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The themes of Christopher Marlowe’s
play Doctor Faustus continue to
reverberate in modern times. Marlowe
hints at the limitless power of the individual; yet he also seems to be warning
us through the play’s protagonist about the dangers of aspiring beyond our
reach. While one could argue that the
play represents an accurate view of the Elizabethan way of thinking it is not
constrained by Elizabethan ideals.
Marlowe’s play instead is an accurate, if uncomfortable, depiction of
the ineffable and paradoxical nature of humanity—while we have the power to
achieve greatness we also are yoked by our own petty desires and
frailties.
The
character of Doctor Faustus is no exception: he has achieved knowledge and
renown far beyond the scope of his birth, yet he still longs for more. He realizes that he has astonishing mental
faculties but he is dissatisfied with the scope of natural wisdom he has
already achieved. He has ambitions and aspirations to improve himself; nevertheless
he chooses the wrong method with which to affect these improvements. Therefore
Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus is a
hybrid—it represents a marked departure from restrictive Calvinist and medieval
ethics while simultaneously sharing elements of the medieval morality play. Marlowe’s beautiful and disturbing blank
verse drama shows us the illimitable power of the human spirit while ultimately
warning us about the dangers of blindly following any type of orthodox belief
system.
While a modern audience may not be
aware of all of the religious implications of Marlowe’s play, an Elizabethan
audience would have been. However, the
idea of a pact with the devil still has weight and symbolism in the modern era. From the beginning, Marlowe warns us that
Faustus’ fate will not be a good one. In
the prologue he tells us that Faustus is “swollen with cunning” and compares
his fate to the Greek myth of Icarus, who died horribly when he flew too close
to the sun on waxen wings. Marlowe is
setting the scene for the dramatic irony of Faustus’ character: Faust ignores
all of the warnings set forth throughout the play, yet the audience is
sensitive to the fact that Faust will ultimately meet a bad end.
The
reader can certainly empathize with Faust’s desire to improve himself. This yearning for self-improvement holds even
more weight with the modern reader as we are not set into the structured class
system prevalent during the Elizabethan era.
Thus Marlowe builds a certain amount of empathy between the audience and
the character of Doctor Faustus. The
human need to continually develop oneself through intellectual and spiritual
pursuits is a universal one. Even
Faustus’ somewhat adolescent abuse of his powers through the form of practical
jokes stirs up a certain amount of tragicomic pathos from the audience. We have all gotten a mean-spirited giggle at
someone else’s expense and this reaction is precisely what Marlowe is
exploiting. Despite all of this juvenile
nastiness Faust manages to gain both wealth and fame. He therefore achieves the earthly pleasures
for which he made the ill-fated pact.
In
contrast his relative youth, Marlowe had a sure knowledge of human nature. Thus while at points the play may make us
cringe it also speaks to us because we can still hope for Faustus’ repentance
notwithstanding all of his faults. He
fails to notice any of the warnings set before him. His blood congeals when he signs the pact,
letting us know that his physical being is rebelling against such an act. “Homo
fuge” appears on his arm—a blatant warning as the words translate to “Flee,
oh man!” Even Mephistophilis attempts to
caution Faustus against his actions to no avail. Yet even this blind, stubborn ambition is
part of human nature—we have all gone against our better judgment and done
things which we later regretted.
Marlowe
does not seem to be warning us against a Christian hell, however; the message
of the play ultimately is ambiguous. Is
the tragedy of Faustus that of one individual’s fall from grace, or is Marlowe
trying to advise us against following a structured system of belief? It is this very ambiguity that gives
Marlowe’s play such a powerful message even for the modern reader. Faust is a greedy, stubborn sensualist, yet
he is also the Everyman with whom we can all identify. Thus the moral symbols in the play—the
angels, the demons—are not a straightforward message of Christian virtue but
instead a challenge to defy the strictures of an orthodox belief system. As Marlowe writes, “…to wonder at unlawful
things/whose deepness doth entice such forward wits/To practice more than
heavenly power permits.”
