Medieval elements and the spirit
of Renaissance in Dr. Faustus
Introduction: Doctor Faustus
is the only one of Marlowe’s plays in which the pivotal issue is strictly
religious and the whole design rests upon protestant doctrines. This
issue, stated simply, is whether Doctor Faustus shall choose God or the evil
delights of witchcraft and we witness his bargain with the witchcraft.
Thus the drama is not primarily one of external action but of
spiritual combat within the soul of man, waged according to the laws of Christian
world order. Here Marlowe, through Faustus, utters strictures on prayer,
hell and the Christian religion, but he never lets these iconoclastic
sallies overthrow the Christian dogma.
Depiction of the Devil in the
Moralities: Miracle and Moralities offered two versions of the devil. One
heroic – the definite Lucifer contesting the throne of God or claiming over the
world. ; the other unheroic and comic – Satan down on his luck and trying to
get his own back somehow.
Marlowe’s Audacity: Marlowe
himself enjoyed a reputation as ‘Atheist and Epicure’ condemner and mocker of
religions. Thomas Kyd and Richard Bains under pressure of authorities brought
against him many charges of blasphemy, heresy and atheism. He was accused for
instance, of saying that the first beginning of Religions was only to keep man
in awe and that Moses as a juggler and Aaron a cosoner the one for his miracles
to Pharaoh to prove there was a god, and the other for taking the earrings of
the children of Israel to make a golden calf. It seems that Marlowe
even delivered a lecture on atheism. We admit these charges against
him as true because he had no serious reverence for Christianity.
Christian Context: According
to Irvin Ribner: “ The only one of Marlowe’s plays which is cast in a
deliberately Christian context is Doctor Faustus.” Kocher has argued that much
of his dramatic activity may be explained as a struggle the theological
training of his youth: “ However desperate his desire to be free, he was bound
to Christianity by the surest of chains – hatred mingled with reluctant longing
and fascination much akin to fear.”
Doctor Faustus and
Christianity: Marlowe’s may well have known Nathaniel Woods’s morality
play, The Conflict of Conscience. But Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is not Christian
morality play, for it contains no affirmation of the goodness or justice of the
religious system it depicts with such accuracy of detail. It is rather a
protest against this system, which it reveals as imposing a limitation upon the
aspiration of man, holding him in subjection and bondage, denying him at last
even the comfort of Christ’s blood, and dooming him to the most terrible
destruction. The religion of the play is Christianity from which, as Michael
Poirier has pointed out, Christ is strangely missing.
Faustus’s Spiritual Condition: Faustus’s
state of mind in the early scenes is that of a man apt for reprobation. Most
dangerously is he “swollen with cunning, of self-conceit” to use the
authoritative words of the Prologue. His search for knowledge knows no
boundaries. He wants to gain the deity and rule the whole universe.
Failure in repentance: In
becoming a witch, Faustus formally renounces God and gives himself over to the
ownership of the devil. Short story …. The trouble with Faustus is not
that God withhold from him the grace necessary to repentance but that he
himself refuses to take a real effort to accept it when it is offered. He lets
himself be lured away by the embraces of Helen and by the threats of physical torments
from the demons. Therefore, he earns the rebuke of the old man.
Conclusion: There is a
terrible warning for humanity in the final chorus:
Faustus is gone: regard his
hellish fall,
Whose friendful fortune may
exhort the wise,
Only to wonder at unlawful things
Whose deepness doth entice such
forward wits
To praise more than heavenly
powers permit
The price of aspiration, of
seeking to probe beyond the ordinary limits of man, is death in its most
terrible form. If the progress of Faustus is, as Miss Garner has written “From
a proud philosopher, master of all human knowledge, to a slave of phantoms,
this is not to say that the order of things which decrees such as human
deterioration as the price of aspiration.” In this play Marlowe is using a
Christian view of Heaven and Hell in a vehicle of protest which is essentially
anti-Christian.
In so far as Marlowe’s
anti-Christian is concerned the play allows us to draw some further conclusions
of great interest. The powerful speeches about Christianity from
Mephistopheles and Lucifer show that however, scornfully Marlowe rejected the
system intellectually; it still has a powerful impact on his imagination and
emotions.
No comments:
Post a Comment