Dr Faustus: summary, analysis, essay plans, context
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Course
Unit 1 - Drama
Institution
PEARSON (PEARSON)
Includes a scene by scene run through with summary and analysis, context, and a breakdown of key themes into essay plans
Some points raised have been gathered through reading academic literature.
If you learn this, knowledge will not be a problem!!!
Overview of life
● 1564-1593
● Dead at 29
● Born in Canterbury, father was a shoemaker
● Christened at St Georges church
● Attends Kings School and Cambridge university; classically educated
● Product of emerging merchant/ middle class
● Received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1584
● In 1587, the university hesitated to award him his masters because of a
rumour that he had converted to Roman Catholicism and intended to be
a priest at an English college in Rheims
● The degree was awarded as the Privy Council intervened for his ‘faithful
dealing’ and ‘good service’ - (spy????)
Marlovian canon- his greatest works
★ 1584 (translated) Elegies of Ovid, Lucan’s Pharsalic, writes Dido Queen
of Carthage
★ 1587-88 Tamburlaine the Great Part 1 and 2
★ ?1588 Doctor Faustus
★ 1588-89 The Jew of Malta
★ 1591-93 Edward II
★ ?1592 Doctor Faustus
★ 1593 The Massacre at Paris
★ Hero and Leander: finished after death
The writer and the rose
His plays were enormously successful, this was due to Edward Alleyn’s
imposing stage presence. He was tall and his parts as Tamburlaine, Faustus
and Barabas were popular. Marlowe’s plays were the foundation of Alleyn’s
company, Admiral’s men, throughout the 1590s. They split from the Lord
Chamberlain’s men, and mainly performed at the rose theatre, built by Philip
Henslowe.
Controversy
Marlowe was certainly a poet, playwright, translator and radical thinker.
Marlow was also allegedly:
,A rebel, overreacher, brawler, heretic, racist, atheist, Catholic, homosexual,
spy, and (Shakespeare)
Marlowe is killed in a brawl over a bar bill, at the house of Eleanor Bull in
Deptford, 30th May 1593. Killed by Ingram Frizer, who later pleaded
self-defence. All men in attendance had connections with Francis
Walsingham.
Critics across the years
● ‘The most enigmatic genius of the literary renaissance’
● ‘Under house arrest for dissident behaviour’
● ‘If his life was dissident, his works are iconoclastic’
● ‘A startingly brief yet brilliant canon’
● ‘Lust of power in his writings’
● ‘Last impassioned soliloquy of agony and despair is surpassed by
nothing in the whole circle of the English drama’ (Dr Faustus)
● ‘Marlowe stands next to Shakespeare’
Literary terms
Blank verse: iambic lines that do not rhyme
Muse: Poet (or imagined goddess who inspires the poet)
Tragic eponym: Character whose name is the play in a tragedy
Critical comments for AO2
● ‘Acoustic properties’ pomp of proud
● ‘Emotional power of controlled language’
● ‘Word music’
● ‘Care for diction’ excelling all, and sweetly can dispute
● ‘Delight in trisyllabic nouns’ dalliance
● ‘Rhythmic power of blank verse’
● ‘Expressive versatility of iambic pentameter’
● ‘Marlovian swagger’ glutted now with learning’s golden gifts
Luther: reformation ideas
● Papal indulgences attached by Luther: he argued that one cannot buy
one's way into heaven
● Sola scriptura: biblical scripture is the only proper source of theological
knowledge
● Corruption of the Catholic church criticised
● Believe salvation is God’s gift and is given to everyone who practices
good faith
, The morality play
● Essentially ritualistic form of drama: generic and typical plots and
characters
● Innocence leads to experience; fall to redemption
● Christian doctrine of redemption
● Story repeated through audience’s lives- watching the plot of their own
predicament, celebrating happy outcome
● Use popular forms: comedy, bawdings, pantomime
Renaissance humanism
➔ Studia humanitatis a humanities curriculum emphasising the
importance of the classics, appreciates the acquisition of worldly,
practical skills such as literacy, logic, public speaking etc
This replaced mediaeval scholasticism- this basically was from Christian
theology
➔ Scientia potentia est the belief that knowledge is power. This is the
quest for the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge from logical
observational principles rather than theological or philosophical givens.
➔ Books Fautus’ study is lined with books. Emphasis on rhetoric and
language elevated the status of the book as a material and intellectual
object
➔ Key ideas
● Learning and quest for knowledge
● Self-fashioning
● Reinvention
● Scientia potentia est
● Literacy and eloquence
● Rhetoric and logic
● Wit and dialectical thinking
● Revival of the interest in the classics
● ‘Humane’ accomplishments
● The fusion of philosophical introspection and worldly and
outward public roles
➔ RENAISSANCE HUMANISM AIMS TO ACHIEVE TRUTH- THAT IS
THE QUEST OF KNOWLEDGE. Faustus does not (fake academic)
Calvinism
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