until it is too late. The question
remains: is Faustus helplessly driven by destiny or doomed by his
own poorly exercised free will? Marlowe provides no definitive
answer but weaves the two possibilities into his play. However, to
believe that Faustus has no choice denies the more pitiable aspects
of his character. The doctor's intelligence, skepticism, and deeply
human desire for knowledge incite choices and actions that anger
heaven and fate him to be databound

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 ‫اﻟﺼﺮاع ﺑﯿﻦ ﻗﯿﻢ اﻟﻘﺮون اﻟﻮﺳﻄﻰ وﻋﺼﺮ اﻟﻨﻬﻀﺔ‬
The Conflict between Medieval and Renaissance Values According
to Medieval values God was the centre of existence and pushed
away the idea of man as an individual and the natural world. During
the Renaissance a more scientific way of looking at situations and
the natural world was used as well as focussing on the individual
and classical learning. These two viewpoints did clash with each
other mainly through the role of Religion in someone's life because
God was the centre of life in medieval life but a more secular
approach was taken during the Renaissance period. Doctor
Faustus can definitely be described as a Renaissance man
because his thirst for knowledge knows no bounds. Faustus spends
most of his time disregarding many fields of scholarship particularly
theology when he laughs a "Ha!" at the idea that "The reward of sin
is death". This definitely goes against medieval and highly religious
beliefs that much of the Elizabethan audience would have been
aware of. They would have known that Marlowe was voicing a
modern way of looking at the world which could have been
considered controversial.

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 ‫اﻟﺨﻄﯿﺌﺔ واﻟﻔﺪاء‬
Sin, Redemption and Damnation Doctor Faustus is a Christian play.
It deals with the themes at the heart of Christianity's understanding
of the world. First, there is the idea of sin, which Christianity defines
as acts contrary to the will of God. In making a pact with Lucifer,
Faustus commits what is in a sense the ultimate sin: not only does
he disobey God, but he rejects obedience to him, choosing instead
to swear loyalty to the devil. In a Christian framework, however,
even the worst deed can be forgiven through the redemptive power
of Jesus Christ who, according to Christian belief, died on the cross
for humankind's sins. Thus, however terrible Faustus's pact with
Lucifer may be, the possibility of redemption is always open to him.
All that he needs to do is ask God for forgiveness. The play offers
several moments in which Faustus can repent by the help of Good
angel on or by the Old Man-both of whom can be seen either as
representatives of God. Only at the end of his life does Faustus
desire to repent, and, in the final scene, he cries out to Christ to
redeem him. But it is too late for him to repent.