Dr Faustus Christopher Marlowe
This play struck me as a spin-off of our last weeks reading, Everyman. Overall it was very hard to read at times but had long stretches of dialogue that were very easy to follow.
One thing I liked was that there weren’t frequent character changes. It can get confusing for me with the language and verbiage of the time period…. And if you throw in a lot of characters it gets confusing.
What Marlowe seemed to convey in this play is that there was no saving Faustus once that contract was signed. The devil used trickery and deception to get the contract signed and once it was that was it. The devil also was given some admirable qualities given that he also would keep his end of the deal.
The play would drag on with paragraphs of Faustus wishing he hadn’t made a pact for his soul then it would jump 24 years into the future. I had to go back and see where the 24 years went. One page he was still lamenting on his eternal doom and the next the clock was striking 12.
With Marlowe being an atheist he didn’t seem to have a dog in this fight. I think he was capitalizing on the sensationalism. It’s probably hard to be compared to Shakespeare. Religion was probably a popular theme that could draw the crowds.
The last thing I’d like to point out is that the An Old Man character seemed to come in and attempt to help Faustus but basically Faustus was to weak willed to try and fight for his soul. Is this some sort of message that Marlowe was putting out? That the religious man is too weak (in his opinion) to fight for his soul? Seems to be a little bit of a condescending tone to me….what do you guys think?
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