The Tragic Damnation of Doctor Faustus

Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is the classic tale of a man who makes a pact with the devil and, as a result, forfeits his soul. This fact alone should qualify it as a tragedy, but when we read Marlowe’s play we aren’t quite sure if it deserves to be called one because of the very arrogant, stoic, and self-righteous attitude that Faustus exhibits throughout most of the play. He exhibits this behavior when he tells Mephistophilis, “This word ‘damnation’ terrifies me not,” and he even goes so far as to say:

What, is great Mephistophilis so passionate
For being deprived of the joys of heaven?
Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude
And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess.

Faustus’ damnation seems less tragic and more justified in the beginning when he does appear so arrogant, but later on we find that he may really have been manipulated by Mephistophilis from the beginning. In fact, it may be quite plausible to say that he was led by Mephistophilis into practicing black magic since “near the end, gloating over Faustus' despair, [Mephistophilis] says:

when thou took’st the book
To view the scriptures, then I turned the leaves
And led thine eye.

The only incident in the play to which this could refer is the collocation of biblical texts that prompts Faustus to renounce divinity in the opening scene.”[1]
In the beginning of the first Act, after Faustus reads the passage in Jerome’s Bible which says, “The reward of sin is death.” He reasons that “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and there is no truth in us. Why, then belike, we must sin, and so consequently die. / Ay, we must die an everlasting death.” Thus, Faustus abandons the priesthood and decides to practice black magic since, at this point, he believes only in the finality of death.
“It can be argued, of course, that the devils cannot control Faustus; they can only come to him when he has laid himself open to them. Mephistophilis says something to this effect when he explains that he has come to Faustus not because Faustus’ invocation is compelling, but because Faustus has made himself vulnerable to attack:

...when we hear one rack the name of God,
Abjure the Scriptures and his savior Christ,
We fly in hope to get his glorious soul.
Nor will we come unless he use such means
Whereby he is in danger to be damned.
Therefore the shortest cut for conjuring
Is stoutly to abjure the Trinity
And pray devoutly to the prince of hell.

This suggests that the devils are not so much independent external creatures as they are aspects of Faustus himself, symbols perhaps of his pride. On the other hand, one can argue that given Faustus’ character—his extraordinary abilities that can find no satisfaction in the trivial pursuits of ordinary men—he is not entirely responsible for his actions. He clearly is of a nature different from that of his fellow scholars, whose attainments are far beneath his, and it is not at all evident that such a nature could find satisfaction and fulfill itself in the allowed activities. Faustus’ initial speech, in which he masters and tires of four branches of learning, each of which would normally require a lifetime—the liberal arts, medicine, law, and divinity—suggests that he is a victim of the intellectual abilities that were given to him by his creator.”[2]
            Faustus aspires to go beyond the mortal capabilities of men and dare damnation. At first he doesn’t seem to believe in the existence of God or heaven or hell although he paradoxically believes in the practice of magic enough to summon the devil. He aspires to be more than mortal, more than human. Faustus’ willingness to tread the path of eternal damnation in the quest for knowledge and truth makes him “a heroic figure courageously violating the conventions of society and symbolically representing the spirit of Renaissance optimism. Whatever is narrow or ungenerous, whatever is confining or petty, he rejected in the beginning. Confidence and magnanimity are an essential part of his nature—but not the whole of that nature. His longing to exceed the limitations of mankind doom him to failure, to frustration and damnation. The insatiability characteristic of Faustus’s appetite leaves him gnawed by apprehension and self-doubt, and these emotions inevitably give rise to the most profound expression of Renaissance pessimism.”[3]
            This is true to a certain degree but, after he makes his pact, he not only has second thoughts which are induced by fear of the very fate he previously made light of, but he abandons the quest for knowledge for which he was willing to risk his soul. He becomes even more jaded in his values than he was at the outset and keeps himself occupied by such trivialities as giving Benvolio a set of horns on his head and conjuring the shades of Alexander and his paramour for the German Emperor. These events are not only indicative of the deterioration of Faustus’ as an intellectual and a human being but also as a magician. We see Faustus degenerate from a man who, having great aspirations, once rode dragons amongst the stars to learn of the universe, to a spirit—or devil—who resorts to petty trickery and gags perpetrated on the Pope and his subordinates.
            We can see Faustus’ degeneration rapidly occurring after he signs the pact with the devil. Prior to this he wished to use magic for altruistic as well as selfish reasons and the acquisition of knowledge. He later abandons all other such endeavors and uses his magic to obtain sensations and cheap thrills to impress others, amuse himself, and gratify his ego. Faustus’ deterioration throughout the play joins with an intensified sense of morality to create a tragedy within a tragedy. “The waste, the futility, the loss of achievement by a man whose accomplishments might have been extraordinary is a central part of his tragedy, and the middle of the play documents this misuse of potential. Gradually Faustus is diminished in aspiration. His loss of stature is reflected also by his loss of status. The clown and comic episodes, earlier kept separate from the Faustus story, by the end of Act IV include Faustus himself, who becomes involved in witless incidents with the Horse Courser and the Carter. The scholar has himself finally become the clown.”[4]
            Faustus is cheated by Mephistophilis not only of heaven and eternal bliss, but of the knowledge, power, freedom, and earthly sensations and joys that he once was privy to. Instead of knowledge, he performs pranks and creates diversions for himself from the damnation which hangs over him like an oppressive dark cloud. His power is only transitory and his freedom limited. He only has as much power as Mephistophilis is willing to give him. He doesn’t control Mephistophilis, Mephistophilis controls him. The earthly pleasures he indulges in are merely diversions from his fate and when he finally meets with damnation he will be deprived of them utterly. “From the beginning, he is too glutted with self-conceit to see that his mastery over Mephistophilis is mere appearance and that he defies heavenly law only to accept the bondage of hell. Hungering for immortality, he trades his hope of salvation for twenty-four years of pleasure and profit, but even the terms of this ridiculous bargain are not honored, because he never attains the powers or the knowledge which magic promised. On the stage, he is never more that a master of illusions, pranks, and magic shows, who grows enamored of his own shadows, and who parodies divine omnipotence, even as in turn he is parodied by the silly clown.”[5]
            The real tragedy of Doctor Faustus is that his inability to repent is coupled with a growing sense of his compassion for others as well as, and possibly because of, his ever nearing damnation. We can see this in Act V, scene 2, when the scholars wish to help save Faustus and convince him to repent and he, unable to repent, tells them “Talk not of me but save yourselves and depart.”
            “Faustus will deserve absolute damnation not for his contract, not even for his past, but for his continued determination to persevere in the forbidden. Unable to deny that part of his nature that first turned to black magic, Faustus cannot reconcile opposing desires at conflict within him. Faustus’s inability to believe in God’s forgiveness is in itself an obstacle to salvation. To fear damnation, to renounce magic, even to curse Mephistophilis and repent is insufficient. True repentance and true faith have positive effects; they are accompanied by confidence in the gift of grace. To doubt that he can be saved is to doubt that grace is freely given; to despair of his worth to heaven is to distrust in the mercy of God. And without such trust and confidence salvation is impossible.”[6]
            In the fifth Act of Doctor Faustus, Faustus conjures the shade of Helen of Troy for a few scholars who were discussing who the most beautiful lady in the world was and decided it was Helen. Although nothing is said about it at this point in the play, Faustus is obviously enchanted by the vision and later conjures her again to comfort himself in the final hours of his life. Before this, however, he is visited by an Old Man whose faith in God is strong and who urges Faustus to repent. Faustus cannot repent for, although there is a part of him willing to repent and he does attempt to repent, Mephistophilis is upon him and insists that he renew his pact or be torn to pieces. After he renews his contract with Mephistophilis, Faustus tells him to torment the Old Man who tried to save his soul, but Mephistophilis is more or less impotent to do so because of the man’s strong faith. This illustrates that the power of God to protect the faithful is greater than the power of the devil to torture. Hence, at this point, we are still uncertain of the possibility of Faustus’ salvation because, although God forgives men that repent for their transgressions, we are not sure that he forgives devils. We must keep in mind that when Faustus first made his pact with Mephistophilis one of his conditions was “that Faustus may be a spirit in form and substance,” spirit meaning devil.
            Finally we come to Faustus’ conjuration of Helen, which is nothing less than the last nail in his coffin. The gravity of his situation becoming clearer and more dreadful as he approaches midnight and his impending damnation way heavily upon him, and so “To ‘glut’ his appetite but also to distract his thoughts from his commitment to Lucifer, Faustus asks for Helen as his paramour. She reenters and the scholar glorifies her role in the siege of Troy.

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul. See where it flies
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.

Power and beauty are her attributes as destruction and devastation are the effects most closely associated with her.[7] We must keep this fact in mind because it is through this act in which Faustus is irrevocably damned. We must remember that “‘Helen’ is a ‘spirit,’ and in this play a spirit means a devil. In making her his paramour Faustus commits the sin of demoniality, that is, bodily intercourse with demons.
The implication of Faustus’ action is made plain in the comments of the Old Man and the Angels. Immediately before the Helen episode the Old Man was still calling on Faustus to repent—

Ah, Doctor Faustus, that I might prevail
To guide thy steps into the way of life!

(So 1604: 1616 proceeds:)

Though thou hast now offended like a man,
Do not persever in it like a devil:
Yet, yet, thou hast an amiable soul,
If sin by custom grow not into nature...

But with Faustus’ union with Helen the nice balance between possible salvation and imminent damnation is upset. The Old Man, who has witnessed the meeting (according to the 1604 version), recognizes the inevitable:

Accursed Faustus, miserable man,
That from thy soul exclud’st the grace of heaven
And fliest the throne of his tribunal seat!”[8]

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, ed. Sylvan Barnet (New York: Signet, 1969), pp. xv-xvi.
2. W. W. Greg, “The Damnation of Faustus,” Modern Language Review 41, (1946), pp. 97-107.
3. Arthur Mizener, “The Tragedy of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus,” College English 5 (1943), pp. 70-75.
4. Robert Ornstein, “Marlowe and God: The Tragic Theology of Doctor Faustus,” PMLA 83 (1968), pp. 1378-85.
5. Gerald Pinciss, Christopher Marlowe, (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1975), pp. 69-91.

[1]W. W. Greg, "The Damnation of Faustus," Modern Language Review 41, (1946), p. 95, n.2.
[2]Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, ed. Sylvan Barnet (New York: Signet, 1969), pp. xv-xvi.
[3]Gerald Pinciss, Christopher Marlowe, (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1975), pp. 83-84.
[4]Gerald Pinciss, Christopher Marlowe, (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1975), p. 79.
[5]Robert Ornstein, "Marlowe and God: The Tragic Theology of Doctor Faustus," PMLA 83 (1968), p. 1380.
[6]Gerald Pinciss, Christopher Marlowe, (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1975), pp. 80-81.
[7]Gerald Piciss, Christopher Marlowe, (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1975), p.82
[8]W. W. Greg, "The Damnation of Faustus," Modern Language Review 41, (1946), pp. 105-07.