Mephastophilis is shown to be a very complex character in the play; he has a name and emotions too. That’s what makes this play different to morality plays as a devil would have been shown as unsympathetic and uncompassionate. Morality plays were teaching devices which were combining of delight and instruction, it was used to entertain the audience and taught the dangers of sin and also showed the goodness of God. Dr Faustus has a lot of similarities as well as a lot of differences to a morality play.
Morality plays are about simplicity and the audience of the renaissance era would have thought that Mephastophilis was evil if he was in a morality play. In Scene 3 when Faustus asks Mephastophilis “How comes it then thou art out of hell?” Mephastophilis replies “Why this is hell, nor am I out of it”. Marlowe creates a subtle version of hell here. The Elizabethan audience would have thought that hell was an actual physical place and people were damned if they committed any of the seven deadly sins that’s why people used to model there life’s around the seven deadly sins. Everyone was much more religious back then. Marlowe was an atheist but still knew everything about Christianity.
The idea created when listening to Faustus would have been that Hell was a spiritual place and it was to do with the mind and the Elizabethan audience wouldn’t have understood this connotation of hell. Only the higher status people would have understood this view but the “groundling’s” who are the people who would have to stand to watch the play and got the cheapest tickets, baisically the poor people wouldn’t have understood this idea of hell being spiritual.
Mephastophilis first uses the pattern of three to hint at Faustus how sad he is and Faustus being a scholar should have realised this because the audience would have recognised the unhappy tone in Mephastophilis’s voice when he says “Unhappy spirits that fell with Lucifer, Conspired against our God with Lucifer, And are ever damned with Lucifer”. Mephastophilis shows respect both to God and Lucifer. This shows that he is wise and doesn’t want to intimate any of them.
Faustus claims in scene 3 that “the word damnation terrifies him not” and he refers to himself in third person. The idea that Faustus was not afraid of damnation would have really shocked the Elizabethan audience and as they were religious back then they would have feared for Faustus too. The audience would also have been shocked at the fact that Mephastophilis says “O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands, which strike a terror to my fainting soul” Mephastophilis sounds really emotional here and the Elizabethan audience would have been shocked because they would have thought that the devil was supposed to trick people and then in this play Mephastophilis was begging Faustus to stop what he was doing.
Emotive vocabulary and exclamatory sentences are used by Mephastophilis this quote is really powerful and is an example of both “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”.
Mephastophilis is shown to be a character rather than a representation of hell or Lucifer. Scene three is a key scene as it’s where the audience is first introduced to Mephastophilis. Faustus is shown being greedy in scene one as he wants to raise the dead which is immoral and impossible, this would have made the Elizabethan audience terrified as what Faustus was thinking was blasphemous. This can remind the audience of the prologue and the imagery used to describe Icarus. It’s ironic because the same thing will happen to Faustus eventually at the end of the play.
Because Faustus wants to achieve the impossible it could be said that he wants to move up in the hierarchy and he wants to be equal to God or even above God which the audience in the Elizabethan era would have thought was wrong both ethically and morally. In the Great Chain of Being God comes first, then the angels, then mankind, then animals, plants and finally at the bottom come minerals.
In Scene five when Faustus asks where hell is Mephastophilis replies that it is “under the heavens” and this idea supports what the Elizabethan audience would have thought as this indicates that Heaven is up and Hell is down below.
At the end of the play you can tell that Mephastophilis regrets that the time has gone past so fast as he’s enjoyed his time on Earth and he doesn’t want to go back into hell. It could also be said that Mephastophilis was warning Faustus at the beginning because he wanted to show God that he was good so he could have another chance to go to heaven again and to prove himself to God.