Doctor Faustus and his struggle with power and morality

The play Doctor Faustus written by Christopher Marlowe is a merger between the pursuit
of knowledge and anti-catholic propaganda. Along with the pursuit of knowledge this
play portrays a relationship between knowledge, the power that comes with it and
morality, regarding the way in which that knowledge/power is used. This play is related
with the religious view of Marlowe and his moral code or lack of it. The intention of
these lines is to expose some ideas about the play and if possible compare it to our
contemporary world that in some aspects is as ignorant as the world of that age, and at the
same time has as much possibility to transcend as that world.

The first thing that is worth to mention is how Dr. Faustus obtained his power,
which has several ways of interpretation. To begin with, there is a little moral fight inside
Faustus, that confronts a good angel and a bad angel, who are giving advice to the main
character of this play; the good angel is clearly a representation of the religious morality
of the time, which at some point was fearful of God and reluctant to a certain kind of
progress; the bad angel is a little more complex, because it can be a representation of two
different things, the first being a traditional idea that simply is the opposite of the good
angel, who gives what was supposed to be bad and sinful advice. The second
interpretation of the bad angel is one that is more specific, this is the depiction of the bad
angel as an entity that seeks a way to improve Faustus, and aspires to get as much
knowledge as possible by any means possible. This comparison between the different

views on the angel can be seen in the first appearing of those two characters, as we can
see in the following lines: Go forward, faustus, in that famous art wherein all natures
treasury is contained. be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky, Lord and commander of these
elements. that is the answer given by the bad angel after the good angels tries to
discourage Faustus from summoning the dark arts from the book; as mention before this
answer can be seen just as a negative to the good angel but it can also be described as the
inner part of Faustus that wants to and will get as much knowledge as possible, even if it
means the invocation of a demon. The interpretation we give to the bad angel will
depend on our own view of religious matters and knowledge. By simple and rough
assumption we could determine that the most accurate interpretation is the one in which
the bad angel is not involved in any kind of pursuit and is just playing along the old game
of good cop bad cop, although we have to bear in mind that this play was written during a
time in which humanism was in its prime, and we could say that the basis of humanism is
to encourage the acquisition of knowledge, therefore really the most accurate
interpretation is the one that talks about wisdom and its power.

Before going deeper into matters, such as the ethical stance of Marlowe, we must
make an examination of how Faustus makes himself the bearer of an immense power that
comes from reading a book; after reading this book he makes a contract in which he
promises to give his soul to Lucifer in exchange for all the knowledge. This scene once
again can be seen in two different perspectives, the first being an example of what people
was not supposed to do -summon demons-, and the second point of view is once again

one related at a certain level to humanism, because in the scene it is stated that the only
way to achieve power is by knowledge, which can be obtained only inside books. What
Faustus does after getting his powers and the previous introduction of the two angels
brings a different topic regarding the author, this being marlowes ethical stance in
regards of the way he uses the power invested in him. The two angels are a graphical
representation of the decisions that marlowe has to do, we could think of these two little
characters as the beginning of the now common angel and demon standing on the
shoulders of a certain character from a cartoon, where the little characters are those who
make the decisions, leaving free of responsibility to the actual person; these type of
character are a sort of release to the person to whom they are giving advice. Since we can
see him make some tricks, if we may call it that, one could easily think he lacks from the
rules we know as ethic, which is wrong because as it was mentioned before the presence
of the angels is the embodiment of conscience. We can call them a sort of Jiminy Cricket
if we want to refer to pop culture of the twentieth century.

One of the main themes in Doctor Faustus is the anti-catholic propaganda, but this
anti- religious propaganda was not related only to catholicism, it was meant to cover all
religion . This play seems to have a hidden message, but to know what Marlowe really
wanted to transmit we need to know a little bit about the context in which Marlowe lived;
So if we were aware that Marlowe wrote this play during what we call now the
renaissance we are able to know that if he was not a humanist he was influenced by
humanism, therefore he was battling against ignorance through logic, he was trying to

evidence irregularities in the catholic myths, that even nowadays people fulfill without
questioning its legitimacy or veracity.

Doctor Faustus is a play that can be taken as didactic, for both sides, the
religious and the intellectual side; if someone decides to make an example of what is an
offense to his or her god this person is able to use the play to show how the devil will try
to seduce us with power in order to get our soul; but then again we have the other side of
the coin, in which everything has been thought carefully and we can see this play as an
example of the only way we can achieve real knowledge/power, by reading books, but
not just that we have to commit to the book we are reading, we practically have to make a
contract and give our soul in order to extract even the tiniest bit of information out of a
book.

To finish with this lines I only have to add that in the real world we cannot make a
pact with lucifer and have Mephistopheles under our service to give us advice and to
share all the knowledge of the world, but we have something that is as good as him, I
would even say it is better because we do not have to sell our soul to them and end as
slaves in the burning hells, we have tons of book, along with teachers, who are like our
personal Mephistopheles, waiting by our side until we need them, ready to provide the
power they have with us.

Bibliography
Brotton, Jerry. The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford
University Press. 2006