FREE NOTES: CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE: DOCTOR FAUSTUS
Drama: Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faustus
Qustion : Discuss the Renaissance elements in Doctor Faustus.
Answer: Christopher Marlowe, including the Elizabethan University wits, is significantly inspired as well as influenced by the Renaissance spirit which takes it origin in Italy. An eminent critic says, “Rabel 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 and of the seven deadly sins in Dr. Faustus links him with the drama of the later middle Ages. Faustus’s 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 superhuman ambition and will in the persuit of ideals of beauty or power, or whatever they may be, prove the author to be a man of the Renaissance.”
Faustus is an in carnation of the Renaissance spirit .He appears to be renaissance man in the very opening scene when, rejecting the traditional subjects of the study, he turns to magic and considers the varied uses to which he can put his magic skill after he has acquired it . He contemplates the worlds of profit and delight, of power, of honor of omnipotence when he hopes to enjoy as a magician. In dwell 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 in the first scene of Act I maintain our sense of enlarged out look and extended horizons of the great period of English history. Faustus desires gold from the East Indies, pearl from the depths of the sea, pleasant fruits and princely delicacies from America. His friend Valdes refers to Indian in the Spanish colony, to Lapland giants, to the argosies of Venice, and to the annual plate-flect which supplied gold and silver to the Spanish treasury from the New world. There was much in this scene to inflame the hearts of English Audiences who must have heartily approved of Faustus’s to chase away the prince of Pharma from the Netherlands. Thus Faustus’ dream of power including much had a strong appeal for the English people including Marlowe himself.
Faustus undoubtedly embodies the new inquiring 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 of the danger into which it could lead those who were dominated by it. The danger is clearly seen in Faustus’s last soliloquy in which Faustus offers to burn his books. Faustus asserts:
“My God, my God, look not so fierce on me!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while!
Ugly hell, gape not! Come not Lucifer!
I’ll burn my books! Ah Mephistophilis!”
Not doubt these looks 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 attributes his downfall partly at least, to his learning.
Although without specific Italian sources, Doctor Faustus owes its audacity of thought and temper to Renaissance Italy, and treats with a comparable reach of mind questions that troubled Italian thinkers. To get some impression of the Renaissaince quality of Doctor Faustus it is enough to read three Italian works- Petrach’s On his Own ignorance, Lorengo Valla’s Dialogue in free will and Pico della Mirandola Oration on the Dignity.
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. In Doctor Faustus turned the focus inward. Here he depicted the human soul as the tragic battlefield and wrote first Christian tragedy.
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’s damnation. But it has to be noted that all that the 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 warns Fasutus against reading the book of magic because it will bring God’s heavy wrath upon his head, 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 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 Jlliars?”
In estimation, 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.
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AMIR MOHAMMAD KABIR
Qustion : Discuss the Renaissance elements in Doctor Faustus.
Answer: Christopher Marlowe, including the Elizabethan University wits, is significantly inspired as well as influenced by the Renaissance spirit which takes it origin in Italy. An eminent critic says, “Rabel 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 and of the seven deadly sins in Dr. Faustus links him with the drama of the later middle Ages. Faustus’s 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 superhuman ambition and will in the persuit of ideals of beauty or power, or whatever they may be, prove the author to be a man of the Renaissance.”
Faustus is an in carnation of the Renaissance spirit .He appears to be renaissance man in the very opening scene when, rejecting the traditional subjects of the study, he turns to magic and considers the varied uses to which he can put his magic skill after he has acquired it . He contemplates the worlds of profit and delight, of power, of honor of omnipotence when he hopes to enjoy as a magician. In dwell 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 in the first scene of Act I maintain our sense of enlarged out look and extended horizons of the great period of English history. Faustus desires gold from the East Indies, pearl from the depths of the sea, pleasant fruits and princely delicacies from America. His friend Valdes refers to Indian in the Spanish colony, to Lapland giants, to the argosies of Venice, and to the annual plate-flect which supplied gold and silver to the Spanish treasury from the New world. There was much in this scene to inflame the hearts of English Audiences who must have heartily approved of Faustus’s to chase away the prince of Pharma from the Netherlands. Thus Faustus’ dream of power including much had a strong appeal for the English people including Marlowe himself.
Faustus undoubtedly embodies the new inquiring 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 of the danger into which it could lead those who were dominated by it. The danger is clearly seen in Faustus’s last soliloquy in which Faustus offers to burn his books. Faustus asserts:
“My God, my God, look not so fierce on me!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while!
Ugly hell, gape not! Come not Lucifer!
I’ll burn my books! Ah Mephistophilis!”
Not doubt these looks 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 attributes his downfall partly at least, to his learning.
Although without specific Italian sources, Doctor Faustus owes its audacity of thought and temper to Renaissance Italy, and treats with a comparable reach of mind questions that troubled Italian thinkers. To get some impression of the Renaissaince quality of Doctor Faustus it is enough to read three Italian works- Petrach’s On his Own ignorance, Lorengo Valla’s Dialogue in free will and Pico della Mirandola Oration on the Dignity.
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. In Doctor Faustus turned the focus inward. Here he depicted the human soul as the tragic battlefield and wrote first Christian tragedy.
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’s damnation. But it has to be noted that all that the 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 warns Fasutus against reading the book of magic because it will bring God’s heavy wrath upon his head, 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 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 Jlliars?”
In estimation, 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.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AMIR MOHAMMAD KABIR
MA (ENGLISH) 24/03/2010
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