The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
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By Christopher Marlowe
5 Jun, 2019
This short and compelling play written by Christopher Marlowe more than five centuries ago is a surprisingly readable and current tale about losing oneself in the pursuit of power and knowledge. Depicting the story of Doctor Faustus, a character who,
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This short and compelling play written by Christopher Marlowe more than five centuries ago is a surprisingly readable and current tale about losing oneself in the pursuit of power and knowledge. Depicting the story of Doctor Faustus, a character who, like Goethe's Faust, was based on the original "Faustbuch" - a collection of stories concerning the life of Jonathan Georg Faust and written by an anonymous German author.
The play itself is written in blank first and prose, and structured in thirteen scenes. Faustus is an extremely intelligent scholar who claims to have reached the end of every subject he ever studied. Despite this fact, it seems that his value of logic and accumulation of knowledge serves him quite poorly, Faustus claiming he assigns no value to divinity because humans sin, and that medicine itself is worthless, unless it can lead to immortality.
His fascination with reviving the dead brings him to the study of necromancy. This also leads him to summon the devil Lucifer and make a pact with him to receive 24 years on Earth and the devil Mephistopheles as his servant. In his haste and desperate pursuit of scientific knowledge, Faustus disregards the possibility of his salvation, believing he is already damned by his sins.
Faustus' story is deep and symbolic on many levels, and the message it seeks to convey is equally valid today as it was during Marlowe's time, when it is thought that the playwright wrote The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus as a warning to John Dee - the aide of Queen Elizabeth I - to avoid dabbling in the dark arts. Today, the story is equally significant, warning that the end can never truly justify the means.
Intriguing, highly entertaining deep and even educational in a number of ways, Marlowe's play continues to stand as one of the most well-written productions in history, coming from the man who inspired William Shakespeare himself. ** Less
- File size
- Print pages
- Publisher
- Publication date
- Language
- ISBN
- 71.389 KB
- 104
- Public Domain Books
- 2017-08-20
- English
- 9781523636532
Author
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