"Othello" written by William Shakespeare play explores themes of jealousy, manipulation, betrayal

 "If Doctor Faustus is a great work, it is also a flawed one". Discuss.

Doctor Faustus is recognised as one of the masterpieces of English drama. There can, therefore, be no doubt as to the greatness of this work. Its stronger point, of course, is the characterisation of the tragic hero himself. The tragic hero is Doctor Faustus, a man of great learning and scholarship who barters away his soul to the devil for twenty-four years of omnipotence and pleasure. The character of Faustus has skilfully been delineated. The author successfully brings into focus both the high and the low sides of Faustus's character. According to Hazlitt, the character of Faustus in this play is a rude sketch, but a gigantic one. Hazlitt regards Faustus as a personification of the pride of will and eagerness of curiosity. Faustus is devoured by a tormenting desire to enlarge his knowledge to the utmost bounds, and to extend his power with his knowledge. To attain this purpose, Faustus defies all moral consequences and allies himself with the devil. It is to be noted, however, that Faustus gets very little in return for the damnation to which he has agreed. He never becomes a real boss of Mephistophilis who has sworn to serve him. After a brief pursuit of knowledge, he employs Mephistophilis for mere frivolous uses. He does gather some knowledge about heaven, and earth, and astronomy in general, but soon he devotes himself to mere trifles and childish pastimes. It is also to be noted that Faustus does not entirely give himself over to the devil because the desire to turn to God does not become totally defunct in him. Marlowe depicts a painful mental conflict which Faustus experiences throughout the period during which he practises magic. The portrayal of this conflict shows Marlowe's understanding of the psychology of a noble-minded individual who falls a victim to an irresistible temptation. The quality for which we admire and respect Faustus most is his scholarship and learning, his mastery over different branches of study such as logic, theology, and medicine. His decision to study necromancy and practise magic is merely an extension (though an impious extension) of that same tendency which in the earlier stages led him to master other fields of learning. In depicting Faustus, Marlowe has given us a portrait of a typical man of the Renaissance. Faustus is a martyr to everything that the Renaissance valued-power, curious knowledge, enterprise, wealth and beauty. The Evil Angel appeals to the ambitions and aspirations of a youthful mind that would make trial of the world. No wonder that Faustus cannot resist the Evil Angel's suggestion. Most of us would like Faustus for his love of life, his love of knowledge, his self-confidence, and his enthusiasm for beauty, and we would feel sorry for the fate that overtakes him. There is no doubt that Faustus is truly a tragic hero, in spite of the fact that some critics refuse to believe that there is anything heroic about him. Faustus's heroic quality consists in his desire for boundless knowledge, and unlimited power. That he attains boundless knowledge and unlimited power through impious means, that is, through his alliance with the devil, is true. But therein precisely lies the weakness or error or vice which causes his downfall. A tragic hero is a high-minded individual who meets a sad fate because of some weakness of character. By this test, Faustus is surely a tragic hero. He is intellectually a genius. His ultimate fate undoubtedly arouses the feelings of pity and horror in the audience. He experiences an acute mental conflict throughout his twenty-four years of power and pleasure. He is capable of tender human relationships. If he is a criminal, he is continually troubled by his criminal acts and by a desire for repentance. It would be wrong not to give him the status of a tragic hero. His extraordinary, almost superhuman learning and scholarship, and the sympathy which he wins, are enough to raise him to that position.

It is part of Marlowe's art to have presented the character of Faustus differently from the Faustus of the old legend. The old legend, as found in the German Faust-buch, was a commonplace tale of magic in which Faustus was depicted merely as an example of wickedness, as a cunning sorcerer who met a richly deserved end. There was no hint of sympathy for Faustus in the narrator's attitude. The appeal of the story, apart from its sensational elements and its farcical comedy, was that of a religious tract. But Marlowe has felt and conveyed the sense of tragedy in Faustus's aspirations and downfall. In the hands of Marlowe, Faustus acquires a spiritual greatness which, in the finest moments of the play, wins him our sympathy, and at his death arouses that pity and terror which great tragedy demands. 

Also, the play, as written by Marlowe, becomes one of the noblest expressions of the Renaissance genius and of Marlowe's own temperament. We see Faustus as a symbol of Marlowe's times when fresh wonders of the mind and of the world were being discovered and people's hopes of the attainable were full of ardour. "The mingled stuff of his dreams, his equal ecstasy in things of the senses and of the spirit, in riches and power, in the songs of blind Homer and in Helen's beauty, stamp him clearly as of the Elizabethan Renaissance."

The outstanding scenes of the play are also examples of Marlowe's power of transforming the original material. These scenes are the summoning of Mephistophilis, the signing of the contract, the vision of Helen, and the final death and damnation. In these scenes the original narrative is quickened into life. "The medley of desire and fear, the poignancy of regret, the ecstasy and the terror are depicted in these scenes with a sureness and strength which give them a place among the greatest emotional situations in Elizabethan tragedy. It is these scenes which especially justify Marlowe's claim to a rank next to Shakespeare."

Some of the passages in the play are famous for their poetic quality, and these passages also contribute to the greatness of the play. The most celebrated of these passages are Faustus' apostrophe to Helen and Faustus's final monologue. The apostrophe to Helen throbs with intense emotion and passion. It is enriched with classical legends and myths. It has an irresistible sensuous appeal. Faustus goes into raptures over the beauty of Helen and reveals an imagination whose powers are totally undiminished by the spiritual agony that he has been undergoing. In fact, the beauty of Helen lulls the mental conflict of Faustus and stimulates his mind and imagination to touch great heights of poetry. If this speech is great because of its appeal of our aesthetic sense, Faustus' final monologue is great because of its revelation of the spiritual terror of a sinner who would like to disown the devil and repent of his sins when it is too late and when no power can rescue him. It is said that, in the expression of sheer agony and horror, this speech is unsurpassed in English drama.

Marlowe has shown great skill in depicting the character of Mephistophilis also. The devil here is not represented as a grotesque and ridiculous figure. Marlowe, like Milton later on, sees Mephistophilis with something of the tragic splendour of a fallen angel. Marlowe thus departs from the customary manner of dealing with the evil spirits. This new and more understanding attitude is well brought out by the answer given by Mephistophilis to Faustus's question as to the whereabouts of hell: "Why. this is hell, nor am I out of it", etc. To a certain extent, Mephistophilis even wins our sympathy when he tells us that he is "tormented with ten thousand hells" because he has lost "the eternal joys of heaven".

There is certainly some weight in the opinion that Doctor Faustus is a great dramatic poem rather than a great play. While this view ignores the remarkable acting quality of the principal scenes, it is true that Doctor Faustus has more superb passages of dramatic poetry than any other of Marlowe's plays. The theme of this play lends itself to several passionate outbursts and lyrical raptures. Even apart from the address to Helen, there are occasions when Marlowe's imagination glows with similar brightness, and the feeling finds expression in rich and musical words. An example of this is the passage in which Faustus speaks of the high delights that his magic has brought him: "Have not I made blind Homer sing to me", etc. In his best passages, Marlowe is neither rhetorical nor obscure, but speaks with a bright and lucid simplicity. Many of his happiest lines in the play consist of words of everyday speech, and are often a sequence of monosyllables. Even in its less exalted passages, this play is almost entirely free from the rhetorical declamation and the word-fury which marked Tamburlaine. The description of the darkness which hide the grove wherein Faustus is about to conjure, is surely marked by extravagant phraseology but even this strained expression has some justification in the weird atmosphere which it is meant to suggest. Furthermore, this play shows most fully the extent of Marlowe's mastery of blank verse, the finest examples of which are Faustus' opening soliloquy and his final monologue.

To a certain extent the greatness of this play is due also to the fact that it has a morally elevating effect on us. Of course, we do not go to a play in order to seek moral instruction. A great work of art need not necessarily have any moral connotation. Art and morality are two altogether different concepts. But, if a work of art is otherwise great, and then at the same time it produces a morally uplifting effect on us, its value even as a work of art will be enhanced. Of course, we are not supposed to reduce Doctor Faustus to a moral formula and say that it teaches us to keep away from evil practices and to follow the path of righteousness. The play is meant primarily to appeal to our imagination and emotions; it stimulates, feeds, and satisfies our aesthetic sense; it reveals the workings of the human mind under certain selected circumstances; it gives us an insight into human nature and thus widens our mental horizon; it delights us by the grandeur of its verse; but it does at the same time morally exalt us. It puts us into a spiritual mood and strengthens our spiritual instincts.

But this play has its faults also. In the first place, its plot is not well knit. It does not have that unity of action which is so necessary in drama from the technical point of view. In other words, the play is weak as regards its construction. It is merely a string of scenes, and the only unity it has is that of a string of beads. The middle section of the play, especially, is discordant with its general tone. We have too much of frivolity and comedy in a play which is tragic in its essence. The abundance of comic scenes considerably dilutes the tragic effect. Secondly, the comedy in this play is of a low and crude variety. Much of the humour is farcical. While the scene in which Wagner talks light-heartedly to the Scholars, parodying the scholarly style of argument, is certainly amusing, and is also appropriate as relieving the tension of the preceding scene, Faustus's tricks at the courts of the Pope and the Emperor, and his dealings with the Horse-courser, are examples of mere buffoonery and horse play. These clownage scenes lower the tone of the play by their crudity. It does not matter to us whether Marlowe wrote these scenes or somebody else did. We are to judge the play as it is. The controversy regarding the authorship of these scenes is irrelevant to our purpose.

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Another weakness in the play is that, barring the character of Faustus and, to some extent, of Mephistophilis, the rest of the characters are shadowy and have no real existence. The Good and Evil Angels are mere personifications of Faustus' own good and evil instincts, even though they may also be regarded as symbolising the external forces of good and evil which operate in the universe. In either case, these Angels have no concrete existence. Valdes and Cornelius appear only for a short while in the opening scene and then disappear altogether. Wagner, the Clown, the Horse-courser have very little to do with the main plot of the drama. The Pope, the Emperor, and the Duke and Duchess of Vanholt are introduced merely as an excuse for Faustus to show his magic powers. The Old Man is also merely a symbol representing unflinching piety and righteousness. The Scholars do not have any individuality separately from one another. They are introduced merely to provide a kind of background against which the change that has come over, Faustus may be depicted. In fact, of all the minor characters (excepting Mephistophilis, who is, in any case not a minor character) the Seven Deadly Sins, despite their purely symbolical and fictitious character, have been endowed with the greatest concreteness. Each of these Seven Sins gives a vivid, though brief, portrayal of itself, and this portrayal fully corresponds to our own notions of each of them.

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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
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