Christopher Marlowe (1564-93) the greatest predecessor of Shakespeare in drama was also the most intellectual of the playwrights in English Literature during Elizabethan Age. Though he lived very short span of life, he wrote around half-a dozen tragedies. They are- Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta, Edward II and The Massacre at Paris. Reassessing the importance of Marlowe, Harry Levin wrote,
Marlowe must abide the question of history which Shakespeare has all but over flown. Yes, he is for all time, we must agree with Ben Jonson. And Marlowe then, was he primarily for his age? Certainly he caught his intensities, placed its rhythm and dramatized its dilemmas as no Elizabethan writer had primarily done.
Doctor Faustus, the great tragedy is a cultural predicament. It makes the reader lost in the conflicting claims of traditions of Christianity, of Reformation, of Renaissance, of Paganism, of Individualism and the incipient scientific modernity. It is the story of human presumption, temptation, damnation and fall.
Doctor Faustus is a complex, confused and tragic protagonist whose extreme intelligence brought on to him both glory and doom. It brought him glory because his wit and brilliance made him famous and respected among his peers and in academia, even in the circle of magicians that he wanted to enter. But it brought him doom because his ego got too big for his own good and led him to a stubborn battle against the conventions of the time.
Marlowe presents the protagonist as a representative of morality of Elizabethan age. Where his predecessors were passionless Faustus like Icarus attempted as,
to mount above his reach.
If we consider morality heroes as self-efficacy human beings, then Faustus is superhuman in his ambitions. He wished his power to be unlimited as he says,
All things that move between the quiet poles shall be at my command. Emperors and Kings are but obey’d their several provinces. Nor can they raise the wind or rend the clouds.
Faustus was a doctor of divinity and a master of several human sciences like Medicine and Law. He was fully aware of nature and indispensability of religious faith on one hand and the nature and possibility of human excellence and achievement on the other. His aspirations were that of misplacement. He misplaces human learning and the power of religion entangled in each other. He wishes Medicines not only to make men live eternally but also raise the dead to life.
Faustus was frustrated by the divine limitation of the human condition and the condition in which he finds himself was as frustrating as the divine limitation. His act of necromancy and the sale of his soul to the devil are diabolic. The diabolic is the very antitheses of the human as well as the divine. His achievements through his pact with the devil are in an inverse proportion to the magnitude of his ambitions. He rebels against God but his divine consciousness characterizes his rebellion and he continues to cherish him. He himself looks upon his own revolt of desperate thoughts against God securing eternal death. His signing of the pact with the devil unfolds the fundamental irony of his aspirations. Douglas Cole writes,
If not choosing the God, in his desire to be as God Faustus has provided not only for his destruction but also for his degradation. Instead of reaching the stature of demi-god or even commander of the world, Faustus becomes an imperial entertainer…
Though full of irony he comes to full repentance at the end of the play. The man, who sought the devil to oppose God, seeks God’s mercy and his innate forgiveness to rescue him from the devil. He cried to God to save him from the devil,
O God! If thou will not have mercy on my soul,
Yet, for Christs sake, whose blood hath ransom’d me.
Impose some end to my incessant pain.
Thus, Doctor Faustus was a man who was highly ambitious and full of aspirations and desires. However, it was this that led him to the path of degradation. In the words of Douglas Cole,
Doctor Faustus is a man who of his own conscious wilfulness brings tragedy and torment crashing down upon his head, the pitiful and fearful victim of his own ambitions and desires…
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