{"id":85,"date":"2019-04-25T08:40:04","date_gmt":"2019-04-25T08:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engp02.epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/?post_type=chapter&#038;p=85"},"modified":"2019-05-08T12:00:33","modified_gmt":"2019-05-08T12:00:33","slug":"christopher-marlowe-doctor-faustus","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp02\/chapter\/christopher-marlowe-doctor-faustus\/","title":{"rendered":"Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faustus"},"content":{"raw":"<div><\/div>\r\n<div><span style=\"float: right\"><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/oMHInvGoiDA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img class=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/download.png\" alt=\"epgp books\" width=\"48\" height=\"48\" \/><\/a>\r\n<\/span><\/div>\r\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">\r\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\r\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Storyboard<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Section I<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Introduction: Christopher Marlowe and Renaissance England<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify\">\r\n \t<li>Biographical contexts for Christopher Marlowe<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Marlowe\u2019s unique contributions to Renaissance Drama \u2013 the power infused into dramatic blank verse for instance.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>The importance of education and learning in Renaissance England<\/li>\r\n \t<li>The religious and political climate in Renaissance England as a crucial context for Marlowe\u2019s life and works<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Section II<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Christopher Marlowe: Major Works and Key Themes<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify\">\r\n \t<li>Overview of Marlowe\u2019s major works<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Survey of major themes and debates in Marlowe\u2019s plays \u2013 predestination, ambition and power, education and social mobility<\/li>\r\n \t<li>The socio-historic contexts of Marlowe\u2019s major themes<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Section III<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong><em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>: Summary and Significance<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify\">\r\n \t<li>Summary of the play <em>Doctor Faustus<\/em><\/li>\r\n \t<li>Historical context for the story of \u201cFaustus\u201d \u2013 the German Faust books and other origin stories and their illustration of the popularity of folktales and legends about witchcraft and devil worship in Marlowe\u2019s England<\/li>\r\n \t<li>The various editions of the play\u2019s text<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Section IV<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong><em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>: Major themes<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify\">\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">A discussion of major themes in <em>Doctor Faustus<\/em><\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Education and Learning \u2013 Marlowe\u2019s examination of hierarchical relationships inherent in any institutionalized system of knowledge\/learning<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Marlowe\u2019s critique of the University space in England as being governed by religious doctrines and state authority<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Religion \u2013 Salvation and Damnation and the corporeal nature of punishment for forsaking God. Representation is seen as essential for communicating and understanding heaven and hell.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Hell and Lucifer are portrayed in concrete, immediate and familiarly \u2018human\u2019 terms while heaven is seen as an abstraction that is not relatable.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Punishment is inscribed on the body \u2013 the play presents a corporeal \u201crealizing\u201d of destiny\/fate\/damnation<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Section V<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Conclusion: <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>in the Present<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify\">\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Continuing relevance of the Faust legend<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Subsequent interpretations\/adaptations of the Faustus story<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Lesson Plan<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">This Unit introduces Renaissance dramatists other than Shakespeare and will thus examine another very well-known contemporary, Christopher Marlowe and one of his most famous works, <em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>. This lesson will consider <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>as an illustration of Renaissance attitudes towards and cultural beliefs about magic, religion, education and free will\/agency. We will begin with a brief introduction to Marlowe\u2019s life, his major works and recurring themes\/ideas before moving to an overview of the many socio-historic contexts within which <em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>, the central focus of this lesson, can be studied. We will then move on to a discussion of the main themes evidenced in <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>and their relevance\/significance for an understanding of Renaissance society. We conclude with a brief survey of <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>in popular culture in contemporary times to reflect on the continuing relevance of this text.<\/p>\r\n<p class=\"no-indent\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Section 1<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<p class=\"no-indent\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Introduction: Christopher Marlowe and Renaissance England<\/strong><\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Christopher Marlowe was born in Canterbury in 1564 and can be considered the first major dramatist of the Elizabethan period, if we leave Thomas Kyd out of the reckoning. Marlowe was born into a very ordinary family - his father was a shoemaker - but was able to rise above his social position through his university education. He shares this in common with several other dramatists (William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Robert Greene) in an age where, under the influence of the European Renaissance, social mobility was seen as \u2018acceptable\u2019 only in the context of classical education. Anxious about the fluidity in social hierarchies created by an emerging merchant class, the nobility began to define the \u2018upper\u2019 or \u2018ruling\u2019 classes in terms of education, manners and attitudes. The \u2018true\u2019 gentleman, in Marlowe\u2019s time, conversant with Greek and Latin epics and trained in Philosophy and the Arts was more suited to being a \u2018ruler\u2019 than the merchant who was merely a man of means. Marlowe\u2019s education first at King\u2019s School, Canterbury and later at Cambridge was made possible by scholarships and helped shape several of the themes\/debates that he would explore in his works. For instance, Marlowe\u2019s introduction to the ancients in his school education exposed him to ways of thinking and experiencing the world that were in conflict with religious institutions and their teachings in the Elizabethan age. His reading\/study of ancient authors would have introduced Marlowe to a non-Christian world view where human beings are not necessarily viewed as inherently depraved on account of original sin and forms of government that are not monarchical (Rome had been a republic for a great part of its history) are also seen to be successful. Moreover, Marlowe is also celebrated for the innovations and power he brought to dramatic blank verse and this is also something he owed to his classical education.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Marlowe\u2019s university education (the period of his MA) also forms an important backdrop for more controversial details about his life and involvement in the religious and political tensions of the period. In 1593, at twenty-nine years of age, Marlowe went to a tavern in Deptford with friends, where he was stabbed to death during an argument over the bill. Later studies reveal that Marlowe was under investigation at the time for treason and atheism and even his roommate, the playwright Thomas Kyd, was tortured for information by the Queen\u2019s Privy Council. While the premeditated nature of Marlowe\u2019s death is a matter of great debate, what is of greater significance is the climate of religious and political authority under which the Elizabethan dramatist worked. We can now move on to a discussion of the major themes and key ideas in Marlowe\u2019s works, for which the preceding biographical details are a useful context.<\/p>\r\n<p class=\"no-indent\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Section II<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<p class=\"no-indent\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Christopher Marlowe: Major Works and Key Themes<\/strong><\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Marlowe\u2019s reputation as a playwright rests on four major works: <em>Tamburlaine the Great<\/em>, <em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>, <em>The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta <\/em>and <em>Edward the Second<\/em>. The chronology of Marlowe\u2019s works is greatly contested although his first play is likely to have been <em>Dido, Queen of Carthage<\/em>, which was co-authored with his contemporary at Cambridge, Thomas Nashe. One of the first major themes that can be seen across Marlowe\u2019s works is that of the use and abuse of power. For instance, in his\u00a0<em>Tamburlaine<\/em>, which is based on the story of Timur the Lame, Marlowe examines imperial power. Marlowe\u2019s Tamburlaine is a shepherd who rises to the position of general before eventually taking command of the Mongol empire. <em>Tamburlaine<\/em>, like Marlowe\u2019s other plays, portrays an arrogant, unapologetically ambitions and powerful character, marked by many dramatic speeches. In the <em>Jew of Malta<\/em>, Marlowe portrays an evil central character, drunk on commercial power and motivated by the ruin he can bring to others\u2019 lives. <em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>, as the rest of the lesson will elaborate, is about the desire and eventual failure to control demonic or satanic power. In his quest for knowledge, especially forbidden knowledge, Marlowe\u2019s Faustus is seen to desire power over Lucifer and the spirits\/bad angels he commands. Similarly, <em>Edward the Second <\/em>is also a meditation on monarchial power and the dilemma between one\u2019s individual desires and the setting aside of personal wants for communal\/social benefit. Marlowe\u2019s characters thus present a close engagement with the subject of power, individual ambition and the taboos associated with a conflict between personal desires and social goals. Social mobility for instance, which several of Marlowe\u2019s characters (and Marlowe himself, as evidenced by his educational scholarships) illustrate is seen to be taboo, a source of discrimination and can even result in personal social ruin. For instance, several other characters condemn Faustus\u2019s interest in magic and necromancy in the play and he is seen not to pay heed to their warning. The pact Faustus makes with the devil results in momentary wish fulfillment \u2013 he is able to travel the world, seeks answers to the universe\u2019s secrets and can attain the love of beautiful women of his choosing \u2013 but is seen as simultaneously isolating. Faustus attains a greater social status in accordance with his ambition to achieve knowledge that other men are too tame or foolish not to pursue but simultaneously becomes ostracized from everyday social life. He is seen to have no friends or well wishers who can save him from damnation by the end of the play. Faustus\u2019 reputation precedes him but it invokes fear, anxiety and enmity in those who hear of his ability to engage in magic and necromancy and summon demonic forces.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The second theme that merits attention in Marlowe\u2019s works is the idea of predestination or the lack of agency in determining the course of one\u2019s life. This theme is important in the context of not only Marlowe\u2019s plays, but also Renaissance dramatists in general. The\u00a0idea of predestination is linked closely with the religious climate and the content of school and university curriculum at the time. Marlowe thus illustrates the violent religious wars of the time through his <em>Massacre at Paris <\/em>and the conflict between politics in religion in <em>Tamburlaine <\/em>and <em>The Jew of Malta<\/em>. These plays demonstrate how belonging to one faith over the other determined the extent to which one could be seen as a \u2018safe\u2019 member of a country where a public performance of loyalty to the monarch was a condition of citizenship\/social and civic security. Individuals in Marlowe\u2019s England would have thus been faced with a continuous battle between individual interests\/beliefs and social\/monarchial mandates. <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>similarly examines an individual faced with the choice between renouncing salvation and being tortured to death. Alexander Nowell\u2019s <em>A Cathecism or First Instruction of Christian Religion <\/em>espoused several of the monarchial tenets of the Church of England, headed by the Queen. Nowell\u2019s text would have been part of the instruction that schoolboys received at the time, where the Biblical commandment of honoring one\u2019s father and mother was also extended to any person who wielded state authority. The Queen herself, as the head of the state, was seen as parent, against whom any act of violence\/dissent was forbidden. Another crucial doctrine set out in <em>A Cathecism <\/em>is the idea that all human beings are born sinners and are in need of god\u2019s mercy. This is central to the development of Faustus\u2019 story where any good deeds or acts performed during his life are seen as incapable of relieving him from damnation. Marlowe and his contemporaries were thus taught to believe that one cannot earn mercy through the \u201cwork\u201d we carry out in this life and the question of our salvation or damnation has been determined before our birth. One did not, therefore, in Marlowe\u2019s England, believe in Free Will or agency in shaping one\u2019s course to heaven or hell without being seen as defying monarchial doctrines.<\/p>\r\n<p class=\"no-indent\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Section III<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<p class=\"no-indent\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong><em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>: Summary and Significance<\/strong><\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>narrates the story of the eponymous Renaissance scholar, one who is at the forefront of knowledge in an age of great exploration and discovery but is still marked by discontent. The play\u2019s Prologue features a Chorus who sum up Faustus\u2019 personality by comparing him to Icarus \u2013 \u2018His waxen wings did mount above his reach\u2019 \u2013\u00a0this contextualizes Faustus\u2019 ambitions, their transgressive nature and role in his eventual downfall. The chorus also supplies us with the information that Faustus was born of parents \u2018base of stock\u2019 and his respectable educational credentials. His lowly birth does not stand in the way of a university education, but characteristic of the age, he is dissatisfied with conventional and traditional modes of understanding and experiencing the world. The play opens with Faustus discrediting different disciplines and subjects of study (divinity, medicine) before finally deciding that necromancy and magic are the true windows to the fulfillment of power, honor and omnipotence. Faustus then proceeds to become a student of magic and necromancy by conjuring the devil\/spirit Mephistopheles. Through Mephistopheles, Faustus makes a pact with Lucifer to attain twenty-four years of unbridled pleasure and power in exchange for his soul. Mephistopheles is to remain, during this time, Faustus\u2019 servant, to do his bidding. Following the course of the pact in the play, before which Faustus is warned by several of his fellow scholars of impending damnation, Faustus seeks to expand the horizons of his knowledge with Mephistopheles\u2019s help. He achieves this by asking Mephistopheles various questions for which he is bound by the pact to supply answers. Faustus is however, not only motivated by his desire to learn, but also with the accruing of wealth and power. His twenty four years of unimpeded, luxurious living is thus spent largely in the pursuit of very petty ambition \u2013 he is seen to be entertained by a masque put up by various devils playing the role of the seven deadly sins, travels the world over only to carry out mischief with the Pope and his followers in Rome and to perform conjuring tricks for the Emperor in Germany. In exchange for his soul, Faustus has gained no more than the power to avenge petty skirmishes (portrayed through various comic interludes in the play) with very powerless opponents. As his twenty-four years are drawing to a close, Faustus is seen to feel a great anxiety about his inevitable damnation. His questions to Mephistopheles now take on an increasingly religious coloring and most of the knowledge he now desires is about the nature of heaven and hell and man\u2019s control over his path towards God or Satan. Finding himself physically unable to repent and too deeply mired in his demonic pact, Faustus is seen to descend into despair and anxiety. Faustus is shown visions of both heaven and hell by a good and bad angel and is made aware of the punishments and rewards that sinners and the faithful receive respectively. Faustus is now terrified because he has\u00a0realized for the first time, the enormity and severity of the punishment that awaits him. The play ends as it began, in Faustus\u2019 study, where in stark contrast to the ambitious, zealous, confident and arrogant man we see at the beginning, surrounded by friends and supporters, there is now a cowardly, despairing and lonesome individual, unable to escape the terrible death that awaits him. The last moments of Faustus\u2019s life are given a great deal of attention and detail in the play to fully illustrate the horror of renouncing salvation and knowing the inevitable consequences. The short epilogue, which announces the play\u2019s end, sympathizes with the scholar who may have \u201cgrown full straight\u201d but was thwarted from \u201cproper\u201d scholarly pursuits through his dalliance with the devil.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The character Faustus is based on a real historical figure, a man called Georguis of Helmstadt, who studied at the University of Heidelberg in 1483 and was a known practitioner of astrology. After Georgius\u2019 death, several legends, influenced no doubt by general hysteria about witchcraft, magic and religious propaganda at the time, attached themselves to the account of his life put forth in a \u201cbiography\u201d and published in Frankfurt in 1587. An Englishman translated this book, published originally in German, in 1592 as <em>The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus<\/em>. This is the source of the central character of Marlowe\u2019s play, whose pact with the devil and other feats of conjuring and necromancy are some of the many legends that are also a product of the \u201cbiography\u201d. Marlowe however, invests his Faustus with more scholarly merit than either of his two predecessors \u2013 the author of <em>The History <\/em>and its English translator, P.F Gent. The popularity of the Faust legend in England after its translation by P.F. Gent and Marlowe\u2019s addition of scholarly merit to this rebel of popular legend illustrates a few key characteristics of Renaissance England. The first is the presence of men like Faustus in Marlowe\u2019s age, men who were both valuable and dangerous. Sir Walter Raleigh, for instance, was one of several Renaissance men who had achieved a great perfection in learning and was popularly associated with witchcraft and devil worship. His meetings with a circle of friends who debated religion, cosmology and philosophy attracted a great deal of attention and were likened during the time to encouraging the study\/pursuit of black magic. In an age where discoveries about the universe and man\u2019s place in it were\u00a0expanding daily, it was seen as imperative for religious authority to emphasize the dangers inherent in the quest for knowledge.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>poses certain editorial problems as well on account of two early texts that were published within a few years of each other, both of which make up the original manuscript of Marlowe\u2019s play. What is referred to as the A text appeared in 1604 and was reprinted twice with a few minor changes each time in 1609 and 1611. Subsequently, a B text was published in 1616 and this was reprinted five times before 1633. The many editions of <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>make varying claims to originality ranging from arguments about the text being the product of an actor\u2019s \u201creporting\u201d or \u201cassembling\u201d of a performance to a corrected version of the author\u2019s manuscript. This lesson follows the New Mermaid series edition of <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>whose basis is the B1 text published in 1616.<\/p>\r\n<p class=\"no-indent\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Section IV<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<p class=\"no-indent\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong><em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>: Major themes Education and Learning<\/strong><\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>presents a sustained intervention on education and learning, the socio-historic contexts for which have already been discussed. The play opens with an illustration of the questioning, skeptical Renaissance mind with Faustus condemning the limits of various subjects. Faustus critiques logic for having no greater end than to learn to \u2018dispute\u2019 well, medicine or the profession of a physician he ridicules since this system of knowledge cannot \u201cmake men to live eternally\u201d or \u201craise them to life again\u201d if they were dead. Faustus also criticizes the finality of predestination and the inability of man to think of himself as anything other than a sinner within the study of Divinity. He comes to rest therefore on the \u201cmetaphysics of magicians\u201d and \u201cnecromantic books\u201d that are heavenly for the world of \u201cprofit and delight, of power, of honour, of omnipotence\u201d that they promise. Thus begins Faustus\u2019 sojourn into magic, necromancy and eventual damnation. What is interesting to note here, in Marlowe\u2019s treatment of a student\u2019s interest in forbidden knowledge, is the space accorded to legitimate and illegitimate modes of\u00a0learning\/acquiring knowledge. While the play begins with Faustus in his study, his association with the University space is first seen through the presence of the \u201cscholars\u201d at the end of Act 1, Scene 1, where his recent dabbling in condemned subjects is discussed. The 2nd Scholar remarks, having heard of Faustus\u2019 recent entry into the study of the \u201cdamned\u201d art, that he would grieve for his impending divine retribution even if he were just a \u201cstranger\u201d and not \u201callied\u201d to him in any way. Here the scholars function as the means through which Faustus\u2019 \u201calliance\u201d or allegiance with a University space is performed. These scholars are representative of \u201cpermissible\u201d modes of learning and the \u201cSchools\u201d they are associated with are, by extension, governed by religious doctrine and thus condemn Faustus\u2019 pursuits. These scholars do not reappear until the end of the play, in Act V, Scene 2, where they are seen to believe in the possibility of Faustus\u2019 redemption or at least continue to be \u201callied\u201d to him. There is a marked hierarchy in Faustus\u2019 exploration of magic and \u201cnecromancy\u201d, his \u201cdeed\u201d with the devil and his institutional \u201caffiliation\u201d with the sanctified \u201cschools\u201d of learning. Faustus remains a \u201cscholar\u201d even through his twenty-four years of \u201cvoluptuousness\u201d following the deed he makes with Lucifer that guarantees his damnation. Faustus\u2019 increasing isolation subsequent to his summoning of Mephistopheles (when the Scholars meet Faustus at the end of the play, they remark that he is perhaps unwell from being \u201cover solitary\u201d), is testimony to the lack of institutionally mandated spaces for the pursuit of learning \u201cforbidden\u201d by state and religious authority. Moreover, the learning accrued by Faustus at the University, which granted him the title of \u201cdoctor\u201d is seen to be innate and unchanged by subsequent \u201cdemonic\u201d modes of learning. The capacity for questioning, his skepticism and wide range of knowledge (logic, divinity, cosmology) are seen to be qualities that were an institutional heritage, transferred and imbibed even prior to his allegiance with the devil. This is perhaps why Mephistopheles is a \u201cservant-teacher\u201d to Faustus, he binds Faustus\u2019 soul to Lucifer but is also himself bound \u2013 both to Lucifer and to Faustus, on account of his conjuring. At the start of the play, Faustus\u2019 reference to the spirits he will conjure as \u201cservile\u201d, creatures that will do his bidding is telling for what it reveals about a magician\u2019s status with respect to the demonic \u201cforces\u201d he commands. Valdes, Faustus\u2019 magician-friend, for instance, describes \u201cspirits\u201d in clearly imperialist terms when he says, \u201cAs Indian Moors obey their Spanish lords, so shall the spirits of every element\u00a0obey us three\u201d. Faustus is himself impressed by Mephistopheles\u2019 servility and he attributes this to his \u201clearning\u201d and scholarly skills \u2013 \u201cHow pliant is this Mephistopheles, Full of obedience and humility, such is the force of magic and my spells. Now Faustus, thou art conjuror laureate that canst command great Mephistopheles\u201d.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Faustus is seen to award himself status of \u201claureate\u201d upon being able to wield scholarly prowess, even if in the pursuit of a condemned subject. Faustus\u2019 superiority to Mephistopheles and his belief, even prior to the act of conjuring, that spirits\/demons are meant to do the scholar\u2019s bidding, are also products of his university heritage. Marlowe is perhaps meditating here on the inbuilt hierarchies in systems of knowledge where even when one is defying educational doctrines, exclusion and oppression continue to exist. Marlowe parodies Faustus\u2019 illusion of superiority, the result of indoctrination at the University that partly \u201ccreated\u201d him, through the exchange between Wagner (Faustus\u2019 servant and student) and the Clown in Act 1, Scene 4. Here, Wagner attempts to enlist the clown as his slave but fails initially to impress his status as \u201cmaster\u201d upon the clown. Since to be a master implies a position of some kind of social or economic advantage, the clown refuses Wagner\u2019s offer of money and food (although the clown, in Wagner\u2019s view is desperate and hungry enough to sell his soul even for a raw shoulder of mutton) and rejects his assumed superiority. It is finally fear and a display of Wagner\u2019s command over a few devils that pushes the clown into slavery. At the end of the scene, the clown is seen to be pacified when Wagner agrees to teach him the \u201cconjuring occupation\u201d and promises that he can learn to change himself into a dog, a cat or mouse or rat. This scene exposes the \u201cperformance\u201d inherent in both an assumed superiority and a \u201crequired\u201d servility \u2013 the clown is seen to accept his status as servant since he now knows that to move out of this position only requires the \u201clearning\u201d of conjuring. The learning he will acquire however, is sure to result in damnation and eternal slavery to Lucifer and this is how Marlowe exposes the flaw in an unproblematic association between education and social advantage. Faustus\u2019 exclamation at the end of his powerful speech in Act 5, Scene 2 that he will \u201cburn my books\u201d is the disappointing discovery that learning and one\u2019s status as \u201cscholar\u201d cannot guarantee agency or unhindered social advantage and recognition. Faustus\u2019 initial requests from Mephistopheles are motivated by \u201clearning\u201d \u2013 his dismissal of Mephistopheles\u2019 offer of a wife and request instead for \u201cbooks\u201d that teach spells and incantations, the character and motions of the planets, a compendium of all the plants herbs and trees that grow on the Earth \u2013 but he soon discovers the limits of demonic knowledge and the restrictive doctrines that govern it. In Act 2, Scene 2 for instance, Faustus asks Mephistopheles who created the world. Mephistopheles refuses to respond to this question in spite of being bound to say anything to Faustus. Faustus, who has now become disillusioned with Mephistopheles\u2019 stock responses to his questions on astrology and cosmology (Faustus exclaims that even his servant Wagner would be able to supply the kind of answers Mephistopheles gives him) pushes for a response. Mephistopheles explains to Faustus that he is only bound to tell him anything that is not against the kingdom of Lucifer \u2013 demonic knowledge is thus also bound by doctrine. A transgressive discipline, Faustus discovers, is thus also paradoxically governed by the fear of transgression and punishment.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Salvation, Damnation and the Corporeality of Punishment Marlowe also illustrates, in his <em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>, the language in which salvation and damnation is communicated and understood by individuals as the sole means of articulating one\u2019s faith\/religion. Faustus is seen to perform his faith as a form of personal devotion to the pursuit of knowledge \u2013 he frequently reiterates the need to \u201cstay resolute\u201d in his study of necromancy especially since impending damnation was guaranteed to him even at the time of making the \u201cpact\u201d. As discussed earlier in this section, Faustus is seen to have lost faith in \u201cDivinity\u201d as a mode of study on account of the rather fatalistic doctrine that one cannot choose to be a \u201csinner\u201d or one\u2019s eternal subservience to God or Satan. One\u2019s actions or \u201cwork\u201d in this life cannot in any way change one\u2019s path towards salvation or damnation. In the context of this religious skepticism introduced at the start of the play, it is interesting to see the parallel, alternative form of demonic faith and governance described subsequently. Mephistopheles, as one who has the experience of both \u201cheaven\u201d and \u201chell\u201d, is thus a unique choice of teacher for Faustus with the ability to offer a more studied and objective view on the subject than the good and bad angel. The good and the bad angel speak for heaven and hell respectively and resemble the universalizing doctrines of the Church and state Authority in the descriptions they offer about their abodes. Mephistopheles, however, speaks from an \u201cexperience\u201d of hell and heaven and presents a more individualistic view of religious faith\/belief. For instance, when the good angel appears in Act 2, Scene 1 to speak against Faustus\u2019 solemnization of a pact with Lucifer, he questions her about the importance of \u201ccontrition, prayer and repentance\u201d. She responds that these are means to bring Faustus into \u201cheaven\u201d and urges him to think of \u201cheaven\u201d and \u201cheavenly things\u201d. In contrast, the bad angel urges Faustus to think of \u201chonour\u201d and \u201cwealth\u201d and ridicules the \u201cillusions\u201d described by the good angel. The bad angel is seen here to speak of specific immediate goals and promises instant gratification in contrast to the vague absolutes alluded to by the good angel. Through Mephistopheles in the play, we are given a testimony about the nature of hell and heaven. Mephistopheles performs his role as an eyewitness when he declares to Faustus that he \u201ctasted the eternal joys of heaven\u201d and \u201csaw the face of God\u201d. He \u201cchooses\u201d to \u201cfall\u201d with Lucifer, himself once an angel who was \u201cdearly loved\u201d by God. Mephistopheles exercises agency by \u201cchoosing\u201d his affiliation with Lucifer and being forever damned with him. He is, however, \u201ctormented with ten thousand hells, in being deprived of everlasting bliss\u201d. After he has signed the \u201cdeed\u201d, Faustus questions Mephistopheles about the nature of hell and confesses that he thinks it to be a mere \u201cfable\u201d Mephistopheles responds to Faustus\u2019 skepticism with the assertion: \u201cAy, think so still, till experience change thy mind\u201d. The emphasis on experience is significant for this new \u201cteacher\u201d of Faustus whose task is to convince him of a different order of faith. Mephistopheles describes hell in strikingly unique terms when he says, \u201cHell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed in one self place; but where we are is hell, And where hell is, there must we ever be\u201d.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Mephistopheles\u2019 descriptions of hell as an individualistic and internal experience, together with the concrete rewards promised with fealty to Lucifer are crucial for the understanding of Faustus\u2019 decision to forsake God and Divinity. Marlowe\u2019s critique of religion, specifically the universal and rigid doctrines of the Church of England perhaps emerges in the interest Faustus shows in the petty gifts he receives from Mephistopheles in exchange for his soul. Like in the case of Wagner and the clown, where the clown is seen as being desperate enough to exchange his soul even for a shoulder of meat, Marlowe\u2019s Faustus is desperately hungry to establish an individual mode of learning, of\u00a0<span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">worship and faith. He finds the material rewards, the immediate gratification of desire and a hedonistic life more appealing than an external abstraction like \u201cheaven\u201d, defined only in absolutes, that one can pass into at the end of mortal life. The immediacy and materiality of the rewards offered by Lucifer are what motivate Faustus to believe in an alternate\/parallel form of worship. Lucifer and Mephistopheles are made more \u201chuman\u201d and thus relatable to Faustus who is defined by his mortality \u2013 at the start of the play he declares, \u201cYet are thou still but Faustus, and a man\u201d. When asked if he has any pain, Mephistopheles responds with \u201cAs great as have the human souls of men\u201d. In addition thus, to feeling pain exactly as the souls of human men do, Mephistopheles also confesses to be tortured by the \u201cchoice\u201d of falling with Lucifer and thus abandoning heaven. Mephistopheles is cast in a mold very familiar to Faustus and is thus a more convincing teacher than the old man and the good angel who offer distant rewards of eternal happiness after death and a burnished throne to sit on in heaven. Moreover, Mephistopheles is quick to offer rewards to Faustus \u2013 his display of magic tricks to \u201cdelight\u201d Faustus\u2019 mind after he has signed the \u201cdeed\u201d is one example gratifying immediate needs without a care for the overall consequences.<\/span><\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Faustus\u2019 punishment, described in great detail at the end of the play, also merits some analysis. Just like the material and tangible rewards of Satanic loyalty, the inevitable punishment for forsaking God is also very corporeal. The \u201cdeed\u201d which secures power and wealth for Faustus and ensures Mephistopheles\u2019 service to him must necessarily be written in blood. Faustus is urged to cut his arm and draw his blood to formally write his commitment to Lucifer that in exchange for certain powers in the present, his soul can be taken in twenty-four years time. Faustus notices that his blood congeals and he is therefore unable to write the deed freely. This is the first indication of the looming corporeality of Faustus\u2019 punishment. His body, in its refusal to co-operate with the demonic ritual, also reminds Faustus that he is limited in his ambition by his corporeality. The deed allows Faustus to briefly transcend the confines of his body \u2013 the first condition of the deed is that \u201cFaustus may be a spirit in form and substance\u201d. This allows Faustus to evade death and injury during the twenty-four years of \u201cvoluptuousness\u201d that he enjoys. A horse-courser cheated by Faustus\u2019 trickery avenges this wrongdoing by pulling off Faustus\u2019 leg while he was sleeping. The horse-courser is subsequently shocked to find Faustus walking, with the use of both his legs and is puzzled at not having caused any physical injury to him. At the end of his twenty-four years however, Faustus\u2019 \u201climbs\u201d are \u201call torn asunder\u201d when several devils arrive to claim his soul. Faustus as \u201cspirit\u201d who enjoys superhuman privileges must thus eventually return to his status as \u201cman\u201d, possessing a body of flesh and blood that feels pain.<\/p>\r\n<p class=\"no-indent\"><strong>Section V<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<p class=\"no-indent\"><strong>Conclusion: <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>in the Present<\/strong><\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The \u2018faustian bargain\u2019 has a certain universal appeal in terms of how well it captures the human dilemma of trading integrity momentarily for short term goals only to regret the eventual consequences of reaching too far above one\u2019s ability. Several great works of literature since Marlowe\u2019s <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>have meditated on the taboos associated with the pursuit of knowledge and learning. The gothic novel in particular, Mary Shelley\u2019s <em>Frankenstein <\/em>being the most illustrative instance, examines the consequences of reaching above \u201chuman\u201d capabilities and attempting to unravel the secrets of life and the universe. The \u2018faustian bargain\u2019 becomes a popular means of representing the hedonism of the 20th century consumerist American society and finds expression in popular Hollywood films like <em>The Devil\u2019s Advocate <\/em>(1997) and <em>Bedazzled <\/em>(2000). Here again, the devil functions as an allegory for the great \u2018vices\u2019 of urban life \u2013 rapid social mobility, unscrupulous professional practices and a decline in personal integrity, all in service of the devil and an unquenchable personal ambition. Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy\u2019s \u201cMrs. Faust\u201d examines the character of Faust through a gendered lens and is a unique adaptation of the Faustus story to serve the interest of a largely ignored perspective \u2013 that of the woman.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Points to Ponder\/Trivia<\/strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">How can we define the form of <em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>? It is titled as a tragical history but offers only a particular \u2018tragic moment\u2019 or episode in the life of Faustus rather than a sustained enquiry into his life. In addition, the comic subplots further problematize the form of the play. The play also preserves certain traditions from Medieval English drama like allegorical characters (The Seven Deadly Sins, the \u201cGood\u201d and \u201cBad\u201d angel) and the Chorus.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Cambridge and Oxford University were seen in Marlowe\u2019s time as spaces where the pursuit of religious and political subversion was encouraged and the State kept a close eye on the scholars who studied there through a network of spies and informers.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">It is significant that <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>comments on the bounded\/controlled realm of knowledge in an age of exploration, learning and discovery. Does Marlowe\u2019s story of ambitious dabbling in \u2018forbidden arts\/practices\u2019 failing against a backdrop of religious autocracy find echoes in modern science fiction where the pursuit of scientific\/technological advancement is checked by a need for ethics and a quest for \u2018humanity\u2019?<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Is Marlowe commenting on the very \u2018constructed\u2019 nature of one\u2019s experience\/perception of hell? Given Mephistopheles \u2018eyewitness\u2019 accounts and his declaration that \u201cWhere we are is hell\u201d, can it be asserted the Faustus had a truly \u2018uncontaminated\u2019 vision of the damnation he is about to experience? The old man, the good angel and Mephistopheles all provide the raw material necessary for Faustus to change his mind about \u2018hell\u2019 being a fable. By saying that \u2018Hell hath no limits\u2019, is Marlowe suggesting that one\u2019s imagination is always already colonized by religious and state authorities that define and thus create ideas of salvation and damnation in very specific and material ways. We don\u2019t see Faustus\u2019 actual torment in hell but instead receive a very detailed insight into how he <em>imagines <\/em>this hell to be \u2013 his agony at imminent punishment is thus given far more importance than the visualizing of this punishment.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">By placing so much importance on \u201creceived\u201d notions of hell and Faustus\u2019 thirst for knowledge from \u201cbooks\u201d bequeathed to him through a \u201cdeed of blood\u201d, is Marlowe commenting on the importance of travellers\u2019 accounts of the world outside Europe during the Renaissance? For those who never left England, these travellers\u2019 \u201ceyewitness\u201d reports in a sense \u201ccreated\u201d the world outside often through a negative lens. These \u201cother\u201d worlds were evidence of non-Christian customs and practices that the European travellers were quick to describe as \u201cdevil worship\u201d. Devil worship was thus one of many ways to mark an \u201cother\u201d in Marlowe\u2019s time, a way of defining a non-Christian worldview or even a way of rendering alien elements familiar. Those that existed like Faustus on the fringes of knowledge, religious belief and State authority were thus brought back to the center by defining their contexts in Christian terms.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<table>\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><strong>you can view video on Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faustus<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/oMHInvGoiDA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img class=\"alignnone wp-image-120\" src=\"http:\/\/epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/download.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"36\" height=\"36\" \/><\/a><\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>\r\n<strong>Reference<\/strong>\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Bartels, Emily C and Emma Smith, eds. <em>Christopher Marlowe in Context<\/em>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Cheney, Patrick, ed. <em>The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe<\/em>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Deats, Sara Muson, ed. <em>Doctor Faustus: A Critical Guide<\/em>. London: Continuum, 2010.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Kinney, Arthur F, ed. <em>A Companion to Renaissance Drama<\/em>. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Rutter, Tom. <em>The Cambridge Introduction to Christopher Marlowe<\/em>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">http:\/\/www.luminarium.org\/renlit\/marlowe.htm: The Christopher Marlowe page at Luminarium, with a biography, discussion of major works and critical material.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">http:\/\/www.marlowe-society.org: Home page of the Marlowe society (established in 1955 to promote Marlowe\u2019s works) with a collection of web resources, biographical details and research journals focused on Marlowe.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: justify\">http:\/\/www.shmoop.com\/doctor-faustus-marlowe\/: The Shmoop page for <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>with a student friendly study guide to the play, its contexts and major themes.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>","rendered":"<div><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"float: right\"><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/oMHInvGoiDA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/download.png\" alt=\"epgp books\" width=\"48\" height=\"48\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Storyboard<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Section I<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Introduction: Christopher Marlowe and Renaissance England<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify\">\n<li>Biographical contexts for Christopher Marlowe<\/li>\n<li>Marlowe\u2019s unique contributions to Renaissance Drama \u2013 the power infused into dramatic blank verse for instance.<\/li>\n<li>The importance of education and learning in Renaissance England<\/li>\n<li>The religious and political climate in Renaissance England as a crucial context for Marlowe\u2019s life and works<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Section II<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Christopher Marlowe: Major Works and Key Themes<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify\">\n<li>Overview of Marlowe\u2019s major works<\/li>\n<li>Survey of major themes and debates in Marlowe\u2019s plays \u2013 predestination, ambition and power, education and social mobility<\/li>\n<li>The socio-historic contexts of Marlowe\u2019s major themes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Section III<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong><em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>: Summary and Significance<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify\">\n<li>Summary of the play <em>Doctor Faustus<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Historical context for the story of \u201cFaustus\u201d \u2013 the German Faust books and other origin stories and their illustration of the popularity of folktales and legends about witchcraft and devil worship in Marlowe\u2019s England<\/li>\n<li>The various editions of the play\u2019s text<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Section IV<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong><em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>: Major themes<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify\">\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">A discussion of major themes in <em>Doctor Faustus<\/em><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Education and Learning \u2013 Marlowe\u2019s examination of hierarchical relationships inherent in any institutionalized system of knowledge\/learning<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Marlowe\u2019s critique of the University space in England as being governed by religious doctrines and state authority<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Religion \u2013 Salvation and Damnation and the corporeal nature of punishment for forsaking God. Representation is seen as essential for communicating and understanding heaven and hell.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Hell and Lucifer are portrayed in concrete, immediate and familiarly \u2018human\u2019 terms while heaven is seen as an abstraction that is not relatable.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Punishment is inscribed on the body \u2013 the play presents a corporeal \u201crealizing\u201d of destiny\/fate\/damnation<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Section V<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Conclusion: <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>in the Present<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify\">\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Continuing relevance of the Faust legend<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Subsequent interpretations\/adaptations of the Faustus story<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Lesson Plan<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">This Unit introduces Renaissance dramatists other than Shakespeare and will thus examine another very well-known contemporary, Christopher Marlowe and one of his most famous works, <em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>. This lesson will consider <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>as an illustration of Renaissance attitudes towards and cultural beliefs about magic, religion, education and free will\/agency. We will begin with a brief introduction to Marlowe\u2019s life, his major works and recurring themes\/ideas before moving to an overview of the many socio-historic contexts within which <em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>, the central focus of this lesson, can be studied. We will then move on to a discussion of the main themes evidenced in <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>and their relevance\/significance for an understanding of Renaissance society. We conclude with a brief survey of <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>in popular culture in contemporary times to reflect on the continuing relevance of this text.<\/p>\n<p class=\"no-indent\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Section 1<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"no-indent\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Introduction: Christopher Marlowe and Renaissance England<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Christopher Marlowe was born in Canterbury in 1564 and can be considered the first major dramatist of the Elizabethan period, if we leave Thomas Kyd out of the reckoning. Marlowe was born into a very ordinary family &#8211; his father was a shoemaker &#8211; but was able to rise above his social position through his university education. He shares this in common with several other dramatists (William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Robert Greene) in an age where, under the influence of the European Renaissance, social mobility was seen as \u2018acceptable\u2019 only in the context of classical education. Anxious about the fluidity in social hierarchies created by an emerging merchant class, the nobility began to define the \u2018upper\u2019 or \u2018ruling\u2019 classes in terms of education, manners and attitudes. The \u2018true\u2019 gentleman, in Marlowe\u2019s time, conversant with Greek and Latin epics and trained in Philosophy and the Arts was more suited to being a \u2018ruler\u2019 than the merchant who was merely a man of means. Marlowe\u2019s education first at King\u2019s School, Canterbury and later at Cambridge was made possible by scholarships and helped shape several of the themes\/debates that he would explore in his works. For instance, Marlowe\u2019s introduction to the ancients in his school education exposed him to ways of thinking and experiencing the world that were in conflict with religious institutions and their teachings in the Elizabethan age. His reading\/study of ancient authors would have introduced Marlowe to a non-Christian world view where human beings are not necessarily viewed as inherently depraved on account of original sin and forms of government that are not monarchical (Rome had been a republic for a great part of its history) are also seen to be successful. Moreover, Marlowe is also celebrated for the innovations and power he brought to dramatic blank verse and this is also something he owed to his classical education.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Marlowe\u2019s university education (the period of his MA) also forms an important backdrop for more controversial details about his life and involvement in the religious and political tensions of the period. In 1593, at twenty-nine years of age, Marlowe went to a tavern in Deptford with friends, where he was stabbed to death during an argument over the bill. Later studies reveal that Marlowe was under investigation at the time for treason and atheism and even his roommate, the playwright Thomas Kyd, was tortured for information by the Queen\u2019s Privy Council. While the premeditated nature of Marlowe\u2019s death is a matter of great debate, what is of greater significance is the climate of religious and political authority under which the Elizabethan dramatist worked. We can now move on to a discussion of the major themes and key ideas in Marlowe\u2019s works, for which the preceding biographical details are a useful context.<\/p>\n<p class=\"no-indent\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Section II<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"no-indent\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Christopher Marlowe: Major Works and Key Themes<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Marlowe\u2019s reputation as a playwright rests on four major works: <em>Tamburlaine the Great<\/em>, <em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>, <em>The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta <\/em>and <em>Edward the Second<\/em>. The chronology of Marlowe\u2019s works is greatly contested although his first play is likely to have been <em>Dido, Queen of Carthage<\/em>, which was co-authored with his contemporary at Cambridge, Thomas Nashe. One of the first major themes that can be seen across Marlowe\u2019s works is that of the use and abuse of power. For instance, in his\u00a0<em>Tamburlaine<\/em>, which is based on the story of Timur the Lame, Marlowe examines imperial power. Marlowe\u2019s Tamburlaine is a shepherd who rises to the position of general before eventually taking command of the Mongol empire. <em>Tamburlaine<\/em>, like Marlowe\u2019s other plays, portrays an arrogant, unapologetically ambitions and powerful character, marked by many dramatic speeches. In the <em>Jew of Malta<\/em>, Marlowe portrays an evil central character, drunk on commercial power and motivated by the ruin he can bring to others\u2019 lives. <em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>, as the rest of the lesson will elaborate, is about the desire and eventual failure to control demonic or satanic power. In his quest for knowledge, especially forbidden knowledge, Marlowe\u2019s Faustus is seen to desire power over Lucifer and the spirits\/bad angels he commands. Similarly, <em>Edward the Second <\/em>is also a meditation on monarchial power and the dilemma between one\u2019s individual desires and the setting aside of personal wants for communal\/social benefit. Marlowe\u2019s characters thus present a close engagement with the subject of power, individual ambition and the taboos associated with a conflict between personal desires and social goals. Social mobility for instance, which several of Marlowe\u2019s characters (and Marlowe himself, as evidenced by his educational scholarships) illustrate is seen to be taboo, a source of discrimination and can even result in personal social ruin. For instance, several other characters condemn Faustus\u2019s interest in magic and necromancy in the play and he is seen not to pay heed to their warning. The pact Faustus makes with the devil results in momentary wish fulfillment \u2013 he is able to travel the world, seeks answers to the universe\u2019s secrets and can attain the love of beautiful women of his choosing \u2013 but is seen as simultaneously isolating. Faustus attains a greater social status in accordance with his ambition to achieve knowledge that other men are too tame or foolish not to pursue but simultaneously becomes ostracized from everyday social life. He is seen to have no friends or well wishers who can save him from damnation by the end of the play. Faustus\u2019 reputation precedes him but it invokes fear, anxiety and enmity in those who hear of his ability to engage in magic and necromancy and summon demonic forces.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The second theme that merits attention in Marlowe\u2019s works is the idea of predestination or the lack of agency in determining the course of one\u2019s life. This theme is important in the context of not only Marlowe\u2019s plays, but also Renaissance dramatists in general. The\u00a0idea of predestination is linked closely with the religious climate and the content of school and university curriculum at the time. Marlowe thus illustrates the violent religious wars of the time through his <em>Massacre at Paris <\/em>and the conflict between politics in religion in <em>Tamburlaine <\/em>and <em>The Jew of Malta<\/em>. These plays demonstrate how belonging to one faith over the other determined the extent to which one could be seen as a \u2018safe\u2019 member of a country where a public performance of loyalty to the monarch was a condition of citizenship\/social and civic security. Individuals in Marlowe\u2019s England would have thus been faced with a continuous battle between individual interests\/beliefs and social\/monarchial mandates. <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>similarly examines an individual faced with the choice between renouncing salvation and being tortured to death. Alexander Nowell\u2019s <em>A Cathecism or First Instruction of Christian Religion <\/em>espoused several of the monarchial tenets of the Church of England, headed by the Queen. Nowell\u2019s text would have been part of the instruction that schoolboys received at the time, where the Biblical commandment of honoring one\u2019s father and mother was also extended to any person who wielded state authority. The Queen herself, as the head of the state, was seen as parent, against whom any act of violence\/dissent was forbidden. Another crucial doctrine set out in <em>A Cathecism <\/em>is the idea that all human beings are born sinners and are in need of god\u2019s mercy. This is central to the development of Faustus\u2019 story where any good deeds or acts performed during his life are seen as incapable of relieving him from damnation. Marlowe and his contemporaries were thus taught to believe that one cannot earn mercy through the \u201cwork\u201d we carry out in this life and the question of our salvation or damnation has been determined before our birth. One did not, therefore, in Marlowe\u2019s England, believe in Free Will or agency in shaping one\u2019s course to heaven or hell without being seen as defying monarchial doctrines.<\/p>\n<p class=\"no-indent\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Section III<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"no-indent\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong><em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>: Summary and Significance<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>narrates the story of the eponymous Renaissance scholar, one who is at the forefront of knowledge in an age of great exploration and discovery but is still marked by discontent. The play\u2019s Prologue features a Chorus who sum up Faustus\u2019 personality by comparing him to Icarus \u2013 \u2018His waxen wings did mount above his reach\u2019 \u2013\u00a0this contextualizes Faustus\u2019 ambitions, their transgressive nature and role in his eventual downfall. The chorus also supplies us with the information that Faustus was born of parents \u2018base of stock\u2019 and his respectable educational credentials. His lowly birth does not stand in the way of a university education, but characteristic of the age, he is dissatisfied with conventional and traditional modes of understanding and experiencing the world. The play opens with Faustus discrediting different disciplines and subjects of study (divinity, medicine) before finally deciding that necromancy and magic are the true windows to the fulfillment of power, honor and omnipotence. Faustus then proceeds to become a student of magic and necromancy by conjuring the devil\/spirit Mephistopheles. Through Mephistopheles, Faustus makes a pact with Lucifer to attain twenty-four years of unbridled pleasure and power in exchange for his soul. Mephistopheles is to remain, during this time, Faustus\u2019 servant, to do his bidding. Following the course of the pact in the play, before which Faustus is warned by several of his fellow scholars of impending damnation, Faustus seeks to expand the horizons of his knowledge with Mephistopheles\u2019s help. He achieves this by asking Mephistopheles various questions for which he is bound by the pact to supply answers. Faustus is however, not only motivated by his desire to learn, but also with the accruing of wealth and power. His twenty four years of unimpeded, luxurious living is thus spent largely in the pursuit of very petty ambition \u2013 he is seen to be entertained by a masque put up by various devils playing the role of the seven deadly sins, travels the world over only to carry out mischief with the Pope and his followers in Rome and to perform conjuring tricks for the Emperor in Germany. In exchange for his soul, Faustus has gained no more than the power to avenge petty skirmishes (portrayed through various comic interludes in the play) with very powerless opponents. As his twenty-four years are drawing to a close, Faustus is seen to feel a great anxiety about his inevitable damnation. His questions to Mephistopheles now take on an increasingly religious coloring and most of the knowledge he now desires is about the nature of heaven and hell and man\u2019s control over his path towards God or Satan. Finding himself physically unable to repent and too deeply mired in his demonic pact, Faustus is seen to descend into despair and anxiety. Faustus is shown visions of both heaven and hell by a good and bad angel and is made aware of the punishments and rewards that sinners and the faithful receive respectively. Faustus is now terrified because he has\u00a0realized for the first time, the enormity and severity of the punishment that awaits him. The play ends as it began, in Faustus\u2019 study, where in stark contrast to the ambitious, zealous, confident and arrogant man we see at the beginning, surrounded by friends and supporters, there is now a cowardly, despairing and lonesome individual, unable to escape the terrible death that awaits him. The last moments of Faustus\u2019s life are given a great deal of attention and detail in the play to fully illustrate the horror of renouncing salvation and knowing the inevitable consequences. The short epilogue, which announces the play\u2019s end, sympathizes with the scholar who may have \u201cgrown full straight\u201d but was thwarted from \u201cproper\u201d scholarly pursuits through his dalliance with the devil.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The character Faustus is based on a real historical figure, a man called Georguis of Helmstadt, who studied at the University of Heidelberg in 1483 and was a known practitioner of astrology. After Georgius\u2019 death, several legends, influenced no doubt by general hysteria about witchcraft, magic and religious propaganda at the time, attached themselves to the account of his life put forth in a \u201cbiography\u201d and published in Frankfurt in 1587. An Englishman translated this book, published originally in German, in 1592 as <em>The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus<\/em>. This is the source of the central character of Marlowe\u2019s play, whose pact with the devil and other feats of conjuring and necromancy are some of the many legends that are also a product of the \u201cbiography\u201d. Marlowe however, invests his Faustus with more scholarly merit than either of his two predecessors \u2013 the author of <em>The History <\/em>and its English translator, P.F Gent. The popularity of the Faust legend in England after its translation by P.F. Gent and Marlowe\u2019s addition of scholarly merit to this rebel of popular legend illustrates a few key characteristics of Renaissance England. The first is the presence of men like Faustus in Marlowe\u2019s age, men who were both valuable and dangerous. Sir Walter Raleigh, for instance, was one of several Renaissance men who had achieved a great perfection in learning and was popularly associated with witchcraft and devil worship. His meetings with a circle of friends who debated religion, cosmology and philosophy attracted a great deal of attention and were likened during the time to encouraging the study\/pursuit of black magic. In an age where discoveries about the universe and man\u2019s place in it were\u00a0expanding daily, it was seen as imperative for religious authority to emphasize the dangers inherent in the quest for knowledge.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>poses certain editorial problems as well on account of two early texts that were published within a few years of each other, both of which make up the original manuscript of Marlowe\u2019s play. What is referred to as the A text appeared in 1604 and was reprinted twice with a few minor changes each time in 1609 and 1611. Subsequently, a B text was published in 1616 and this was reprinted five times before 1633. The many editions of <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>make varying claims to originality ranging from arguments about the text being the product of an actor\u2019s \u201creporting\u201d or \u201cassembling\u201d of a performance to a corrected version of the author\u2019s manuscript. This lesson follows the New Mermaid series edition of <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>whose basis is the B1 text published in 1616.<\/p>\n<p class=\"no-indent\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Section IV<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"no-indent\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong><em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>: Major themes Education and Learning<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>presents a sustained intervention on education and learning, the socio-historic contexts for which have already been discussed. The play opens with an illustration of the questioning, skeptical Renaissance mind with Faustus condemning the limits of various subjects. Faustus critiques logic for having no greater end than to learn to \u2018dispute\u2019 well, medicine or the profession of a physician he ridicules since this system of knowledge cannot \u201cmake men to live eternally\u201d or \u201craise them to life again\u201d if they were dead. Faustus also criticizes the finality of predestination and the inability of man to think of himself as anything other than a sinner within the study of Divinity. He comes to rest therefore on the \u201cmetaphysics of magicians\u201d and \u201cnecromantic books\u201d that are heavenly for the world of \u201cprofit and delight, of power, of honour, of omnipotence\u201d that they promise. Thus begins Faustus\u2019 sojourn into magic, necromancy and eventual damnation. What is interesting to note here, in Marlowe\u2019s treatment of a student\u2019s interest in forbidden knowledge, is the space accorded to legitimate and illegitimate modes of\u00a0learning\/acquiring knowledge. While the play begins with Faustus in his study, his association with the University space is first seen through the presence of the \u201cscholars\u201d at the end of Act 1, Scene 1, where his recent dabbling in condemned subjects is discussed. The 2nd Scholar remarks, having heard of Faustus\u2019 recent entry into the study of the \u201cdamned\u201d art, that he would grieve for his impending divine retribution even if he were just a \u201cstranger\u201d and not \u201callied\u201d to him in any way. Here the scholars function as the means through which Faustus\u2019 \u201calliance\u201d or allegiance with a University space is performed. These scholars are representative of \u201cpermissible\u201d modes of learning and the \u201cSchools\u201d they are associated with are, by extension, governed by religious doctrine and thus condemn Faustus\u2019 pursuits. These scholars do not reappear until the end of the play, in Act V, Scene 2, where they are seen to believe in the possibility of Faustus\u2019 redemption or at least continue to be \u201callied\u201d to him. There is a marked hierarchy in Faustus\u2019 exploration of magic and \u201cnecromancy\u201d, his \u201cdeed\u201d with the devil and his institutional \u201caffiliation\u201d with the sanctified \u201cschools\u201d of learning. Faustus remains a \u201cscholar\u201d even through his twenty-four years of \u201cvoluptuousness\u201d following the deed he makes with Lucifer that guarantees his damnation. Faustus\u2019 increasing isolation subsequent to his summoning of Mephistopheles (when the Scholars meet Faustus at the end of the play, they remark that he is perhaps unwell from being \u201cover solitary\u201d), is testimony to the lack of institutionally mandated spaces for the pursuit of learning \u201cforbidden\u201d by state and religious authority. Moreover, the learning accrued by Faustus at the University, which granted him the title of \u201cdoctor\u201d is seen to be innate and unchanged by subsequent \u201cdemonic\u201d modes of learning. The capacity for questioning, his skepticism and wide range of knowledge (logic, divinity, cosmology) are seen to be qualities that were an institutional heritage, transferred and imbibed even prior to his allegiance with the devil. This is perhaps why Mephistopheles is a \u201cservant-teacher\u201d to Faustus, he binds Faustus\u2019 soul to Lucifer but is also himself bound \u2013 both to Lucifer and to Faustus, on account of his conjuring. At the start of the play, Faustus\u2019 reference to the spirits he will conjure as \u201cservile\u201d, creatures that will do his bidding is telling for what it reveals about a magician\u2019s status with respect to the demonic \u201cforces\u201d he commands. Valdes, Faustus\u2019 magician-friend, for instance, describes \u201cspirits\u201d in clearly imperialist terms when he says, \u201cAs Indian Moors obey their Spanish lords, so shall the spirits of every element\u00a0obey us three\u201d. Faustus is himself impressed by Mephistopheles\u2019 servility and he attributes this to his \u201clearning\u201d and scholarly skills \u2013 \u201cHow pliant is this Mephistopheles, Full of obedience and humility, such is the force of magic and my spells. Now Faustus, thou art conjuror laureate that canst command great Mephistopheles\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Faustus is seen to award himself status of \u201claureate\u201d upon being able to wield scholarly prowess, even if in the pursuit of a condemned subject. Faustus\u2019 superiority to Mephistopheles and his belief, even prior to the act of conjuring, that spirits\/demons are meant to do the scholar\u2019s bidding, are also products of his university heritage. Marlowe is perhaps meditating here on the inbuilt hierarchies in systems of knowledge where even when one is defying educational doctrines, exclusion and oppression continue to exist. Marlowe parodies Faustus\u2019 illusion of superiority, the result of indoctrination at the University that partly \u201ccreated\u201d him, through the exchange between Wagner (Faustus\u2019 servant and student) and the Clown in Act 1, Scene 4. Here, Wagner attempts to enlist the clown as his slave but fails initially to impress his status as \u201cmaster\u201d upon the clown. Since to be a master implies a position of some kind of social or economic advantage, the clown refuses Wagner\u2019s offer of money and food (although the clown, in Wagner\u2019s view is desperate and hungry enough to sell his soul even for a raw shoulder of mutton) and rejects his assumed superiority. It is finally fear and a display of Wagner\u2019s command over a few devils that pushes the clown into slavery. At the end of the scene, the clown is seen to be pacified when Wagner agrees to teach him the \u201cconjuring occupation\u201d and promises that he can learn to change himself into a dog, a cat or mouse or rat. This scene exposes the \u201cperformance\u201d inherent in both an assumed superiority and a \u201crequired\u201d servility \u2013 the clown is seen to accept his status as servant since he now knows that to move out of this position only requires the \u201clearning\u201d of conjuring. The learning he will acquire however, is sure to result in damnation and eternal slavery to Lucifer and this is how Marlowe exposes the flaw in an unproblematic association between education and social advantage. Faustus\u2019 exclamation at the end of his powerful speech in Act 5, Scene 2 that he will \u201cburn my books\u201d is the disappointing discovery that learning and one\u2019s status as \u201cscholar\u201d cannot guarantee agency or unhindered social advantage and recognition. Faustus\u2019 initial requests from Mephistopheles are motivated by \u201clearning\u201d \u2013 his dismissal of Mephistopheles\u2019 offer of a wife and request instead for \u201cbooks\u201d that teach spells and incantations, the character and motions of the planets, a compendium of all the plants herbs and trees that grow on the Earth \u2013 but he soon discovers the limits of demonic knowledge and the restrictive doctrines that govern it. In Act 2, Scene 2 for instance, Faustus asks Mephistopheles who created the world. Mephistopheles refuses to respond to this question in spite of being bound to say anything to Faustus. Faustus, who has now become disillusioned with Mephistopheles\u2019 stock responses to his questions on astrology and cosmology (Faustus exclaims that even his servant Wagner would be able to supply the kind of answers Mephistopheles gives him) pushes for a response. Mephistopheles explains to Faustus that he is only bound to tell him anything that is not against the kingdom of Lucifer \u2013 demonic knowledge is thus also bound by doctrine. A transgressive discipline, Faustus discovers, is thus also paradoxically governed by the fear of transgression and punishment.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Salvation, Damnation and the Corporeality of Punishment Marlowe also illustrates, in his <em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>, the language in which salvation and damnation is communicated and understood by individuals as the sole means of articulating one\u2019s faith\/religion. Faustus is seen to perform his faith as a form of personal devotion to the pursuit of knowledge \u2013 he frequently reiterates the need to \u201cstay resolute\u201d in his study of necromancy especially since impending damnation was guaranteed to him even at the time of making the \u201cpact\u201d. As discussed earlier in this section, Faustus is seen to have lost faith in \u201cDivinity\u201d as a mode of study on account of the rather fatalistic doctrine that one cannot choose to be a \u201csinner\u201d or one\u2019s eternal subservience to God or Satan. One\u2019s actions or \u201cwork\u201d in this life cannot in any way change one\u2019s path towards salvation or damnation. In the context of this religious skepticism introduced at the start of the play, it is interesting to see the parallel, alternative form of demonic faith and governance described subsequently. Mephistopheles, as one who has the experience of both \u201cheaven\u201d and \u201chell\u201d, is thus a unique choice of teacher for Faustus with the ability to offer a more studied and objective view on the subject than the good and bad angel. The good and the bad angel speak for heaven and hell respectively and resemble the universalizing doctrines of the Church and state Authority in the descriptions they offer about their abodes. Mephistopheles, however, speaks from an \u201cexperience\u201d of hell and heaven and presents a more individualistic view of religious faith\/belief. For instance, when the good angel appears in Act 2, Scene 1 to speak against Faustus\u2019 solemnization of a pact with Lucifer, he questions her about the importance of \u201ccontrition, prayer and repentance\u201d. She responds that these are means to bring Faustus into \u201cheaven\u201d and urges him to think of \u201cheaven\u201d and \u201cheavenly things\u201d. In contrast, the bad angel urges Faustus to think of \u201chonour\u201d and \u201cwealth\u201d and ridicules the \u201cillusions\u201d described by the good angel. The bad angel is seen here to speak of specific immediate goals and promises instant gratification in contrast to the vague absolutes alluded to by the good angel. Through Mephistopheles in the play, we are given a testimony about the nature of hell and heaven. Mephistopheles performs his role as an eyewitness when he declares to Faustus that he \u201ctasted the eternal joys of heaven\u201d and \u201csaw the face of God\u201d. He \u201cchooses\u201d to \u201cfall\u201d with Lucifer, himself once an angel who was \u201cdearly loved\u201d by God. Mephistopheles exercises agency by \u201cchoosing\u201d his affiliation with Lucifer and being forever damned with him. He is, however, \u201ctormented with ten thousand hells, in being deprived of everlasting bliss\u201d. After he has signed the \u201cdeed\u201d, Faustus questions Mephistopheles about the nature of hell and confesses that he thinks it to be a mere \u201cfable\u201d Mephistopheles responds to Faustus\u2019 skepticism with the assertion: \u201cAy, think so still, till experience change thy mind\u201d. The emphasis on experience is significant for this new \u201cteacher\u201d of Faustus whose task is to convince him of a different order of faith. Mephistopheles describes hell in strikingly unique terms when he says, \u201cHell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed in one self place; but where we are is hell, And where hell is, there must we ever be\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Mephistopheles\u2019 descriptions of hell as an individualistic and internal experience, together with the concrete rewards promised with fealty to Lucifer are crucial for the understanding of Faustus\u2019 decision to forsake God and Divinity. Marlowe\u2019s critique of religion, specifically the universal and rigid doctrines of the Church of England perhaps emerges in the interest Faustus shows in the petty gifts he receives from Mephistopheles in exchange for his soul. Like in the case of Wagner and the clown, where the clown is seen as being desperate enough to exchange his soul even for a shoulder of meat, Marlowe\u2019s Faustus is desperately hungry to establish an individual mode of learning, of\u00a0<span style=\"text-align: initial;font-size: 1em\">worship and faith. He finds the material rewards, the immediate gratification of desire and a hedonistic life more appealing than an external abstraction like \u201cheaven\u201d, defined only in absolutes, that one can pass into at the end of mortal life. The immediacy and materiality of the rewards offered by Lucifer are what motivate Faustus to believe in an alternate\/parallel form of worship. Lucifer and Mephistopheles are made more \u201chuman\u201d and thus relatable to Faustus who is defined by his mortality \u2013 at the start of the play he declares, \u201cYet are thou still but Faustus, and a man\u201d. When asked if he has any pain, Mephistopheles responds with \u201cAs great as have the human souls of men\u201d. In addition thus, to feeling pain exactly as the souls of human men do, Mephistopheles also confesses to be tortured by the \u201cchoice\u201d of falling with Lucifer and thus abandoning heaven. Mephistopheles is cast in a mold very familiar to Faustus and is thus a more convincing teacher than the old man and the good angel who offer distant rewards of eternal happiness after death and a burnished throne to sit on in heaven. Moreover, Mephistopheles is quick to offer rewards to Faustus \u2013 his display of magic tricks to \u201cdelight\u201d Faustus\u2019 mind after he has signed the \u201cdeed\u201d is one example gratifying immediate needs without a care for the overall consequences.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Faustus\u2019 punishment, described in great detail at the end of the play, also merits some analysis. Just like the material and tangible rewards of Satanic loyalty, the inevitable punishment for forsaking God is also very corporeal. The \u201cdeed\u201d which secures power and wealth for Faustus and ensures Mephistopheles\u2019 service to him must necessarily be written in blood. Faustus is urged to cut his arm and draw his blood to formally write his commitment to Lucifer that in exchange for certain powers in the present, his soul can be taken in twenty-four years time. Faustus notices that his blood congeals and he is therefore unable to write the deed freely. This is the first indication of the looming corporeality of Faustus\u2019 punishment. His body, in its refusal to co-operate with the demonic ritual, also reminds Faustus that he is limited in his ambition by his corporeality. The deed allows Faustus to briefly transcend the confines of his body \u2013 the first condition of the deed is that \u201cFaustus may be a spirit in form and substance\u201d. This allows Faustus to evade death and injury during the twenty-four years of \u201cvoluptuousness\u201d that he enjoys. A horse-courser cheated by Faustus\u2019 trickery avenges this wrongdoing by pulling off Faustus\u2019 leg while he was sleeping. The horse-courser is subsequently shocked to find Faustus walking, with the use of both his legs and is puzzled at not having caused any physical injury to him. At the end of his twenty-four years however, Faustus\u2019 \u201climbs\u201d are \u201call torn asunder\u201d when several devils arrive to claim his soul. Faustus as \u201cspirit\u201d who enjoys superhuman privileges must thus eventually return to his status as \u201cman\u201d, possessing a body of flesh and blood that feels pain.<\/p>\n<p class=\"no-indent\"><strong>Section V<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"no-indent\"><strong>Conclusion: <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>in the Present<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The \u2018faustian bargain\u2019 has a certain universal appeal in terms of how well it captures the human dilemma of trading integrity momentarily for short term goals only to regret the eventual consequences of reaching too far above one\u2019s ability. Several great works of literature since Marlowe\u2019s <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>have meditated on the taboos associated with the pursuit of knowledge and learning. The gothic novel in particular, Mary Shelley\u2019s <em>Frankenstein <\/em>being the most illustrative instance, examines the consequences of reaching above \u201chuman\u201d capabilities and attempting to unravel the secrets of life and the universe. The \u2018faustian bargain\u2019 becomes a popular means of representing the hedonism of the 20th century consumerist American society and finds expression in popular Hollywood films like <em>The Devil\u2019s Advocate <\/em>(1997) and <em>Bedazzled <\/em>(2000). Here again, the devil functions as an allegory for the great \u2018vices\u2019 of urban life \u2013 rapid social mobility, unscrupulous professional practices and a decline in personal integrity, all in service of the devil and an unquenchable personal ambition. Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy\u2019s \u201cMrs. Faust\u201d examines the character of Faust through a gendered lens and is a unique adaptation of the Faustus story to serve the interest of a largely ignored perspective \u2013 that of the woman.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Points to Ponder\/Trivia<\/strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">How can we define the form of <em>Doctor Faustus<\/em>? It is titled as a tragical history but offers only a particular \u2018tragic moment\u2019 or episode in the life of Faustus rather than a sustained enquiry into his life. In addition, the comic subplots further problematize the form of the play. The play also preserves certain traditions from Medieval English drama like allegorical characters (The Seven Deadly Sins, the \u201cGood\u201d and \u201cBad\u201d angel) and the Chorus.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Cambridge and Oxford University were seen in Marlowe\u2019s time as spaces where the pursuit of religious and political subversion was encouraged and the State kept a close eye on the scholars who studied there through a network of spies and informers.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">It is significant that <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>comments on the bounded\/controlled realm of knowledge in an age of exploration, learning and discovery. Does Marlowe\u2019s story of ambitious dabbling in \u2018forbidden arts\/practices\u2019 failing against a backdrop of religious autocracy find echoes in modern science fiction where the pursuit of scientific\/technological advancement is checked by a need for ethics and a quest for \u2018humanity\u2019?<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Is Marlowe commenting on the very \u2018constructed\u2019 nature of one\u2019s experience\/perception of hell? Given Mephistopheles \u2018eyewitness\u2019 accounts and his declaration that \u201cWhere we are is hell\u201d, can it be asserted the Faustus had a truly \u2018uncontaminated\u2019 vision of the damnation he is about to experience? The old man, the good angel and Mephistopheles all provide the raw material necessary for Faustus to change his mind about \u2018hell\u2019 being a fable. By saying that \u2018Hell hath no limits\u2019, is Marlowe suggesting that one\u2019s imagination is always already colonized by religious and state authorities that define and thus create ideas of salvation and damnation in very specific and material ways. We don\u2019t see Faustus\u2019 actual torment in hell but instead receive a very detailed insight into how he <em>imagines <\/em>this hell to be \u2013 his agony at imminent punishment is thus given far more importance than the visualizing of this punishment.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">By placing so much importance on \u201creceived\u201d notions of hell and Faustus\u2019 thirst for knowledge from \u201cbooks\u201d bequeathed to him through a \u201cdeed of blood\u201d, is Marlowe commenting on the importance of travellers\u2019 accounts of the world outside Europe during the Renaissance? For those who never left England, these travellers\u2019 \u201ceyewitness\u201d reports in a sense \u201ccreated\u201d the world outside often through a negative lens. These \u201cother\u201d worlds were evidence of non-Christian customs and practices that the European travellers were quick to describe as \u201cdevil worship\u201d. Devil worship was thus one of many ways to mark an \u201cother\u201d in Marlowe\u2019s time, a way of defining a non-Christian worldview or even a way of rendering alien elements familiar. Those that existed like Faustus on the fringes of knowledge, religious belief and State authority were thus brought back to the center by defining their contexts in Christian terms.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>you can view video on Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faustus<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/oMHInvGoiDA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-120\" src=\"http:\/\/epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/download.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"36\" height=\"36\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p><strong>Reference<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Bartels, Emily C and Emma Smith, eds. <em>Christopher Marlowe in Context<\/em>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Cheney, Patrick, ed. <em>The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe<\/em>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Deats, Sara Muson, ed. <em>Doctor Faustus: A Critical Guide<\/em>. London: Continuum, 2010.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Kinney, Arthur F, ed. <em>A Companion to Renaissance Drama<\/em>. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">Rutter, Tom. <em>The Cambridge Introduction to Christopher Marlowe<\/em>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">http:\/\/www.luminarium.org\/renlit\/marlowe.htm: The Christopher Marlowe page at Luminarium, with a biography, discussion of major works and critical material.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">http:\/\/www.marlowe-society.org: Home page of the Marlowe society (established in 1955 to promote Marlowe\u2019s works) with a collection of web resources, biographical details and research journals focused on Marlowe.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify\">http:\/\/www.shmoop.com\/doctor-faustus-marlowe\/: The Shmoop page for <em>Doctor Faustus <\/em>with a student friendly study guide to the play, its contexts and major themes.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"menu_order":9,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":["dr-neeraja-s"],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[64],"license":[],"class_list":["post-85","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","contributor-dr-neeraja-s"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp02\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp02\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp02\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/85\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":490,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp02\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/85\/revisions\/490"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp02\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp02\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/85\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp02\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=85"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=85"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}