Dr Faustus as a man of Renaissance.
Prepared by: Dhaval Diyora
Roll No: 05
Paper – 1: THE RENAISSANCE LITERATURE
M.A (English): Sem -1
Enrollment No: 2069108420190013
Batch: 2018-20
Email: d.d.diyora@gmail.com
Submitted to:Smt .S. B Gardi, Department of English,MK Bhavnagar University.
Topic: Dr Faustus as a man of Renaissance.
Prepared by: Dhaval Diyora
Roll No: 05
Paper – 1: THE RENAISSANCE LITERATURE
M.A (English): Sem -1
Enrollment No: 2069108420190013
Batch: 2018-20
Email: d.d.diyora@gmail.com
Submitted to:Smt .S. B Gardi, Department of English,MK Bhavnagar University.
Topic: Dr Faustus as a man of Renaissance.
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"Rebel and pioneer though he was, Marlowe was yet a product of his own age. The introduction of the Good and Bad Angels. of the minor devils and of the Seven Deadly Sins in Faustus links him with the drama of the later Faustus's inexhaustible thirst for knowledge, his worship of beauty, his passion for the classics, his skepticism, his interest in sorcery and magic, his admiration for Machiavelli and for super-human ambition and will in the pursuit of ideals of beauty or power or whatever they may be, prove the author to be a man of Renaissance.
Faustus appears as a man of the Renaissance in the very opening scene when, rejecting the traditional subjects of study, he turns to magic and considers the varied uses to which he can put his magic skill after he has acquired it. He contemplated the "world of profit and delight of power of lle honor, of omnipotence" which he hopes to enjoy as a magician In dwelling upon the advantages which will accrue to him by the exercise of his magic power, he shows his ardent curiosity his desire for wealth and luxury, his nationalism, and his longing for power. These were precisely the qualities of the Renaissance, which was the age of discovery. A number of allusions in the first scene of Act I maintain our sense of the enlarged outlook and extended horizons of that great period of English history. Faustus desires attempt gold from the East Indies, pearls from the depths of the sea, pleasant fruits even be and princely delicacies from America. His friend Valdes refers to the Indians in the Spanish colonies, to Lapland giants, to the argosies of Venice, and t the annual plate-fleet which supplied gold and silver to the Spanish treasury from the New World. There was much in this scene to inflame the hearts of the English audiences who must have heartily approved of Faustus's intention to chase away the Prince of Parma from the Netherlands. After all, only the way defeat of the Spanish Armada had prevented Parma from invading England in Doctor 1588. Englishmen knew also about 'the fiery keel at Antwerp's bridge," Thus Faustus's dream of power included much that had a strong appeal for the English people including Marlowe himself.
Faustus certainly embodies the new enquiring and aspiring spirit of the Renaissance. Marlowe expresses in this play both his fervent sympathy with that new spirit an recognition of the danger into which could lead those who were dominated by it. The danger is clearly seen in Faustus's last soliloquy in which Faustus The offers to burn his books. No doubt these books are chiefly the books of magic, but we are surely reminded of his exclamation to the Scholars earlier in this scene: "O would I had never seen Wittenberg, never read the book ! "Thus we get the impression that Faustus attributed his downfall, partly at least, to his learning.
"Doctor Faustus, although without specific Italian sources, owes its audacity of thought and temper to Renaissance Italy, and treats with a comparable reach of mind, questions that troubled Italian thinkers. To get some impression of the Renaissance quality of Doctor Faustus, it is enough to read three Italian works (readily available in translation) -Petrarch's On His Own Ignorance, Lorenzo Valla's Dialogue on Free Will, and Pico Della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man. Petrarch reconciles Renaissance delight in life and learning with an Augustinian recognition of the limitations of man and devotion to eloquence with a devotion to dogma. Valla's elegant argument illuminates his theme but leaves its paradoxes as teasing as it finds them, adding a stringent warning against pursuing moral questions too far. Pico vindicates the magus who weds earth to heaven and lowers things to the endowments and powers of higher things.
The Italian who most often anticipates the dynamic and mysterious qualities of Marlowe's intellectual vision is Marsilio Ficino. Ficino shares Marlowe's awareness of the sanctity and torment of desire-"by a natural instinct every soul strives in a continuous effort both to know all truths by the intellect and to enjoy all things by the will" Through its striving the soul reaches out towards harmony with the cosmic order, and by the exercise of the four furors (music and poetry, religious rites, prophecy, and love) man can enjoy the most beneficent influences from the stars and planets. Whether we treat Faicino's astrological theory of the power of words as fantasy, as naive science or as valid allegory, we must recognize it as an attempt to explain why eloquence seems often to refresh out moral being even before we are fully alive to its meaning. Marlowe exercises the poetic furore without giving an astrological account of it. But his rhetoric often commands imagery of cosmic space, and the verse of Tamburlaine is indebted to Renaissance cosmography. Marlowe's distinction was to make the verbal magic efficacious in English-to put audiences under a spell. His eloquence often endows sweetness with power, and power with sweetness, in a way that disarms conventional moral judgments. The problem arises in Doctor Faustus, for the play does not leave us free to assume uncritically that poetic eloquence is one thing and moral truth quite another. It may be claimed that what we value most at the end is not the piety of the good but the rhetoric of the damned."
Doctor Faustus is not only the first major Elizabethan tragedy, but the first to explore the tragic possibilities of the direct clash between the renaissance compulsions and the Hebraic Christian tradition Tamburlaine symbolizes the outward thrust of the Renaissance, (and Marlowe conceived of this play as a tragedy because of its pictures of suffering and destruction, and its spectacle of death overtaking in the end even the mightiest of worldly conquerors). But in Doctor Faustus Marlowe turned the focus inward. Here he depicted the human soul as the tragic battle-field and wrote the first "Christian tragedy".
The play has a typical morality-play ending. It closes with the Chorus warning "forward wits"" against such fiendish practices Faustus followed. But, if the play has a pious conclusion, the truth of the play goes far beyond the final piety of the speech of the Chorus. No figure medieval morality-plays talks so much or takes us so deep into his own b as Faustus does. No figure of the morality-plays; he suggests Adam (he knowledge-seeker), and he suggests Prometheus (the defiant hero of the Greek tradition). In other words, Faustus put into an old legend a new meaning. He inserted into the old medieval or Christian moral equation t new and ambiguous dynamic of the Renaissance. He treated the legend Faustus in such a manner as to give it a fascination and dignity never realized in previous treatments of the story. He made Faustus the first modern man**".The story of this 24-year action, compressed by Marlowe in a few vivid scenes, represents a soul torn between the desire to stretch to its utmost limit its new mastery and freedom on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the claims of the old teachings a defiance of which meant guilt and a growing sense of alienation from society.
The legend of Faustus was believed to be a terrible and ennobling example, and a warning to all Christians to avoid the pitfalls of science, pleasure, and ambition which had led to Faustus's damnation. But it has to be noted that all that the Renaissance valued is represented in what the devil has to offer, and one is left wondering whether it is the religious life or the worldly life that is more attractive. All that the Good Angel in this play has to offer is "warnings". For instance, the Good Angel warns Faustus against reading the book of magic because it will bring God's "heavy wrath" upon his head, and asks him to think of heaven. To this, the Evil Angel replies: No Faustus think of honor and of wealth". At another point in the play, the Evil Angel urges Faustus to go forward in the famous art of magic and to become a lord and commander of the earth. There can be no doubt that the devil here represents the natural ideal of the Renaissance by appealing to the vague but soul which wishes to launch itself upon the wide world. No wonder that Faustus, a child of the Renaissance, cannot resist e devil's suggestion. We like him for his love of life, for his trust in Nature for his enthusiasm for beauty. He speaks for us all when looking at Helen, he cries:
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
(Act V Scene II. Lines 91-92)
In a word, Marlowe's Faustus is a martyr to everything that the renaissance valued-power, curious knowledge, enterprise, wealth, and beauty. The play shows Marlowe's own passion for these Renaissance values.
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