Dr.Faustus
Major Themes
Harold Osborne
• “The Good and Evil Angels are really
externalisations of the two aspects of
Faustus’s own character on the one hand,
conscience, and on the other, that aspiration
to the novel and romantic that led to his
downfall.” It may be noted that Marlowe is
quite original in the use of his angels and they
differ a lot from those abstract figures in the
Morality plays.
Significance of Helen and the Old Man
• As Faustus’s fascination for Helen, the ‘only
paragon of excellence’ reveals the
Renaissance characteristic of love and
adoration of classical art and beauty, Helen
epitomises the charms of classical art, learning
and beauty. And her shade or apparition may
also be the symbol of sensual pleasures of life
which are but transitory, and lead to despair
and damnation.
• If it is so, the Old Man represents Christian
faith with its obedience to laws of God and its
need for prayer and penitence that can assure
eternal joy and bliss. The Old Man also
represents another moral aspect; that is one
who has firm faith in God can boldly face the
temptations and tortures presented by the
forces of Evil and ‘can ascend to heaven while
the fiends sink back into hell.’
Significance of the Show of the Seven
Deadly Sins
• We have this pageant of Seven Deadly Sins in the
sixth scene or second scene of Act II. This
spectacle also shows that Marlowe in his Doctor
Faustus adopted some of the conventions of the
old Miracle and Morality plays. So the Seven
Deadly Sins—Pride, Covetousness, Wrath, Envy,
Gluttony, Sloth and Lechery—of good old
Morality plays are also very much here in this
play in a grand spectacle to cheer up the
wavering and dejected soul of Doctor Faustus.
• But Marlowe is quite original in his treatment
of the scene. In the ‘Faustbuch’, or ‘Faust
Book’ it is a masque of the seven animal forms
representing the seven principal Devils. We
get this pageant of Seven Deadly Sins also in
Spenser’s Faerie Queene and this also might
have been a source for Marlowe.
• Some critics are of the view that the show is
meant for comic relief for the audience. But this
is hard to accept. In fact the show is not meant
for any comic relief but is really meant for
bringing back Faustus to the path of hell when he
was much irritated by Mephistophilis for not
giving right answers to some of his questions
related to the creation of this universe. And we
find Lucifer, Belzebub alongwith Mephistophilis
appearing on the stage, the moment, Faustus, to
a great extent disillusioned, utters the name of
Christ with a fervent appeal to save his soul:
• Ah, Christ, my saviour,
• Seek to save distressed Faustus’ Soul!”
• They put up the show to cheer up his drooping
mind and lure him back to the path of hell; and
they succeed mightily when Faustus in rapture
expresses his delight after the show:
• “Oh, this feeds my soul!”
• Symbolically it means Faustus’s abject surrender
to these deadly sins who lead to the path of hell.
In fact the sins are already there in his soul and
the show of the sins simply symbolises or
externalises them. Another point to note is that
Pride leads the procession. In fact Pride deserves
this, as Pride is the worst vice that brings about
the downfall. And our Faustus was puffed up with
pride to fly too near the Sun with ‘waxen wings’
to bring about his own ultimate doom and
damnation.
Significance of The Character of
Mephistophilis
• If in Doctor Faustus there is any other
character other than Faustus that deserves
some consideration, it is Mephistophilis. He is
with Faustus from the very beginning of his
proud career till his tragic downfall. He is
considered to be one of the seven spirits of
second rank. He is also called Lucifer’s viceregent. But the Mephistophilis of Doctor
Faustus with his ‘signs of remorse and passion’
is Marlowe’s unique creation.
• Of course we may treat Mephistophilis as the
villain of the play as it is he who seems to lure
away Faustus to the path of hell. But a closer
study reveals that Faustus himself with his
extreme pride and inordinate ambition is the
root cause of his own damnation. The point is
made clear when Mephistophilis in the very
third scene of the Act I tells Faustus in
response to his query:
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“For, when we hear one rack the name of God,
Abjure the scriptures and his Saviour Christ,
We fly in hope to get his soul;
Nor will we come, unless he uses such means
Whereby he is in danger to be damn’d.”
• So it was Faustus who first racked the name of
God and abjured ‘the scripture and his Saviour
Christ’ and only then Mephistophilis, the Devil,
flew ‘in hope to get his soul.’ And this leads to the
symbolic significance of the character of
Mephistophilis. The evil is actually in his own soul
and Mephistophilis is the symbolic representation
of it. He is nothing but a projection of the self of
Faustus. We may also say with a critic that ‘he
symbolises power without conscience, the
danger of which is the motif of the play.’
• And this power without conscience ultimately
brings about the downfall and eternal
damnation of Doctor Faustus. If
Mephistophilis sometimes warns him against
the evils of practising the black art of magic,
that is, the brighter aspect of Faustus’s mind,
an acute struggle between the good and the
evil rages in his soul. So Mephistophilis may
also be said to be externalising the split
conscience of Doctor Faustus.
• Then again, we may also treat Mephistophilis as the
symbol of dramatic irony in the play. Having bitter
experiences of hell as a fallen angel, Mephistophilis
warns Faustus of the evils of necromancy and the
suffering in hell. But Faustus with his pride and
ambition turns a deaf ear to all this, shuns the path of
virtue and dreams of becoming ‘as great as Lucifer’ or
to be as powerful ‘as Jove in the sky’ and ‘Lord and
Commander of these elements.’ And thus
Mephistophilis is made the symbol of dramatic irony
that intensifies the tragic appeal of this great drama.
Biography
• Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), English
poet and playwright, was the first great
dramatist of the English theatre and the most
important writer of tragedy plays before
William Shakespeare. He is best known for the
play Tamburlaine
Early Years of Christopher Marlowe
• Marlowe was the son of a shoemaker in the
city of Canterbury and attended the King's
School there. At 17 he went to Cambridge
University on a scholarship. He graduated
after three years and then stayed on to study
for a higher degree. This was nearly refused
because he was away too much, but the
university relented when an official letter
arrived saying he was on government
business.
Marlowe the Playwright and Poet
• Marlowe first began to write plays and poems at
university. It is not known exactly when his tragic plays
were written. Both two parts of his greatest tragedy,
Tamburlaine the Great, had been performed by the
time he was 23. The first part of Tamburlaine the Great
was a great success at the London Theatre. The second
part met with equal success performed in the same
year. Before his death, Marlowe spent time writing his
narrative poem Hero and Leander, (1598), along with
his poetic masterpiece "The Passionate Shepherd to His
Love."
• His plays often reflect on the aspirations of
characters whose outright defiance of social,
political and religious morality equally invites
admiration and condemnation.
Marlowe's Own Tragic Life
• Historians believe he was abroad working as a
spy, and alleged that while still at the
university, Marlowe became an agent of
Francis Walsingham. The detail of any mission
he undertook in the secret service of Queen
Elizabeth I's great scheme is not known but an
intelligent speculation leading to his early
death.
• In London, Marlowe made important friends, including
the famed English writer, poet and explorer, Sir Walter
Raleigh, who started the first colony in Virginia. At the
age of 25, Marlowe was imprisoned after a brawl in
which a man was killed. He was involved in other street
fights in between years, until in 1593, at 29, he was
murdered in a dockside tavern. The official story
released was that he had been stabbed in the eye
during an argument over a bill, but a week earlier a
warrant had been issued for Marlowe's arrest, and his
former roommate, Tomas Hyd, had been tortured to
make him give information about Marlowe.
• Many people think that Marlowe was
deliberately silenced to stop him exposing
secrets about powerful people. His personal
life, as a free-thinker and being indiscreet,
added to his infamous reputation.
• A study of Marlowe’s great tragedies cannot but
convince us that Marlowe possessed the power in
its fullest degree of projecting himself into his
chief characters. In fact one of the most
remarkable elements in all his dramatic works is
this subjective or autobiographical note. Herein
also lies the great difference between
Shakespeare and Marlowe as dramatists. There is
a complete effacement of Shakespeare’s
personality in his plays.
• We can never assert that this play or that
passage of Shakespeare reveals his mind or
personality. But Marlowe could not but
project his personality into the chief
characters of his plays, especially in his four
great tragedies: Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus,
The Jew of Malta and Edward II.
Marlowe’s Life and the Spirit of
Renaissance
• Before taking up this note of subjectivity in Marlowe’s
dramatic works we should have a fair idea of Marlowe’s life,
career, the influence of the spirit of Renaissance on him
and his ambitions and aspirations. Marlowe came of
‘parents base of stock’—he was the son of shoe-maker. But
he was fortunate enough to have school education, had a
chance to go to Cambridge to specialise in theology and got
Doctorate in Divinity. As an Archbishop Parker’s scholar he
was intended for a Church career. But he abandoned the
holy order and joined the theatrical companies in London
to become a dramatist. In Cambridge, he also studied
classics and various other subjects and became an erudite
scholar.
• But here also he had the bitter experience of
finding his young companions belonging to a
wealthier class with much better status and a
greater scope for enjoying pleasures of life,
although they were much inferior to him in other
respects. Probably, in his later life this was the
main cause of his rebellion against the
established order. He also imbibed his sceptical
attitude to the established religion and religious
authority and was reputed as an atheist by
rejecting Christian dogma.
• Marlowe also developed a dual personality—
especially during his life in London. He was a
poet, a dramatist as well as an agent of secret
service. In London he freely mixed with many
a reputed nobleman as well as shady
characters of the under-world. He was to a
great extent violent in temperament and
Bohemian in character.
• Then we are to remember that Marlowe was a
man of the Renaissance and an embodiment of
the spirit of his age. He was saturated with the
spirit of Renaissance with its great yearning for
knowledge and learning, with its hankering after
sensual pleasure of life and with its inordinate
ambition and supreme lust for power and pelf. He
was also profoundly influenced by Machiavelli,
the famous Italian social and political writer, who
disregarded all conventional moral principles to
achieve the end by any means, noble or ignoble,
fair or foul.
Reflection of Marlowe’s Personality in
His Tragic Heroes
• A close and critical study of works of Marlowe
convinces us that all his tragic heroes clearly reveal the
chief characteristics and temperament of the great
dramatist. His great tragic heroes, Tamburlaine,
Faustus, Jew of Malta, and Edward II—all are
absolutely dominated by some uncontrollable passion
for gaining some ideal or finding the fulfilment of some
inordinate ambition. To achieve their end they throw
overboard all established moral scruples or religious
sanctions and never scruple to adopt even the most
cruel and horrible means. His cruel, tyrannic
Tamburlaine with his craze for limitless power defies all
authorities on earth as well as in heaven
His stone-hearted Barabas is dominated by a
senseless craze for gold and does not shirk from
committing the worst type of crimes to achieve
his end. He seems to be an embodiment of
Machiavellianism. To gain super human powers
through knowledge, his Doctor Faustus, with his
over-weening ambition takes to the study of the
black art of necromancy and even sells his soul
to the Devil to gain his end.
And Edward II and Mortimer pay the heaviest
price—the former for his passion for is base
minions and the latter for his craze for power.
Influenced by the spirit of Renaissance, Marlowe
developed a deep sense of egotism. All his great
creations are also deeply egotistical having the
highest regard for their own power and
personality. Hence, we find his Tamburlaine
speaking thus:
• I hold the Fates bound fast in iron chains.
• And with my hand turns fortune’s wheel about.”
• His heroes have also scant regard for religion or
godliness. His spirit of the atheist is clearly
revealed in the following line from the “Prologue
to the Jew of Malta”:
• “I count religion but a childish toy”
• Another relevant point to note is that just like Marlowe all
his great tragic heroes, excepting Edward II, are born of
‘parents base of stock’ with a great sense of superiority.
Thus, proclaims Tamburlaine:
• “I am a lord, for so my deeds will prove,
And yet a shephered by my Parentage.”
• And Baldock, the clerk, in Edward II proudly asserts:
• “My name is Baldock, and my gentry
I fetch from Oxford, not from Heraldry.”
• Another significant point is that almost all the
tragic heroes of Marlowe are poets and
convey their feelings and emotions to the
audience in the superb poetical language. And
Marlowe himself was a great poet of passion.
Hence, this lyrical quality of his great heroes
reveal their creator’s moods and passions.
Marlowe and Doctor Faustus—Striking
Parallelism
• Of all Marlowe’s tragic heroes Doctor Faustus bears out
the most striking reflection of Marlowe’s own self.
After a close study of the play we are struck by the
close similarity between the life and career of Marlowe
and that of Doctor Faustus. We know that Marlowe
was the second child of a Canterbury shoe-maker and
in the very beginning of the play Doctor Faustus, the
Chorus tells us of Faustus’s parentage:
• “Now is he born, his parents base of stock.”
• Harold Osborne has briefly pointed it out thus:
• “Marlowe himself, like Faustus, came of parents
of ‘base stock’ and was destined for the church
but turned elsewhere; he was undoubtedly
keenly interested in secular knowledge; was
reputed as scoffer of religion and incurred the
charge of blasphemy.”
• We should not press the analogies too far. But we
cannot ignore them as the parallelism is so very
obvious.
Personal Tragedy: Spiritual Suffering
• Doctor Faustus expresses very powerfully
Marlowe’s innermost thoughts and authentic
experiences. So it can be regarded as the spiritual
history of Marlowe himself. Marlowe’s inordinate
ambition led him to revolt against religion and
society, to defy the laws of man and laws of God.
And such defiance is bound to bring about acute
mental conflict resulting in deep despair and
certain defeat. So, both Marlowe and his creation
Doctor Faustus experience terrible mental pangs
and agonies. Osborne has rightly said:
• “The descriptions of Faustus’s repentance,
despair and mental anguish are among the most
vivid and poignant parts of the play. It is, of
course, possible to suppose that Marlowe had
passed through a stage of youthful scepticism in
religion and that with a sounder and deeper faith
he had come to the knowledge of repentance.
Nor indeed is he ever the pure scoffer. It is certain
that the author of “Faustus” must himself have
walked some way along the path of religious
doubts and gropings and must have known the
sufferings attendant upon that journey.”
• Hence, in Doctor Faustus we get a faithful portrait of an
agonised condition of mind wavering between its
‘Good and Evil Angels, between God and the Devil.’
And it very much seems that Faustus is for Marlowe
when he gives vent to his deep anguish of his soul
before his scholar friends: “But Faustus’s offence can
never be pardoned: the serpent that tempted Eve may
be saved, but not Faustus....O, Would I have never seen
Wittenberg, never read book and what wonders I have
done, all Germany can witness, yea, all the world; for
which Faustus hath lost both Germany and the world,
yea, heaven itself………..”
• The end of the play reveals the influence of
Reformation on Marlowe. It seems in spite of
all his great achievements, Marlowe, like
Faustus, ultimately realised that they did not
in any way helped to fortify his soul but to lose
it as it was cut off from the rich natural
resources of inspiration and faith.
Hankering after Power, Knowledge and
Sensuality
• As regards passion for knowledge and craving
for sensual pleasure of the world there is
remarkable affinity between Faustus and
Marlowe. It is true that Marlowe lived a
Bohemian, profligate and boisterous life.
Marlowe who was to go for the Holy Orders
gave up divinity for the career of a poet and a
playwright. Faustus seeks knowledge just for
the power it gives and to have opportunities
for the gratification of sensual pleasures.
• If Ellis is correct regarding the circumstances
of Marlowe’s tragic death, then Faustus’s
doting over the lips of Helen shortly before his
death bears a very close resemblance with
those of Marlowe’s death over ‘bought kisses.’
Poetic Spirit
• All the tragic heroes of Marlowe are undoubtedly poets.
But of all of them his Faustus is poet par-excellence just like
Marlowe himself. The superb oft-quoted apostrophe to
Helen beginning with the lines:—
• “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
• And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
• reveals his wonderful poetic temperament. Wynne is
perfectly correct in saying: “This passage has probably
never been surpassed in its magic idealisation of that which
is essentially base and carnal.”
Conclusion
• Even in their short span of life and in their tragic death there is real
affinity between Marlowe and his creation, Doctor Faustus. After
living twenty-four years a life of sensual pleasures and superhuman
achievements, Faustus had to surrender his soul to the Devil for
eternal damnation. Marlowe’s boisterous and Bohemain life also
came to a tragic and premature end in a tavern brawl at the hands
of a shady character of the London underworld at the age of
twenty-nine. And there is really something occult in the mournful
melody of the Chorus in the closing line of this tragedy:
• “Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
• And burned is Apollo’s laurel bough,
• That sometimes grew within this learned man.”
• It is given only to Shakespeare to write dozens of
plays without projecting his personality into them
in any detectable manner. He has so lost himself
in his works and yet so skilfully kept himself away
from them that it is almost impossible to say with
any stress of certainty that a particular play or
even isolated passage reveals his mind and
personality. Marlowe does not share this unique
privilege of Shakespeare. He is there in every play
of his, and especially in his four great tragedies—
Tamburlaine, Dr. Faustus, The Jew of Malta, and
Edward II.
• These plays give us not a shadowy idea but an
intimate glimpse of the quivering personality of
Marlowe and the intense thoughts that were his
at the time of writing them. It is therefore neither
desirable nor possible to separate Marlowe the
poet and dramatist from Marlowe the man. His
subjectivity, however, is not as obvious and
insistent as that of Shelley, for instance. It is the
subjectivity of the type that Milton gives us in his
Comus, Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes.
• Doctor Faustus is strewn with unmistakable
autobiographical suggestions. Reading the play
we cannot refrain from concluding that it is the
spontaneous expression of its writer’s innermost
thoughts and authentic experiences. The storm of
doubt and despair, of suffering and sin, that
sweeps through the serious scenes of the play,
does not seem to be the work of a mere
imaginative artist who conjures it forth from the
confines of his own mind, but of one who must
have stood up to the chin in such experience.
• There is no doubt that the writer of Doctor
Faustus appears to be one who has experienced a
great spiritual tragedy, one whose sense of
harmony between his mind and the universal
forces around him is shaken, one who is heavy
with a feeling of loss. What his sufferings and
losses are, the dramatist does not make clear.
Caught in a chaotic maze of conflicting emotions,
he is busy searching for the meaning of the
calamity that has overtaken him.
• Part of it he seems to discover in blind
servitude to barren learning. Marlowe, like
Faustus, seems to have realised that all he had
learnt and known, all he had attempted and
achieved with the help of his intellectual
equipment, helped not to strengthen his soul
but to lose it, by being cut off from the rich
natural resources of inspiration and of faith.
Shakespeare vs. Marlowe
• These two men supposedly:
Lived in the same town: London
• At the same time
• Worked at the same occupation: writing plays
• At the same places: the few theatres of London
• Worked with the same people
• Each occupied the same prestigious position as
foremost poet and playwright in all of England.
And yet the contrasts are almost
unbelievable.
• In spite of such narratives as the movie “Shakespeare In
Love” and writings by Marlowe biographers (which tell in
glowing detail how Shakespeare and Marlowe might have
met), there is absolutely no record of the two of them
meeting, or working together, or even crossing paths.
• Park Honen writes in his highly regarded biography of
Marlowe, “Christopher Marlowe, Poet and Spy,” discussing
the two of them: “Did they meet? Or become intimate.
Plainly, no record of their talk together survives. No obscure
diary tell us of the meetings, though shreds of the truth can
be discovered if we are willing to be patient, indirect, or
somewhat roundabout in assessing Marlowe’s friendship
with his prime contemporary.”
• The question arises: if the two greatest writers
in England at that time ever met, wouldn’t
there be some reference to it somewhere?
All the suppositions in the world regarding what
might have occurred if Shakespeare and Marlowe
met in no way indicate that they did. As a matter of
fact, the very fact that there no existing references
that England’s two major writers even cross paths,
seems to be indicative that there never was such a
meeting.
• One must ask: why? The two most famous and
highly regarded playwrights in England … never
met?
Comparing The Two Men
• With so much in common, it’s amazing that
the lives of these two men were so different.
As stated above, they worked in the same
profession, in the same town, at the same
time, with the same people and in the same
places (London theatres).
• How could they not have met? Examining
their differences may offer a clue.
• Educationally they were a great contrast.
Shakespeare had had little schooling, quitting
school when he was fifteen years old.
Marlowe, by comparison, had two degrees
including a master’s from Corpus Christi
College at Cambridge University.
• Shakespeare had had no opportunity to learn
foreign languages though Marlowe was fluent in
many. Marlowe had translated Ovid’s “Amores”
while in college and later had done the first
translation of Cervantes’s massive classic Don
Quixote from Spanish to English. Many of the
plays attributed to Shakespeare have reference to
foreign cities and foreign languages
• In a similar manner, Shakespeare had had no
opportunity to learn protocol of military life, legal
matters or court manners, things in which
Marlowe was proficient -- things that were
frequently a part of many of the Shakespearean
plays.
• Marlowe had traveled to many countries.
According to records, Shakespeare had never left
England.
THEIR ONLY SIMILARITY?
• There is one area in which the two men share many
traits. Their writings.
• This is the primary impetus for the conspiracy theory
that Marlowe may have written the works attributed to
Shakespeare.
• There are more than a hundred duplicate lines in the
works of Shakespeare taken from previous writings of
Marlowe. And more so, there are numerous references
to Marlowe’s works in Shakespeare’s writings.
• Some historians have pieced together these facts:
• There is no record that the two greatest writers
of the time ever met.
• Marlowe’s death seems fabricated at best.
• Shakespeare seems to be missing all the traits
and experiences required to write such
magnificent plays.
• Maybe Marlowe did not die and continued to
write under the name of William Shakespeare.
COUNTER ARGUMENTS
• Some historians have argued that
Shakespeare’s lack of education, travel
experiences, and military knowledge do not
preclude his having written the works
attributed to him.
• But others have disputing these factors, when
coupled with all the other peculiarities
connected with Shakespeare’s life.
• There are questions concerning if Shakespeare was
literate. There are no copies of anything handwritten
by him. His signature appears only once in a legal
document and that one has raised some suspicions.
• There are a multitude of questions concerning other
issues: why there were no tributes to Shakespeare
when he died … why did his plays kept appearing
(fourteen in all) after his death … and why did his will
list every pot and pan but no books, no quartos of his
plays, and no willing to anyone of any present plays on
which he was working when he died.
• Two different men, with two contrasting lives:
presenting more questions than solutions.
• That is how conspiracy theories begin.
Quotes
• “Marlowe is the greatest discoverer, the most daring pioneer, in all
our poetic literature. Before Marlowe there was no genuine blank
verse and genuine tragedy in our language. After his arrival the way
was prepared, the path made straight for Shakespeare. Marlowe
differs from the other poets of his time not in degree, but in kind;
not as an eagle differs from wrens and tit-mice, but as an eagle
differs from frogs and tadpoles . . . he first, and he alone, gave
wings to English poetry; he first brought into its serene and radiant
atmosphere the new strange element of sublimity . . . Among all
English poets he was the first full-grown man. Only young and
immature by comparison with‘such disciples and successors as
Shakespeare and Milton; but the first born among us of their kind."
Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1914
• Shakespeare, I suggest, only became
Shakespeare because of the death of
Marlowe. And he remained peculiarly haunted
by that death."
Jonathan Bate, 1997
• Allusions to Marlowe's work are prevalent in
Shakespeare's plays. Here Shakespeare quotes
directly a line from Marlowe's Hero and
Leander (176): "Whoever lov'd that lov'd not
at first sight?" (As You Like It, 3.5.81). It is
argued that Shakespeare alludes to Marlowe's
murder in As You Like It, 3.3.11-12: "it strikes a
man more dead than a great reckoning in a
little room", and apostrophizes his dead friend
in A Midsummer Night's Dream:
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The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
• The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
• Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth
to heaven;
• And as imagination bodies forth
• The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
• Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
• A local habitation and a name.
• Now, for those with lots of imagination:
theory has it that, because he was about to be
tried for heresy, Marlowe staged his death and
fled to Italy. From there, Marlowe is supposed
to have penned all the works attributed to
Shakespeare and had them smuggled back to
England.
• Money can't buy love, but it improves your
bargaining position.
Christopher Marlowe
• Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one
self place, for where we are is hell, And where
hell is there must we ever be.
Christopher Marlowe
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