Notesale: Turn your study into money

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What is Marlowe suggesting about the nature of knowledge?
• Good or bad respective of its use: Faustus begins as a scholar, but then as the play progresses his
knowledge is used for childish means (i
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entertaining others and himself
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• Marlowe is probably musing simultaneously about the changing face of knowledge in the late sixteenth
century (the increase in people going to university and the rise of humanism) and about the presence of
the belief in magic in society and the anxieties that it provoked
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Faustus' power:
• Potentially representative of those in positions of authority who wielded their power for negative means
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Indeed, he
becomes an ape of the devil, who in turn is an ape of God (and therefore can only have power accessible
to God, or less
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• Economic exchanges pervade the story: Faustus' deal with Lucifer, the Horse Courser's deal with Faustus,
Wagner bribes the clown to his servant in return for learning some magic
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Faustus' desire for sexual knowledge:
• The first thing he asks Mephistopheles for is a wife who is like a 'whore'
...
) He then again desires Helen of Troy
in one of his final acts
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The presence of the Old Man:
• The Old Man is a memento mori figure - a reminder of the inevitability of death
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• He stands as a reminder of God's omnibenevolence, and the fact that Faustus can always repent
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Wittenburg:
• Possible link to Hamlet, who was also a student at Wittenburg: literary trope that is symbolic of education
and knowledge
...
let us make haste
to Wittenburg') which is symbolic of his return to knowledge/education; where the his downfall began
(his 'study') and will end
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Presents Faustus as an immediately scholarly character, well
read
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' Draws a sort of ring composition with the opening
soliloquy, reminding the audience both of the change that Faustus has undergone, and the culpability of
knowledge in this change
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Ironic reversal of Faustus:
• Begins as the scholar who boasted that he could 'command great Mephistophilis' and is reduced to the
level of a clown tormented by fleas (the 'familiars' that Wagner threatens will 'tear' the clown 'into pieces'
are symbolic of Mephisophilis for Faustus, who threatens to 'piecemeal tear thy flesh')
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Robin and Rafe:
• What happens when magic falls into the hands of those who do not know how to use it
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However, they are still the same in that they are both sexually charged: Faustus'
desire to have Helen of Troy is just a more elaborate form of Rafe's desire for Nan Spit
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His punishments for Robin
and Rafe anticipate what Faustus can expect at the end of his twenty four years
...
')
• Other things to which Faustus calls: Lucifer, mountains and hills, Earth, stars, adders and serpents
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Seven Deadly Sins:
• Ironically, Faustus enjoys their show ('this feeds my soul') but fails to realise that his own sins (including
pride) will prove deadly to him
...
')
Distractions:
• Parade of devils (what means this show? nothing, but to delight thy mind withal)
• Seven Deadly Sins (talk not of paradise, but mark this show)
• Helen of Troy (whose sweet embracings may extinguish clean these thoughts that do dissuade me from
my vow)

Temptation, sin and redemption:
• Faustus' journey can be seen as symbolic of his downward trajectory from temptation to sin to failed
redemption: he wants limitless power, he partakes in necromancy to achieve it, to rejects the offers of
redemption set forward by the scholars and, significantly, the old man

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