Doctor Faustus as the Renaissance

Write a note on the Renaissance character of the play, Doctor Faustus. or Discuss Faustus as a man of Renaissance.

"Rebel and pioneer though he was, Marlowe was yet a product of his own age. The introduction of the Good and Bad Angels, of the minor devils, and of the Seven Deadly Sins in Faustus links him with the drama of the later middle Ages. Faustus's inexhaustible thirst for knowledge, his worship of beauty, his passion for the classics, his capitalism, his interest in sorcery and magic, his admiration for Machiavelli and for super-human ambition and will in the pursuit of ideals of beauty or power, or whatever they may be, prove the author to be a man of Renaissance."

Faustus appears as a man of the Ranaissance in the very opening scene when, rejecting the tradition subjects of study, he turns to magic and considers the varied uses to which he can put his magic skill after he has acquired it. He contemplated the "world of profit and delight, of power, of honor, of omnipotence" which he hopes to enjoy as a magician. In dwelling upon the advantages which will occur to him by the exercise of his magic power, he shows his ardent curiosity, his desire for wealth and luxury, his nationalism, and his longing for power. These were precisely the qualities of the Renaissance, which was the age of discovery. A number allusions in the first scene of Act I maintain our sense of the enlarged outlook extended horizons of that great period of English history. Faustus desires gold from the East Indies, pearls from the depths of the sea,  pleasant fruits and princely delicacies from America. His friend valdes refers to the Indians in the Spanish colonies, to Lapland giants, to the argosies of Venice, and to the annual plate-fleet which supplied gold and silver to the Spanish treasury from the new world. There was much in this scene to inflame the hearts of English audiences who must have heartily approved of Faustus's intention to chase away the Prince of Parma from the Netherlands. After all, only the defeat of the Spanish Armada had prevented Parma from invading England in the 1588. Englishman knew also about "the fiery keel at Antwerp's bridge." the Italian inventor of which had been in the service of England in 1588. Thus Faustus's dream of power included much that had a strong appeal for the English people including Marlowe himself.

Faustus certainly embodies the new enquiring and aspiring spirit of the age of he Renaissance. Marlowe expresses in this play both his fervent sympathy with that new spirit and ultimately his awed and pitiful recognition of the danger into which he could lead those who were dominated by it . The danger is clearly seen in Faustus's last soliloquy in which Faustus offers to burn his books. No doubt these books are chiefly the books of magic, but we are surely reminded of his exclamation to the scholars earlier in this scene: "O, would I had never seen writtenberg, never read book! "Thus we get the impression that Faustus attributed his downfall, partly at least, to his learning.

"Doctor Faustus, although without specific Italian sources, owes audacity of thought and temper to Renaissance Italy, and treats with a comparable reach of mind questions that troubled Italian thinkers. To get some impressions of Renaissance quality of Doctor Faustus, it this enough to read three Italian walks (readily available in translation) - Petrarch's On His Own Ignorance, Lorenzo Valla's Dialogue on Free Will, and Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man. Petrach reconciles a Renaissance delight in life and learning with the Augustian recognization of the limitation of man, and a devotion to eloquence with a devotion to dogma. Valla's elegant argument illuminate his theme but leave its paradoxes as teasing as it finds them, adding a stringent warning against pursuing moral questions too for. Pico vindicates the magus who weds earth to heaven, and lower things to the endowments and power of higher things.

But the Italian who most often anticipates the dynamic and mysterious qualities of Marlowe's intellectual vision of Marsilio Ficino. Ficino shares Marlowe's awareness of the sanctity and torment of desire -  "by the natural instinct every soul strives in a continuous effort both to know our truths by the intellect and to enjoy all things by the will." Through its striving the soul reaches out towards harmony with the cosmic order and by the exercise of four furores (music, poetry, religious rites, prophecy and love) man  can enjoy the most beneficent influences from the stars and planets. Whether we treat Faicino's astrological theory of power of words (vis verborum) as fantasy, as naive science or as valid allegory, we must recognize it as an attempt to explain why  eloquence seems often to refresh out more being even before we are fully alive to its meaning. Marlowe exercises the poetic furore without
giving an astrological account of it. But his rhetoric often commands imagery of cosmic space, and the verse of Tamburlaine is indebted to Renaissance cosmography. Marlowe's distinction was to make the verbal magic efficacious in English - to put audiences under a spell. His eloquence often endows sweetness with power, and power with sweetness, in a way that disarms conventional moral judgments. The problem arises in the Doctor  Faustus, for the play does not leave us free to assume uncritically that poetic eloquence is one thing and moral truth quit another. It may be claimed that what we value most at the end is not the piety of good but the rhetoric of demand." 

Doctor Faustus is not only the first major elizabethan tragedy, but turn first to explore the tragic possibilities of the direct clash between the Renaissance compulsions and the Hebraic (Jewish) - Christian tradition. Tamburlaine symbolises the outward trust of the Renaissance, (and Marlowe conceived of this play as  a tragedy because of its picture of suffering and destruction, and it’s spectacle of death overthinking in the end even the mightiest of wordly conquerors). But in the Doctor Faustus Marlowe turned the focus inward. Here he depicted the human soul as the tragic battlefield and wrote the first "Christian tragedy".

The play has typical morality-play ending. It close with a speech by the Chorus warning “forward wits” against such fiendish practices as Faustus followed. But, if the play has a pious conclusion, the truth of the play goes far beyond the final piety of the speech of the Chorus. No figure of the medieval morality-plays talks so much or takes us so deep into his own being as Faustus does. No figure of the old morality-plays does so much and so boldly, as Faustus. Faustus in thought and action, brooding, philosophizing, disputing, conjuring, defying God, risking his body and soul, does not suggest merely the lay figure of the morality-plays, he suggests Adam (the knowledge-seeker), and he suggest Prometheus (the defiant hero of Greek tradition). In other words, Faustus put into an old legend a new meaning. He inserted into the old medieval or Christian moral education the new and ambiguous dynamic of the Renaissance. He treated the legend of Faustus in such a manner as to give it a fascination and a dignity never realized in previous treatments of the story. He made Faustus the first modern man. The story of this 24 years action, compressed by Marlowe in a few vivid scenes, represents a soul torn between the desire to stretch to its utmost limit its new mastery and freedom on the one hand and on the other hand, the claims of the old teachings a defiance of which meant guilt and a growing sense of alienation from society.

The legend of Faustus was believed to be a terrible and ennobling example, and a warning to all Christians to avoid the pitfalls of science, pleasure and ambition which had led to Faustus’s damnation. But it has to be noted that all that the Renaissance valued is represented in what the devil has to offer and one I left wondering whether it is the religious life or the worldly life that is more attractive. All that the Good Angel in ths play has to offer is “warning”. For instance, the Good Angel warns Faustus against reading the book of magic because it will bring God’s “heavy wrath” upon his head and asks him to think of heaven. To this Evil Angel replies: “No, Faustus, think of honor and of wealth”. At another point in the play the Evil Angel urges Faustus to go forward in the famous art of magic and to become a lord and commander of the earth. There can be no doubt that the devil here represent the natural ideal of the Renaissance by appealing to the vague but healthy ambitions of a young soul which wishes to launch itself upon the wide world. No wonder that Faustus, a child of the Renaissance, cannot resist the devil’s suggestion. We like him for his love of life, for his trust in Nature, for his enthusiasm for beauty. He speaks for us all when, looking at Helen, he cries:

Was this he face that launched a thousand ships

And burnt the topless tower of Ilium?

                                                                                (Act V, Scene II, Lines 91-92)

In a word Marlowe’s Faustus is a martyr to everything that the Renaissance valued-power, curious knowledge, enterprise, wealth, and beauty. The play shows Marlowe’s own passion for these Renaissance values.

For more important Question Answers of Christopher Marlowe Doctor Faustus: CLICK HERE

Christopher Marlowe | The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus | Important Questions With Answers

1. What do you think is the cause of the tragedy in Doctor Faustus?
2. Discuss Doctor Faustus as a Morality play. Or Elaborate the view that Doctor Faustus is a thoroughly "Christian" Document.
3. Discuss Doctor Faustus as an allegory. Or Bring out the symbolic meaning of Doctor Faustus.
4. Do you agree with the view that Doctor Faustus has a beginning and an end but no "middle" ?  Or Discuss the structure or construction or design of the play, Doctor Faustus. 
5. Write a note on the Renaissance character of the play, Doctor Faustus. Or Discuss Faustus as a man of Renaissance.
6. Write a note on Faustus's character as revealed in Marlowe's play. Or Show that Marlowe in this play is concerned with recording the mental history of Faustus. "
7. 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. 
8. Discuss the appropriateness or otherwise of the comic and farcical scenes in Doctor Faustus. Write a note on the comic and farcical scenes in Doctor Faustus. Do you think the introduction of these scenes in the play to be justified? Give reasons for your answer. 
9. Conflict is the essence of drama. Illustrate this dictum with reference to Doctor Faustus. Or Trace the mental conflict of Faustus from the beginning till his last hour on this earth.
10. How does Marlowe portray the character of Faustus? Or What estimate of the character of Faustus have you formed?
11. Discuss Doctor Faustus as regards its construction. Do you think that it possesses what is known as organic unity?
12. "If Doctor Faustus is a great work, it is also a flawed one". Discuss