Notesale: Turn your study into money

Document Preview

Extracts from the notes are below, to see the PDF you'll receive please use the links above

---

Key
o
o
o
o
o
o
o

F = Faustus
M = Mephistopheles
OM = Old Man
V = Valdes
C = Cornelius
L = Lucifer
HofT = Helen of Troy

Structure
o Beginning (illusion of magic), middle (reality of magic), end
...

o Act 1 + 2- F anticipating what he’ll do with magic/doubts
...

o Act 5- back on track- F heading towards damnation
...

o 2nd person referral- split personality/duality- cut off from self
...

 Finite words ‘depth’ ‘end’- get to limit of every subject
...

1
...

 F thinks already good/knows everything with medicine
...

 Blasphemous- making people live forever/raising from dead describes activities of Christ in New
Testament
...
Justinian- Roman Emperor- Law
 Too dull/superficial/material
...
g
...

 Wants something more fundamental
...
Theology
 2 Bible versus- sin = death- but everyone sins- does this mean everyone will die?
 If message of divinity is we all sin and we all die- rejects
...

o F already knows he wants necromancy- simply finding reasons to reject
...

o Necromancy- ‘heavenly’- polysemy- ironic effect:
 Religious/secular meaning
...

• Audience made aware- F not considering consequences
...

o F- clever academically/stupid in other sense-not wise
...

 Marlowe satirizes the uni student
...

o Frivolous attitude- concepts such as ‘sin’ and ‘hell’- just words to him
...

 ‘Profit’- F meaning excitement of discovery not profit
...


o
o

 1590s- old limits diminishing- world opening up- geographically and knowledge
...

 F tapping into an expanding world-mysterious
...

 Marlowe expressing his excitement of this through F
...

‘Omnipotence’- challenging god- ‘raise the wind’ ‘rend the clouds’- wants to achieve ‘deity’ = god-like status
...

 = Personified virtues and vices- allegorical figures
...

 Good= god’s truth/ repentance- protestant world
...

 Psychomachia= inner conflict
...

o F wants more knowledge then needs- greed
...

 Mischievous/subversive sense of humor- ‘public schools with silk’- meant to wear dark colours
...

 Benign- F not going to use magic for evil
...

o ‘Prince of Parma’- Spanish Armada- patriotic cheer- gain sympathy of audience
...

o Especially languorous in combination with other consonants e
...
‘resolve’ ‘gold’ ‘world’ ‘fly’ ‘pleasant’- hear
F’s sensual pleasure in his imaginative capacities

Valdes and Cornelius- tempter figures
...

o V advising caution- motif- magic can only produce and empty illusion- repetition of like
...

 Suggesting F step back from necromancy and be wise
...

o V also advising to be brave- then F will have power, women and treasure
...

 C flatters F- compares to ‘Delphian oracle’- know future
...

• Will be able to control nature- appealing to F’s imagination not greed
...

o Scholars- functions not characters- get audience invested in the fate of F
...

 Servant scoring point of scholars
 Comic scenes employ stock characters- e
...
cheeky servant
...

 Links to previous scene- both F and W sounding clever- scholarly language/Latin- however both acting
stupidly- parallelism
...

 Marlowe making fun of academics- using clever sounding language but for foolish purposes
...


 Academic discourse- parody
...

Act 1- Scene 3
o F’s opening soliloquy picks up imagery of the elements- creates sinister/threatening atmosphere
...

 Through language Marlowe-communicating night is falling/ feels ominous
...

o Audience filled with suspense- theatrically chilling
 Audience terrified- 1590s- magic is real- F summoning spirits- dangerous theatre
...

 Marlowe draws fine line between play and reality
...

 Latin- language of authority and religion- very important
...

o Tempter figure- lure f into damnation- Marlowe playing with the form
...

o 1989 RSC production- figure of the wounded/suffering Christ
...

o F makes a joke ‘go, and return an old Franciscan Friar’- surprised to be obeyed- arrogant
...

o ‘You’/ you’re’- formal ‘thee’/’thou’- addressing a servant
...

o Suggests F not damned yet- ‘we fly in hope’
...

 Sincere- telling reality of hell ‘my fainting soul!’
...

 But to F- hell just a name-ignores warning
...

o Epistrophy- rhetorical technique= language of persuasion- repetition of ‘with Lucifer’
...

 Other possibility= elaborate trick- tempter is a deceiving figure- reverse psychology?
 Or setting up an almost legal system- making sure F has read terms and conditions
...

o Suggests hell= state of mind- reflects increasing debate about what hell was at the time
...

o F’s reaction- not deflated as expected- protected by armor of arrogance
...

o Academics live in world of words
...

o Marlowe representing a Calvinist idea
...

o F asks for ‘four and twenty years’ in return for giving L soul
...

o Marlowe exposing F’s limitations
...

o 3rd person referral- fantasy
...

Act 1- Scene 4- comic scene
o Wagner- speaking in detached way
 ‘Poetry’= abstract noun
...

 Exposes F’s intentions
...

Even W learnt how to conjure devils- rejects idea F is clever
...

 W sounds clever- Latin- but scene acts to belittle F
...

Deal- if Robin disobeys W- hours notice taken to hell
...

 W learns necromancy from master- those in power corrupt those beneath them
...

Imagery- hell/devils etc
...

 Suggest men in charge of discourse/women unfaithful
...

Robins limited ambitions draw attention to poverty of F’s ambitions
...

 Condensed
...

o Many audiences 1590s- believed F damned
1
...

2
...

o Religious response:
 F deserves to go to hell- committed sin of necromancy
...

o Psychological response:
 Rapid mood swings- bipolar?
 Manic depression quality- cut off from self
...

 Marlowe invites P response- acts to challenge Christian narrative- F’s complex psychology makes us
question this
...

 Catholics- good works
o Humanist- F wants to expand human knowledge/ presented as frustrated for limitations of Christian thoughtimagery/excitement
...

o Casual talk of selling soul- suggests doesn’t fully understand
...

 Negative portrayal of hell
...

 Flatter- slipping more into tempter role
...

 Trick however?
 Tempter figures= tricksters
...

o F doesn’t see what’s obvious to audience- manifestation of God’s mercy
...


o
o
o

o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o

o
o

 Psychological- depression- can’t see it
...

Bravery/ foolhardy
...

L asking for contract for own security
...

 ‘Spirit’= devil- fate clear? - F’s transformation into a spirit implies he is damned from this point
...

 Reflects questioning of hell at the time
...

Marlowe draws attention to 2 different types of knowledge- experience/books
...

This request- M cannot deliver- highlights magic is an illusion- asks for wife- gives devil dressed as women
...

 ‘Fairest courtesans’- M educating F to be sinful- sense of necromancy failing to deliver
...

Desires for knowledge- cosmography, natural history of planet etc
...


Act 2- Scene 2- comic
o Parallel with F wanting a wife
...

o Serous purpose to comic scene- corruption effect
...

o ‘Clean our boots’- reminder of lowly status- highlighting idiots can perform necromancy
...

o F= nuanced figure (portrayed in subtle way, delicate shades of meaning appreciated
...
Acknowledging sin
...
Confess sins before God
...
Affirm faith in God’s mercy
...
Mend ways- change sinful behaviour
...

 Psychological idea- depression- cannot help himself
• ‘Fearful echoes’- to M- hell =state of mind
...

• Weapons- suicidal thoughts- psychological distress
...

 Paradox- necromancy prevents F from committing immortal sin
...

o Tone change in F’s short soliloquy:

o

o
o
o
o

o

o
o
o

1
...

2
...

3
...

4
...

5
...

• F’s escapism- losing himself in questions
...

 Ptolemaic geometric system- earth at centre
...

 What M says in answer to F is old-fashioned- not exciting
...

 Fails to tell him anything interesting about cosmos
...

Evil angel ‘too late’- counseling despair- reflecting despair and hope wrestling in F’s mind
...

 1-word change can reflect theological debate at time- is F a Calvinist? Using these ideas to create
drama
...

 Genuine- shock when L comes
 Acknowledging sin? - first step of repentance
...

‘Pastime’- actually trying to distract F from repentance
...


Seven Deadly sins
o L presenting sins as a sort of entertainment:
 Pageant of sins- designed to entertain F
...

 Morality play antecedents (early versions of/inspiration)
 Christianity- sin central- enabled by sin- original sin-all born with it- Christ sent to redeem
...

 Liverpool Playhouse production 2005- sins appeared in costumes worn by F throughout- indicating
he himself was guilty of each sin
...
Pride
 ‘I disdain to have any parents’- links to F parents of base stock
...

 Tone- complaining/unsatisfied/constantly frustrated
...

 Fault of L- pride leads him to rebel against God
...

 Audiences 16C- might mock/heckle- sins encourage response
...
Covetousness
 Wanting what other people have/more than you need
...

 Material goods ‘O my sweet gold!’
 Addresses audience/interacting- encouraged thinking of sin as something to make fun of
...

 Tone- complaining/unsatisfied/constantly frustrated
...
Wrath
 ‘Neither father nor mother’- no reason to be angry
...

4
...

 ‘Chimney-sweeper’ + ‘oyster’s wife’- low down social hierarchy
...
Gluttony
 F also enjoying interacting with sins- caught up in entertainment
...
Sloth
 Complaining tone- ‘you have done me great injury’
...
Lechery- Lust
 ‘Mistress minx’- female- F shows ‘respect’- ‘what are you’- the/thy referral
...

 Men spiritually stronger- women spiritually feeble
...

o Polysemy- ironic- ‘feeds my soul’- actually feeding on his soul/destroying
 F unaware/doesn’t understand the forces playing with him
...

o ‘Think on the devil’ instead of god- topsy turvydom
...

o F- innocence? - sinful without being evil/intellectually motivated
...

 Christian binary of good + evil being challenged- is F bad?
o Sins = condensed allegorical representations of F’s life
...

o ‘prove’ ‘cosmography’- suggests empiricist
...

o Diff tone from beginning (critical)- now impressed- inconsistence in chorus
...

 Glamour of F’s life from outside
...

Act 3- scene 1
o Privileged experience (to 1590s audience) - aerial tour of Europe- birds eye view
...

o ‘taken up his holiness’ privy chamber’- irony- anti-papal propaganda- pope seen as enemy
...

 Anti-papal humour/satire- to please protestant authorities
...

 1588- Spanish Armada- catholic invasion
...

 Pope = representative God- audience being asked to side with devil
...

 Parody of catholic rituals- transubstantiation/ invisible presence (F not God)
 Parody of excommunication- showing pettiness of papal court- reduces popes’ power
...

 Strangely humble tone from F- not seen before (usually associated with pride)
...

 M- distracted F from innocence- taking F into world of trivia/joking
...

o Carnivalesque humour- bodily appetites- inverts social hierarchy
...

o M called against his will- enraged (anticipate F’s punishment)
...

o R + R scared- M threatens to turn into Ape (Robin) + dog (Rafe)
...


Act 4- scene 1
o Continued degradation of F
...
23 ‘a sound magician is a mighty god’ p
...

o Previous chorus admiration juxtaposed by absurd slapstick comic scene
...

 ‘royal courts of kings’- tautology (saying something twice using different words)- gushing fan
...

 ‘such as bear his absence but with grief’- suggests people worried about F
...

• Expressing the reports/glamour press release- not reality
...

o Charles V of Spain- father of Phillip II- enemy of England- launched Spanish Armada/catholic
...

o Emperor- deceiving himself/more power then has or deceiving F- disingenuous- can’t offer immunity by
damnation
...

Functions to shape audience response/offer different perspective of F
...

Classical illusion- Archaeon- turned into a stag by Diana
...

 Christian + classical brought together- conflict
...

 F getting petty revenge contrast to great things he imagined
...

‘Far inferior to the report’- gulf between stories + reality
...

 Surprising tone of humility/apologetic/gained self-knowledge/awareness of limitations
...

 Language used ‘inferior’- 1st person/sycophantic (to gain adv)/courtly language
...

 ‘art’- euphemistic- instead of ‘black magic’
...

 ‘it is not in my ability’- limitations evident
...

• ‘wart or mole’- that perfect a copy
...

 Protagonist become the antithesis of himself
...

Marlowe- puncturing myths- necromantic’s restoring dead
...

‘I’ll walk on foot’- F prefer to waste time- diff from beginning- impatient/emperor of world attitude
...

 ‘but a man condemned to die’- sad tone- reveals what he’s really thinking
...

 ‘Christ did call the thief’- still hope/comforts self
...


o
o
o
o
o

Made fun of pope then knight the hoursecourser- gradual degradation or distraction from approaching fate?
M- guardian angel in reverse- keep F directed to hell- often little speech in later scenes- F directing himself
...

F ‘has not slept this eight nights’- anxious or trying to make most of time?
F leg pulled- foreshadows eventual fate- pulled apart by devils
...

 Reveals magic amounts to little more than silly tricks
...

 Bring grapes- small menial task
...

 Human nature- hopes + dreams rarely forefilled/gap between stories + reality
...

o Bored by magic- human nature- can never bet totally fulfilled
...

Act 5 Scene 1
o Wagner- shapes audience’s response
...

 ‘given to me all his goods’- highlights F’s lack of companions- giving possessions to servant
...

o ‘amongst the students’- social inferiors- any real friends?
 M appears to fill void
...

o M always present- aim- keep F on the crooked + wide
...

 Gave rise to foundation of literature- Iliad/Odyssey
...

 Real friends would encourage him to repent
...

o Christian discourse = set of words supporting each other/understand the world
...

 Marlowe challenging but also writing in it
...

o Classical allusions- fusion of classical + Christian world
...

 Uses knowledge of pre-Christians
...

 Christians celebrate humility as a v whereas humanists celebrate potential of humanity
...

 If F bad/evil- would try to take down others with him
...

o Helen- young man dressed up 16thC- contributes to irony
...

o Polysemy ‘heavenly beauty’- awe of scholars
...

 Abstract nouns ‘beauty’
...

 Lines almost clogged up by ugly words
...

 Invites us to sympathises due to extremity of language
...

 ‘guide thy steps’- trying to help
...

Is OM being unfair- haven’t actually seen F do anything morally repugnant- encourages audience to question
Christian narrative
...

OM- vindictive? - wanting to punish F
...

 A beautiful allusion or ugly truth
...

F chooses to despair ‘damned…damned’- although language so condemnatory- F committing sin of despairopposite of acknowledging God’s mercy
...

 Supports argument- not evil
...

 Dramatic enactment of conflict in F’s soul
...

 Does exactly what’s required to keep F on path to hell
...

• Moral paradox
 Confidence trick- M doesn’t acc have physical power over him- cleverly maximises chances
...

Appears to work- ‘my sweet friend’ BUT sends OM away- becomes vulnerable to M’s tricks
...

 Body = evil/ good = soul
...

M horrifying threat ‘arrest thy soul’ ‘revolt or I’ll in piecemeal thy flesh’
...

M- ironic use of pious language ‘with unfeigned heart’
...

F asks M to torture OM for trying to dissuade him- EVIL- clear now F will be damned
...

M admits he can’t hurt man- protected by faith- Protestant view
...

 OM rep power of faith
...

F asks for sex with devil- pushing him past point of return- damning himself irrevocably
...

 ‘whose sweet embracings may extinguish clean’- ironic
...

‘keep in mine oath I made to Lucifer’- promise weighs heavily on F
...

 Recreate disgust felt in 1590- shock value
...

 ‘make me immortal with a kiss’- common love poetry yet deeply ironic as this will make him immortal in
an eternally damned way
...

 At some level must know he’s committing self-destruction but lost in beautiful illusion
...

 Images of destruction- destruction something beautiful can create
...

 Through language F almost able to communicate he’s a great man- Renaissance stage
...

 Poetry seen as elevated for of literature
...

 ‘will be Paris’- yet Paris loses Trojan War
...

 Language returned to rich intensity after prosaic simplicities of comic scenes
...

 Functions as wise adviser- Marlowe reuses pattern of doubt-persuasion/resolve-gains
...

 OM’s words- vivid contrasting pictures of joys of heaven/pains of hell
...

First suffers fit of despair/describes keeping demonic bargain as ‘to do thee right’- be an honorable man
...

 Believes ‘our hell’- opposite to previous ‘hell’s a fable’
...

 Raises question about God- if omnibenevolent/omnipotent- why allow suffering?
 Sense of a wrathful God/sadistic
...

• ‘heaven smiles’ ‘I fly unto my God’- taste of Elizabethan atmosphere
...


Act 5 Scene 2
F’s final soliloquy- marks last hour of his life
o blank verse/iambic pentameter
...

 Uses rhythm to underline passage of time
...

o Sudden 5 syllable word ‘perpetually’- alerts us to what F fears most- eternal suffering
...

o Enjambement- mark’s F futile plea for time- accelerating of rhythm signals F’s inevitable fate
...

 Echoes 1st Soliloquy - going through options- ironic contrast- excitingly looking into future/trying to escape
future
...

 Begging for human existence
...

o Sound effects used to heighten emotional impact- ‘thunder and lightening’/stage directions
...

o Syntax ‘o my Christ! Rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!’- clear F wants his heart to be protectedemphasis on ‘heart’
...

o Marlowe succeeds in capturing the agitations of F’s tortured mind
...

o Bargaining with God evidently pointless- catholic view- could earn salvation v protestant view- God = inscrutable
...

o Classical allusion- Amores by Ovid ‘o lente, lente…’
...


o

o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o

o

o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o

o
o
o

 Accelerating cadence (rising + falling)- only 2 syllables (devil + F) disrupt heavy beat of monosyllable
words
...

 Renaissance idea- human caught betw angels + beasts- striving for salvation
...

‘who pulls me down?’- who’s responsible- devil? F?
‘stretcheth out his arm’- F interps as an angry God
...

Frustrating- not acknowledging God’s mercy- assumes is unworthy but if mercy infinite the no one is unworthytheological conundrum
...

Kastan (critic)- tragedy makes us ask about the source of suffering- ‘malignity of the heavens’- out to get F?
...

F knows his time is up/terrified
...

Surrounded by unnamed characters- creates atmos of concern
...

 Scholars function- evoke sympathy in audience
...

 F more of a complex character then sinner- questions binary good/evil
...

 Protestants believes have to repent/have faith
...

‘he stays my tongue!’- feels stopped physically ‘they hold them, they hold them’- can’t pray
...

Psychological explanation- depressed- unable to feel faith- mental controlling physical
...

‘save yourselves and depart’- generosity of spirit- F not innately evil
...

Asks for day to be longer ‘year, a month, a week, a natural day’- bargaining failure/desperation
...

‘hide me//like a foggy mist!’- asks for world to conceal him
...

‘I’ll burn my books’- give up magic- humbling the Renaissance man
...

 Ambiguous- cursing M? desperate for M’s help?
 Both tragic heroes
...

‘curst be the parents that endangered me’- still not taking full responsibility- although ‘curse thyself’
...


Epilogue- Chorus
o Asks to lament F- tragical fall of brilliant man/waste
...

o ‘burned’- creativity destroyed
...

o Orthodox view ‘heavenly power’- realise we need to acknowledge our limits/don’t meddle with unlawful arts

---