SIN, REDEMPTION, AND DAMNATION
Insofar as Doctor Faustus is
a Christian play, it deals with the themes at the heart of
Christianity’s understanding of the world. First, there is the idea of
sin, which Christianity defines as acts contrary to the will of God. In
making a pact with Lucifer, Faustus commits what is in a sense the
ultimate sin: not only does he disobey God, but he consciously and even
eagerly renounces obedience to him, choosing instead to swear allegiance
to the devil. In a Christian framework, however, even the worst deed
can be forgiven through the redemptive power of Jesus Christ, God’s son,
who, according to Christian belief, died on the cross for humankind’s
sins. Thus, however terrible Faustus’s pact with Lucifer may be, the
possibility of redemption is always open to him. All that he needs to
do, theoretically, is ask God for forgiveness. The play offers countless
moments in which Faustus considers doing just that, urged on by the
good angel on his shoulder or by the old man in scene 12—both of whom can be seen either as emissaries of God, personifications of Faustus’s conscience, or bo
Each time, Faustus decides to remain loyal to hell rather than seek
heaven. In the Christian framework, this turning away from God condemns
him to spend an eternity in hell. Only at the end of his life does
Faustus desire to repent, and, in the final scene, he cries out to
Christ to redeem him. But it is too late for him to repent. In creating
this moment in which Faustus is still alive but incapable of being
redeemed, Marlowe steps outside the Christian worldview in order to
maximize the dramatic power of the final scene. Having inhabited a
Christian world for the entire play, Faustus spends his final moments in
a slightly different universe, where redemption is no longer possible
and where certain sins cannot be forgiven.
THE CONFLICT BETWEEN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE VALUES
Scholar R.M. Dawkins famously remarked that Doctor Faustus tells
“the story of a Renaissance man who had to pay the medieval price for
being one.” While slightly simplistic, this quotation does get at the
heart of one of the play’s central themes: the clash between the
medieval world and the world of the emerging Renaissance. The medieval
world placed God at the center of existence and shunted aside man and
the natural world. The Renaissance was a movement that began in Italy in
the fifteenth century and soon spread throughout Europe, carrying with
it a new emphasis on the individual, on classical learning, and on
scientific inquiry into the nature of the world. In the medieval
academy, theology was the queen of the sciences. In the Renaissance,
though, secular matters took center stage.
Faustus, despite being a magician rather than a scientist (a blurred
distinction in the sixteenth century), explicitly rejects the medieval
model. In his opening speech in scene 1,
he goes through every field of scholarship, beginning with logic and
proceeding through medicine, law, and theology, quoting an ancient
authority for each: Aristotle on logic, Galen on medicine, the Byzantine
emperor Justinian on law, and the Bible on religion. In the medieval
model, tradition and authority, not individual inquiry, were key. But in
this soliloquy, Faustus considers and rejects this medieval way of
thinking. He resolves, in full Renaissance spirit, to accept no limits,
traditions, or authorities in his quest for knowledge, wealth, and
power.
The play’s attitude toward the clash between medieval and Renaissance
values is ambiguous. Marlowe seems hostile toward the ambitions of
Faustus, and, as Dawkins notes, he keeps his tragic hero squarely in the
medieval world, where eternal damnation is the price of human pride.
Yet Marlowe himself was no pious traditionalist, and it is tempting to
see in Faustus—as many readers have—a hero of the new modern world, a
world free of God, religion, and the limits that these imposed on
humanity. Faustus may pay a medieval price, this reading suggests, but
his successors will go further than he and suffer less, as we have in
modern times. On the other hand, the disappointment and mediocrity that
follow Faustus’s pact with the devil, as he descends from grand
ambitions to petty conjuring tricks, might suggest a contrasting
interpretation. Marlowe may be suggesting that the new, modern spirit,
though ambitious and glittering, will lead only to a Faustian dead end.
POWER AS A CORRUPTING INFLUENCE
Early in the play, before he agrees to the pact with Lucifer, Faustus is
full of ideas for how to use the power that he seeks. He imagines
piling up great wealth, but he also aspires to plumb the mysteries of
the universe and to remake the map of Europe. Though they may not be
entirely admirable, these plans are ambitious and inspire awe, if not
sympathy. They lend a grandeur to Faustus’s schemes and make his quest
for personal power seem almost heroic, a sense that is reinforced by the
eloquence of his early soliloquies.
Once Faustus actually gains the practically limitless power that he so
desires, however, his horizons seem to narrow. Everything is possible to
him, but his ambition is somehow sapped. Instead of the grand designs
that he contemplates early on, he contents himself with performing
conjuring tricks for kings and noblemen and takes a strange delight in
using his magic to play practical jokes on simple folks. It is not that
power has corrupted Faustus by making him evil: indeed, Faustus’s
behavior after he sells his soul hardly rises to the level of true
wickedness. Rather, gaining absolute power corrupts Faustus by making
him mediocre and by transforming his boundless ambition into a
meaningless delight in petty celebrity.
In the Christian framework of the play, one can argue that true
greatness can be achieved only with God’s blessing. By cutting himself
off from the creator of the universe, Faustus is condemned to
mediocrity. He has gained the whole world, but he does not know what to
do with it.
THE DIVIDED NATURE OF MAN
Faustus is constantly undecided about whether he should repent and
return to God or continue to follow his pact with Lucifer. His internal
struggle goes on throughout the play, as part of him of wants to do good
and serve God, but part of him (the dominant part, it seems) lusts
after the power that Mephastophilis promises.
The good angel and the evil angel, both of whom appear at Faustus’s
shoulder in order to urge him in different directions, symbolize this
struggle. While these angels may be intended as an actual pair of
supernatural beings, they clearly represent Faustus’s divided will,
which compels Faustus to commit to Mephastophilis but also to question
this commitment continually.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
MAGIC AND THE SUPERNATURAL
The supernatural pervades Doctor Faustus,
appearing everywhere in the story. Angels and devils flit about, magic
spells are cast, dragons pull chariots (albeit offstage), and even fools
like the two ostlers, Robin and Rafe, can learn enough magic to summon
demons. Still, it is worth noting that nothing terribly significant is
accomplished through magic. Faustus plays tricks on people, conjures up
grapes, and explores the cosmos on a dragon, but he does not
fundamentally reshape the world. The magic power that Mephastophilis
grants him is more like a toy than an awesome, earth-shaking ability.
Furthermore, the real drama of the play, despite all the supernatural
frills and pyrotechnics, takes place within Faustus’s vacillating mind
and soul, as he first sells his soul to Lucifer and then considers
repenting. In this sense, the magic is almost incidental to the real
story of Faustus’s struggle with himself, which Marlowe intended not as a
fantastical battle but rather as a realistic portrait of a human being
with a will divided between good and evil.
PRACTICAL JOKES
Once he gains his awesome powers, Faustus does not use them to do great
deeds. Instead, he delights in playing tricks on people: he makes horns
sprout from the knight’s head and sells the horse-courser an enchanted
horse. Such magical practical jokes seem to be Faustus’s chief
amusement, and Marlowe uses them to illustrate Faustus’s decline from a
great, prideful scholar into a bored, mediocre magician with no higher
ambition than to have a laugh at the expense of a collection of
simpletons.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
BLOOD
Blood plays multiple symbolic roles in the play. When Faustus signs away
his soul, he signs in blood, symbolizing the permanent and supernatural
nature of this pact. His blood congeals on the page, however,
symbolizing, perhaps, his own body’s revolt against what he intends to
do. Meanwhile, Christ’s blood, which Faustus says he sees running across
the sky during his terrible last night, symbolizes the sacrifice that
Jesus, according to Christian belief, made on the cross; this sacrifice
opened the way for humankind to repent its sins and be saved. Faustus,
of course, in his proud folly, fails to take this path to salvation.
FAUSTUS’S REJECTION OF THE ANCIENT AUTHORITIES
In scene 1,
Faustus goes through a list of the major fields of human
knowledge—logic, medicine, law, and theology—and cites for each an
ancient authority (Aristotle, Galen, Justinian, and Jerome’s Bible,
respectively). He then rejects all of these figures in favor of magic.
This rejection symbolizes Faustus’s break with the medieval world, which
prized authority above all else, in favor of a more modern spirit of
free inquiry, in which experimentation and innovation trump the
assertions of Greek philosophers and the Bible.
THE GOOD ANGEL AND THE EVIL ANGEL
The angels appear at Faustus’s shoulder early on in the play—the good
angel urging him to repent and serve God, the evil angel urging him to
follow his lust for power and serve Lucifer. The two symbolize his
divided will, part of which wants to do good and part of which is sunk
in sin.
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