Language, Form and Structure:
Faustus:
Language: In terms of dramatic devices, Marlowe's novel portrayal of his protagonist would have been significant in it’s time. The changes brought about by the renaissance were particularly influential to Marlowe’s decisions of language and setting, which were exotic and extravagant, relative to the style of the time. 16th Century English audiences saw unfamiliar and exotic language as a mark of the renaissance and the imperialistic ambitions of the time, which would’ve given particular emphasis to the points in the play where it featured. This gave Marlowe an opportunity to overwhelm with Faustus’s use of the new Elizabethan vocabulary, which drew upon the language of the exploring nations as well as the Latin and Greek learning that had filtered down to the street-English of his time from the increasing frequency of humanists and sonneteers about the time of the renaissance.
Faustus’s characteristically epic language, most evident in his soliloquies, can be seen as used by Marlowe to identify a certain type of classical tragic hero. Marlowe’s choice of diction illustrates the hyperbole prominent in the typical characteristics of the traditional tragic hero and appears to allude to the feats of Icarus, who reached above his grasp. The elaborate and verbose diction attributed to Faustus in the first soliloquies seems to reveal an exaggerated appetite for knowledge as power, in which the choice of words seem to take importance over the content, heightening the tone. This exaggeration creates a structure whereby the tone is changed alongside the language and therefore showing how the positioning of the soliloquies at the beginning and end of the play shows a conscious decision by Marlowe to raise the tone to create a rising and falling, mirroring the classic structure of a Greek Tragedy.
Is Marlowe, perhaps, something of a "Faustus" in language? That is, has he made a kind of bargain with imperialism in order to make his theatre, a bargain that costs him something precious?
Is writing itself and literacy as a social force, something "demonic" in the sense that it transforms its possessors? Look closely at Faustus' first description of his book of necromancy, "Lines circles, schemes, letters and characters" (1:51). Isn't this just a specialized sort of writing and reading, one that gives its user access to power?
Form: Blank verse in the main plot, unrhymed iambic pentameter, set in 13 scenes with a prologue, three internal choruses, and an epilogue. Subplot passages involving Wagner, the Clown, the Horse Courser etc. usually are in prose and use colloquial diction to comic effect, though Faustus becomes involved with the subplot in the end.
Narrator: The Chorus appears intermittently between scenes, providing background information and commenting on the action. The chorus is an archaic device from the Medieval English Drama indicating Marlowe believed his audiences needed some help to experience the full illusion of his dramas.
What kinds of information does the Chorus deliver, and what does that tell you about the function of the chorus in relation to power and the sophistication of the theatrical audience?
Point of view: While he sometimes cedes the stage to the Chorus or the lesser, comic characters, Faustus is central figure in the play, and he has several long soliloquies that let us see things from his point of view.
Tone: Grandiose and tragic, with occasional moments of low comedy
Tense: The Chorus, who provides the only narration, alternates between the present and past tenses.
Setting: The 1580s
Rising action: Faustus’s study of dark magic and his initial conversations with Mephastophilis
Climax: Faustus’s sealing of the pact that promises his soul to Lucifer
Falling action: Faustus’s travelling of the world and performing of magic for various rulers
Foreshadowing: The play constantly hints at Faustus’s ultimate damnation. His blood congeals when he tries to sign away his soul; the words Homo fuge, meaning “Fly, man!”, appear on his arm after he makes the pact; and he is constantly tormented by misgivings and fears of hell.
Allegorical characters also make appearances in ‘Dr. Faustus’, but Marlowe appears to be of two minds regarding their usefulness. When allegory first appears, in the montage of Seven Deadly Sins, the "author" is Lucifer, and Faustus, as the inscribed audience for their performance, openly mocks them and fails to listen to the message they communicate about sin. What might Marlowe be saying in this scene about a theology now identified with the Roman Church? He may’ve been rebuking the old way of the church and the authoritarian view of sin. Also in Scene 5, Marlowe introduces "Good Angel" and "Evil Angel," two allegorical characters who appear to represent aspects of Faustus' own mind or soul. They do not reappear, but in Scene 13, an enigmatic "Old Man" materializes in Faustus' study to deliver a message similar to that which the "Good Angel" offered. How do you explain what Marlowe was doing with those three allegorical characters, and how might that be compared with those Lucifer causes to appear to Faustus? The technique is purely a distraction from what we know to be Faustus’s fate from the Chorus- damnation. It reinforces the idea that Faustus has no real power, as we know he will always despair in relation to God and provides support for text as a morality play, showing only the choices Faustus could’ve made.
How do they relate to Alexander and His Paramour, and "Helen of Greece," herself perhaps the most well known Elizabethan character who never spoke a line, due to Faustus' famous apostrophe to her (13: 81-100)? Are those characters somewhere between allegory and "round" characters? How would you explain their function in the play?
Symbols: Blood- Blood plays multiple symbolic roles in the play. When Faustus signs away his soul, he signs in blood, symbolizing the permanent and supernatural nature of this pact. His blood congeals on the page, however, symbolizing, perhaps, his own body’s revolt against what he intends to do. Meanwhile, Christ’s blood, which Faustus says he sees running across the sky during his terrible last night, symbolizes the sacrifice that Jesus, according to Christian belief, made on the cross; this sacrifice opened the way for humankind to repent its sins and be saved. Faustus, of course, in his proud folly, fails to take this path to salvation. Faustus’s Rejection of the Ancient Authorities- In scene 1, Faustus goes through a list of the major fields of human knowledge—logic, medicine, law, and theology—and cites for each an ancient authority (Aristotle, Galen, Justinian, and Jerome’s Bible, respectively). He then rejects all of these figures in favour of magic. This rejection symbolizes Faustus’s break with the medieval world, which prized authority above all else, in favour of a more modern spirit of free inquiry, in which experimentation and innovation trump the assertions of Greek philosophers and the Bible.
The Good Angel and the Evil Angel- The angels appear at Faustus’s shoulder early on in the play—the good angel urging him to repent and serve God, the evil angel urging him to follow his lust for power and serve Lucifer. The two symbolize his divided will, part of which wants to do good and part of which is sunk in sin.
TMWWBK:
Narrator:
He first seems to side with the 2 men, running their message and warning them off a dangerous scam, but then reports them to the authorities. Could we connect this ambivalent attitude to his relationship to the native population, as in his characterization of the Intermediate Carriage? How is his attitude like that of the con artists? (E.g., p. 157: "They are the dark places of the earth.") His status appears ambiguous at first, as his mission into the wilderness could be seen as similar to their cons; however, he turns them in (p. 158) and legitimately has the position that they only pretend to. His ability to turn on them despite their supposed "brotherhood" through Masonic rituals (shown by their shared use of secret language) suggests the underlying problem in the Masonic claim of brotherhood that opens the story, but which is betrayed by the sense in which Carnehan and Dravot remain dedicated to exploiting/taking from their "brothers."
Similarly, we can see the language of brotherly love used to mask exploitation throughout the colonial world. In his career as a newspaperman, the narrator spends most of his time waiting on news from far away, while stating explicitly that there is no interest in what goes on closer at hand (pp. 158-59) -- at least if it involves the native population. There seems to be a general "colonialist" attitude that events in the home country, in Europe, are the ones that will shape the world- but note that the sameness of the news from home, and the anonymity of the narrator's description of it, undermines the surface claim that the distant news is the more important.
The narrator, and in particular his occupation, helps to establish the connection between the action of the story and the goings-on in the outside world; as Paul Fussell states, “The ‘frame’ of the newspaper office . . . provides constant irony throughout the story; the incredible events of the creation and loss of the Kingdom of Kafiristan are told to a newspaperman in a newspaper office, and yet, because the events have real instead of actual meaning, they are not news.” (“Irony, Freemasonry, and Humane Ethics in Kipling’s ‘The Man Who Would Be King’”)
Interpretations:
Faustus:
Greek Tragedy
The Conflict Between Medieval and Renaissance Values
Scholar R.M. Dawkins famously remarked that Doctor Faustus tells “the story of a Renaissance man who had to pay the medieval price for being one.” While slightly simplistic, this quotation does get at the heart of one of the play’s central themes: the clash between the medieval world and the world of the emerging Renaissance. The medieval world placed God at the centre of existence and shunted aside man and the natural world. The Renaissance was a movement that began in Italy in the fifteenth century and soon spread throughout Europe, carrying with it a new emphasis on the individual, on classical learning, and on scientific inquiry into the nature of the world. In the medieval academy, theology was the queen of the sciences. In the Renaissance, though, secular matters took centre stage.
Faustus, despite being a magician rather than a scientist (a blurred distinction in the sixteenth century), explicitly rejects the medieval model. In his opening speech in scene 1, he goes through every field of scholarship, beginning with logic and proceeding through medicine, law, and theology, quoting an ancient authority for each: Aristotle on logic, Galen on medicine, the Byzantine emperor Justinian on law, and the Bible on religion. In the medieval model, tradition and authority, not individual inquiry, were key. But in this soliloquy, Faustus considers and rejects this medieval way of thinking. He resolves, in full Renaissance spirit, to accept no limits, traditions, or authorities in his quest for knowledge, wealth, and power.
The play’s attitude toward the clash between medieval and Renaissance values is ambiguous. Marlowe seems hostile toward the ambitions of Faustus, and, as Dawkins notes, he keeps his tragic hero squarely in the medieval world, where eternal damnation is the price of human pride. Yet Marlowe himself was no pious traditionalist, and it is tempting to see in Faustus—as many readers have—a hero of the new modern world, a world free of God, religion, and the limits that these imposed on humanity. Faustus may pay a medieval price, this reading suggests, but his successors will go further than he and suffer less, as we have in modern times. On the other hand, the disappointment and mediocrity that follow Faustus’s pact with the devil, as he descends from grand ambitions to petty conjuring tricks, might suggest a contrasting interpretation. Marlowe may be suggesting that the new, modern spirit, though ambitious and glittering, will lead only to a Faustian dead end.
When considering ‘Dr Faustus’ on it’s more pronounced formal characteristics, it becomes possible to say Faustus was transformed into something very like a tragedy with five acts, ascending and descending dramatic structure, high-status hero with a poignant flaw, which dooms him by means of his deeds. This classic structure is interrupted by the intrusion of comedy into Faustus's downfall. Although the comic subplots are separated from the doctor's behaviour and can be seen more as a means of showing how ineffective Faustus’s use of his power is, rather than providing any insight into Marlowe’s intentions when deciding on the form.
Is Faustus tragic, for Marlowe, because he finds the knowledge and power he praises in the first scene and loses it? How does the form suggest this?
Morality Play
Insofar as Doctor Faustus is a Christian play, it deals with the themes at the heart of Christianity’s understanding of the world. First, there is the idea of sin, which Christianity defines as acts contrary to the will of God. In making a pact with , commits what is in a sense the ultimate sin: not only does he disobey God, but he consciously and even eagerly renounces obedience to him, choosing instead to swear allegiance to the devil. In a Christian framework, however, even the worst deed can be forgiven through the redemptive power of Jesus Christ, God’s son, who, according to Christian belief, died on the cross for humankind’s sins. Thus, however terrible Faustus’s pact with Lucifer may be, the possibility of redemption is always open to him. All that he needs to do, theoretically, is ask God for forgiveness. The play offers countless moments in which Faustus considers doing just that, urged on by the good angel on his shoulder or by the old man in scene 12—both of whom can be seen either as emissaries of God, personifications of Faustus’s conscience, or both.
Each time, Faustus decides to remain loyal to hell rather than seek heaven. In the Christian framework, this turning away from God condemns him to spend an eternity in hell. Only at the end of his life does Faustus desire to repent, and, in the final scene, he cries out to Christ to redeem him. But it is too late for him to repent. In creating this moment in which Faustus is still alive but incapable of being redeemed, Marlowe steps outside the Christian worldview in order to maximize the dramatic power of the final scene. Having inhabited a Christian world for the entire play, Faustus spends his final moments in a slightly different universe, where redemption is no longer possible and where certain sins cannot be forgiven.
Do you have any sense of whether Marlowe feels Faustus was morally wrong in seeking the knowledge and power he praises in the first scene? How does the language suggest this?
TMWWBK:
Empire
Empire:
When examining the interpretations of the text one must consider two different plot structures, "The Tragedy of Daniel Dravot," the man who overreached himself, and the farce of the imitation of Empire. As you read, note the humorous touches, as in the description of Dravot and Carnehan disguised for their journey across the border, but see too the frequent foreshadowing of death and destruction that Dravot, at least, ignores. Then consider what might be the "native" perspective on these events? How would it appear to one of the mountain villagers? Does Kipling provide any vision of this perspective? How do you think Kipling would view the story: as tragedy or as farce?
Kipling the Imperialist
Imperialist
The story of two con artists who establish a kingdom in the remote part of Afghanistan parallels British methods of governing India, ruling through tributary leaders after frightening them with modern weaponry. They recruit a native army to support their rule, which is cemented by native acceptance of their superiority: they are seen as gods connected with poorly remembered Masonic rituals. Note that Dravot refuses to eat until the food is offered by the most senior men (p. 170), thereby establishing his place at the very top of the hierarchy. Their rule is not all bad - as the British did in India, they put an end to intertribal warfare in a kind of Pax Dravotiana. Also see that Dravot remains a patriotic Brit throughout, even though British society has no real place for him. He proposes to conquer an empire and then turn it over as a gift to Queen Victoria (p. 178) -- reflecting a delusion of grandeur perhaps rooted in his own sense of being at the bottom of British society?
Phillip Mallett ("Kipling and the Hoax" in Mallett, Kipling Considered (1989)) says that Kipling draws attention to the assumption that whites will inevitably rise to power over non-whites, showing the falseness of the assumption. But Kipling ultimately evades the general question: There is no suggestion that the claim to power is itself "inherently fraudulent," as Mallett argues (103). Rather, Kipling suggests that Daniel's error is that he forgot himself by overreaching, thus exposing himself to defeat.
Story of Friendship
Context:
Faustus:
TMWWBK:
Law:
The idea of law is expressed at beginning ("The Law. . . lays down a fair conduct of life. . ."), and used in various ways. At one level is the common law of Great Britain. The English tended to see themselves as bringing law and order to the chaos of warring native peoples; English law is characterized as benign, native law as cruel. Note this in relation to the Pax Dravotiana, in which justice appears (at least in Peachey's telling) to be fairly and benignly administered, and to the ultimate disposition of Dravot, Carnehan, and Billy Fish - murdered, mutilated, or crucified. The Masonic law is presented as a kind of "higher law" that binds men across racial and national divides, and generally connects to God's law (via the frequent references to the Bible). One of Kipling's concerns is the probable fate of the British colonizers if they should lose their moral authority, which they would do by violating the higher law - and note Dravot's willingness to violate this law, and his own contract with Peachey, to satisfy his own desires
