What does Marlowe's presentation of Mephastophilis tell an audience about sixteen century ideas of hell and damnation?

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What does Marlowe's presentation of Mephastophilis tell an audience about sixteen century ideas of hell and damnation?

Literary works in sixteenth- century England were rarely if ever created in isolation from other currents in the social and cultural world and Marlowe's Dr Faustus is no exception. It is significant that Marlowe's great play was written at a time in which the possibility of sorcery was not merely a theatrical fantasy but a widely shared fear. Dr Faustus was also performed at time in which many artists such as Bosch and Jacques Callot were depicting horrific images of hell in their paintings making the play all the more disturbing to the medieval audience. Marlowe's tragedy emerges not only from a culture in which bargains with the devil are imaginable as real events but also from a world in which many of the most fundamental assumptions about spiritual life were being called into question by the movement known as the reformation.

The character of Mephastophilis plays a pivotal role in Dr Faustus as it is through him that Marlowe expresses his views on sin, redemption and damnation. Mephastophilis presents a particularly intriguing portrayal of hell and encapsulates the