Page 170 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

British Drama

Notes 14.1 Doctor Faustus—A Tragedy: Tragedy in Christian Terms

Doctor Faustus has elements of both Christian morality and classical tragedy. On the one hand, it
takes place in an explicitly Christian cosmos: God sits on high, as the judge of the world, and every
soul goes either to hell or to heaven. There are devils and angels, with the devils tempting people
into sin and the angels urging them to remain true to God. Faustus’s story is a tragedy in Christian
terms, because he gives in to temptation and is damned to hell. Faustus’s principal sin is his great
pride and ambition, which can be contrasted with the Christian virtue of humility; by letting these
traits rule his life, Faustus allows his soul to be claimed by Lucifer, Christian cosmology’s prince of
devils.

Doctor Faustus is a tragedy in Christian terms. Explain.

Yet while the play seems to offer a very basic Christian message—that one should avoid temptation
and sin, and repent if one cannot avoid temptation and sin—its conclusion can be interpreted as
straying from orthodox Christianity in order to conform to the structure of tragedy. In a traditional
tragic play, as pioneered by the Greeks and imitated by William Shakespeare, a hero is brought low
by an error or series of errors and realizes his or her mistake only when it is too late. In Christianity,
though, as long as a person is alive, there is always the possibility of repentance—so if a tragic hero
realizes his or her mistake, he or she may still be saved even at the last moment. But though Faustus,
in the final, wrenching scene, comes to his senses and begs for a chance to repent, it is too late, and
he is carried off to hell. Marlowe rejects the Christian idea that it is never too late to repent in order
to increase the dramatic power of his finale, in which Faustus is conscious of his damnation and yet,
tragically, can do nothing about it.
In the Elizabethan age there was a strictly dichotomised attitude towards right and wrong, and the
framework of Christian morality was one by which most people aimed to live: religion was of much
more central importance than it is now. Abandoning God and turning to the path of sin would be seen
as a shocking and unforgiveable crime, as would experimenting with black magic and forbidden
knowledge. Elizabethan audiences would be more familiar with the concepts of sinful distraction and
the soul-poisoning influences of the Seven Deadly Sins. Elizabethan audiences firmly believed in the
Christian cosmology of angels and devils. Following are the influences of Christianity on the play:
• The play takes place in an explicitly Christian cosmos of angels and devils.
• Although Faustus’ journey ends in damnation, the essential message of the play upholds the
Protestant belief: that the journey to spiritual redemption is a personal one requiring no
intermediary. People damn themselves through their own actions but they can repent.
• Faustus is not a typical Elizabethan thinker because he rejects ‘good’ knowledge and yearns for
knowledge ‘more than heavenly power permits’.
• The play contains Medieval and Renaissance concepts of Hell. Hell is shown as a physical
place, but there is also the interesting idea that Hell has no location and may be defined as the
absence of God.
• Faustus expresses atheistic beliefs (‘I think hell’s a fable’) and turns his back on the redemptive
power of God. On the surface the play has a Christian moral, as Faustus is damned for
abandoning God. However there are reasons to be suspicious, as Marlowe was widely believed
to be an atheist. There is a lot of blasphemy in the play, as well as powerful sacrilege hidden in
the Latin phrases.
• Marlowe uses the scenes in Rome to satirise institutions sacred to the Catholic Church. The
Pope is represented as a greedy, power-mad fool, and the power-struggle between Rome and

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