Doctor Faustus | On Knowledge, Human Nature, and Fate

This blog is meant to be a sort of curio cabinet for my thoughts on Renaissance literature. Much of what will be posted here will be somewhat disjointed thought processes result from my interaction with Renaissance texts and Renaissance culture, and to academic criticism and contemporary opinions (scholarly and otherwise) on these aspects of the Renaissance. While my writings will no doubt be sporadic in content and form at first, I hope to produce significantly more consistent posts within the next couple of weeks. I would have put all this in the "blog description" section of this blog, but I like my semi-humorous (in my opinion) subtitle too much to remove it. Oh, and as a final note, while I am a great fan of Shakespeare's, I will be tending to write more on other authors and works of the Renaissance, at least for the time being. Perhaps I will throw in a witty reference or two every now and then, when it seems appropriate.

Anyhow, we begin with Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, a favorite play of mine. It is important to explain that I will be working exclusively with the A-text here, though I have nothing against the B-text (I have read it also and actually enjoy it more, but the A-text just happens to be what am reading at the moment). I would like to address three aspects of Doctor Faustus which may be seen within the first 5 scenes of the play: desire for knowledge, human nature, and fate.

Desire for knowledge is undoubtedly a key aspect of Doctor Faustus. We see within the first scene that, having learned all that he can about philosophy, medicine, law, and theology, Faustus gives them all up to search for something new. His desire to study black magic is not due to an innate fascination with the art; rather, it is because the study of black magic would allow him to both pursue studies in a field which he had not pursued previously and learn, with the help of Mephistopheles, all he desired about heaven and hell and all else that he could not learn through traditional study. The question that must be posed is whether Faustus's desire to learn is excessive. I would say no. For centuries people have conjectured about what happens after death, if anything at all. People have wondered if there is a heaven and a hell, and Faustus is no different. "Others have not sold their soul to the devil," one might respond. Perhaps, we cannot know for sure, but regardless, the problem here lies with Faustus's method of obtaining knowledge, not his abstract desire for it. There is more to this thought process, of course. Is infinite knowledge worth the price Faustus must pay? Does the knowledge that Faustus gains beneficial to anyone but himself? However, I simply wish to provide a brief overview of my thoughts on this matter before moving on. I will, perhaps, expand upon these points in later posts.

Faustus's human nature is also a key aspect of Doctor Faustus. Is Faustus innately evil and sign the deal with the devil of his own free will, or is he tempted by Mephistopheles and the evil angels into signing his deal with the devil? The one thing the struck me in particular in the scenes where the good and bad angels appear to Faustus is that they never lie to him in order to persuade him. Instead, they appeal to different aspects of Faustus's nature. The good angel appeals to the part of Faustus that believes that there is a god that will forgive him and protect him if he gives up the practice of black magic and lives a life relatively free of sin. The bad angel appeals to the part of Faustus that desires money, wealth, knowledge, etc. Both angels, in essence, simply say, "If you choose my side, this is what you will get." Yet Faustus, at least in the first few scenes of the play, always sides with the bad angel. He chooses to have Mephistopheles as his servant and to obtain infinite knowledge and power. When given this simple choice, I believe that Faustus reveals his true nature; he would rather obtain power, wealth, and material possessions rather than the guarantee of a life in heaven. There is no persuasion, just a demonstration of what Faustus himself values the most.

Finally, fate is also an important, yet less immediately obvious, aspect of Doctor Faustus. Faustus is born into a low family, yet he excels in all of studies at university and quickly receives his degree. He masters philosophy, medicine, law, and theology (as mentioned previously), and still has the potential and desire to learn even more. Is this his fate? Does his fate allow him to transcend the low status with which he was born? Further, the heavens "conspire" against Faustus, which makes his over-ambition and downfall seemingly inevitable. Can we blame Faustus, then? I think not. Marlowe certainly makes it seem as though Faustus's fate was out of his hands. Even when Faustus is beginning to have second thoughts about making a deal with the devil, he still chooses to make the deal instead of accepting the good angel's offer to turn to God for salvation. His fate is to sell his soul in exchange for power. As many times as he doubts the decision he will inevitably make, he still goes through with it in the end. While the play may, at first, seem to focus on Faustus's decisions, I think its focus is actually on the inevitability of Faustus to make the choices he does.

On a note which just occurred to me, Marlowe seems to be making a distinction between knowledge and salvation in this play. If Faustus chooses Mephistopheles's offer, he will have the opportunity to wield infinite power and obtain infinite knowledge, yet if he follows the good angel's advice, he is seemingly offered nothing but "God's Grace." This characterization of knowledge as evil and Faustus as an extremely intelligent man who sees value in this knowledge is amusing. It is hard to tell whether Marlowe is making the point that the pursuit of knowledge is evil and that one should turn to God instead, or satirizing the view that knowledge is evil and arguing that turning to God keeps one from knowledge. Certainly there is a biblical allusion to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in both scenarios; God attempts to keep Adam and Eve away from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, either because the knowledge its fruit bestows is inherently evil or because he wants to keep knowledge from the pair simply because he desires they choose him over knowledge (or, in other words, as a test of whether they will obey him or not), depending on how you read it.

--ARR
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"So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends."
--From William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream