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Summary of Doctor Faustus with A* analysis
Summary of key and interesting quotes from scenes in Doctor Faustus, with explanations, analysis, and context provided.
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Chor •“Base of stock” The way that the Chorus introducesus •“Pro ts in divinity” Faustus, the play’s protagonist, is
•“Graced with doctor’s name” significant, since it reflects a commitment
•“Till swollen with cunning of a self-conceit, his to Renaissance values. The European
waxen wings did mount above his reach” Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth
•“For falling to a devilish exercise” centuries witnessed a rebirth of interest in
•“glu ed” classical learning and inaugurated a new
emphasis on the individual in painting and
•“cursed necromancy”
literature. In the medieval era that
•Nothing so sweet as magic is to him” preceded the Renaissance, the focus of
scholarship was on God and theology; in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the
focus turned toward the study of
humankind and the natural world,
culminating in the birth of modern science
in the work of men like Galileo Galilei and
Isaac Newton.
The Prologue locates its drama squarely
in the Renaissance world, where
humanistic values hold sway. Classical
and medieval literature typically focuses
on the lives of the great and famous—
saints or kings or ancient heroes. But this
play, the Chorus insists, will focus not on
ancient battles between Rome and
Carthage, or on the “courts of kings” or the
“pomp of proud audacious deeds”
(Prologue.4–5). Instead, we are to witness
the life of an ordinary man, born to humble
parents. The message is clear: in the new
world of the Renaissance, an ordinary
man like Faustus, a common-born scholar,
is as important as any king or warrior, and
his story is just as worthy of being told.
Scen •“And live and die in Aristotle’s works” In proceeding through the various
e1 •“A greater subject eth Faustus’ wit” intellectual disciplines and citing
•“The end of physic is our body’s health@ authorities for each, he is following the
•Yet art tho s ll but Faustus, and a man.” dictates of medieval scholarship, which
•“Wouldst thou make man to live eternally” held that learning was based on the
•“Too servile and illiberal for me” authority of the wise rather than on
•“The reward of sin is death? That’s hard.” experimentation and new ideas. This
soliloquy, then, marks Faustus’s rejection
•“And necroman c books are heavenly”
of this medieval model, as he sets aside
•“A sound magician is a mighty god. Here each of the old authorities and resolves to
Faustus, try thy brains to gain a deity” strike out on his own in his quest to
•“lay that damned book aside, and gaze not on become powerful through magic.
it, lest it tempt thy soul, and heap God’s heavy
wrath upon thy head” he uses religious language—as he does
•“Tis magic, magic that hath ravished me.” throughout the play—to describe the dark
•“O this cheers my soul!” world of necromancy that he enters.
•“This night I’ll conjure, though I die therefore”
Having gone upward from medicine and
law to theology, he envisions magic and
necromancy as the crowning discipline,
even though by most standards it would
be the least noble.
The logic he uses to reject religion may be
flawed, but there is something impressive
in the breadth of his ambition, even if he
pursues it through diabolical means.
ttfi ti ti fitt
, Scen •“Sic probo” The ba le between academics and the lower
e2 •“For is not he corpus naturale? And is not that classes.
mobile?” The light humour either deals with what
•“I am by nature phlegma c, slow to wrath, and happened before and or foreshadows what’s
prone to lechery” to come.
•“I will set my countenance like a precision”
•“Lord bless you” It is characteristic of Elizabethan
•“I fear he is fallen into that damned art” dramatists to have the dramatic persona
•“Were he a stranger, and not allied to me, yet speak in a language that is appropriate to
should I grieve for him” their characters. The higher or nobler
•“see if he by his grave council can reclaim him” characters speak in an elevated and
•“Nothing can reclaim him” formal language. The lower characters
usually speak in prose. Faustus speaks in
"Marlowe's Mighty Line," while Wagner
speaks in a simple prose. Shakespeare
also uses this same technique in many of
his comedies. For instance, in A
Midsummer Night's Dream, the noble
characters speak in digni ed language
and the rustic characters use a more
common idiom and speech.
Scen •“gloomy shadow of the earth… Orion’s drizzling In this scene, Faustus takes the rst
e3 hook” de nite and inexorable steps toward his
•“preyed and sacri ced to them” own damnation as he abjures the trinity
•“signs and erring stars” and appeals to the black powers of hell.
•“fear not Faustus, but be resolute” Mephistophilis' rst appearance is also
•Incanta on dramatically effective because he appears
•“I charge thee to return and change thy shape, so suddenly and in a horrifying shape. The
thou art too ugly to a end on me; go and return symbolic signi cance of his appearance is
an old Franciscan friar, that holy shape becomes obvious: hell is a place of horror and
a devil best.” damnation and anything emanating from
•“I see there’s virtue in my heavenly words!” there would appear extremely ugly.
•“How pliant is this Mephistopheles, full of In the Renaissance view, humans lived in
obedience and humility” an ordered universe which was governed
•“I am a servant to great Lucifer” by principles of law. Even Mephistophilis
•“For when we hear one rack the name of God, recognizes that the universe is governed
abjure the scriptures, and his saviour Christ, we by law, but Faustus is working under the
y in hope to get his glorious soul” mistaken belief that he has been able to
•“Why this is hell, nor am I out of it… tormented abrogate divine law by his conjuration.
with ten thousand hells in being deprived of
everlas ng bliss?”
•“Learn thou of Faustus manly for tude, and
scorn those joys thou never shalt possess”
Scen •“he would give his soul to the devil for a The antics of Wagner and the clown
e4 shoulder of mu on” provide a comic counterpoint to the
•“Bring your self presently unto me for seven Faustus-Mephastophilis scenes. The
(Com clown jokes that he would sell his soul to
years”
edy •About lice- “ they are as bold with my esh as if the devil for a well-seasoned shoulder of
w/ they had paid for my meat and drink” mutton, and Wagner uses his newly
gained conjuring skill to frighten the clown
clow •“Baliol and Belcher… Banios and Belcheos”
into serving him. Like Faustus, these
n) •“Pre y frisking ea… O I’ll ckle the pre y
clownish characters (whose scenes are so
wenches’s plackets!” different from the rest of the play that
•“Villain, call me Master Wagner; and let thy le some writers have suggested that they
eye de diametarily xed upon my right heel, with were written by a collaborator rather than
quasi ves gias nostras insistere.” by Marlowe himself) use magic to
summon demons. But where Faustus is
grand and ambitious and tragic, they are
low and common and absurd, seeking
mutton and the ability to turn into a mouse
or a rat rather than world power or
fantastic wealth. As the play progresses,
though, Faustus’s grandeur diminishes,
and he sinks down toward the level of the
clowns, suggesting that degradation
fl fi tt ttti ti
ttfiflfifi fi tt ti tifi ti fi fl tt ft
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