Notesale: Turn your study into money

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Brandon Morris

What have you found striking about Marlowe’s presentation of
Mephistopheles and Hell in Doctor Faustus?
Within the play Doctor Faustus, Mephistopheles is presented as a devil “too ugly” to attend to
Faustus’, whilst the audience learns that Mephistopheles is actually a tortured soul, due to his
deprivation of “everlasting bliss” as he believes Hell is the absence of God, and Heaven is being in
the presence of God
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There have been various beliefs of Hell itself each varying depending on religion, with the shared
thought that it is a place of eternal suffering for unrighteous souls, but Marlowe describes Hell as a
state of mind
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As I alluded to, Mephistopheles believes that Hell is the absence of God,
since he experienced the “eternal joys of Heaven” but is now “deprived of everlasting bliss”
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The idea of Hell, within the play, can be seen to be divided into two distinct versions: a physical Hell
and a spiritual Hell
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In terms of the Gothic, the image of a
spiritual Hell would be viewed as terror because terror is the anticipation or dread of an event,
before it happens
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It is not until his final
soliloquy that he start to feel his ‘impending damnation’ slowly approach with the “clock striking
elven” and “thunder and lightning”, the real horror starts to sink in, and both the spiritual and
physical Hell collide
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For Marlowe, this was a way to connect with the audience, reminding them about the
importance of God and not ‘straying from the path’, since the Elizabethan audience was
predominantly Catholic, therefore, more considered as a cautionary tale
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However, as both his name suggests
(Mephistopheles meaning manipulator and liar) and he later reveals about the ‘truth’ as to why he
was ‘summoned’
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What he
means by this is simply he has come to ‘reap’ Faustus’ soul, since he has turned away from God, and
Mephistopheles’ manipulation of Faustus appeals to his desire for knowledge beyond the reach of
humanity
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On the other hand, apart from Marlowe displaying Mephistopheles as a traditional demon, he
reveals a ‘softer’ side to him, through his belief in Hell and separation from God
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Marlowe does this to further add to the morality play,
physically displaying the choices Faustus has to make, but it is more ambiguous to figure out what
role Mephistopheles is playing, since he seems to plead with Faustus to turn away from Lucifer and
back to God, although, it can be seen he is leading him into damnation, because when Faustus
eventually tries to repent he is threatened to be ripped apart by, “I’ll in piecemeal tear thy flesh”
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These both create Mephistopheles as a traditional villain, since
he is a “servant of Great Lucifer”, and an anti-hero, since he tries to dissuade Faustus from defying
God, by explaining his fall from heaven and the true nature of hell
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g
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) to create terror and horror unto the Elizabethan audience, but on closer analysis, he
plays with the traditional views and applies pre-Gothic themes to them
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This creating a ‘striking’ view to both the
contemporaneous audience and to audiences today, since it shows the demons of Hell to have
consciences and the ‘hero’ of the play to actually cause his own demise, due to his unquenchable
desire for knowledge, contrary to the superstitious beliefs surrounding these

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