Doctor Faustus

The most important religious issue the play addresses is Christian salvation. What makes Doctor Faustus tragic is not that Faustus makes a bad bargain with the devil to sell his soul but that he...

Knowledge is an important issue in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and is announced as such in the prologue to the play as well as in the play’s opening scene. In addition, the theme of...

Discussion of the theme of religion requires a discussion of the entire drama of Doctor Faustus because the premise of Marlowe's play is that an academic rejects all the fields he has studied and...

Knowledge is the be all and end all for Faustus early on. To know is to be divine. Look, for example, at these lines from the first scene: Settle thy studies, Faustus, and begin To sound the depth...

You might like to think how this juxtaposition reveals something about the key theme of appearance vs. reality. Consider, for example, the famous banquet scene in Rome that Faustus interrupts. The...

The last two scenes of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus show both internal and external conflict coming to a head after a long postponement caused by Faustus's frivolous use of his powers. To summon up...

The short answer to this question is yes. The most obvious parallel is that both the historical Faust and Christopher Marlowe were men about whom legends began to circulate soon after their deaths....

Dr. Faustus is based on the legend of Faust. Dr. Faustus was a scholar who found that the conventional road to knowledge wasn't enough, so he made a deal with the devil for magical powers. (He...

Renaissance tragedies are characterized by their emphasis on character psychology. Characters are less often brought down by fate than they are by their own flaws as human beings. They have free...

When Faustus is struggling to avoid the fatal hour of his encounter with Mephistophilis, one impulse that crosses his mind as a means of escaping his fate is to "leap up to" God. When he tries...

The most significant decision that Faustus makes is his decision to sell his soul to Lucifer in exchange for twenty-four years of the demon Mephistopheles' dedicated service. Faustus wants to...

Faustus doesn't necessarily not believe in the reality of repentance, and he is quick to realise that it is too late for repentance however much he might wish for it in Act V. However, his problem...

Many of the key themes of Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus are announced explicitly by the Chorus at the very beginning of the work. These themes include the following: The fluctuation of...

A soliloquy can be defined as an act of speaking one's thoughts out loud when by oneself. In a play, it is often the case that a soliloquy reveals something very important about the character...

The irony of Faustus' career lies in his tragic dilemma because while he signed away his life in blood for unlimited command of the cosmos, he was thereafter limited by Lucifer's constraints and,...

Usually when we speak of the "modern man," we're referring to a mindset: one in which the older values and kinds of fulfillment have passed away and been replaced by a void, or an existential...

Marlowe uses a range of poetical devices to convey the despair and terror of Faustus as he faces the inevitable outcome of his bargain with Mephistopheles. As he contemplates the perpetual...

This play, in the character of Doctor Faustus himself, represents not so much a bridge between Medieval values and Renaissance values, but a clash and conflict between these two opposing schools of...

Faustus's wish for power, so great that he is willing to sell his soul for it, is animated partly by a desire to break free of the restrictions imposed by society and religion. These restrictions...

It has been argued by a number of scholars that Marlowe didn't actually write the comedy scenes in Doctor Faustus. The main reason for this, so the argument runs, is that Marlowe himself, in his...

Christopher Marlowe's play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus is written in five acts and recounts the decision of the primary character, Doctor Faustus, to sell his soul to the Devil in...

The confrontation between the good and bad angels in Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus is typical of this drama in many ways. Marlowe’s play is very much concerned with the conflict...

Although Christopher Marlowe’s play titled Doctor Faustus is not a “morality play” in the strict sense of the term, it obviously resembles a morality play in various ways. Here are some of those...

Marlowe doesn't give very much background information, but there is enough from the Chorus and from Faustus' introductory soliloquy to give us some idea of his life before necromancy (magic)....

Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus is a tragedy that can be relevant to all times because it deals with topics much inherent to human nature. The hunger for wealth, the power of ambition, and the...

Mephistophilis informs Doctor Faustus that hell is less a physical location than a state of being. As Milton's Satan would discover in Paradise Lost, hell or heaven is within the individual and not...

Your question presents an interesting quandary--Is being responsible for one's actions equivalent to being in command or control? I would argue that the two differ. For example, in a military...

In Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, the theme of covetousness in found in Faustus' greed for money and magic—which will afford him great power. Covetousness is a form of greediness. Covetousness is...

A tragic hero always has far to fall, and Doctor Faustus is no exception. A great scholar and polymath, he has an enviable position in life, one for which many people would give their eye teeth....

There is a sense in which Doctor Faustus is a character who represents both what is best and what is worst about the Renaissance period. He is a character who has massive ambition and believes that...

In one sense, you might say that it is true: Faustus is a Medieval Man presented as living in the Renaissance. The Faustus legend was based on a real historical figure. While there are more than...

Hamlet suffers both as a result of his own flaw and as a result of other people's sins. When the play begins, he is miserably unhappy because of the sudden death of his father as well as the hasty...

The dominant impression conveyed by Faustus's language, in this scene and elsewhere, is one of resignation, in my view. Though he is striving for something beyond the real world, he seems washed...

Marlowe's Doctor Faustus does relate to the concept of Everyman as seen in Dante's Divine Comedy because, at least in part, both have strong central thematic elements foregrounding God's...

Christopher Marlowe presents many forms of the devil in Doctor Faustus. We meet Lucifer, the devil himself; Mephistopheles, one of his chief devils; and various "bad angels" and lesser...

Marlowe's drama Doctor Faustus is based on what purported to be a real account of a German scholar and magician of the name of Doctor John Faustus (1488-1541) who is said to have performed wonders...

Marlowe's Faustus begins the play as an ideal Renaissance man. His first scene, as he contemplates the best use of his many talents, illustrates that he is not only familiar with many topics but...

Gluttony, in the biblical sense, refers to one of the seven deadly sins. It consists on the act of indulging excessively with food, drink, or material things. The idea is that, by over-indulging,...

Christopher Marlowe frequently foreshadows the inevitable fate of Dr. Faustus because of his infernal bargain. He does this by means of the chorus, the protagonist's own stated fears, the comments...

From a theological perspective, Faustus’s fall begins the moment he gives his soul to Mephistophilis and continues until he is dragged into the depths of hell (and presumably for a little longer,...

I suggest approaching this question from an ethical perspective when crafting your argument, paying special attention to the influential philosophical movements during the Renaissance period, such...

Faustus the character is what is known as a tragic hero. Although he is intelligent and thoughtful, his overwhelming ambition is what causes him to make a decision that leads to his own failure....

Much of the comedy in the play arises from the way Faustus's grandiose expectations of what access to the Devil's magical powers will bring him are betrayed. As always, what Mephistopheles promises...

The Alexander scene shows the limits of what Faustus is actually capable of doing, even with Mephistopheles's help. He tells the Emperor that he cannot actually raise Alexander from the dead; he...

Christopher Marlowe’s drama titled Doctor Faustus resembles a medieval morality play in a number of ways, including the following: It rebukes the sin of pride, which was considered the root cause...

The two angels, one representing God and the other representing Lucifer, the Devil, are both trying to convince Faustus to come to their side in the conflict for his soul. The Good Angel has...

The clock has just struck eleven, and Faustus has only one hour left before his immortal soul receives eternal damnation. To make matters worse, he's all alone, the scholars with whom he'd been...

As other postings on this question acknowledge, discussing absolute importance is impossible. Why does anyone need to study or know anything in particular? If we move out of that merely...

This "poem" is actually a speech spoken by Faustus in Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus. Prosody is chiefly concerned with how a writer creates a sense of rhythm or meter, but it is also concerned with...

Christopher Marlowe's The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus was written between 1589 and 1592. Two versions of the play exist—one from 1604 and another from 1616—but the essential elements of the...