Themes and Style in Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus

Themes and Style in Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus

Chapter One

Scope of Study

This essay examines the themes and styles in the play, Dr Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe uses these elements to realize the subject matter of the work. My choice of Marlowe as a literary artist is informed by his specialty in portraying the essence of man in the light of gaining all but losing his soul. The themes and styles appeal to my literary judgment between renaissance and medieval values, the divided nature of man, power as a corruptive influence which is the focus of this essay.

Methodology

This is a quantitative research. The primary source of information for this long essay is the text Dr Faustus.  Others includes; M.H Abrams’ A Glossary of Literary Terms, Anthology: An introduction to literature, Mc  Cullen ,J.T., “Dr. Faustus and renaissance learning”, Collier’s Encyclopedia and Comprehensive Literature by Martins Amechi.

CHAPTER TWO 

LITERATURE REVIEW

INTRODUCTION

The quotation above shows that Faustus uses his black art to make the comedy. The horse-dealer, anxious to recover his money, shouts in Faustus’s ears to wake him up. When Faustus does not move, the horse-dealer pulls him by the leg, and it so happens that the leg is dislodged from Faustus’s body. Faustus begins to cry at the loss of his leg and asks Mephistophilis to call the police. The matter is settled, however, when Faustus agrees to accept a compensation of forty dollars from the horse-dealer. The horse-dealer runs away. Faustus feels happy that he has tricked the horse-dealer into parting with another forty dollars (besides the forty dollars which he has taken from the horse-dealer as the price of the horse.)

The comic scene of Faustus and the horse-courser is crude and vulgar. The pulling of the leg of Faustus while asleep and the dislodgement of the leg from the body are farcical in character. Robin, Ralph, and the wine-dealer provide amusement which might be acceptable if Mephistophilis had not been involved.

CHAPTER THREE

The theme of the Seven Deadly Sins, still prominent even though Elizabethans “had seen the nation change its official religion three times,” runs through the play (Duxfield 2), suggesting that Marlowe considered spiritual and earthly concerns relevant for the individual and British society.  Faust’s desire to “ransack the ocean for orient pearl,/And search all corners of the new-found world/For pleasant fruits and princely delicates” (Marlowe 1.83-85) points the finger of judgment not at a fictional character with symbolic appetites and damnation at stake, but at a very real British Empire culpable in matters of economic and political expansionism having far-reaching effects on the community of man.   Faust’s misogynistic casting of “a plague” on wives, preference for “a hot whore” and “fairest courtesans” in his bed, and view of marriage as “but a ceremonial toy,” (5.142-147), reflect the fragile feminist discourse in which Elizabethan women rejected the angel/whore dichotomy and sought to become equal partakers in the intellectual, aesthetic and sexual explorations taken for granted by Renaissance men.  Faust’s delving into “demonstrations magical” (1.151), rejection of “wise Bacon’s and Albanus’ works” and disdain for the divine law of “The Hebrew Psalter and New Testament” (1.155-6) are just the first steps into his long and excruciating descent from a man “grac’d with learning’s golden gifts” to one who has “fix’d the love of Belzebub” (5.13) and refused “Contrition, prayer, repentance” (5.18) so many times that he is irrevocably lost. One could suppose that Marlowe, in portraying Faustus’ inevitable destruction, either intended or stumbled upon the lesson his failed hero refused to learn – that humility and wisdom, found only in man’s right relationship to God, are in truth the only rational foundation from which Renaissance society could exercise its newborn “golden gifts” of learning and unify and preserve itself.

CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

The comic scenes involving Wagner and the Clown in the first half of the play, and Robin and Ralph in the second, form a sort of comic underplot to the tragic main plot, opposing the comic view of life to that proper to tragedy. The two points of view taken together ought to present a balanced picture of life, but the effect is unfortunate in Doctor Faustus. The comic underplot is neither continuous nor is it artistically integrated with the main plot. The tragic motive, the deliberate choice of damnation for superhuman power, is exceptional. It suggests a philosophy of life which is entertained by few persons in the world; while the comic view relates to the masses of common people who are so hard pressed by hunger and poverty and humble cares and desires that they would use magic and raise the Devil for solving their common problems. Thus the comic underplot parodies the action and cast of the main plot, throwing ironical light upon the variety of human pride and aspiration. But, on the whole, the intention is ill-realized, and Doctor Faustus might well have done without the comic interpolations.

REFERENCES

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