The audience views Faustus as a very ambitious character who strives to reach his potential and we know this when he in the first scene we gain an understanding of his many achievements which have been acknowledged by many when he says, “Is not thy common talk found aphorisms? Are not thy bills hung up as monuments, Whereby whole cities have escaped the plague…” Ambition to accomplish things like this was admired as new cures and discoveries helped people to live better lives. It is when Faustus’ ambitions turn selfish, are no longer generous and defy God that good and bad angel appear to argue the morality of his wishes. I think the angel’s represent the conflicting ideas of the people at the time. There were those like the bad angel who wanted to be in control of things rather than living in fear; to be “as Jove is in the sky” and there were those that still had the medieval belief that pushing these boundaries was blasphemy. The fact that the angel described as “evil” expressed the new ideas proves that the attitude to these ambitions was a strongly negative one. We see this from the consequences of Faustus’ actions because he is dragged screaming into hell and this is what they thought would really happen. The play tells us that having ambitions is good but the more ambitions you have the more you are pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable which is what they were scared of.
In the play I think Valdes and Cornelius represent the things that most people in that time would be proud and happy to obtain like riches when Cornelius says, “…spirits tell me they can dry the sea, And fetch the treasure of all foreign wrecks, Ay all the wealth that our forefathers hid…” and women when Valdes says, “…they shall guard us when we please…sometimes like women, or unwedded maids, shadowing more beauty in their airy brows...” However, Marlowe shows something which is more to be proud of and that is power. Faustus strives for power, he has wealth and success but he wants to be in control. That is what he would be proud of and we know this when he says, “[I’ll] chase the Prince of Parma from our land, and reign sole king of all our provinces.”
Faustus greatly represents the people of his time. He is not scared of death and he later tells Mephastophilis, "I think hell's a fable". The whole story of Dr Faustus is that of a renaissance man defying God and its horrific consequences. Many people of their time were questioning God because then, the key concepts of the pre-Renaissance philosophy centred on the dignity and central position of human beings in the universe but it was in this period that Galileo argued that the earth goes around the sun and so the belief that heaven was beyond the stars, angels were in the sky, hell was beneath us, was shattered and people did start to question God. It would have been likely that many intellectuals in Marlowe’s time would have thought about magic and going against God as magic was a skill widely believed in. However the fact that Faustus paid such a nasty price for his defiance shows that it wasn’t accepted when the play was written.
By using the character of Faustus who is quite ahead of the people of his time we are able to see Marlowe’s beliefs and ideas, which he probably shared with many intellects like himself in this period of discovery and growing ambitions to “better yourself”. Although Marlowe had these views, he wouldn’t have been able to share them so Dr Faustus made people of that time aware of these revolutionary concepts but had to turn it into a morality play which shows that the 16th century attitude to pride, ambition and defiance of God were opposing and conservative so they could not be discussed or shared publicly.