So herein lies the great tragic flaw in his character that he wants to gain a deity. He is claiming Godhood and thus his fall has begun. From a scholar, he has reduced himself to a conjurer-laureate who can command great Mephistophilis. We sadly witness this drawback in his character which brings about his ultimate doom and destruction. He perfectly knows that to achieve his purpose, he will have to abjure God and Trinity. He was also not void of concience and that is why we find the Good and the Bad Angels which are the symbols of his virtue and vice in his soul making their appearance just after his final decision in favour of cursed nemocracy. His curious personality affects the play because his decisions determine the plot. For example, the seven Deadly Sins entice him so that he becomes convinced not to repent his sin. This characterizes him as gullible, curious and adventurous.
Inspite of all skepticism and atheistic bias of Faustus, he is decidedly a self-portrait of Marlow. His emotional attachment to the medieval doctrines of Christianity is too deep to be rooted out. So the Good Angel, his voice of conscience, urges him to shun “that damned book” and to read scriptures. But the Evil Angel, the voice of his passion, scores a victory by luring away Faustus with the assurance that by mastering the black art of magic Faustus will be:
“Lord and commander of the elements”
On account of his lust to become omnipotent, he is willing to pay the ultimate price i.e. his soul to the Devil in exchange. Therefore, he surrenders himself by signing his death warrant with his own blood. With the help of Mephistophilis as his abject slave, he decides, “to live in voluptuousness” for a period of twenty-four years. He thought that black magic will give him the power beyond boundaries and make him immortal. Ironically, he binds himself and gives the most productive twenty-four years of his life.
It may be noted that Marlow was a child of the Renaissance with its dreams and desires and Faustus expresses the ideas and aspirations of his creator quite faithfully. Before accomplishing the object act of surrendering his soul to Lucifer, Faustus experiences the prick of conscience in his soul and henceforth, we find the entire action of the play fluctuating between the weak and wavering loyalties of Faustus to the two opposing forces of virtue and will. His guilty conscience dogs him from the beginning to the end of the play. And the heart of Faustus turns out to be the field where the forces of good and evil are trying to overwhelm each other. With great dramatic skill, Marlow has depicted the wavering and vascillations in his mind. He possesses a spirit of reckless adventure and a tremendous confidence in his own will which to a great extent reflects Marlow’s spirit.
Apart from all the warnings that came into his way, he still chooses to delve into black magic and defy God. He says:
“How am I glutted with the conceit of this”
Here, the image is connected with food and overindulgence is used to illustrate the scholastic gluttony that seems to control Faustus’ actions, as though by learning he were feeding a hunger.
Missing the honour of a mastermind, he has only the recognition of a magician. However, during his status as a magician, he did not do anything constructive or worthwhile. His longing is for the fairest maid of Germany, for the beauty of Helen that makes man immortal with a kiss. He chooses no other song but that of Homer, no music but that shaken from Amphion’s harp. He uses sweet pleasure to conquer deep despair. Faustus’s mind is delighted with the dumb show of Devils that Mephistophilis presents before him. He wants to have fun through magic and starts to practice trickery as an art. This gives us a hint into his childish natureTravelling far and wide, he displays his new-won power which projects the idea that fame is his prime motive. He wanted to aspire awe. Faustus is a self-centered and a self-fostering man. His commitment to self is unruly. Sin had become his second nature like brutality had become the second nature in Macbeth.
Faustus never seems completely sure of his decision and constantly wavers about whether or not to repent. He manipulates religion and the idea of God in many different ways so that he can rationalize his actions. Although a learned scholar, Dr. Faustus chooses to ignore good, sound advice and cold, hard fact which ultimately leads to his downfall. He is also a man of extremes. Throughout the play, he exhibits extremes of laughter to depths of despair.
Faustus’s own pleasant vices turn into instruments to plague him. The last scene in which Faustus is torn between conflicting feelings is the best of its kind, the most poignant in English tragedy. In this scene we find the human in him begging for relief as his soul would be handed in to Lucifer according to the contract. It is a truth that one is always alone in his suffering and Faustus’s fate is no different. No response is there to his cries of anguish and his appeals for mercy. We can vividly see a descent in his character from pride and arrogance to supplication. Instead of the flaunting and bragging Faustus, he is now the scared and crouching Faustus. His impulsive nature can be considered the root cause of his downfall because he could be swayed easily. There is no more salvation for him, only damnation. As the clock strikes twelve, Faustus is borne away to hell by the devils. It is in his final awareness that consumed by his own sense of overreaching. He has isolated himself from both his fellowmen and from his God. It is this awareness that makes Faustus human and helps him achieve the status of a tragic hero.
However, it is interesting to note how in Faustus the scholar never disappears in magician. He is ever a student and a thinker as he wants all ambiguities to be resolved and all strange philosophies explained. Hence, we can say that Marlow’s Dr. Faustus is, as Nicoll suggests:
“………unquestionably the greatest tragic figure in sixteenth century literature outside the work of Shakespeare.”
According to some critics, Doctor Faustus is a Promethean character who embodies the Renaissance spirit of restless curiosity and risk taking. He longs to explore geographical and intellectual boundaries of the age to the point of being willing to defy the limitations of human condition.
William Hazlitt notes:
“His Doctor Faustus, though an imperfect and unequal performance, is his greatest work. Faustus himself is a rude sketch, but it is a gigantic one. The character may be considered a personification of the pride of will and eagerness of curiosity, sublimed beyond the reach of fear and remorse.”
Apart from the dazzling and towering character of Doctor Faustus, Marlow gives us a vivid insight into the character of the antagonist of the play, Mephistophilis. He is no doubt a devil, but it is no longer a devil of the Moralities and Miracles with his funny and comic pictures just to cater the taste of the groundlings of that age. In Dr. Faustus, he is rather a symbolic figure with considerable dramatic significance. From the very beginning of Faustus’s meteoric rise and anti- Christian career, till the terrible tragic end, Mephistophilis is his constant companion and he is the source of Faustus’s rise and downfall as well.
He first appears in the third scene of the play when he is first summoned by Faustus’s experimental necromancy. He is the deputy of Lucifer, the Prince of Hell. Moreover, he is also a fallen angel who associated himself with Satan’s revolt against God. He is not just a villain but is endowedwith some redeeming features. Infact, he confesses to Faustus that he is keenly and sadly conscious of his sufferings in hell and that the loss of heaven and God’s blessings are a constant source of deep mental anguish for him. Mephistophilis is nothing but the symbolic representation of the evil in Faustus’s soul. According to an eminent critic:
“Mephistophilis symbolises power without conscience, the danger of which is the motif of the play.”
He may also be treated as a symbol of dramatic irony. In Act1; Sc.3, we find Mephistophilis warning Faustus about the inevitable doomawaiting one who deviates from the right path and denounces God and the Saviour. Even Lucifer, an angel “most dearly lov’d of God”, fell due to pride and insolence. But Faustus, the victim of his own pride and inordinate ambition to gain a deity turns a deaf ear to his timely warning and very audaciously asserts:
“Think’st thou thou that Faustus is so fond to imagine
That after this life, there is any pain:
Tush, these are trifles and mere old wives’ tales.”
It is a fact that it was not Mephistophilis who lured Faustus away from the path of virtue infact, that was his own decision. But undoubtly it was Mephistophilis who paved the way for his tragic doom and eternal damnation. It is he who is the most significant minor character in the drama and makes the greatest contribution to the development of the character of Faustus.
When Faustus has made up his mind to surrender his soul to the Devil to gain limitless powers and knowledge, to live a life of luxury and voluptuousness,it is Mephistophilis who is there to get the contract properly executed and informs him with all seriousness:
“But, Faustus, thou must bequeath it solemnly,
And write a deed of gift with thine own blood;
For that security craves great Lucifer.
If thou deny it I will back to hell.”
And when the blood congeals, there is Mephistophilis ready with his “chafer of coals” to make the flow and thus to smoothen the path to hell for Faustus. So, from here begins the very close relationship between Faustus and Mephistophilis. However, on the other hand, Mephistophilis also warns Faustus to leave these frivolous demands and stop inviting God’s anger.
We find the artful Mephistophilis playing rather a double role inhis relationship with Faustus. When Faustus is normal and sticks to the conditions of his contract with the Devil, Mephistophilis is his most obliging slave. It is Mephistophilis who tries to satisfy his thirst for knowledge by answering all his questions to the best of his ability. But he refuses to reply like a stern guardian, when Faustus requests:
“Tell me who made the world”. And then again when Faustus expresses his keen desire
“………..to see the monuments
And situation of bright-splendent Rome”
Mephistophilis helps him to make his journey through air. Then again when Faustus wants to marry the most beautiful maiden of Germany, he very clevrly dissuades him from marrying like a true Christian; but to satisfy his carnal desire and thirst for youuth and beauty, he conjuresup Helen, “whose heavenly beauty passeth all compass”. But when his soul is wavering between heaven and hell and is thinking of prayer, and repentence to gain God’s mercy, Mephistophilis is there like a creual master to threaren him thus:
“Thou traitor, Faustus, I arrest thy soul
For disobedience to my sovereign lord:
Revolt, or I’ll piece-meal tear thy flesh,”
Apart from this, whenever Faustus thinks of repentence, Mephitophilis is always there to tempt him.This is what Devilry does. After seeing that the Old Man’s speech has started to have a positive impact on Faustus, we see a sovereign Mephistophilis representing Lucifer.Earlier, we had seen a servile Mephistophilis.
Strangely and very ironically, Mephistophilis also appears along with other devils in the final scene to snatch away Fautus’s soul to hell for eternal damnation and the last word wrung out from the depth of his terror-stricken soul is “Mephistophilis”.
Moreover, it is Mephitophilis who brings out all the important traits in the character of the mighty hero, Dr. Faustus. He alone has a certain individuality and importance. Mephistophilis is the right-hand spirit of Lucifer. He describes himself modestly as “a servant of Great Lucifer”. Part of his work sems to be to “win souls for hell by the allurements of despair, playing with open cards and hiding no iota of the dreadfulness of damnation”. At any rate, that is what he does with Faustus. He makes Faustus sign a bond with his own blood, and reminds him of it at the end; nay, makes Faustus keep his word and submit himself to the Devils finally. True to his promise, Mephistophilis remains loyal to Faustus, follows him in his aerial flight from place to place and does his bidding obediently. It is he again, that explains to Faustus the secrets of the elements, the spheres and other allied details. Thus, Marlow’s Mephistophilis is a commonplace drudge of the internal powers. The first time when he appears in the play, he impresses us by his quiet dignity. He speaks as one who has come not over-willingly and with no desire to inveigle. He replies to Faustus’s eager questioning are almost wearily abrupt. All the same he cannot help to restrain his tragic passion and burst fort:
“For when we hear one rack the name of God,
Abjure the scriptures and his Saviour Christ,
We fly in hope to get his glorious soul;”
We can see the signs of Mephitophilis’s remorse and passion which are evident in the following lines:
”Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of Heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells:
In being depriv’d of everlasting bliss?
O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands,
Which strike a terror to my fainting soul.”
These signs of remorse and passion are Marlow unique creation. However, Mephistophilis’s motives are perceptibly ambiguous throughout “Doctor Faustus”, he seemingly alternates between a typically gleeful medieval devil, and a romantically suffering fallen angel.
Concluding, we can say that the way Christopher Marlow has portrayed the protagonist and antagonist of the play are aesthetically appealing. This clearly projects his mastership in crafting such magnificient characters like Dr. Faustus and Mephistophilis. Hence, the way he has presented these characters to us is highly applaudable and is worth every ounce of adulation.
