About
Doctor Faustus
Classics
versus moderns
There
are those who maintain that the Greeks are closer to us than the
Elizabethans. 'Thucydides is more modern than Sir Walter Raleigh',
writes Matthew Arnold, comparing two historians, one from 400 BC
and the other, 2,000 years closer to us in time, from 1600 AD. The
Greeks certainly seem more humane, more natural and spontaneous,
than many bombastic, bigoted witch-hunting types from the Middle
Ages and from more recent periods - and I am not just thinking of
Dr Ian Paisley and the IRA. The question of whether and how Greek
culture, Greek values, Greek art can be transposed into a modern
environment is one which has occupied and preoccupied many thinkers
from the Renaissance onwards. But we would do well to begin by remembering
that the Greeks and Romans were very different from later generations
in three important respects:
-
They
worshipped a plurality of deities, and seemed to have no difficulty
in believing that the 'gods' were a disorderly group of scoundrels
who could harm as well as help individual human beings for reasons
that were not always clearly discernible. (Why is Oedipus punished
so dreadfully? Why is the noble Achilles, the pacifist among
the warring Greeks, slaughtered despite his great strength and
the protection of the immortals? Why is crafty Odysseus rewarded,
as virtually the only Greek warrior to return home unscathed
after the Trojan War?) These gods not only acted arbitrarily,
but required frequent sacrifices to be made to them.
-
Greece
and Rome were slave-owning societies. Some moderns argue that
slaves were little worse off than Victorian servants, reasonably
well fed and well looked after. Not all slaves were exploited,
some were teachers and craftsmen. The Romans, unlike the Greeks,
would tend to free their slaves after a few years. But the conditions
in which most of them worked were squalid; the galley slaves
on the ships, the slaves in the Athenian silver mines being
particularly crass examples of ruthless bondage, degradation
and exploitation. Such conditions were not widespread in Europe
after the Middle Ages. They are particularly disturbing, because
they do not accord well with the Greeks' lofty ideals on the
dignity of life and the need for humane principles of conduct.
-
The
sexual behaviour of Greeks and Romans was very different from
that of the post-classical nations. In ancient Greece, homosexual
love was widespread, and what we nowadays call child abuse was
accepted and even regarded as character forming. Marriage was
not seen as either 'romantic' or as indissoluble; and the keeping
of mistresses and concubines was accepted, if not exactly encouraged.
Prostitution was a fact of life and there is little evidence
of the existence of the sexually transmitted diseases that were
to plague Europe from the 16th century onwards.
With
our next tragedy, Christopher Marlowe's Tragicall History of
D. Faustus, we enter the world of the late Middle Ages. In fact,
the MA are over, but superstitions linger on, magicians are rumoured
to practise their black arts, the Church has a dominating role in
the lives of all individuals. They may all style themselves Christians,
but their understanding of Christianity is very different from our
own. In the 16th century, people believed literally in the existence
of Hell and in the physical reality of the Devil. You may say that
Christians nowadays haven't completely relinquished such beliefs;
many, if questioned, would affirm that they recognise Hell and the
Devil as real. But there are few who would go so far as to maintain
that an otherwise good person, who had by chance failed to be baptised,
or had omitted to confess a sin, or had used swear words or not
abstained from meat during Lent would, as a punishment, be burnt
in real, terrifyingly painful fires for the rest of eternity, i.e.
for ever and ever and ever. One could easily argue that Christianity
as understood and practised in Luther's time was as distinct from
modern Christianity represented by Archbishop Carey and Pope John
Paul as modern Christianity is from Islam or Judaism. Even articles
of faith central to the Christain creed (such as the resurrection
of the flesh) are now viewed sceptically by many practising Christians.
The
tragic potential of a tale of sinfulness within a Christian moral
framework is obvious. The sinner is damned to an existence even
worse than anything that could have befallen the ancients (unless
you happened to be Tantalus or Sisyphus). The theme of Hell and
its torments seems tailor-made for a tragic catastrophe; there is
one little problem only: to be certain that the sinner will indeed
go to Hell, s/he must be truly evil - otherwise there is, even in
the narrowly dogmatic view, the potential of forgiveness and redemption.
So will we get a 'tragic hero' who can hold his own in a post-classical
moral context? The case of Doctor Faustus, part fiend, part superman,
provides some tentative answers.
Source
of the material: The Chapbook of Dr Faustus
Whether
a 'Doctor Faustus' ever lived will never be known. There are around
500 references to doctors of the black arts, some of whom styled
themselves 'Faustus' ('favoured one'), popping up in various parts
of Europe during the first half of the 16th century. Typically,
Doctor Faustus would cast horoscopes, foretell ill luck, or sell
magical potions. It was often rumoured that Doctor Faustus was in
league with the devil. Whether this was a sales gimmick on the part
of the magician or an attempt to defame him on the part of the church
remains uncertain. But the references are fragmentary and inconsistent.
In 1532, the council of Nuremberg decreed that 'The great sodomite
and necromancer Doctor Faustus was to be denied safe conduct' (Doctor
Fausto dem grossen Sodomitten und Nigromantico zu furr, glait ablainen).
Yet a few years earlier, the bishop of Bamberg paid Doctor Faustus
10 guilders for a horoscope. The original receipt, dated 1520, can
be admired in the Bavarian State Archives. People have speculated
endlessly about the magician's provenance and movements, but there
is no certainty. Several towns in Germany have a 'Faust-House' or
a 'Faust Museum' (Knittlingen), but the associations are tenuous,
often the products of 19th century neo-Romantic fantasies. Two dates
stick out:
See
also: E.M. Butler: The Fortunes of Faust (Cambridge 1952)
and The Myth of the Magus (Cambridge 1948); P.M. Palmer and
R.P. More: The Sources of the Faust Tradition from Simon Magus
to Lessing (New York 1936); Dorothy L. Sayers, 'The Faust Legend
and the Idea of the Devil', Publications of the English Goethe
Society (1946), pp. 1-20.
We
are on safer ground when we consider the first published account
of Doctor Faustus's life: a volume entitled Historia of D. Johann
Faustus, published anonymously in Frankfurt in 1587. We know
nothing about its author. The publisher, John Spies, claims that
the manuscript had been sent to him 'by a good friend in Speyer'.
It is a typical Volksbuch (chapbook) of a type popular in
sixteenth-century Europe. It tells a story, punctuated by anecdotes
and sermonising, and culminates in a series of deadly earnest warnings
not to imitate the actions of the central character. Most other
chapbooks either retold biblical episodes, classical myths and fables
or mediaeval epics, or related the pranks of some more or less comic
modern folk-hero (Owlglass). But what is truly remarkable is that
the tale of Doctor Faustus depicted a 24-year 'relationship' between
a man and a devil. This had never been attempted before: hence the
immense success of the work. Within a couple of years, its fame
had spread across Europe; Empson describes it as 'one of the first
international best sellers'. In six years it had appeared in six
languages, and in 1592 it was translated into English by P.F. Gent
(or 'P. F., gentleman'). It is here that Christopher Marlowe found
the material for his play on the subject.
Extract
from the English version of 1592
Then
Faustus said vnto him, I am not able to resist nor bridle
my fantasie, I must and will haue a wife, and I pray thee giue
thy consent to it. Sodainlie vpon these words came such a whirle-winde
about the place, that Faustus thought the whole house
would come down, all the doores in the house flew off the hookes:
after all this, his house was full of smoke, and the floore
couered ouer with ashes: which when Doctor Faustus perceiued,
he would haue gone Vp the staires: and flying Vp, he was taken
and throwne into the hall, [page 11] that he was not able to
stir hand nor foote: then round about him ran a monstrous circle
of fire, neuer standing still, that Faustus fried as
hee lay, and thought there to haue been burned. Then cried hee
out to his Spirit Mephostophiles for help, promising
him hee would liue in all things as he had vowed in his hand-writing.
Hereupon appeared vnto him an ougly Diuell, so fearefull and
monstrous to beholde, that Faustus durst not looke on
him. The Diuell said, what wouldst thou haue Faustus:
how likest thou thy wedding? what minde art thou in now': Faustus
answered, he had forgot his promise, desiring him of pardon,
and he would talke no more of such things. The diuell answered,
thou were best so to doe, and so vanished.
After
appeared vnto him his Frier Mephostophiles with a bel
in his hand, and spake to Faustus: It is no iesting with
vs, holde thou that which thou hast vowed, and wee will performe
as wee haue promised: and more than that, thou shalt haue thy
hearts desire of what woman soeuer thou wilt, bee shee aliue
or dead, and so long as thou wilt, thou shalt keepe her by thee.
These
words pleased Faustus wonderfull well, and repented himselfe
that hee was so foolish to wish himselfe married, that might
haue any woman in the whole Citie brought to him at his command;
the which he practised and perseuered in a long time.
Click here to
read the full text
Doctor
Faustus as a seeker of knowledge
Later
generations have treated the story of Doctor Faustus as the tragedy
of the knowledge-seeker. Like King Oedipus, Doctor Faustus wants
to find out more than it is good for him to know. It is therefore
only right that he should be a university don. He teaches at Wittenberg,
the university most closely associated with Martin Luther. But unlike
Luther, he goes against the Bible. Doctor Faustus is not only a
seeker after knowledge, he is a seeker after secular knowledge,
which in the view of the time is associated with witchcraft, is
forbidden, and is also somehow linked with the study of the classics
(Doctor Faustus begins by reading Aristotle and ends up desiring
Helen of Troy). From a Christian point of view, he is 'damnable'
for rejecting the Bible - and in the 16th century many churchmen
saw the study of classical authors as tantamount to casting away
the scriptures and immersing oneself in the necessarily sinful writings
of pagan authors.
We
could of course decide to view Faustus through more modern eyes,
particularly through the eyes of those who, in the eighteenth century,
used him as an example of a positive thirst for knowledge, as a
'striver', as someone who anticipates the Age of Reason and tries
to stand on his own two feet and work out his own salvation, be
it through necromancy. But there is one problem with this view:
Christopher Marlowe's Faustus is motivated, largely, but not perhaps
entirely, by a desire for pleasure. Hedonistically, he wants the
spirits, once in his service, to
[…]
fly to India for gold,
ransack the ocean for orient pear,
and search all corners of the new found world
for pleasant fruits and princely delicates. (1:82-85)
In
his aspirations, he mixes a desire for knowledge with a no less
strong desire for pleasure, power, and the rape of overseas provinces,
which were beginning to be colonised and exploited at the time.
There is something of the rude soldier of fortune in him: 'As Indian
Moors obey their Spanish lords' (Valdes, 1:121) draws a specific
analogy between the quest for hidden knowledge and the brutal activities
of the colonial powers (ironically claiming to ensure the spread
of Christianity!).
The
structure of Doctor Faustus
Since
the first published version of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus
dates from eleven years after the author's death, and people in
those days were not over-scrupulous in passing on the poet's words
in the way they had been written down; since laws were being enacted
governing what people might and might not say on stage, it is hardly
surprising that many have disputed that any of the texts that have
come down to us is an exact record of what Marlowe wrote. McAlindon
and others speak of 'a cathedral hit by a bomb'; but there is uncertainty
as to what is rubble and what is part of the original edifice. A
certain amount of cherry-picking has taken place, with critics like
F. D. Covella arguing that Marlowe should be credited with the 'covenant'
or 'pact' scenes, and with the 'punishment' scene at the end, but
that the scenes in between, particularly the humorous adventures
of Faustus, were written by others (Studies in Engl. Literature
1500-1900 26 (1986), 201-215). The Chorus, attributed to Wagner,
supplies the 'fulcrum' between the two halves. Empson implies that
the good parts of Doctor Faustus are very good and that the bad
parts are a mystery. We do have a written record confirming that
two men, William Byrde and Samuel Rowle, were paid in 1602, for
supplying 'adicyones' to the text of 'docter fostes'. It is usually
assumed that these will have consisted of the more light-hearted
parts. However, there is another complicating factor, which is that
although our surviving 'A Text' dates from 1604, there is a written
record that suggests that book was first published in January 1601.
It
does not take long to realise that two conflicting elements are
juxtaposed here: scenes focusing on Faustus's pursuit of knowledge
and evil, and the battle for his soul (I, III, V, VII/1, IX, XI,
XII), alternate regularly with instances of low-life tomfoolery,
in which either his assistants attempt to mimic him (II, IV, VI,
VIII) or Faustus himself plays a trick on some unworthy opponent
(VII/2, X). Scene XI provides an explanation of sorts for how the
'magic' works (a speedy messenger produces grapes from the other
side of the world). The first part of Scene VII returns to the 'gazetteer'
function of the source, which contained instructive material designed
to educate or to reinforce knowledge: 'Know that this city stands
upon seven hills' (VII, 29). The relationship between the humour
and the serious theme has given rise to various interpretations.
Tragedy
versus comedy
The
critics divide into two groups: those who feel that given the seriousness
of the topic, Christopher Marlowe could not (or should not) have
written the comic scenes himself. Particularly the anti-Papal sections
involving the Pope (in both texts) and the papal pretender Bruno
(in the B text) were felt to detract from the earnest purpose of
the plot, in which Doctor Faustus's immortal soul is at stake. Empson
and others claim that such scenes have 'practically nothing to do
with Faust' (p. 40). There is a sense of outrage that after sensitively
written, profound verses, 'one is dropped abruptly into bilge, as
through a trap door'. Empson claims that Marlowe's greatest fault
(if Marlowe's it is) is that he shows indifference to the feelings
of the audience: 'all through the middle of the play Faust is assumed
to be a popular character, a great source of fun, and yet his enormous
punishment at the end is accepted as a matter of routine.' (Empson,
loc. cit.)
There
are a number of objections one could raise at this point. One is
that Marlowe's audiences might have looked for comic ingredients
with greater enthusiasm than for moral edification. Secondly, Elizabethan
audiences had a penchant for receiving great tragedies with a liberal
dash of humour and even, on occasions, slapstick. The combination
of the two ingredients appears to have been attractive to them.
Thirdly, Empson is patently wrong when he argues that such episodes
have 'practically nothing to do with Faust'; the chapbook in its
original form was a compendium of material from many sources: the
Bible, travelogues, elementary science manuals and, not least, joke
books. Many of the stories in this book were rude and based on stereotypes,
such as the 'hypocritical monk' or the unkind (often Jewish) moneylender.
The horse-dealer of Scene X is one such type that Marlowe adapted
for his play. But my fourth and final point is the most important
one and the most often overlooked: the Faust-chapbook of 1587 was
essentially a piece of anti-Catholic propaganda. Faustus is not
allowed to marry (attack on celibacy of Catholic clergy); Faustus
can't repent and be forgiven at the end of his life (the sacrament
of confession is ineffective), and Faustus consorts with prelates,
bishops and the Pope, in Marlowe's source, for the purpose of exposing
their gluttony, avarice and especially their hypocrisy. Therefore
the scene with the Pope is of central importance rather than an
add-on provided by an incompetent collaborator.
A
Text versus B Text
Each
has its supporters. The A Team claim that Christopher Marlowe wrote
a short digest of the chapbook, which was expanded after his death
by groups of players who needed a full evening's programme and commissioned
some hack to produce some extra padding. The B Team claim that the
opposite happened; Marlowe produced a play that was of the same
length as some of the shorter Shakespearean dramas, but after his
death it went on tour and had to be shortened (Walter Greg, Marlowe's
'Doctor Faustus' 1604-1616, 1950). One of the flaws in this
argument is that if the B text is older than A, it would have to
have been preserved for 23 years after the poet's death, then unearthed
and - most importantly, a publisher would have needed to be persuaded
that the presumed 'original' was more worthy of printing than the
current version that was being performed at the time. I therefore
side with those who see A as closer to the author's work than B
- despite the problem of its brevity. It would not have satisfied
the relatively sophisticated London audiences of the time.
Irony
Many
scholars find it impossible to accept that Christopher Marlowe,
a free-thinking individual often thought to have been a double agent
and therefore uncommitted to either of the main Christian denominations
of his time, should have composed a play which seems to endorse
orthodoxy and end, conventionally, with the magus ignominiously
condemned to hell fire. Marlowe is in the curious position of being
reprimanded both for his light-heartedness (the slapstick deemed
intrusive) and for his serious moral purpose, which is out of tune
with the spirit of the modern, secular age. Empson comes up with
an almost incredibly contorted hypothetical account of what the
play looked like before the censor, whom Empson blames for the truncations,
got his teeth into Marlowe's original text:
"To
explain the original story, Marlowe supposes a Middle Spirit
who is a quisling or rather a double agent, professing to work
for the devils, and actually inducing them to grant their powers
to Faust, but on condition that Faust gives his immortal soul
beforehand to the quisling. Faust is at first delighted by the
results but before long the intense experience becomes too much
for his nerves; he decides to repent, supposing he may yet go
to Heaven. Meph regards this as a cheat, and counters it by
saying that he really is a devil, so that Faust has really sold
his soul. To prove it he calls up the Devil and his whole court,
at the end of act II (they are a charade put on by his Middle
Spirit friends). Faust, after a brief crisis of horror, decides
to live bravely for his time on earth, and the play mentions
that he does grand things that are useful for his countrymen
(compare A: 1408 f.), but he only feels at peace when playing
practical jokes (incidentally this also satisfies the devils,
who imagine he is carrying out his promise to be an enemy of
mankind). But at the end, when Meph has succeeded in bringing
him to the agreed hour of death without having repented, so
that Meph gets his immortal soul, nothing happens except that
his old friend advances upon him with open arms and a broad
smile. The last two words of Faust are 'Ah Mephastophilis',
and the censor could not rule how the actor was to speak them.
He dies in the arms of his deceitful friend with immense relief,
also gratitude, surprise, love, forgiveness, and exhaustion.
It is the happiest death in all drama." (Empson, 121 f.)
In
this view, the play ceases to be a tragedy; nay, it becomes 'the
happiest death in all drama'. Why it should have been billed as
a tragedy is a bit of an unresolved mystery; but wherever there
is evidence of dislocations or non-sequiturs in Marlowe, Empson
immediately blames the hand of the Queen's censor, a certain Edmund
Tilney. He insisted on cutting out vital bits that would have revealed
the poet's true intentions. It's a rather cheap (because unprovable)
argument.
But
Empson does touch on a number of questions that have perplexed modern
readers. Why does Mephastophilis give Faustus ample warning about
the perils of entering into a pact with him, if he is indeed an
evil spirit desirous of corrupting his victim? Why does Faustus
play tricks on the Pope, if he is truly wicked? Surely to have seen
through the corruption of the Pope's court is a positive achievement,
one that would endear him to an overwhelmingly anti-Popish audience?
Empson uses all these details as evidence that it never was Christopher
Marlowe's intention to damn Faustus: 'One should remember that the
anathema of the Pope would give the audience strong reason to feel
that he could not really go to Hell in the end' (p. 147). These
are interesting and in some ways compelling arguments which it is
not easy to refute. I will try to make a few suggestions as to how
these inconsistencies can be resolved:
1.
Mephastophilis is not 'THE DEVIL'. He is an evil spirit, a kind
of negative angel. Just as angels are not God, evil spirits (popularly
called devils) are not the Devil. Mephastophilis is a particular
kind of evil spirit: one that encourages people to go after forbidden
knowledge: the thinking person's devil (?).
2.
Mephastophilis does not warn Faustus out of any innate goodness
of heart. He is a fallen spirit, and in pain, suffering because
of his separation from God (3:78 ff.). Like the spirits in hell,
he repents of what he has done, but not sufficiently to be forgiven.
Therefore, he alternately warns and gloats over Faustus.
3.
Faustus's exploits are, as we saw, past history. He is assumed to
have lived in the early 16th century, and was born into a world
that was entirely under the sway of the Catholic Church. Therefore
his pranks betoken irreligiosity, but without the zeal of the would-be
reformer. His attacks on the Pope are a source of laughter, not
an instrument of salvation. The 'marriage-wish' in scene 5 is positive,
and Mephastophilis mimics the Catholic church in refusing to let
Faustus marry, but instead of persevering (which might have earned
him redemption), Faustus is easily distracted by a string of concubines.
4.
Faustus is a true tragic hero: he has good qualities beside his
evil aspirations. He dutifully provides grapes in mid-winter for
the Duke of Vanholt (Anhalt?), generously bestows his worldly goods
on Wagner, punishes an uncouth knight at the Emperor's court, and
obligingly undoes the punishment again. At times he regrets what
he has done - this evidently heightens the tragic effect, but does
not make him a good person. The fact that even Mephastophilis counsels
him to desist from the pact does not prove Mephastophilis's goodness
but rather emphasises Faustus's blindness and arrogance:
Thinkst
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! (3:78-81)
5.
Another fact that ought not to be overlooked is that many of the
inconsistencies, including the farce, the pulled-off leg (scene
10), the buffoonery in Rome and elsewhere, and even the self-deconstruction
of Mephastophilis, as an evil spirit who sees through his own evil,
are found in the original chapbook, which is a compendium of much
incongruous material. But these by-products of the story are mere
interludes and do not imply that the story is something other than
a tale of arrogance and awesome folly.
Theological
content
Some
critics have assumed that the author of the original chapbook must
have been a Catholic. Why would Doctor Faustus be associated specifically
with Luther's home university (Wittenberg), if not to expose Wittenberg
as a hot-bed of heresy? Why the references to holy relics (Longinus's
spear) in the 'travelogue' section, if the author was a Protestant
who would not have believed in such things? And it is of course
true that criticisms of monks and of other often abused malpractices,
such as the rule of celibacy, were sometimes heard from within
the Catholic church.
Nonetheless,
the central ethical content is in line with Luther's teaching. The
devil is real, he is the fiend who must be shunned, the Catholics
are under his influence, they believe that a man can be as sinful
as he likes, if only he repents at the end; Faustus demonstrates
that this is not the case. A man's whole life must be repentance
(Luther's 95 theses). Could the 'Old Man' who advises the doctor
to repent (12:26 ff.) be a representative of Lutheran values? Faustus
is too blind to recognise that genuine contrition that comes from
the heart would help towards his salvation.
But
it would be unwise to read the play or its source entirely along
Lutheran lines. G.M. Pinciss (Studies in Engl. Literature 1500-1900
33 (1993), 249-264) has shown that Cambridge was one of the battlegrounds
between continental Protestantism (along Calvinist lines) and the
English variant, which derived from Cranmer's 42 articles (later
39). William Perkins was a lecturer and university fellow who propounded
a rigorous form of Calvinism; contemporaries say 'he was able to
make his hearers [sic] hearts fall down and hairs stand upright'.
Perkins describes the sin of witchcraft as peculiar to those 'not
satisfied with […] knowledge, wit, understanding, memory' (p. 254)
and Pinciss portrays Marlowe as engaging directly with these controversies.
While
it may be rash to trace the content of Doctor Faustus to
the influence of a single preacher, particularly as Marlowe is re-working
material that predates his entry to Cambridge, there is one aspect
of the play to which Pinciss does rightly draw our attention. That
is the influence of the university environment on all versions of
Doctor Faustus. Faustus is the product of a university, he is a
scholar, he knows Latin and Greek, he has studied law, medicine,
theology and other subjects - and it is this knowledge that has
made him vulnerable. There is little doubt that, while lashing out
at Catholic malpractices in the chapbook, the anonymous author also
wished to impugn the 'scholars' of his age for being dissatisfied
with conventional learning, with the Bible, and wishing to go further.
One of the doctor's misdeeds is to rescue the missing comedies of
Terence and Plautus - something many a scholar has longed to do;
another is to reawaken Helen of Troy. An excessive interest in the
classics (in that very world that gave us tragedy!) produces a tragedy
of a more modern kind - the damnation of an individual, immortal
soul.
The
Pursuit of Classicism
Does
it matter whether Marlowe shared the Christian belief in the damnation
of the soul? Perhaps not, because he has given the story an entirely
new twist. The university is satirised, not because it's a hotbed
of heresy, but for other reasons. Marlowe the Cambridge graduate
paints a satirical picture of an overblown don who quotes semi-intelligible
chunks of Latin (3:16-22, etc.), whose fawning assistant mimics
him without being able to fathom him out, and who 'disputes' with
the diabolical emissary as though he were in a tutorial. Uncouth
hangers-on like Rafe and Robin imitate him, but like the sorcerer's
apprentice, the magic runs away with them.
So
we have on one level, a satire of university life for its own sake.
On another, we have the world of classical antiquity, which Faustus
tries to bring to life. This is a very complex issue, which we can
only briefly hint at. Faustus is the product of an age (the Renaissance)
that was deeply torn between whether to follow the Greeks and Romans
or to abandon them and follow only the Bible. The Humanists were
urging the former, the radical reformers wanted to destroy the legacy
of the past and to base their lives on the scriptures alone. Many
great thinkers were caught in the cross-fire (Erasmus). They tried
to use reason, while at the same time not dismissing the revealed
scriptures out of hand. One might argue that the outcome of such
an endeavour cannot be other than tragic. The central question that
Doctor Faustus asks is: is Faustus damnable because he goes
against God, or is he damnable because he fails as a scholar to
understand what he is meant to be teaching? Is his greatest flaw
that he parades the spirits of Alexander and Helen around as though
they were trophies, instead of learning something from them about
the value of harmony and humanity? This type of hamartia
would be in keeping with the pretentiousness of some of his earlier
utterances (the incantation). Is his sensual love for Helen a sign
of sensitivity and emotion ('make me immortal with a kiss', 12:83),
or an aberration, in which he falls for the superficial, sensually
exciting charms of classical beauty, but fails to appreciate its
deeper qualities?
