Trace the various stages of Faustus's damnation. or "This play presents the fall and slow moral disintegration of an ardent, but erring, spirit". Discuss.
As soon as Faustus has decided that necromancy is the only study worth his while, he seeks the aid of Valdes and Cornelius, who, are already proficient in the art. The pair are ready enough to help Faustus, for they have been trying in the past to lead him into forbidden ways. He tells them that their exhortations have won him at last “to practice magic and
concealed arts”. At the same time, he is anxious not to appear too pliant, and
adds: “Yet not your words only, but mine own fantasy”. He makes it plain that
he is no humble seeker after instruction, but one who has already earned fame
and honor. The two friends are willing to accept him on his own terms. Valdes hints
that common efforts deserve common rewards:
called spirits, but they have made no use of success. They have been careful
not to sacrifice their salvation for the attainment of supernatural powers. They
have never yielded to the temptation of the spirits and never put their powers
to test. Even when they agree to guide Faustus in his exploration of magic,
they leave us in no doubt of their intention to use Faustus as a tool rather
than run into danger themselves. Speaking to his partner, Cornelius says:
ambition, we should not fail to recognize its nobler elements, even though
subsequently Faustus, instead of pursuing ends worthy of his professed ideals,
abandons these and appears content to amuse the Emperor with conjuring tricks
and play childish branks on the Pope.
lies? Marlowe knew the nature of the power his hero had acquired and the Inevitable curse it carried with it. Of course, Faustus’s
deterioration is not an automatic result of his pact with the devil. In spite
of his genuine desire to know the truth, the seeds of decay existed in his
character from the first, otherwise he would not have made his fatal bargain. Besides
his passion for knowledge, he has a lust for riches and pleasure and power. He does
express patriotic sentiments, but he has an almost vulgar desire to exercise
authority over kings and rulers and even revels his sensual nature by speaking
of living “in all voluptuousness”. It is not for nothing that Valdes spoke of
the spirits who sometimes appear like women or maids possessing greater beauty
than is to be seen “in the white breasts of the Queen of Love”. Faustus is a
man dazzled by the unlimited possibilities of magic and he shows himself quite
aware of his own weakness when he says, “The god thou servest is thine own
appetite”
(sleeping, eating, walking, disputing), he will willingly be damned. Faustus’s
discussion with Mephistophilis on the subject of astronomy is curiously barren.
“These slender trifles Wagner can decide”, says Faustus impatiently. The quarrel
that follows on Mephistophilis,s refusal to say who made the world leads to the
intervention of Lucifer and the “pastime” of the Seven Deadly Sins. It is a
much shrunken Faustus who, after seeing the parade of the Seven Deadly Sins,
exclaims: “O, this feeds my soul”. He had felt equally delighted with the dance
of the devils who offered him “crowns and rich apparel” just before his singing
the bond. At that time he was told that he would be able to conjure up such: “ Then
there’s enough for a thousand souls”. We may perhaps infer that Mephistophilis’s
promise included sensual satisfaction. That inference would accord with Faustus’s
mood soon afterwars when he demands a wife, “the fairest maid in Germany”, and
when, instead of providing a suitable wife for him, Mephistophilis offered to
bring him a mistress, any woman who attracted him, “be she as chaste as was Penelope……”
So far
Faustus has not left Wittenberg, and the emphasis has been on the hollowness of
his bargain in respect of any intellectual progress or enlightenment. The actual
degradation of his character has not yet received much emphasis. As yet only
his childish pleasure in the devil-dance (Act III, Scene I, Lines 82-83) and
the pageant of the Seven Deadly Sins (Act II, Scene II, Lines 112-172) hints at
the vulgar trivialities to which he will descend. Now, in the company of
Mephistophilis, he launches forth into the world (Act III-the speech of the
Chorus). But his flights on the back of a dragon to find the secrets of astronomy and ‘to prove
cosmography” only land him at last in the pope’s private chamber to “take some
part of holy Peter,s feast” and to view the royal courts of kings and this only
brings out very pointedly the progressive silliness and meaninglessness of Faustus’s
career.
Faustus sees the dance of the devils (Act II, Scene I, Lines 82-83), he asks: “But
may I raise up spirits when I please?” later he promises to make his “spirit”
pull down the churches of God (Act II, Scene II, Lines 101). At one point,
speaking to Mephistophilis speaks of the devils as “unhappy spirits that fell
with Lucifer” (Act I, Scene III, Lines 71). When Faustus asks what is Lucifer,
Mephistophilis replies: “Arch-regent and commander of all spirits” (Act I,
Scene III, Lines 64) which Faustus at once interprets as “prince of devils”. In
short, the word “spirit” in this play is persistently used to mean “devil”. This
throws a new light on the question, debated throughout the play, whether
Faustus can be saved by repentance. Faustus, of course, is for ever repenting. The
Good and Bad Angels, who symbolize the two sides of his nature, are for ever
disputing the point:
These
two passage are particularly significant in this respect. When Faustus calls on
Christ to save his distressed soul, Lucifer replies with admirable logic that
Christ, being just, will not interfere because Faustus’s soul has been pledged
to the devil. Thus the possibility of Faustus’s salvation is left nicely
balanced in doubt. It is only when, back among his students at Wittenberg, he faces the final reckoning that Faustus
regains some degree of heroic dignity. But even so the years have wrought a
change. His faithful Wagner is puzzled:
paramour, Faustus explains the nature of the figures that will appear. He says
that the true substantial bodies of Alexander and his paramour will not appear
but such as will resemble Alexander and his paramour in that manner that they
both lived in, “in their most flourishing estate” the same holds good for
Helen, because Faustus warns the students to be silent, “for danger is in words”,
when he is about to summon Helen. The circumstances in which Helen is summoned
for the last time to revolt against the devil. But he has been threatened into submission
and has renewed the blood-bond. He has sunk so low as to ask for revenge upon
the Old Man who had tried to save his soul. And it is in the first place as a safeguard
against once again trying to desert the devil that he seeks possession of
Helen. He wants Helen so that her sweet embraces “may extinguish clean, Those
thoughts that do dissuade me from my vow, and keep mine oath I made to Lucifer!”
Revenge upon the Old Man and the desire to make love to Helen are both sought
as guarantees against salvation. Helen then is a “spirit” and in this play a
spirit means a “devil”. In making her his paramour Faustus commits the sin of
demoniality, that is, bodily or sexual intercourse with a demon. The implication
of Faustus’s action is made plain in the comments of the Old Man after the
Helen episode:
This
play presents the fall and slow moral disintegration of an ardent, but erring,
spirit. It depicts not only Faustus’s spiritual sin of bartering his soul to
the power of evil, but also the physical counterpart of that sin, the physical
counterpart being demoniality.
Faustus, these books, thy wit, and our experience,
Shall make all nations to canonize us.
(Act I, Scene I, Lines 117-118)
He paints a glowing picture of the possibilities before
them, the only condition being that Faustus remain firm in his decision: “If Faustus
will be resolute”. However, it soon appears that for all their reputation for proficiency
in magic, the two friends of Faustus have not yet gone very far. They have certainly
Valdes, first let him know the words of art,
And then, all other ceremonies learned,
Faustus may try his cunning by himself.
(Act I, Scene I, Lines 156-158)
These two men are not perfect magicians welcoming a promising beginner, but merely the davil’s decoys luring Faustus along the road to destruction. They serve their purpose in giving a dramatic turn to the scene of his temptation and except for a passing mention by the students, we hear no more of them.
Faustus goes to conjure alone and alone he concludes his
pact with the devil. As for the use to which he will put his newly-acquired
powers, he speaks in a heroic vein about the world of profit and delight, of
power, of honor, and omnipotence, all things that move between the quiet poles
shall be at his command, his dominion will stretch as far as does the mind of
man, he will become a demi-god, he will wall all Germany with brass and chase
the Prince of Parma from his land. Whatever baser elements there may be in his
Faustus soon lapses into luxury and buffoonery. The reason
is that all that happens to Faustus, once the pact has been signed, is the
devil’s work who but a fool would imagine that any power but evil could be won
by a bargain with evil, or that truth could be elicited from the father of
After Faustus has signed the bond with his blood, we can
trace the stages of a gradual deterioration. Although he was skeptical
regarding hell and heaven in his first interview with Mephistophilis (before he
signed the blood), his skepticism now becomes bolder and more jeering. He now
tells Mephistophilis that he thinks hell to be a “fable”. He refuses to believe
that “after this life there is any pain”. To Mephistophilis’s remark that he
(Mephistophilis) is now in hell, Faustus’s reply is that if this be hell
There is something strange and peculiar not only in Faustus’s
situation, but in his nature. Once he has signed the bond, he has of his own
free will renounced salvation. But he has brought upon himself another change
also. In this connection, we should not neglect the first clause of his
agreement with the devil: “that Faustus may be a spirit in form and substance”.
This clause has generally been taken to mean merely that Faustus will be free
of the bonds of flesh, so that he may be invisible at will, able to change his
shape, ride on dragons and so on. But in this play the word “spirit” has been
used in a special sense. Here this word means “devil”. When, for instance,
Faustus. Contrition, prayer, repentance-what of them?
Good Angel. Oh, they are means to bring thee unto heaven.
Evil Angel. Rather illusions, fruits of Lunacy…….
(Act II, Scene I, Lines 16-18)
Again:
Good Angel. Never too late, if Faustus will repent.
Evil Angel. If thou repent, devils will tear thee in pieces.
Good Angel. Repent and they shall never raze thy skin.
(Act II, Scene II, Lines 82-84)
And yet, methinks, if that death were near,
He would not banquet and carouse and swill
Amongst the students, as even now he doth.
(Act V, Scene I, Lines 3-5)
This is very different Faustus from the fearless teacher his students used to know, whose least absence from the class-room used to cause anxiety.
One good, or at least amiable, quality, apart from a genuine tenderness towards his students, Faustus shows throughout: a love of beauty in Nature and in art:
Have not I made blind Homer sing to me
Of Alexander’s love and Oenon’s death?
And hath not he, that built the walls of Thebes
With ravishing sound of his melodious harp,
Made music----? (Act II, Scene II, Lines 26-30)
The climax of his career is his union with the immortal
beauty of Helen. This sensitive appreciation of beauty could be something that
has survived uncorrupted from his days of innocence. But there appears no hint
of it in the austere student of the early. After all, the builder of Thebes
played on his melodious harp and “made music with my Mephistophilis” (Act II,
Scene II, Line 30). And who is Helen? Here we come to the central theme of the
damnation of Faustus. When the Emperor asks him to summon Alexander and his
Accursed Faustus, miserable man,
That from thy soul excludes the grace of heaven.
(Act V, Scene II, Lines 1-2)
Thus with Faustus’s union with Helen the nice balance between possible salvation and imminent damnation is upset and the Old Man recognizes the inevitable in his above-quoted speech. Faustus, in his talk with the Scholars in Act V, Scene II, shows a terrible clarity of vision: “a surfeit of deadly sin, that hat damned both body and soul. Faustus’s offence can never be pardoned: the serpent that tempted Eve may be saved, but not Faustus”. In the final scene Faustus is still haunted by the idea of a salvation beyond his reach:
See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul, half a drop: Ah, my Christ!
(Act V, Scene III, Lines 79-80)