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British Drama

Notes 13.2 Character of Doctor Faustus

13.2.1 Central Character of the Play
Faustus is the central character of the play. The attention of the audience is certainly focused upon
him. Faustus was born of poor parents in Rhode in Germany. Like so many outstanding men who
were humbly born, it was through learning that he was able to rise above his lowly beginnings. He
was brought up by relatives who sent him to the university at Wittenberg. There he excelled in the
study of divinity and was awarded his doctorate. He was so outstanding in scholarship and in
learned argument that he grew proud of himself and his powers.

13.2.2 Doctor Faustus—A Brilliant Man

At the beginning of the play, he is no longer content with the pursuit of knowledge. He has studied
all the main branches of learning of his time and is satisfied by none of them. He demands more
from logic than the ability it gives one in debate. Medicine has brought him fame and riches but
confers upon him only human powers. The study of law is for slaves and leads to nothing significant.
Divinity is preferable to all of these but cannot get beyond sin and death. It is magic that promises
to open up new worlds of power and to make man into a god.

13.2.3 Doctor Faustus—A Tragic Hero with Admirable Aspirations

Aristotle stated that the tragic hero is a predominantly good man, whose undoing is brought about
by some error of human frailty, “the stamp of one defect.” The audience sees three such defects in
Faustus that lead to his ultimate domination by Mephistophilis: his pride, his restless intellect and
his desire to be more than man (to possess the power and the insight of a god.) Any one of these
three defects would have been sufficient to ensure his downfall in terms of the theory of tragedy. In
his pride, he is guilty of hubris, a quality which in Greek tragedy was certain to arouse the wrath of
the gods. His desire to be equated with God is a sin in Christian terms as well.

“Aristotle stated that the tragic hero is a predominantly good man, whose undoing is
brought about by some error of human frailty.” Illustrate this statement in context of Doctor
Faustus.
In some ways, Faustus’ aspirations are admirable. It was the glory and the ambition of the Renaissance
man to have an “aspiring mind.” Faustus, on one level, represents the new man emerging from the
womb of the middle Ages. The authority of the Church, which had limited the thought of the middle
Ages, was lessening. There was a movement of power from the Church to the State, which meant, to
a limited extent, the transfer of power to the individual man. The classical spirit was certainly a
source of influence for Marlowe and his fellow dramatists. The Greek attitude to their gods was
very different from that of the medieval Church. The Greeks encouraged a spirit of inquiry in their
thought that was quite foreign to the attitude of the medieval Church.

13.2.4 Doctor Faustus—A Character with Dual Attitude

This is the key to much of the duality of Faustus’ thoughts and attitudes. He looks sometimes
backwards to the medieval world, and sometimes forward to the modern world. Above all, he is a
Renaissance figure, adventurously surveying a world whose horizons were widening every day as
a result of voyages and exploration. Faustus is full of excitement for geographical discovery. The

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