Doctor Faustus Death Essay Research Paper Faustus

Doctor Faustus` Death Essay, Research Paper

Faustus died a death that few could bear to imagine, much less experience. After

knowing for many years when exactly he would die, he reached the stroke of the

hour of his destiny in a cowardly, horrid demeanor. Finally, when the devils

appeared at the stroke of midnight, tearing at his flesh as they draw him into

his eternal torment, he screams for mercy without a soul, not even God Himself,

to help him. However, what to consider Doctor John Faustus from Christopher

Marlow’s dramatic masterpiece The Tragical History of the Life and Death of

Doctor Faustus is a very debatable issue. For example, one can see that he threw

his life away for the sake of knowledge, becoming obsessed with the knowledge

that he could possess. In this case, he is unarguably a medieval tragic hero.

However, when considering the fact that he died for the sake of gaining

knowledge, pushing the limits of what is possible in spite of obvious

limitations and, eventually, paying the ultimate penalty, he could be considered

a Renaissance martyr. These two points of view have their obvious differences,

and depending on from what time period one chooses to place this piece of

literature varies the way that the play is viewed. However, the idea of

considering him a martyr has many flaws, several of which are evident when

considering who Faustus was before he turned to necromancy and what he did once

he obtained the powers of the universe. Therefore, inevitably, the audience in

this play should realize that Faustus was a great man who did many great things,

but because of his hubris and his lack of vision, he died the most tragic of

heroes. Christopher Marlowe was borne on February 6, 1564 (Discovering

Christopher Marlowe 2), in Canterbury, England, and baptized at St. George’s

Church on the 26th of the same month, exactly two months before William

Shakespeare was baptized at Stratford-upon-Avon (Henderson 275). He was the

eldest son of John Marlowe of the Shoemaker’s Guild and Katherine Arthur, a

Dover girl of yeoman stock (Henderson 275). Upon graduating King’s School,

Canterbury, he received a six-year scholarship to Cambridge upon the condition

that he studies for the church. He went to Cambridge, but had to be reviewed by

the Privy Council before the university could award him his M.A. degree because

of his supposed abandonment of going to church. He was awarded his degree in

July of 1587 at the age of twenty-three after the Privy Council had convinced

Cambridge authorities that he had "behaved himself orderly and discreetly

whereby he had done Her Majesty good service" (Henderson 276). After this,

he completed his education from Cambridge over a period of six years. During

this time he wrote some plays, including Hero and Leander, along with

translating others, such as Ovid’s Amores and Book I of Lucan’s Pharsalia

(Henderson 276). During the next five years he lived in London where he wrote

and produced some of his plays and traveled a great deal on government

commissions, something that he had done while trying to earn his M.A. degree. In

1589, however, he was imprisoned for taking part in a street fight in which a

man was killed; later he was discharged with a warning to keep the peace

(Henderson 276). He failed to do so; three years later he was summoned to court

for assaulting two Shoreditch constables, although there is no knowledge on

whether or not he answered these charges (Henderson 276). Later Marlowe was

suspected of being involved in the siege of Roven where troops were sent to

contain some Protestants who were causing unrest in spite of the Catholic

League. Then, after sharing a room with a fellow writer Thomas Kyd, he was

accused by Kyd for having heretical papers which "denied the deity of Jesus

Christ" (Discovering Christopher Marlowe 2). Finally, a certain Richard

Baines accused him of being an atheist. Before he could answer any of these

charges, however, he was violently stabbed above his right eye while in a fight

Ingram Frizer (Discovering Christopher Marlowe 2). Doctor Faustus could be

considered one of Marlowe’s masterpieces of drama. It was his turn from

politics, which he established himself in with his plays Edward II and

Tamburlaine the Great, to principalities and power. In it he asks the reader to

analyze what the limits are for human power and knowledge and ponder what would

happen if one man tried to exceed those limits. The play opens up with Faustus,

who is supposedly the most learned man in the world, talking about how he has

mastered every field of knowledge known to man. He is bored with theology,

finding that man is doomed no matter what happens, and he has become a master

physician, curing a whole village of a plague. He feels that there is nothing

left for him to learn, as is frustrated by this; therefore

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