Dr Foustus Essay, Research Paper

Faustus: Renaissance Martyr or Tragic Hero Faustus died a death that few

could bear to imagine,

much less experience. After knowing for many years when exactly he would

die, he reached the

stroke of the hour of his destiny in a cowardly, horrid demeanor. Finally,

when the devils appeared

at the stroke of midnight, tearing at his flesh as they draw him into his

eternal torment, he screams for

mercy without a soul, not even God Himself, to help him. However, what to

consider Doctor John

Faustus from Christopher Marlow’s dramatic masterpiece The Tragical History

of the Life and

Death of Doctor Faustus is a very debatable issue. For example, one can see

that he threw his life

away for the sake of knowledge, becoming obsessed with the knowledge that he

could possess. In

this case, he is unarguably a medieval tragic hero. However, when

considering the fact that he died

for the sake of gaining knowledge, pushing the limits of what is possible in

spite of obvious limitations

and, eventually, paying the ultimate penalty, he could be considered a

Renaissance martyr. These

two points of view have their obvious differences, and depending on from

what time period one

chooses to place this piece of literature varies the way that the play is

viewed. However, the idea of

considering him a martyr has many flaws, several of which are evident when

considering who

Faustus was before he turned to necromancy and what he did once he obtained

the powers of the

universe. Therefore, inevitably, the audience in this play should realize

that Faustus was a great man

who did many great things, but because of his hubris and his lack of vision,

he died the most tragic of

heroes. Christopher Marlowe was borne on February 6, 1564 (Discovering

Christopher Marlowe

2), in Canterbury, England, and baptized at St. George’s Church on the 26th

of the same month,

exactly two months before William Shakespeare was baptized at

Stratford-upon-Avon (Henderson

275). He was the eldest son of John Marlowe of the Shoemaker’s Guild and

Katherine Arthur, a

Dover girl of yeoman stock (Henderson 275). Upon graduating King’s School,

Canterbury, he

received a six-year scholarship to Cambridge upon the condition that he

studies for the church. He

went to Cambridge, but had to be reviewed by the Privy Council before the

university could award

him his M.A. degree because of his supposed abandonment of going to church.

He was awarded his

degree in July of 1587 at the age of twenty-three after the Privy Council

had convinced Cambridge

authorities that he had “behaved himself orderly and discreetly whereby he

had done Her Majesty

good service” (Henderson 276). After this, he completed his education from

Cambridge over a

period of six years. During this time he wrote some plays, including Hero

and Leander, along with

translating others, such as Ovid’s Amores and Book I of Lucan’s Pharsalia

(Henderson 276).

During the next five years he lived in London where he wrote and produced

some of his plays and

traveled a great deal on government commissions, something that he had done

while trying to earn

his M.A. degree. In 1589, however, he was imprisoned for taking part in a

street fight in which a

man was killed; later he was discharged with a warning to keep the peace

(Henderson 276). He

failed to do so; three years later he was summoned to court for assaulting

two Shoreditch

constables, although there is no knowledge on whether or not he answered

these charges

(Henderson 276). Later Marlowe was suspected of being involved in the siege

of Roven where

troops were sent to contain some Protestants who were causing unrest in

spite of the Catholic

League. Then, after sharing a room with a fellow writer Thomas Kyd, he was

accused by Kyd for

having heretical papers which “denied the deity of Jesus Christ”

(Discovering Christopher Marlowe

2). Finally, a certain Richard Baines accused him of being an atheist.

Before he could answer any of

these charges, however, he was violently stabbed above his right eye while

in a fight Ingram Frizer

(Discovering Christopher Marlowe 2). Doctor Faustus could be considered one

of Marlowe’s

masterpieces of drama. It was his turn from politics, which he established

himself in with his plays

Edward II and Tamburlaine the Great, to principalities and power. In it he

asks the reader to analyze

what the limits are for human power and knowledge and ponder what would

happen if one man tried

to exceed those limits. The play opens up with Faustus, who is supposedly

the most learned man in

the world, talking about how he has mastered every field of knowledge known

to man. He is bored

with theology, finding that man is doomed no matter what happens, and he has

become a master

physician, curing a whole village of a plague. He feels that there is

nothing left for him to learn, as is

frustrated by this; therefore, he decides to delve into the realm of

necromancy and magic. He calls

upon two other magicians, Valdes and Cornelius, to teach him how to conjure.

He learns to do so,

and upon his first private experiment into the black art, Mephistophilis

appears to him in the form of

an ugly devil. This repulses Faustus, so he tells this devil to go away and

return as a friar. The devil

does so, but then explains that it was not his conjuring that brought forth

this devil, but the fact that

he conjured and, therefore, cursed the trinity that made him appear. Faustus

realizes the amount of

power that he can gain from being a necromancer, so he tells Mephistophilis

to return to hell and tell

Satan that he will sell his soul to him for twenty-four years of absolute

power. Satan agrees to this,

telling Faustus to sign the bargain in blood. Faustus does so even after a

Good Angel appears to him

trying to convince him not to do so and several omens appear which warn him

not to make the bond.

For the next twenty-four years Faustus, with Mephistophilis as his servant,

has absolute power.

However, in spite of this, he spends his time going to several different

important places to display his

power in the form of petty tricks. In Rome, Faustus turns himself invisible

and, along with

Mephistophilis, pokes fun at the Pope and some friars. He also goes to the

German court where he

shows of his power to Emperor Carolus by conjuring the ghost of Alexander

the Great. When one

knight is sarcastic with Faustus’ tricks, he places a set of horns on his

head. Later on, Faustus sells

his horse to a horse-courser on the condition that he not take the horse

into water. Soon thereafter,

the horse-courser returns, furious that his horse turned into a bundle of

hay in the middle of the lake.

Finally, later on in the play, Faustus conjures up Helen of Troy for some

fellow scholars for their

viewing pleasure. As the play draws to its climax, Faustus begins to realize

what he has done and

that death, which he once thought didn’t exist, is indeed his ultimate

destiny. Several times he is given

the hint that he should repent to God. For example, an old man enters

towards the end of the play

and informs Faustus that it isn’t too late to repent because he himself was

once a sinner but repented.

Faustus still doesn’t listen. Finally, as the clock strikes twelve upon his

hour of destiny, many ugly

devils appear and drag him off as he finally screams for mercy. After

finishing reading or seeing this

play, one can argue that Faustus was a Renaissance hero. In fact, some argue

that this play

epitomizes the ideals of the Renaissance: egocentrism and the

over-indulgence of knowledge. “The

lust for power that led to the excess of the Renaissance-the slaughter of

Montezuma and countless

American Indians, the launching of the Armada, the very creation of the

English Church out of

Henry’s spleen-is epitomized in Dr. Faustus” (Shipley 404). Because Faustus

gave his life and soul

to Satan himself for the sake of gaining a greater knowledge is proof that

he is a Renaissance hero.

He rebels against the limitations set forth by medieval ideals and makes a

contract for knowledge

and power. In essence, Faustus, like every other Renaissance man, tries to

prove that man can rise

above the current set of limitations. Faustus does go to extremes by

chancing damnation in order to

gain his knowledge; however, he is considered tragic and God himself is seen

as the bad guy

because He set forth limitations on knowledge and makes man suffer eternal

damnation when trying

to exceed those limitations. The comedy then comes out when one thinks that

man was created by

God and, therefore, given his thirst for knowledge by God. When he tries to

gain knowledge, then,

he is damned forever. This divine comedy is one of the ironies that one can

perceive in Marlowe’s

play. However, this Renaissance view of Marlowe being a martyr much less

realistic when

considering Faustus to be a medieval tragic hero. In fact, for the very

reasons that one can argue that

Faustus is martyr, one can give strong evidence that he fell from grace and

became a tragic hero.

First of all, the Faustus claims that he is a master in all fields of study.

In medicine, his “[prescriptions

are] hung up like monuments / Whereby whole cities have escaped the plague”

(1.1.20-21). He is

bored with the study of law for “this study fits a mercenary drudge / Who

aims at nothing but

external trash, / Too servile and illiberal to me” (1.1.34-36). With

theology, Faustus claims that he is

dumbfounded by the loose translation of the quote from Romans 6:23, “For the

wages of sin is

death.” This final area is where the irony is greatly seen in the play.

Throughout the play, Faustus is

given the option to repent for these sins and turn back towards God. When

the Good Angel and the

Bad Angel appear to him throughout the play, both sides try to persuade

Faustus that they are right.

The Bad Angel tells Faustus about how he should delve into necromancy, for

this art is “wherein all

nature’s treasury is contained” (1.1.75). The Good Angel, on the other hand,

warns that by dealing

with magic, he would ask for “God’s heavy wrath upon thy head” (1.1.72). At

first, Faustus is so

eager to gain this knowledge from Satan that he ignores the Good Angel.

Later, when the Good

Angel appears again and pleads for him to think on heavenly things, but

again Faustus, either

because he doesn’t want to or is afraid to, ignores this angel. The irony

comes from Faustus’ view

on the statement from the Book of Romans mentioned above. Faustus only

recalls the first half of the

verse; the entire verse states, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift

of God is eternal life through

Jesus Christ our Lord.” His oversight of this pivotal verse, which in itself

is the center for Christianity,

is the ultimate irony in his downfall. He refu Secondly, Faustus originally

asks Mephistophilis and

Satan for the power to do anything, “be it to make the moon drop from her

sphere / Or the ocean to

overwhelm the world” (1.3.38-39). He is even promised this power for

twenty-four years if he sells

his soul to Satan. However, when he is given his extraordinary power, he

resorts to using it for petty

tricks and tomfoolery. Originally, Faustus gained this power in order to

learn more about the

essential nature of the universe. However, when he travels to Rome, he

doesn’t try to use his power

in this way; he becomes invisible, boxes the pope in the ear and snatches

cups away from the pope’s

hands. He then causes fireworks to explode at the feet of the cardinals and

the pope. Finally, he

returns with Mephistophilis, both dressed as cardinals, and poses as two

fathers returning from a

mission. All of this is pure slapstick comedy to the audience; it is also

comedy against Faustus. He is

given great powers, and resorts to using them for petty tricks. He does the

same thing later on, while

at the German Court and Emperor Carolus the Fifth, where he makes the ghost

of Alexander the

Great appear and where he also makes the horns appear atop the head of the

knight, Benvolio. He

then shows how his one-time thirst for the secrets of the universe become

overshadowed by his

simple lustful fantasies when he conjures up Helen of Troy and then, once he

is faced by the old man

and his warnings, exits with this legendary beauty. Not only is he blinded

so much by his power that

he resorts to simple tricks, but he is reduced to the indulgence of his

simple pleasures. Through these

displays of his necromantic powers Faustus shows the true tragedy of his

character. Finally, and

probably his most tragic flaw, is the fact that he tries to gain a knowledge

that is completely

forbidden to him. Although the Renaissance view says that from the search of

such forbidden power

one become mighty and truly great, the medieval view says that there are

certain limits for man and

he should never try to break those limits. In nature, each and every thing

obeys a certain order that

God Himself set. First there is God, then the angels, then man, then

animals, and finally inanimate

objects. If man tries to sink lower into the realm of the animal, which

implies trying to succumb to

man’s animalistic lusts and tendencies, one is seen as succumbing to the

“id” personality, as called by

Sigmund Freud. Then, on the other end of the spectrum, one can try to become

more become

superhuman, attempting to break the limits of man. Lucifer was once of the

most beautiful angels until

he was guilty of “aspiring pride and insolence / For which God threw him

from the face of heaven”

(1.3.68-69). Faustus thinks that he can become like God by gaining these

great powers; little does

he know that he is damning himself to eternal torment. Even when his final

seconds are approaching,

he tries to break the limitation that, since time began, man has tried to

circumvent: time itself.

Although he was given all of the power of the universe, he was ironically

not given the power to halt

time, and as he is about to meet his destiny, more time is all he can ask

for so that he can repent for

his sins: Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may

cease and midnight never

come; Fair Nature’s eye, rise, rise again, and make Perpetual day; or let

this hour be but A year, a

month, a week, a natural day, That Faustus may repent and save his soul! O

lente lente currite noctis

equi (5.3.133-139). This last line, meaning “Slowly, slowly run, O horses of

the night,” sums up

Faustus’ desperation and tragic nature very thoroughly. Once he didn’t

believe in death or in hell;

sadly, now he realizes that those two things are the only reality he will

have from then on. Over time,

this play has received many critiques. In fact, there is question on whether

or not Marlowe actually

wrote this play in its entirety. One critic says that “this drama should be

regarded as a skeletal

structure of the play written by Marlowe, for the surviving manuscripts are

so interspersed with

comic scenes and the lines themselves are so often revised according to

whims of the actors that the

original writing must be culled out of the surviving version” (”Dr. Faustus”

261). This same author,

when thinking along the same lines as the above quote, says, “the exploits

of Faustus are frequently

rendered pure low comedy” (”Dr. Faustus” 261). From this he concluded that

these parts weren’t

written at all by Marlowe. Although this may be true, as the stylistic

differences between the comical

and the serious scenes is very broad, drawing this conclusion from the fact

that the slapstick comedy

that Faustus and Mephistophilis exhibit together is of a much different tone

from the rest of the play is

preposterous. In my opinion, Marlowe included these scenes and these obvious

examples of

comedy to show the true tragedy of Faustus. He begins the play as a great

man who is a master in

every field of knowledge known to man. The best way to represent his truly

dramatic turn-around is

to show Faustus becoming involved in petty tricks and antics to show of his

incredible power. This

true tragedy is, I believe, a step that Marlowe consciously took in order to

show the dramatic

change in the character of Faustus. I am not saying that someone else

besides Marlowe couldn’t

have written these scenes. However, when looking at the debate from this

point of view, it is very

possible that Marlowe did write them intentionally to show the dramatic

change in Doctor Faustus.

Faustus was indeed a tragic hero. Many scholars and literary experts may

debate that, because this

play was written in the Renaissance, Christopher Marlowe intended that

Doctor Faustus be seen as

a martyr trying to attain that which was forbidden to man in a time when

doing so was the noble thing

to do. This is not true, however. Doctor Faustus was a tragic hero through

and through, and the way

that he presents himself in the play is solid evidence for this. To begin

with, he feels that he can justify

his turning to witchcraft and necromancy by his gaining of all other

knowledges. The irony here is that

he never did, or he would have realized that even after he had committed

blasphemy by conjuring

spirits, he could have turned back to God. He also is a tragic hero because

of his methods of using

his new power. Instead of using it to attain the secrets of the universe, he

plays petty tricks and

tomfoolery on various important people around the world, including the pope

and the German

emperor. Finally, he proved his tragic nature by trying to move above and

beyond the limitations set

by God himself. Faustus knew that he had to abide by certain laws and rules

that God set aside for

all of mankind. Faustus knew his limitations, and thus by trying to break

those, he damned himself to

eternal torment. Ironically, Faustus could have been the most incredible

human being who ever lived.

If he had repented, the world would have seen that God is truly merciful

because he forgave such a

blasphemous heathen as Faustus. Faustus could have become an example for all

of mankind and

proven that if he could be forgiven, then all could be forgiven. However,

because he was stubborn,

ignorant, and blind, he refused to see that he was never truly damned until

he was drug by the devils

into the heart of hell itself.

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