Review Of Doctor Faustus Play By Christopher Marlowe

I get that Christopher Marlowe was writing this play during a time when people were really coming down on the Catholic Church — its own corruption was primarily to blame, although this is arguably an inevitable fate for any institution run by men — and a great number of his potential audience were starting to follow new-fangled ideas like Protestantism, so I can respect where he’s coming from ideologically and how that kind of thinking influenced the way he wrote certain scenes. I still didn’t enjoy this piece in the least. Quite frankly, reading it was only slightly less fun or interesting than having teeth pulled.

The entire story can be summed up in one sentence: “Faustus, ya done goofed.” I mean, all I could say was “come on man! Dude, you’re supposed to be smart enough to pursue multiple fields of study and have a doctorate in theology (if I was reading correctly; I might have misunderstood this point), but your dumbass thinks that all those fields of study are too ‘constrained’ or ‘limited’ for you, so you’re just like ‘hurr, hurr I’m gonna do magic and sell my soul to see dead people.”’ Marlowe as narrator also calls Faustus out on this and declares it an act of arrogance comparable to Icarus flying too close to the sun, except of course it’s Faustus who gets burned this time. I can sympathize with boredom, with wanting to travel or explore or test your limits — but I cannot commiserate with someone who is such an ignoramus that he’d honestly think taking up the black arts or selling his soul to the devil is a good idea. For one thing, if I were to declare an allegiance, it’s not going to be to the colossal asshole who was petty enough to try to take down humanity for the sole reason of giving a middle finger to the Creator he already got pawned by and lost to in battle like a total noob. Who wants to side with a loser, especially in any eternal sense?

I may have my doubts and struggles with faith, but if there is in fact an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent intelligent designer out there, I’m totally on that team. All the blasphemy and pro-Lucifer language in this story had my skin crawling and had me crossing myself. I was extremely uncomfortable to say the least. I also hated how Faustus could plainly see that Mephistopheles and Lucifer existed and were capable of making deals, and yet he was still convinced there was no Hell. As the Republicans are always bitching about, “you can’t get anything in this world for free.” How dumb or in denial did he have to be to think that there was no downside to his dealing with the powers of darkness? That there was no Hell to which he’d be sent when literal representatives from Hell were right in front of him? Also, if you are going to be in denial enough to go ahead and sell your soul to Satan AND you’re going to put your knowledge of the law to work by writing your own contract, try writing one that actually works in your favor! For fucks sake, where did he get the idea of limiting himself to only 24 years of power (and most of that misspent on either whoring around and/or entertaining nobility)?

Given what lengths Satan is reputed to go in the pursuit of obtaining souls, it was literally a seller’s market; Faustus could have asked for a lot more than what he received. If he was able to be so particular about the details of making sure Mephistopheles would be answerable to him and under his power, why couldn’t he give more thought to having loopholes for himself that he could exploit, built in failsafe clauses in case he changed his mind or didn’t get exactly what he wanted in the way that he wanted it? A good lawyer knows “the devil is in the details” (quite literally so in this story). I think there must be some sort of metaphorical or symbolic connection to the 24 years that admittedly is going over my head, otherwise, Faustus simply has the same level of common thinking sense as a three-day old dog turd.Don’t get me started on the servant, Wagner, and his cronies, Robin and Dick (essentially an Elizabethan version of Beavis and Butthead). Their goals in life essentially amount to bossing someone else around and getting drunk and laid for free (not really that different from a large number of young men if we’re being honest). Wagner can do magic like Faustus just by watching him, so obviously you don’t necessarily have to sell your soul for power, which makes Faustus out to be a bigger fool than he already was to me. The other two idiots somehow manage to conjure up Mephistopheles, who is rightly pissed and turns them into animals (a representation of their base natures).

Getting back to Faustus, in my opinion he totally wastes his 24 years, as well as multiple opportunities to give such foolishness up and repent. Everyone kept telling him to repent, the good angel and the symbolic old man included, but then Mephistopheles and the other demons would simply say “oh, it is too late now” and despite the fact that everyone knows demons lie, he just accepts it and keeps going forward in spite of the alarm bells in his head. Even at the bitter end, he cries out for Lucifer when he could have called out for God (and it gets him torn limb from limb). I wanted to smack him upside his stupid head repeatedly. I abhorred this story and I’ll be glad if I never have to read it ever again. Honestly, I wish we could have read some of Marlowe’s poetry instead of this bullshit. “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” is immensely enjoyable reading and I would have loved to break that down in class.