Faustus

Question 1

Characters

Answer 1

• chorus
• dr Faustus
• Wagner
• good and bad angel
• valdes and Cornelius
• three scholars
• lucifer
• Mephistopheles
• robin
• beelzebub
• seven sins
• dick
• pope
• horse courser
• duke of vanholt
• old man

Various Mute Characters, including Alexander the Great, Alexander’s Paramour, Helen of Troy, Devils, Friars, Attendants, Soldiers, and Servants

Question 2

Chorus

Answer 2

the Chorus relates the prologue which introduces much of the plot, tells of Faustus’s magical experiences as the devil’s promises are fulfilled, and who also offers the final comments at play’s end.

Question 3

Dr Faustus

Answer 3

A brilliant scholar, Doctor Faustus sells his soul to the devil in exchange for limitless knowledge and powerful black magic, which leaves him yet unfulfilled. Even when repentance is still within his grasp, he is too proud to ask God for forgiveness, and his pride ultimately seals his fate.

Question 4

Wagner

Question 5

Good and bad angel

Answer 5

• Good - Trying to save his subject’s soul, the Good Angel attempts to convince Faustus on several occasions that repentance is still possible and that he must turn away from the devil and his enticements.
• Bad - The opposing force, the bad angel convinces Faustus that repentance is not possible and that devils will tear him in pieces if he tries.

Question 6

Valdes and Cornelius

Answer 6

Magicians who instruct Faustus in the art of black magic.

Question 7

Three scholars

Answer 7

Students of Faustus, the Three Scholars come in search of Faustus early in the play, only to find that he has fallen into a damned art from which he may not be able to be reclaimed. At play’s end, they find Faustus’s remains after the devils have made their claim on him.

Question 8

Lucifer

Answer 8

The prince of devils, Lucifer convinces Faustus, through various enticements, to give up his prayers to God once and for all and to agree to a pact with him.

Question 9

Mephistopheles

Answer 9

Mephistophilis is a demon whom Faustus conjures up while first using magic. Readers initially feel sympathy for the demon when he attempts to explain to Faustus the consequences of abjuring God and Heaven. Mephistophilis gives Faustus a description of Hell and the continuous horrors it possesses; he wants Faustus to know what he is getting himself into before going through with the bargain:

Think’st thou that I who saw the face of God
And tasted the eternal joy of heaven
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands
Which strikes a terror to my fainting soul! [30]

However, Faustus believes that supernatural powers are worth a lifetime in Hell:

Say he (Faustus) surrender up to him (Lucifer) his soul
So he will spare him four and twenty years,
Letting him live in all voluptuousness
Having thee (Mephistophilis) ever to attend on me [31]

Some scholars[who?] argue that Mephistophilis depicts the sorrow that comes with separation from God. Mephistophilis is foreshadowing the pain Faustus would have to endure, should he go through with his plan.[32] In this facet, Faustus can be likened to Icarus, whose ambition was the source of his misery and the cause of his death.

Question 10

Robin

Answer 10

A servant and clown to Wagner and a sometimes magician.

Question 11

Beelzebub

Answer 11

A devil.

Question 12

The seven sins

Answer 12

Pride, Covetousness, Envy, Wrath, Gluttony, Sloth, Lechery

they are led by a piper and appear before, even delighting, Faustus with the prospect of what he might find in hell.

Question 13

Pope Adrian

Answer 13

Having grown arrogant and abusive in his power, Pope Adrian becomes a prospect for humiliation at the hands of Faustus and Mephistopheles, who disguise themselves as cardinals and cause mass confusion.

Question 14

Horse courser

Answer 14

A clown, the Horse-Courser makes the mistake of buying a horse from Faustus.

Question 15

Duke

Answer 15

Faustus performs his conjuring tricks for the duke’s amusement.

Question 16

Old man

Answer 16

Appearing at the play’s end, the Old Man attempts to convince Faustus that there is still time to repent and save his soul from hell.

Question 17

Context
The renaissance

Answer 17

• means rebirth
• a period of European history which followed he middle ages
• its development had attributed to a new confidence in the potential of man.
• renaissance was characterised by great achievement both culturally and in the advancement of geographical and scientific knowledge
• represented a massive assertion of the learned person’s right to challenge accepted orthodoxy = pushing the boundaries of human knowledge
• a new individualism in life through religion and art

Is Faustus a renaissance man:
- he is characterised by ambition and intellectual cUriosity and a desire to explore
- strives to push back the limits of human knowledge and power
BUT
- he quests for knowledge in areas forbidden by renaissance thinkers
- he is distracted from intellectual curiosity by the pursuit of earthly pleasures - celebrity status
- he is ultimately punished for his actions

Question 18

The great chain of being

Answer 18

• going beyong boundaries set bu the chain of being
• simultaneously displaying the grand spirit of human aspiration and the more questionable hunger for superhuman powers, faustus seems in the play to be exhalted and punished.
• marlowe’s play embodies renaissance ambiguity suggesting both its fear and its fascination with pushing beyond human limitations

Question 19

Humanism

Answer 19

• the fulfilment of life through reason and sciences rather than religious devotion and faith.

Question 20

Influence of social attitudes

Answer 20

faustus is born base of stock = experiencing poverty, lack of education yet he is still unhappy with his position
in the final acts arguably marlowe restores
conventional hierarchy due to faustus’ fate
undercurrent of social
rebellion = duke and duchess
speak in prose rather than elevated blank verse and do not behave in a noble way = marlowe brings scenes of low comedy to palatial/noble settings.

Question 21

Protestant reformation

Answer 21

the 16th-century religious, political, intellectual and cUltural upheaval that splintered Catholic Europe.

Question 22

Calvinism

Answer 22

• john calvin a french protestant invited to put his doctrine into practise
• stressed god’s power and humanity’s predestined fate
• resulted in theocratic regime of enforced, austere moralitv

Question 23

Lutheranism

Answer 23

• martin luther - 16th century reformulated
  certain basic tenets of christian belief
• argued stopping extravagant preaching and indulgence

Question 24

Christian morality

Answer 24

elizabethan age there was a strict dichotomised attitude towards right and wrong
- religion of
central importance
- abandoning god, experimenting with black magic and forbidden
knowledge . = unforgivable sin
- the audience would have been more familiar with the concept of sinful distraction and soul poisoning influences of seven deadly sins
- firm belief in the christian cosmology of angels and devils

Question 25

The damnable

Answer 25

• the damnable life, was more than orthodox moral narrative; by exploring Faustus’ inner conflicts and motivations,
• Marlowe turned the story into a powerful and ambiguous renaissance tragedy, raising questions to do with sin, damnation and bounds set upon human learning and experience.

Question 26

significance of lack of sleep (shown in act 4 scene 1)

Answer 26

to an elizabethan audience this would indicate the spiritual and mental condition of a person
his tortured mind is not allowing him to sleep (his conscious is speaking)

Question 27

“the reward of sin is death”

Answer 27

Faustus fails to quote the rest of the verse from the bible

Question 28

“Waxen wings did mount above his reach”

Answer 28

The chorus refer to Icarus to foreshadow Faustus’ fall, his ambition will drag him down

Question 29

“These necromantic books are heavenly”

Answer 29

Blasphemy and contrast in this sentence show the delusion in Faustus and how he worships ungodly things

Question 30

‘Sweet Mephistopheles’ ‘ my Faustus’

Answer 30

Faustus’ admiration for Mephistopheles blurry the master - servant relationship and could be interpreted as homoerotic

Question 31

“ this is hell, nor am I out of it”

Answer 31

Hell is not a geographical place but the state of one’s soul

Question 32

“ I think hells a fable”

Answer 32

Faustus is perhaps in denial, and tries to assert his strength by belittling Hell, to hide his fear.

Question 33

‘My blood congeals’

Answer 33

Natural, his body tries to prevent what the mind wants

Question 34

“I am a servant to great Lucifer’

Answer 34

Is Meph ever truly
Faustus’ servant? Or is he manipulating Faustus in order to gain his soul?

Question 35

Iambic and Unrhymed, with Techniques

Answer 35

Marlowe’s combines his “mighty line” of iambic pentameter – five beats to a line of unstressed/stressed syllables – and blank (rhythm but no rhyme) verse with literary techniques. His most famous “Faustus” line – “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?” – is not only exemplary blank verse in iambic pentameter, but also carries the ironic imagery of Helen’s beauty launching Trojan destruction. It is also an example of metonymy, where a part represents a whole; Helen’s face is her entirety, a woman who carries sensuality and death together.

Question 36

Mythological and Satanic Allusions

Answer 36

Helen is only one of the mythological allusions that Marlowe employs; his literary technique of combining ancient “over-reachers” with his protagonist deepens the meanings behind Faustus’ doomed impulses. Faustus identifies himself with Icarus, the son of Daedalus who flew with waxen wings too near the sun; with Oedipus, who plucked out his eyes when he discovered his real self; with Prometheus, who brought light to mankind but suffered Zeus’ wrath. Faustus sees himself as greater than all; Marlowe’s irony is that Faustus also alludes to the biggest over-reacher of all, the Jehovah-defying Satan.

Question 37

Irony, Paradox and Damnation

Answer 37

Marlowe uses the techniques of irony and paradox to explicate both his theme of mankind’s fall and deepen the meaning of his protagonist’s diction. Faustus says he will “be resolute” and “fix’d” as he bargains with Satan; ironically, when his end comes in his last, splendid soliloquy, he begs the heavens to dissolve him into elements of air, water, earth – he avoids mentioning fire – before remembering his soul “must live still to be plagued in hell.” Paradoxically, Faustus wishes to be solid and liquid, whole and dissolved, to escape the permanence of damnation.

Question 38

Figuratives Galore

Answer 38

Figurative literary techniques abound in “Faustus,” almost all used ironically. Helen is “clad in the beauty of a thousand stars,” an extended metaphor to make the hellish woman heavenly. Faustus calls “lente currite noctis equi,” begging time – the horses of night – to stop moving, a figure that combines apostrophe and personification; ironically, time moves on. Even the final lines personify Faustus’ lost wisdom ironically: “burned is Apollo’s laurel bough.”

Question 39

Structure

Answer 39

The play is in blank verse and prose in thirteen scenes (1604) or twenty scenes (1616).

Blank verse is largely reserved for the main scenes; prose is used in the comic scenes. Modern texts divide the play into five acts; act 5 being the shortest. As in many Elizabethan plays, there is a chorus (which functions as a narrator), that does not interact with the other characters but rather provides an introduction and conclusion to the play and, at the beginning of some Acts, introduces events that have unfolded.

Along with its history and language style, scholars have critiqued and analysed the structure of the play. Leonard H. Frey wrote a document entitled In the Opening and Close of Doctor Faustus, which mainly focuses on Faustus’s opening and closing soliloquies. He stresses the importance of the soliloquies in the play, saying: “the soliloquy, perhaps more than any other dramatic device, involved the audience in an imaginative concern with the happenings on stage”. By having Doctor Faustus deliver these soliloquies at the beginning and end of the play, the focus is drawn to his inner thoughts and feelings about succumbing to the devil.

The soliloquies also have parallel concepts. In the introductory soliloquy, Faustus begins by pondering the fate of his life and what he wants his career to be. He ends his soliloquy with the solution: he will give his soul to the devil. Similarly in the closing soliloquy, Faustus begins pondering, and finally comes to terms with the fate he created for himself. Frey also explains: “The whole pattern of this final soliloquy is thus a grim parody of the opening one, where decision is reached after, not prior to, the survey”.

Question 40

Structure

Answer 40

There are five acts in this drama. Blank verse was used to write it. A blank verse is an unrhymed iambic pentameter.
At the opening and end of the excerpt, a chorus plays a role comparable to that of a narrator.
There are captions in brackets in this extract. The actors do not pronounce them because captions explain what is happening on stage, such as the half-hour clock, the Devil’s entrance, or the sound of thunder and lightning. They are called ‘stage directions’. They provide details about the atmosphere and setting, as well as how characters enter and exit the stage.
Faustus was a scholar. Faustus was a professor at a university. He did, however, have an ambition of becoming wise and knowing everything. As a result, he made a contract with Lucifer (Mephistoteles), the demon. So he made a deal with Mephistoteles, the devil, in which he agreed to give up his soul in exchange for everything he desired in 24 years.
After 24 years,…
It is the last hour of Faustus’ life in his house. He says he hopes to save himself with all his convictions, but time passes and those dreams are beginning to fade.
The devils enter the house at 00.00 o’clock and leave with Faustus.