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

By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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-sixteenthcentury 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 s equence 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 spr ead 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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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-sixteenthcentury 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 s equence 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 spr ead 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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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. S hakespeare. By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 d angerous 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 g reatest 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.


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. By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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.


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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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.


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.


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.


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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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.


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. By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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. By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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.


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. By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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, goodnatured 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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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.


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 fr om 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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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.


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. By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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. By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 antihero, but the pre-occupation of the play with silly pranks suggests otherwise. Even if Faustus rejects both Christian goodness and Renaissance/Greek By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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. By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 (5.2.163174); he alludes to various theories and conceptions of the soul (5.2.177189); 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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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.


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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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. By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 consciencestricken: “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, By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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. By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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”. By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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”. By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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? By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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


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. By Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 CONTRIBUTION IN ENGLISH LITERATURE?

MARLOWE’S

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


“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 Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

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 Qaisar Iqbal Janjua from Lahore, Pakistan. Contact (92) 300 8494678 qaisarjanjua@hotmail, qaisarjanjua@gmail, [email protected]

Dr Faustus Critical Analysis

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