Thinking activity on Doctor Faustus

Thinking Activity

DOCTOR FAUSTUS: A PLAY BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

                  This blog is designed in the form of an answer sheet to the task assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad on the play “A Tragical History of the life and death of Dr. Faustus” by Christopher Marlow. Click on the link to navigate to Dilip Barad Sir’sworksheet on Dr. Faustus.

1. The play directed by Matthew Dunster for Globe theatre ends with this scene (see the image of Lucifer). What does it signify?

                    The play directed by Matthew Dunster for Globe theatre contains an artistic different end than the enormously popular play of Elizabethan age, “A Tragical History of the life and death of Dr. Faustus” by Christopher Marlow. So, Matthew Dunster’s directed play ends with this scene.

Last Scene: Lucifer with wide wings

                        In this scene Lucifer, the master of Mephistophilis has gained the ultimate Power and is now more strong and sturdy as the real figure- the dominant Prince of Devils, the Ruler of Hell. After gaining victory and power which seemed to be lost for years, Lucifer is finally contented by his robust and mighty spirit with the magnificent wings and he seems to throw a wild laugh at God depicting God’s disastrous failure. 

                This scene demonstrates the grand triumph of Lucifer over God by constraining the soul of Dr. Faustus.

“Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,

And burned is Apollo’s laurel-bough,

That sometime grew within this learned man.

Faustus is gone: regard his hellish fall,

Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise”

                   Dr. Faustus, the learned man’s soul had to meet the hellish end. This well-studied man had in him the seeds of poetry and music but these seeds were reduced to dust. Faustus had collided in a satanic spirit which led his downfall in the mysteries of black art. 

2. Is God present in the play? If yes, where and how? If No, why?

                             The concept of God in today’s world is abstract. If there is God then how shall we prove its existence and if there isn’t then how the idea could be presented in a rather convincing way? So there’s always a dichotomy in God’s existence and hardly could we prove any of the notions.

                    Since the play of Dr. Faustus belongs to sixteenth-century literature, it contains a medieval idea of God and theology. A variety of instances, as well as references related to God, is presented in the play. Through ‘Good Angel’ and ‘Old Man’ references of God is brought to the reader.

GOOD ANGEL-

“O, Faustus, lay that damned book aside,

And gaze not on it, lest it tempt thy soul,

And heap God’s heavy wrath upon thy head!

Read, read the Scriptures:—that is blasphemy.”

                      The spirit of Good Angel earnestly tries to persuade Dr. Faustus not to engage in black art, it is against God’s practices and it will corrupt his soul, to repent for his pact with Lucifer and return to god.

                  Dr. Faustus himself believes that the creator of the world is God. Here is the reference of God.

FAUSTUS-

“Think, Faustus, upon God that made the world.”

                       It may be considered to a great degree that the good angel is not the sign from God; it’s rather Faustus’s inner conscience like the evil angel.

The way, the good angel represents Dr. Faustus’s virtuous half-conscience, the evil angel also is an evil part of Dr. Faustus’s conscience.

MEPHISTOPHILIS-

 “Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it:

Think’st thou that I, that saw the face of God,

And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,

Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,

In being depriv’d of everlasting bliss?

O, Faustus, leave these frivolous demands,

Which strike a terror to my fainting soul!”

                          In Mephistopheles’s words, it can be reflected that he might have seen God. He asks Dr. Faustus ‘Do you think that I, who saw the face of God, and enjoyed the everlasting pleasure of heaven, do not feel tormented in hell?’

                       As far as the Old man is concerned, the reader may feel that he might be a messenger of God or God himself (in disguise). The old man is a mysterious figure who appears in the final scene of the play to advise Dr. Faustus to repent. He tries to make Faustus realize about his deeds and seems to be concerned for Dr. Faustus. He, like every other matured man, tries to prove that Faustus is going in the wrong track and he should not continue his way.

                         Hence, as God is neither a character of play nor does he appear in any of play’s scenes, just with some references of God in the play, it cannot be assumed that God is in the play.  If he would be there in the play, he was supposed to be the savior of Dr. Faustus’s soul from meeting perpetual death and from Lucifer.

3. What reading and interpretation can be given to this image (see the image of Daedalus and Icarus) with reference to the central theme of the play Dr. Faustus?

Father Daedalus and Son Icarus

                         According to Greek mythology, the image shows Greek mythological figures of Father and Son, Daedalus, and Icarus- the son of Daedalus. In his days, the line that separated god from man was absolute. God in high position had unlimited power and any mortal being who tried to cross his limits by acquiring power or doing the things of immortals was punished in an extremely inexorable way. Icarus faced death because he was overjoyed with the feeling of flight and felt like divine power and as a result felled from such a height because of his melted wings, as he had gone too near the sun. Through this Greek myth, it can be interpreted that the myth tries to advocates us that if a mortal being tries to cross the boundaries decided by God or tries to reach God then he is bound to meet a catastrophically tragic end.

  

Click on the link to know the myth of Daedalus and Icarus in detail. 

Myth and Play	Mortal being	as	Hubris
The myth of Daedalus and Icarus	Icarus	Mythological figure	His overjoyed feeling of flight leads him to feel like a divine power.
“A Tragical History of the life and death of Dr. Faustus”	Dr. Faustus	A well-respected German scholar	His hunger for knowledge becomes his pride leading his refusal to accept limited human knowledge and his ambition of becoming like God.

             The central theme of Dr. Faustus is in acquiring too much knowledge and then turning to black art. Dr. Faustus was at the peak of his worldly career, he was already a master of all the existing knowledge and skills.

Faustus-

“Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man.

Couldst thou make men to live eternally,

Or, being dead, raise them to life again,

Then this profession were to be esteem’d.”

                     In spite of achieving all knowledge of the worlds, he is still Faustus, still a man, and nothing more. He wishes if he can attain the power to give immortal life to human beings. Or if they die he could bring them back to life. Marlow’s depiction of Dr. Faustus is in some way similar to the mythological character Icarus. Like Icarus, Faustus also ignores the advice of the old man, though he wavers a lot and fights to a great extent with his inner conscience. He even ignores the warnings of his two good friends. Throughout the play, Faustus receives plenty of advice and warnings from wise characters but he is so blind in the wonders of black art that he disregards all of them and at the end of completion of twenty-four years, Faustus repents at the last hour but he fails to convince God. In this way, his disregarding wise people’s advice leads to his tragic death.

              This way the image is very well connected with the play for its central theme of human pride and ambition. The reference is hence why presented in chorus the play of Dr. Faustus.

“His waxen wings did mount above his reach,

And, melting, heavens conspir’d his overthrow;

For, falling to a devilish exercise,”

4. How do you interpret this painting?

by Pieter Bruegel

                              The above-inserted oil painting “Landscape with the fall of Icarus” by Pieter Bruegel depicts the mythological figure of Icarus drowning in the sea in the lower corner in the right.  It shows the awful end of Icarus after his ambitious flight near the sun. In the painting, everyone seems busy with own issues and none cares for Icarus’s fall. The conflict in the painting is the fall but the painter had focused on showcasing, the central idea of the theme, in the periphery. The scene largely shows the insignificant figures and not the significant figure of classic tragedy. This painting is one of the best illustrations of the center-periphery model.

5. Read this article by Bhagat Singh. In light of the arguments made by Bhagat Singh in this article, can you re-write last monologue of Doctor Faustus?

Bhagat Singh was a realist. In light of the arguments made by Bhagat Singh in the article as well as with the reference of “Bhagat Singh” edited by K. C. Yadav and Babar Singh which provides a useful understanding of Bhagat Singh and his persona. Click on the link to view the last monologue of Doctor Faustus with my viewpoint.

edited by K. C. Yadav and Babar Singh

A short introduction of Bhagat Singh

 6. Summarise articles discussed in the class:

Marlowe and God: Tragic Theology of Dr. Faustus

Robert Ornstein, in his article, with the reference of several biographical interpretations of Christopher Marlow’s life tries to figure out failings or artistic problems of Marlow with God in order to better understand the concept of theology in his works “A Tragical History of the life and death of Dr. Faustus”, “Tamburlaine”, and “The Jew of Malta”. He tries to peep in Marlow’s life which was full of controversy. Marlow’s characters were full of exuberant spirit and enthusiastic but their turning from atheism to theism is what reflects the Elizabethan culture. He also takes the reference of Faust book to develop a deep understanding. Faustus’s wavering personality represents Marlowe’s spiritual struggle- his wavering between exhilaration and despondency is nothing but a rhapsodic idea of conveying art. Unlike ‘Doctor Faustus’, Marlow’s free-thinking is transparent and clear in ‘Tamburlaine’ in which Marlow reveals the deviant sympathies and ‘Jew of Malta’  where he makes critical remarks on Christianity.

Marlow’s fascination with the supernatural was obvious. For him, the dream of a supernatural power has momentous intellectual seriousness. The scholarly interpretation of ‘Doctor Faustus’ can be better understood by contemporary opinions about Marlow. Ornstein mentions that no courage can save Faustus who shrinks from powerful to powerless.

“We can argue that Faustus too late-or with too little conviction-turns toward Christ. But we cannot say that the Faustus of the early scenes ignores the Sacrifice when he rejects his faith. He does not, as scholars would have it, describe Christianity without Christ or delude himself with schoolboy sophistries about the possibility of salvation.” - Robert Ornstein

It can be said that the conflict of drama acts as a way of escape for Christopher Marlowe from the irritation of his own thought, resulting in his own catharsis of emotions. As Marlow was also a believer of god and considered God as Deity, he portrays the character of Dr. Faustus with the same conception. 

Myth, Psychology and Marlowe's Doctor Faustus

Kenneth L. Golden, in his article observes Dr. Faustus dilemma parallels with the dilemma of a modern man with reference to the twentieth-century standpoint of Carl Jung’s psychology of Archetypes.

"Mankind has never lacked powerful images to lend magical aid against all the uncanny things that live in the depths of the psyche"

-says Jung.

Accordingly, Kenneth remarks that the images continue to operate in a strange way with a neurotic nature for Faustus when he comes to crises in his life. The manipulative power over things of Faustus largely represents the confusion of a Renaissance man as well as the modern man which Jung calls ego-inflation. Like the myth of Icarus, Faustus is placed in danger of enantiodromia, a tendency of things to change into their opposites.

“According to the prologue, Faustus is

‘swoll'n with cunning of a self-conceit’ ,

 ‘glutted now with learning's golden gifts’.”

-Observes Kenneth L. Golden

Faustus like modern man becomes a favorable victim of power. His neurosis, like modern man, operates as split personality, the bipolar nature of psyche to which Kenneth defines “doublethinking”- a timeless realm.  An illustration is provided further of Faustus asking Mephistophilis, "Where is the place that men call hell?"

To this Mephistophilis answers the Hell is situated in the interior of this world where we remain forever. Hell has no boundaries; hell is wherever we are. The way Mephistophilis describes hell is what the Miton’s verse says 

"The mind is its own place, and in itself,

Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n." 

This suggests the agency of neurosis theory. Faustus' attraction to the mythical figure of Helen of Troy clearly involves the archetype of the anima. This allows the personal psyche of Faustus to know and discover all that can possibly know.

This way it can be concluded that Marlow’s Faustus differs from Goethe’s Faust, largely Marlow’s Faustus is a resemblance of modern man with the modern psyche.