In his first scene, Mephistophilis adopts the deflating and belittling tone with Faustus that he often employs to quash him when he becomes overly arrogant or excitable. As the critic Philip Brockbank writes:
“Mephistophilis promptly replaces Faustus as the intellectual centre of the play.”
This is evident, for example, when Faustus proclaims:
“I charge thee wait upon me whilst I live,
To do whatever Faustus shall command,
Be it to make the moon drop from her sphere
Or the ocean to overwhelm the world.”
And Mephistophilis dryly rebuffs him:
“I am a servant to great Lucifer
And may not follow thee without his leave;
No more than he commands must we perform.”
This rebuking disparagement, although suggesting the depth and intellect of the fallen angel, aligns with the typical medieval mystery play representation of a devil that scorns human beings. Faustus thinks he is in charge of the devil he believes he summoned; yet Mephistophilis carries all the intellectual weight and coolly corrects Faustus with astonishingly powerful lines that suggest his position with succinct clarity.
It is also clear that at times Marlowe does intend for Mephistophilis to be perceived as a typical gleeful medieval devil, who aims to seize human souls at any cost and entice them into hell. This is evident when Faustus is signing the pact to sell his soul, and Mephistophilis says aside:
“What will not I do to obtain his soul!”
This wicked devil, constantly plotting to entrap erring humanity, is a common character throughout medieval literature.
Throughout the middle section of the play Faustus experiments with his supernatural powers. He has made exotic, extravagant promises as to what he will do with this faculty:
“I’ll have them fly to India for gold,
Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,
And search all corners of the new-found world
For pleasant fruits and princely delicates…”
However, Faustus never does fulfil these vivid ambitions in sight of the audience – although we do hear of dramatic adventures, the Chorus tells us he:
“…Did mount him up to scale Olympus’ top,
Where, sitting in a chariot burning bright
Drawn by the strength of yoked dragons’ necks,
He views the clouds, the planets and the stars…”
On stage, Faustus largely uses his powers for simple jokes, with Mephistophilis acting as a gleeful sidekick. Together they dress as cardinals and fool the Pope by snatching his food at a banquet, even boxing him on the ear. This highlights the wickedly jovial aspects of Mephistophilis perfectly, as he gleefully wreaks havoc on the Catholic figurehead alongside Faustus. In terms of the structure of the play, this provides entertainment for the audience (who would find anti-Catholic jokes amusing considering the anti-Catholic mood of the general public in England at the time of publication of ‘Doctor Faustus’) in the middle of a relatively long play that raises many serious issues.
Other examples of Mephistophilis’ gleeful disposition are when together with Faustus he plants horns on Benvolio, and when they trick the horse-courser by selling him a horse that dissolves into hay when it comes into contact with water. This idea of the devil as comic relief is very much in keeping with the medieval tradition.
‘Doctor Faustus’ is of course, in one basic sense, a morality fable, and it is a characteristic of such plays predominantly to feature characters that are personified abstractions (such as the Seven deadly Sins or the Good and Bad Angels) devised to clarify the morals to be conveyed. Therefore, it would be natural for Marlowe simply to present Mephistophilis as the typical ‘medieval mystery play’ devil, yet he does not adhere to this simple characterisation. It seems to me that Marlowe wanted to create a glittering character memorable for his multi-dimensional complexity and intricacy. The character of Mephistophilis is not at all one-dimensional; there is a peculiar ambiguity and inconsistency in Marlowe’s creation. The critic Harry Levin wrote in his book ‘Marlowe The Overreacher’:
“Mephistophilis does nothing to lure Faustus on: he suffers for him. He sympathises with him. Above all he understands him, and through this understanding we participate in the dramatic irony. Faustus persists in regarding his fiendish assistant as a sort of oriental slave of the lamp.”
This presents an entirely different opinion of Mephistophilis’ character. Levin suggests that instead of gleefully and fiendishly attempting to entice Faustus into selling his soul, he in fact appreciates Faustus’ dilemma but cannot do anything to save him because Mephistophilis himself is condemned to hell and bringing damnation to others. To Levin, Marlowe’s Mephistophilis is indeed a romantically suffering fallen angel.
A poignantly clear suggestion of an angel fallen from grace is in Mephistophilis’ response to Faustus’ “How comes it then that thou art out of hell?”
“Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
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 deprived of everlasting bliss?”
This mournful sentiment that suggests Mephistophilis is indeed a fallen angel who sinned in Heaven and cannot return, and is desperately regretful to the extent that here he seems to be forewarning Faustus, perhaps even suggesting repentance before he too is eternally damned. The critic Philip Brockbank says of these lines:
“[They make] an orthodox point about devils carrying torment with them wherever they go, but spoken from the stage platform to the theatre, its blighted objectivity reminds us that human life itself can be a state of deprivation and pain.”
Mephistophilis’ bitter resentment of hell is also echoed in the lines he utters after Faustus enquires where hell is:
“Within the bowels of these elements,
Where we are tortur’d and remain for ever.
Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib’d
In one self place, but where we are is hell,
And where hell is, there must we ever be.”
This, in fact, is another inconsistency in Marlowe’s presentation of Mephistophilis and the concept of hell, for in the final scene of the play, Faustus is physically dragged, not to this metaphysical hell, but to a vast perpetual torture-house” where there are “tossing damned souls on burning forks” and “ever-burning chairs”. This striking difference is supplemented by Mephistophilis’ reversion in the final scenes of the play to the simply and utterly terrifying devil Faustus first encountered in his initial necromantic experiments. This sharply contrasts with the gleeful and mischievous Mephistophilis seen throughout the middle comic scenes of ‘Doctor Faustus’, and adds to the ambiguity of the character.
In conclusion, I feel that Mephistophilis is a wonderfully multi-dimensional character, developed in an intriguing manner that makes the devil intensely unpredictable and thrilling. The sharp contrast between his fiendishly gleeful qualities and the aspects that suggest a romantically suffering angel fallen from grace, in my opinion, make the character much more absorbing. Perhaps Marlowe realised that the most captivating characters could never remain one-dimensional. Although many critics are unhappy with the apparent inconsistencies, I think it is the combination of the gleeful and tormented aspects of the character that make him the central masterpiece of ‘Doctor Faustus’.
Bibliography
‘Doctor Faustus’ by Christopher Marlowe (edited by John D. Jump)
- ‘Marlowe: Doctor Faustus’ by Philip Brockbank
- ‘Marlowe The Overreacher’ by Harry Levin
