Marlowe

1
Christopher Marlowe 1564-1593
2
Marlowes heroes in Tamberlaine, a 14th century
Mongol warrior, and other plays is the vehicle
for the expression of boundless energy and
ambition, the impulse to strive ceaselessly for
absolute power. When one of his victims accuses
him of bloody cruelty, Tamberlaine answers that
strife, restlessness, and unfettered ambition are
embedded in the laws of nature and in basic human
psychology
3
Nature that framed us of four elements Warring
within our breasts for regiment, Doth teach us
all to have aspiring minds Our souls, whose
faculties can comprehend The wondrous
architecture of the world And measure every
wandering planets course, Still climbing
after knowledge infinite,
4
And always moving as the restless spheres, Wills
us to wear ourselves and never rest Until we
reach the ripest fruit of all, That perfect bliss
and sole felicity, The sweet fruition of an
earthly crown. NA pages 456-57
5
Faustus says, O what a world of profit and
delight, Of power, of honor, of omnipotence Is
promised to the studious artisan! master of
occult arts and magic All things that move
between the quiet poles Shall be at thy command
emperors and kings Are but obeyed in their
several provinces,
6
Nor can they raise the wind, or rend the
clouds But his dominion that exceeds in
this Stretchest as far as doth the mind of man A
sound magician is a mighty god. Here Faustus, try
thy brains to gain a deity. Scene 1, lines 53-63
7
This is the humanist spirit and
philosophy expressed earlier in the text, the
spirit of unleashed curiosity,
individual self-assertion, and a powerful
conviction that man was the measure of all
things (317).
8
Marlowes major dramas. . . all portray
heroes who passionately seek power--the power of
rule, the power of money, and the power of
knowledge, respectively. Each of the heroes is
an overreacher, striving to get beyond the
conventional boundaries established to contain
the human will (458).
9
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
Faustus seeks the power and voluptuous pleasure
that come from forbidden
10
knowledge. To get this power Faustus must
make--or chooses to make--a bargain with Lucifer.
This is an old folklore motif, but it would have
been taken seriously in a time when belief in the
reality of devils was almost universal. The
storys power over its original audience is
vividly suggested by the numerous accounts of
uncanny events at performances of the
11
play strange noises in the theater or extra
devils who suddenly appeared among the actors on
the stage, causing panic. In the opening
soliloquy, Marlowes Faustus bids farewell to
each of his studies-logic, medicine, law, and
divinity-as something he has used up. He turns
instead to black magic, but the devil exacts a
12
fearful price in exchange the eternal damnation
of Faustus soul. This fate would also have
taken literally by an Elizabethan audience.
Faustus aspires to be more than a man A sound
magician is a mighty god, he declares. His fall
is caused by the same pride and ambition that
caused the fall of the angels in heaven and of
humankind in the Garden of Eden. But it is a
characteristic of Marlowe that he makes those
aspirations nonetheless magnificent (548).
13
A key to the theme of Marlowes play is the
allusion to Icarus in the Prologue Till swollen
with cunning of a self-conceit, His waxen wings
did mount above his reach, And melting heavens
conspired his overthrow. See note 7 page
460 For falling to a devilish exercise, And
glutted more with learnings golden gifts,
14
He surfeits feeds to excess upon
necromancy Nothing so sweet as magic is to
him, Which he prefers before his chiefest bliss.
15
(No Transcript)
16
Villain tragedy
Revenge tragedy
Tragedy
History plays
Heroic tragedy
17
When tragedies began to be dramatized, they
took over very different elements from Seneca
violent and bloody plots, resounding rhetorical
speeches, the frequent use of ghosts among the
cast of characters, and sometimes the five-act
structure.

18

• While Aristotles Poetics did not provide rigid
  norms for tragedy in England as it did on the
  Continent, it did influence the conception of the
  genre.
• Aristotelian principles of the tragic archetype--
• the characters should be persons of high estate,
  better than we

19

• the tragic fall should be caused by some error or
  moral weakness in the protagonist
• the plot should involve a fall from eminent
  success into misery, marked by reversals and
  discoveries
• the tragedy should evoke pity and fear in the
  viewers, working at last to achieve a purgation
  (catharsis) of those emotions