Christopher Marlowe

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Christopher Marlowe

• Born in 1564 in Canterbury, Kent.
• Attended Kings School and later Corpus Christi
  College, Cambridge (theology and ancient
  languages).
• While a student at Cambridge Marlowe travelled
  abroad on Government business, from which
  information scholars conclude he was spying for
  Sir Francis Walsinghams secret service. He may
  have infiltrated the Catholic Jesuit Community at
  Rheims in France.

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Christopher Marlowe

• However, it is also speculated that he may have
  become a Catholic sympathiser and a double agent
  while in France.
• Marlowe left for London in 1587 and took up the
  profession of playwright.
• Dates of composition are not certain
• Dido, Queen of Carthage
• Tamburlaine the Great
• The History of Doctor Faustus
• The Jew of Malta
• The Massacre at Paris
• Edward II

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Christopher Marlowe

• Marlowes lifestyle in London was that of a
  single man who lived amongst a crowd of similar
  friends, including Paywright Thomas Kid. His
  contacts included intellectuals, con-men and
  spies. He also had political connections,
  including the spymaster and Secretary of State to
  Queen Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham.
• At the time of his death (May 1593) some
  contemporaries claimed that Marlowe expressed
  atheistic views and often tried to persuade men
  to Atheism.
• However we cannot take this as straightforward
  truth.

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The Faust Story

• It is now clear to us that the real Dr. Faust, on
  whom Marlowe based his play, was not a magician
  at all but rather an incredible braggart and
  trickster. His stories were bred in the German
  inns of the sixteenth century, an environment
  described by E. M. Butler as a place where
  "jugglers, charlatans, and quacks of all kinds
  thrived. . ., the ideal breeding ground for those
  crass deceptions and knavish tricks associated
  with the real Faust" (121).

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• Dr. Faust was known to publicize himself as chief
  of all astrologers, the most learned chemist of
  all times, a palmist, a crystal gazer, and a man
  who could perform miracles greater than Christ
  (121). Unfortunately for Faust, he was never able
  to bring about any of these miracles (unless one
  wants to argue that such a man achieving a good
  theological degree is a miracle in itself). The
  only documented facts that might have given him
  credibility as a wizard, among his bar mates,
  were things that now seem trivial.

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• These include such occurrences as his keeping a
  dog with him at meals (some of the sixteenth
  century general public considered demons to
  disguise themselves as dogs), his ability to
  occasionally obtain out-of-season game, and his
  threatening a group of monks with a poltergeist
  because they gave him bad wine. Whenever he would
  claim to bring someone back from the dead, he
  always needed a couple of days to prepare, no
  doubt to hire the right actors and create an
  eager audience.

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• Dr. Faust was not made famous and immortalized in
  literature by such authors as Marlowe because of
  amazing acts, but rather because his amazing
  amount of bragging caused false stories to become
  exaggerated over time. In truth, the real Faust
  sounds more like Shakespeare's comically boastful
  Falstaff than the respectable man unable to avoid
  temptation that Marlowe creates.
• Faust's own legend did grow, however, to the
  point of his banishment from the city of
  Ingostadt for being a soothsayer. Faust brought
  this on himself though.

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• Unlike the Faustus in Marlowe's play, the real
  Faust went out of his way to inform people of his
  pact with the devil. According to Johannes Weir,
  Faust once came up to him and said, "I surely
  thought that you were my brother-in-law and
  therefore I looked at your feet to see whether
  long, curved claws projected from them" (124).
  Faust had to know that such a statement would not
  be taken lightly by many in the sixteenth
  century, a time connected with great fear of
  Satan.

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Other Literary Sources

• The theme of human being whose ambition and
  vision lead him or her to challenge or disobey a
  god is widespread in most cultures.

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Your turn!

• Can you think of any examples (religious or not)
  of human ambition leading to a challenge of God
  or gods?

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Literary Sources

• Marlowes play derives specifically from several
  of these
• The Adam and Eve myth from the Judaeo-Christian
  tradition, is referred to in scene 1 Original
  sin is what the human race is supposed to have
  inherited from Adam.
• The fall of Lucifer from heaven to hell as a
  punishment for wishing to be equal with God.
• The Ancient Greek myth of Dedalus and Icarus,
  where Icarus disobeyed his fathers instructions
  and perished because he flew too high.