William Blake’s Symbolism

William Blake’s Symbolism

Blake is a highly symbolic poet and his poetry is rich in symbols and allusions. Almost each and every other word in his poems is symbolic. A symbol is an object which stands for something else as dove symbolizes peace. Similarly, Blake’s tiger symbolizes creative energy; Shelley’s wind symbolizes inspiration; Ted Hughes’s Hawk symbolizes terrible destructiveness at the heart of nature. Blake’s symbols usually have a wide range of meaning and more obvious. Few critics would now wish to call Blake a symbolist poet, since his handling of symbols is markedly different from that of the French symbolistes’, but the world inhabited by his mythical figures is defined through quasi-allegorical images of complex significance, and such images are no less important in his lyrical poetry.  The use of symbols is one of the most striking features of Blake's poetry.

There is hardly any poem in the "Songs of Innocence and of Experience" which does not possess a symbolic or allegorical meaning, besides its apparent or surface meaning. If these poems are written in the simplest possible language, that fact does not deprive them of a depth of meaning. The language of these poems is like that of the Bible—at once simple and profound as the following lines read:

“O Rose, thou art sick!”

When Blake talks of the sick rose, he is really telling us how mysterious evil attacks the soul.  Flower-symbolism is of particular importance in Songs of Innocence and Experience, being connected with the Fall by the motif of the garden; and its traditional links with sexuality inform the text of ‘The Blossom’ and the design for ‘Infant Joy’, which are taken up in Experience by the plate for ‘The Sick Rose’. ‘Ah! Sun-Flower’ is a more symbolic text, and has evoked a greater variety of responses. Declaring this to be one of ‘Blake’s supreme poems’, we can interpret the flower as a man who ‘is bound to the flesh’ but ‘yearns after the liberty of Eternity”. Harper claims that it describes the aspiration of all ‘natural things’ to ‘the sun’s eternality’. Identifying the speaker as ‘Blake himself. Blake travels from flower-symbolism to animal symbols as in the ‘Tyger’:

“Did he smile his work to see

Did he who made the Lamb make thee!”

If the lamb symbolizes innocence and gentleness, the tiger is to Blake a symbol of the violent and terrifying forces within the individual man. The lamb, innocent and pretty, seems the work of a kindly Creator. The splendid but terrifying tiger makes us realize that God's purposes are not so easily understood, and that is why the question arises "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" At the same time, the tiger is symbolic of the Creator's masterly skill which enabled Him to frame the "fearful symmetry" of the tiger. But the lion described in the poem Night (in the "Songs of Innocence") offers an interesting contrary to the tiger of the "Songs of Experience". Both the beasts seem dreadful, but the lion, like the beast of the fairy tale, can be magically transformed into a good and gentle creature: the tiger cannot. In the world of Experience the violent and destructive elements in Creation must be faced and accepted, and even admired. The tiger is also symbolic of the Energy and the Imagination of man, as opposed to the Reason.  Blake was a great believer in natural impulses and hated all restraints. Consequently he condemns all those who exercise restraints upon others. He states in Holy Thursday II:

“And their ways are fill’d with thorns

It is eternal winter there”

The eternal winter are symbolic of total destruction of the country and the perpetual devastation and ‘Grey-headed beadles’ in ‘Holy Thursday I’ are symbolic of authority and it is they exploit children for their own material interests. In the poem London, oppression and tyranny are symbolised by the king (who is responsible for the soldier's blood being shed), social institutions like (loveless) marriage, and '"he mind-forged manacles". Even further, personal and social relationships have been symbolised as:

“In the morning glad I see

My foe outstretched beneath the tree”

A Poison Tree is another allegory. The tree here represents repressed wrath; the water represents fear; the apple is symbolic of the fruit of the deceit which results from repression. This deceit gives rise to the speaker's action in laying a death-trap for his enemy. The deeper meaning of the poem is that aggressive feelings, if suppressed, almost certainly destroy personal relationships. On the surface, however, the poem is a simple, ordinary story. Thus symbolism is crucial to understanding Blake as poet of earlier romanticism. What can be more symbolic than the following lines from, ‘Auguries of Innocence’?

“To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour”

Thus, Blake’s poetry is charged with symbols. He has depicted nature and human nature; animals and plants as simple but profound symbols of powerful forces; "contrary states of the human soul" - for example, good and evil, or innocence and experience throughout his poetry. What is different in Blake is that he is not modeling after any symbols but his own. The symbols always have an inner relatedness that leads us from the outer world to the inner man. The symbols live in the ordered existence of his vision; the vision itself is entirely personal, in theme and in the logic that sustains it. Blake is difficult not because he invented symbols of his own; he created his symbols to show that the existence of any natural object and the value man’s mind places on it were one and the same. He was fighting the acceptance of reality in the light of science as much as he was fighting the suppression of human nature by ethical dogmas. He fought on two fronts, and shifted his arms from one to the other without letting us know—more exactly, he did not let himself know. He created for himself a personality, in life and in art, that was the image of the thing he sought.

In short, it is established that William Blake is a highly symbolic and even allegorical poet. His use of symbolism is unique and cinematic. It paints a lively and pulsating picture of dynamic life before us. Especially, the symbolic use of

‘Sun-flower’ gets so much stamped on the mind of the reader that it is difficult to forget it. He mentions a tiger it becomes a symbol of God's power in creation, his lamb turns out to be a symbol of suffering innocence and Jesus Christ and his tree is symbolic of anger and desire to triumph over enemies; the dark side of human nature.  Symbolism is the main trait of William Blake as a dramatist as a poet and this has been well-crystallized in his legendary work, ‘The Songs of Innocence and Experience’.

William Blake’s Religion and Vision

William Blake’s Religion and Vision

William Blake was a Christian, although he did not conform to any denomination within the Christian faith. He was born and brought up a Baptist. When he was married, he took on board some ideas of the Swedish scientist philosopher and theologian, Swedenbourg, who believed in the idea of God as man. This idea is illustrated in Blake's poem, within the "Songs of Innocence", "The Divine Image" where he asserts that "Where mercy love and pity dwell, there God is dwelling too".

He also says that love is "the human form divine". However, Blake also believes that there are two contrary states to the human soul, that a person makes their own condition, although children are born "naturally good". This runs against religious thought at the time, which suggested that children were "naturally bad" due to Original Sin. The contraries are apparent throughout the "Songs", in Innocence versus Experience. The contrary poem to "The Divine Image" is "A Divine Image" in which Blake claims:

“Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face”

"A Divine Image" is much shorter than "The Divine Image" as it is only two stanzas long; perhaps because "secrecy" is the "human dress" according to "A Divine Image", this may also be a suggestion of sexual restriction. It also emphasizes the contrast more starkly. Children appear alongside religion in the "Holy Thursday" poems (one in Innocence and one of the same name in Experience). In Experience, the reader is asked "Is this a holy thing to see / In a rich and fruitful land, / Babes reduced to misery". In Innocence we meet the old men who are the "wise guardians of the poor", although this is probably an ironic description of these people by Blake, as they benefit from the poverty. Blake was very concerned with the social condition of the Britain that came with the Industrialism. Blake's "Songs", especially "Holy Thursday" (Innocence) show how religion was used to keep the poor "in their place" and to prevent revolution; although ironically, the majority of the poverty-stricken in Blake's day were "children of the Industrial Revolution". He was a revolutionary and asked:

“And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?”

William Blake was a visionary (but not a dreamer), aware of the realities and complexities of experience, particularly the poverty and oppression of the urban world where he spent most of his life. He had an amazing insight into contemporary economics, politics and culture, and was able to discern the effects of the authoritarianism of church and state as well as what he considered the arid philosophy of a rationalist view of the world which left little scope for the imagination. He abhorred the way in which Christians looked up to a God enthroned in heaven, a view which offered a model for a hierarchical human politics, which subordinated the majority to a (supposedly) superior elite. He also criticised the dominant philosophy of his day which believed that a narrow view of sense experience could help us to understand everything that there was to be known, including God. Blake's own visionary experiences showed him that rationalism ignored important dimensions of human life which would enable people to hope, to look for change, and to rely on more than that which their senses told them. He religious values are more profound than a priest actually practicing religion as he endorses:

“Then cherish pity, lest you drive
an angel from your door”

In the two Holy Thursday poems Blake offers contrasting perspectives on the social situation in England. On the one hand, the poet describes a festive event in St Paul's cathedral, in which children who are recipients of charity come to thank God. On the other, there is a hard-hitting critique of what it's actually like for most children, in "this green and pleasant land", with "Babes reduc'd to misery. Fed with cold and usurous hand". The Holy Thursday poems offer readers the opportunity to meditate upon late 18th-century England through the lens of a particular social event. Here is an example of the focus on the "minute particular", when one event opens up a different perspective on the reality of a wider context. Blake's vision was holistic. He criticised the way in which people (especially those of a religious bent) separated sacred and profane, instead of seeing each person as the place where these massive emotional and political forces were in tension. He insisted in his most outspoken work, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, that "everything that lives is holy". So, he challenged that view that there was anything special about the Bible, or a religious building, as compared with other literature, or other places, which could equally manifest the divine. His lifework was dedicated to exposing the extent to which infatuation with habits of thought, which sunder and demonize, prevent human flourishing.

“And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy”

The Sick Rose illustrates, again, the horror of repressed sexuality. The rose may be regarded as a symbol for a beautiful girl. In fact it represents a girl restricted by excessive modesty. This quality was to Blake a vice, and a vice which leads to the kind of frustration emphatically illustrated in this poem. The canker-worm destroying the beauty of a rose-bud here symbolizes the repression which eats into the vitals of the girl. The worm here may also refer to the priest as an exponent of the morality that encourages formal, loveless marriages. In any case, a girl who does not give a free scope to her senses is like a sick rose. The main theme of ‘Ah, Sunflower’ is, once again, the need for an uninhibited expression of sexual love. Both the young man and the virgin have been denied a fulfillment of their sexual desires. To all intents and purposes they are dead and buried. To allow one's desire to remain unfulfilled was the worst of crimes in Blake's eyes.

Blake's vision was very different from those who appealed to the past. He was concerned with human beings. The Bible was not to be a kind of holy rule-book, therefore, according to which priests and rulers could police people, but a collection of "sentiments and examples" which engaged the imagination. There was to be no contracting out of responsibility for biblical interpretation to priests and scholars. All people, inside and outside the churches, according to Blake, have the responsibility to attend to the energetic activity of the divine spirit in creation, in history, and in human experience. He wouldn't have wanted his words to become a sacred text, any more than the words of the Bible, but an ongoing stimulus to politics and religion in the struggle to realize man can exist but by brotherhood. Blake does not believe that salvation is possible through priests or through the morality preached by organized religion. The life of the senses should be free, he says. To hinder or to chain to fetter the senses is like murdering the human personality.

Marlowe’s Contribution to English Drama

Marlowe’s Contribution to English Drama

Tragedy before Marlow: Swinburne’s remarks, “Before him there was neither genuine blank verse nor a genuine tragedy in our language. After his arrival the way was paved for Shakespeare.” With the advent of Marlowe, Miracle and Morality plays vanished. He brought Drama out of the old rut of street presentation and made it a perfect art and a thing of beauty. After the Reformation, the Mystery and Morality plays were disliked by the public at large until the advent of University Wits the greatest of whom was Marlowe.

It was in the fifteenth century that tragedy came to English dramatic field. This was due to the Revival of Learning in Europe commonly referred to as the Renaissance and the translation of great Italian tragedies. Italian Renaissance exercised a vital influence on the development of English Drama. The first English tragedy was Gorboduc (1565) by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville. In style and treatment of theme Seneca was very much their model. Although this tragedy showed some innovation, yet most of the Senecan qualities such as long speeches, ghosts, gruesome murders and talks and talks were very much there. The tragedies that followed Seneca had the same qualities and properties. It required the mighty efforts of a genius to free the Elizabethan Drama from the worst features of the Senecan tragedies and it was Christopher Marlowe who has achieved this foundation for the realm of English Dramatic Literature. There are umpteen characteristic of Marlovian tragedies. In discussing Marlowe, we can point out how he formulated the English Drama and especially Tragedy which was improved upon and perfected by a genius like Shakespeare who owes Marlowe for all his greatness and grandeur. Because had there been no Marlowe, there would have been no Shakespeare. It is also due to Marlowe that English Drama for the first time was bestirred with the vigorous poetry and passion. He has rightly been called the Morning Star of English Drama.

Marlow’s Great Tragic Heroes: The first great thing done by Marlowe was to break away from the medieval conception of Tragedy. The Medieval Drama was a game of the princes and imperial classes – the kings and Queens and their rise an fall. But it was left to Marlowe to evolve and create the real tragic hero. All of his tragic heroes are of humble parentage, Tamburlaine, Barabas in the Jew of Malta and Faustus, but they are endowed with great tragic and heroic qualities. His tragedy is a tragedy of one man – his rise and fall, his fate and actions and finally his death for his own failings and incapacities. All the other characters fade into insignificance besides the towering personality and the glory and grandeur of the tragic hero. Even various incidents revolve round the hero. His heroes are men fired with indomitable passion and inordinate ambition. His Tamburlaine is in full-flooded pursuit of military and political power, his Faustus sells his soul to the Devil to attain ultimate power through knowledge and gain the deity and His Jew of Malta discards all sense of human values with his blind aspirations. What Marlowe depicts and dramatizes is that all his mighty and towering heroes with all their sky-high designs and aspirations ultimately fall into failure and doom exhibiting their tragic and doomed end. Herein lies the greatness of Marlowe.

Working of a passion: We have previously studied that Marlowe’s heroes are dominated by the inordinate desires and passions. These passions take the form of wealth, spirit of learning, high power. Through these, Marlowe imparts vehemence, fire and force in the drama. But in this way, we may trace the distinct influence of Machiavelli on Marlowe. Marlowe must have read his famous book, The Prince and derived this idea of ambition and spirit from him. Marlowe discarded the old concept of tragedy as decent from greatness to misery and supplanted it greatness by the greatness of individual worth. His heroes truly reflect the new Spirit of Learning because he himself was the product of Renaissance.

The Inner Conflict: Another great achievement of Marlowe was to introduce the element of conflict in the tragic hero especially in Dr. Faustus and Edward II. The conflict may be on the physical or spiritual plane. The spiritual and moral conflict takes place in the heart of man and this is of much greater significance and much more poignant than the former. And a great tragedy most powerfully reveals the emotional conflict or moral agony of the mighty hero.  In the realm of England’s dramatic literature, Dr. Faustus may be reckoned the first spiritual tragedy or the tragedy of the soul. In this epoch-making drama, true and deep moral agonies and painful spiritual conflict has been superbly laid bare before us by Marlowe. Like the old Greek heroes, Marlovian Heroes are not helpless puppets in the hands of Fate and they are never destined by gods. They have free thinking of religion and carve their way themselves. The tragic end they meet is caused by the tragic flaw in their personalities and they achieve this end through their actions. This is the greatest contribution of Marlowe to the English Drama.

Moral Conception: It was Marlowe who first discarded the medieval conception of tragedy as it was distinctly a moral one. In old Morality Plays, the purpose was to simply inculcate a moral lesson by showing the fall of the hero. There is no such thing in Marlovian plays. The main interest centers on the sky-touching personality of the heroes with their tremendous efforts to attain the limit and their rise and fall in their struggle.

Blank Verse: Another great achievement of Marlowe was to introduce a new type of blank verse in his tragedies.  A new spirit of poetry was breathed into the artificial and monotonous verse of the old days. In fact, the whole of Elizabethan Drama was enliven by a new poetic grandeur.

Seriousness and Concentration: Another notable characteristic of Marlowe’s work is seriousness and concentration on the theme and there is complete lack of humor.  According to many critics, the clownish scenes and the other absurdities were interpolated by the later authors. There are also no women characters in Marlowe’s works, this is also a typical quality of his. The episodes of Helen in Dr. Faustus and other female figures in other plays are only shadows or figure-heads. Most of these features may also be regarded as the drawbacks, however; it was Marlowe’s distinct way of writing which is typical of him. Or perhaps, for these reasons, he couldn’t reach the towering high plane of fame as did Shakespeare. But we must remember that he was a pioneer and path-finder. He was the Columbus of a new literary World in England. It is due to Marlowe that we have Shakespeare whom we know and read, but had Marlowe not written such these works, there would have been Shakespeare, but no the one we know today. Shakespeare, without him, would have been only another writer.

Autobiographical note in Faustus

Autobiographical note in Faustus

Introduction: A study of Marlowe’s great tragedies cannot but convince us that Marlowe possessed the power in its fullest degree of projecting himself into his chief characters. The most important quality of his works is the subjective or autobiography note. Here lies the greatest difference between Shakespeare and Marlowe as dramatists. There is a complete effacement of Shakespeare’s personality in his plays. We cannot say that this or that passage reveals Shakespeare’s personality or mind. But Marlowe couldn’t but project his personality into the chief characters of his plays – especially in his four great tragedies: Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta and Edward II.

Marlowe’s Life and the Spirit of Renaissance Before discussing the subjective note in his plays any further, we should have a fair idea of Marlowe’s life, his career, the influence of the Renaissance on him, and his ambitions.Marlowe came of parents ‘ base of stock’. He was the son of a shoe maker. But he was fortunate enough to get school education and had a chance to go to Cambridge to specialize in theology and got Doctorate in Divinity.  But his abandoned his career in theology and joined the theatrical companies in London to become a dramatist. But seeing a difference between himself as poor and his companions as rich, though they were much inferior to him in intellect, Marlowe rebelled against the established norms. This was also perhaps the main cause of his rebellion against religion and its normal orders. He was much criticized and branded as the Atheist. He also possessed a dual personality. He was a dramatist and poet in London, but also had relations with the underworld. However, Marlowe was a man of the Renaissance and an embodiment of the spirit of his age. He was a saturated with the spirit of learning, exploring and experimenting with its hankering after sensual pleasure of life and with its inordinate ambition and supreme lust for power and pelf. He was profoundly influenced by Machiavelli, the famous Italian social and political writer, who discarded all conventional moral principles to achieve the end by any means, fair or foul.

Reflection of Marlowe in his tragic Heroes A close and critical study of works of Marlowe convinces us that all his tragic heroes clearly reveal the chief characteristics and temperament of the great dramatist. All his tragic heroes are absolutely dominated by some uncontrollable passion. To achieve their end, they throw overboard all established moral scruples or religious sanctions and never avoid using horrible means, for example, his cruel and tyrant Tamburlaine with his craze for limitless power defies all authorities on earth and in the heaven. His stone-heated Barabas is dominated by a senseless craze for gold and doesn’t shirk from committing the worst type of crimes to achieve his end, thus he seems to be an embodiment of Machiavellism. To gain super human powers through knowledge, his Doctor Faustus sells his soul to the Devil in pursuit of his passion. His heroes have a scant regard for religion as Faustus says, “ I count religion but a childish toy” another significant point is that all tragic heroes of Marlowe are poets and convey their feelings and emotions to the audience in the superb poetic language, but of all Faustus is a poet par excellence just like Marlowe himself. His utterance about Helen is magical and fascinating: Was this the face …. Towers of Illium? And Marlowe himself was a great poet of passion.

Marlowe and Faustus-A Striking Parallelism: Of all the tragic heroes of Marlowe, Faustus bears the most striking reflection of Marlowe’s own self. We know that Marlowe was the second child of a Canterbury shoe-maker and in the very beginning of the play, we are told of Faustus’ parentage as: Now is he born, his parents base of stock. Harold Osborne has pointed out that Marlowe like Faustus came of parents ‘base of stock’ and was destined for the church but turned elsewhere.  We should not press the analogies too far, but we cannot ignore them as the parallelism is too obvious.

Personal Tragedy: Spiritual Suffering: Doctor Faustus very powerfully expresses Marlowe’s innermost thoughts and authentic experiences. So it can be regarded the spiritual history of Marlowe himself. Marlowe’s inordinate ambition led him to revolt against religion and society, to defy the laws of man and laws of God and such defiance is bound to bring up acute mental conflict resulting in deep despair and certain defeat. So, both Marlowe and Faustus experience terrible mental pangs and agonies. Osborne has rightly observed:

The descriptions of Faustus’ repentance, despair and mental anguish are among the most vivid and poignant parts of the play. It is, of course, possible to suppose that Marlowe had passed through a stage of youthful skepticism in religion and that with a sounder and deeper faith he had come to the knowledge of repentance.

Conclusion Doctor Faustus’ tragic death also has resemblance. After living twenty four years in sensual activities, Faustus had to surrender his soul to the Devil. Marlowe’s Bohemian and boisterous life, too came to a tragic sudden end in tavern brawl at the hands of a shady character of the London Underworld at the age of twenty nine. Marlowe lost himself into his works.

Doctor Faustus is strewn with unmistakably autobiographical suggestions. Reading the play we cannot refrain from concluding that it is the spontaneous expression of its writer’s innermost thoughts and authentic experiences.

Doctor Faustus – a Psychological tragedy

Doctor Faustus – a Psychological tragedy

Spiritual Combat: Tragedy is regarded as the highest aspect of the dramatic art as in it our emotions are more profoundly stirred than in comedy thereby rendering it more universal in it appeal. And conflict is the essence of or soul of tragedy. All previous dramas including Tamburlaine had dealt with single-minded individuals. If a struggle in the heart of the hero was introduced, it was like that of Morality plays.

It was external as in the Jew of Malta because it was between the hero and his adversaries. Doctor Faustus attempted something different. It is a drama of spiritual combat within the soul of man. This struggle is certainly somewhat primitive in its expression but it is a foretaste of those inner characteristics towards which a drama in its development inevitably trends.   Faustus in this respect is unquestionably the greatest tragic figure in sixteenth century outside the work of Shakespeare. It is also a modern tragedy because Marlowe broke away from the old Aristotelian concept of tragic hero as  being a royal figure of some very lofty stature. He introduced Faustus who is not a prince or a king but a common learned man whose parents are base of stock.

Tragic Flaw – cause of his tragedy According to Aristotle, the tragic hero must have some inherent weakness – a tragic flaw which he referred to as Hamartia. He should be neither totally vicious nor good. As per Doctor Faustus, he is puffed with pride and his wisdom. He has studied all branches of knowledge and wants to get infinite knowledge. The boundless mastery of all sciences. So, he acquires necromancy in order to gain the ultimate. He says,

A sound magician is a mighty god:

Here, Faustus, tire thy brains to gain a deity.

Despite all his scholarly personality and his learning, we witness how he surrenders his soul to the Devil for a span of twenty four years and instead of gaining the deity and mastering and commandeering all the elements, he stands doomed and cursed.

Internal Tragic Conflict: Marlowe’s contribution to the English or Elizabethan drama was great and many fold. One of his contributions was the introduction of internal tragic conflict in the mind of the tragic hero. Nicoll has rightly observed: “All previous dramas including Tamburlaine had dealt with single-minded individuals. If a struggle in the heart of the hero was introduced, it was like that of Morality plays. In Doctor Faustus, Marlowe attempted something new – the delineation of struggle in the mind of the hero. This struggle is certainly somewhat primitive in its expression but it is a foretaste of those inner characteristics towards which a drama in its development inevitably trends.   Faustus in this respect is unquestionably the greatest tragic figure in sixteenth century outside the work of Shakespeare.”

So in Doctor Faustus, we find the conflict or the psychological struggle raging in the heart and soul of the hero. In fact, there’s hardly any external action. The delineation of a psychological struggle or spiritual conflict in the mind of the hero is the chief thing. Then why is this struggle and to what is it due?  Generally, the inner conflict takes places when man is faced with two alternatives, one  of which he must have to choose, but he finds himself pulled in opposite directions. Now Faustus is inspired by the spirit of the Renaissance, by dreams of gaining limitless knowledge and super-human powers. These he can attain only by resorting to necromancy, discarding religious dogmas and abjuring the Trinity and denouncing the established religious norms. Doctor Faustus may reject all these intellectually, but he is very much emotionally attached to them. He may be acting like an atheist, but his flesh and blood is saturated with Christianity.  Here the conflict starts between will and conscience externalized by the Good and Bad Angel. We can follow this conflict in the play at three stages:  The First Stage: we see how pride and ambition lead Faustus into the vicious bargain with the Devil. He convinces himself that: A sound magician is a mighty god. He also says with perfect faith in Mephistopheles, “Had I as many souls as there are stars, I would give them all for Mephistopheles, By him I will great emperor of the world” Nicholas Brooke says: Faustus wants to satisfy the demands of his nature as God has made him. He wants to be the Deity. For this, he must deny Christianity as did Lucifer, but Faustus’ attachment to religion is too deep to be rooted out. Throughout the play we find Faustus pricked by his conscience, we find him in tussle between will and conscience in the form of Good and Bad Angel.  The Second Stage: At this stage, we see Faustus struggling hard to break away from the impeding doom and he turns to repentance.

When I behold the heavens, then I repent

And curse thee, wicked Mephistophilis,

Because thou hast depriv’d me of those joys

The two angles appear again. One advises him to return to repentance and the other tells him that he is a spirit and God will not help him now and that he will tear his body to pieces if he repents. He has to submit to the will of Lucifer and refresh his bond with him. The show of Seven Deadly Sins and the best of all the apparition of Helen temporarily soothe his damned soul.The Third and Final Scene: In the closing scene, we find the climax culminating into a horrible catastrophe. Faustus knows that he is eternally doomed; but his poignant soliloquy and appeal for redemption is pathetic and pitiable. His last minute frantic appeal, to the ever moving spheres of heaven to stand still or to the sun to rise again to make perpetual day, stirs the readers’ soul and refresh in him the spirit of religious faith. Later, his soul is taken away by the devils leaving a short visual scene repeating itself in the reader’s mind.  The show of Seven Deadly Sins is presented to please Doctor Faustus and remove his internal conflict between the good and the bad. So the seven sins – Pride, Covetousness, Wrath, Envy, Gluttony, Sloth and Lechery. Some critics are of the view that the show is meant for comic relief for the audience. But this is hardly to accept. In fact the show is not meant for a comic relief, but is really meant for bringing back Faustus to the path to hell when he was much irritated by Mephistopheles for not telling him the right answers. In fact, the sins already abide in Doctor Faustus’ soul; the show merely symbolizes or externalizes them.

Disintegration: Doctor Faustus is thus the tragedy of a man who in striving boundlessly, misdirects great gifts of mind and spirit and hence progressively loses his soul by disintegration. Progressive disintegration in Faustus brings low comedy into the tragedy. In the last act, Faustus repents, then despairs and is about to commit suicide. But his distressed soul is comforted by the Old Man. The feeling cannot exist, however, without the support of the Old Man’s presence; as soon as he goes Faustus exclaims: I do repent; and yet I do despair. Mephistophilis forces him to sign another bond to strengthen the contract.

Psychological tragedy: Thus we find that in Doctor Faustus, Marlowe reveals for the first time in English drama the full possibilities of psychological tragedy, the anguish of a mind at war with itself. The play depicts the tragedy of the human soul, and in the closing scene it achieves end  with a strength and intensity as yet unknown in English drama. We conclude with the words of Una Ellis Fermor: In Marlowe’s great tragic fragment the conflict is not between man and man for the domination of one character over another or in the interaction of a group of characters. Thus and in such terms is staged the greatest conflict that drama has ever undertaken to the present.

Doctor Faustus – a great work, also a flawed one

Doctor Faustus – a great work, also a flawed one

Introduction: Critics and scholars are one in their opinions that Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is one of the masterpieces of British Drama.  It was Marlowe who brought the medieval concept of a magician, who sold his soul to the Devil and caused his destruction himself, into a magnificent and superb masterpiece. Even Goethe was inspired by its grandeur and he used the concept of Doctor Faustus in his play. Despite the excellence of the play, it falls short of meeting a regular established play like any one of those of Shakespeare. It looks more like a novel of detached scenes instead of a regular play.

Merits of the play: One of the most superb things about Doctor Faustus is the delineation of the tragic hero revealing the intense spiritual struggle and inner conflict in his soul. …short summary… Another chief quality of his play is the tragic conflict which dives deep into the depth of human heart. … short synopsis of conflict… Some of its outstanding scenes are of magnificent quality which reveals the genius of Marlowe: the summoning of Mephistopheles, the sighing of the contract and the second episode of Helen are the soul-stirring events of the play which rank Marlowe as a Dramatist next to Shakespeare. Doubtless, He was the greatest playwright before Shakespeare.  His surpassing poetry is another merit of the play. His ravishing descriptions, the emotional utterances from Faustus for Helen have eternal significance and will only die with the English language as complimented by Edward Thomas.

Structural Weaknesses: Despite his stupendous achievements in the realm of Dramatic Literature, Marlowe had some limitations and drawbacks. His first drawback being the one-man show. His character, Faustus has towered higher above the other characters rendering them pale into insignificance. The second drawback being: One of the greatest drawbacks is that the plot is not well-knit. It has only two parts: the first being the presence of Faustus and his desires to gain the deity and signing the contract with the Devil to attain his voluptuous desires. The second part being: his gradual travel onto the path of damnation and final doom. Goethe might have been impressed by the beginning and the end because the play has no middle. R.S. Knox has remarked: “The play is a series of scenes, some splendid, some petty, loosely related in a time-sequence; and rounded off by the foreseen catastrophe.” Anti-climax: the new world in which Faustus finds himself is nothing but a world of illusions and buffoonery. He forgets his aim and becomes a play-toy in the hands of his self-imposed doom. He is no more the same Faustus who was aspirant of knowledge; he falls into buffoonery and becomes a magic entertainer.  Comic scenes irrelevantly exist in the play. Though critics believe that they are later interpolations, however as long as they exist in the play, cause a drawback in the structure and plot of the play. Most of these scenes are crude and meaningless. There is hardly any female character in the play. The lack of female character is another drawback. Though we have a glimpse of the peerless dame of Greece, but she is nothing but a visual apparition and a dream seen with eyes wide open. The Duchess, too, falls short of being a female character. She doesn’t play any role.

Catastrophe: --- The last scene of catastrophe---

Conclusion: To conclude with the words of Ronald M., Frye: “The rejection of humanity which constituted the character of Faustus is complete and the plot closes, as it had opened, with this. It is in these terms that Marlowe achieves aesthetically powerful an understanding of the human condition which has never been more central to the plight of man than it is in our own time.” J.A. Symonds on Marlowe observes: “About him, there is nothing small or trivial. His verse is mighty, his passion is intense; the outlines of his plot are large, his characters are Titanic, his fancy is extravagant in richness, insolence and pomp.”

The Last Scene: Helen of Troy and the Old man in "Dr. Faustus"

The Last Scene: Helen of Troy and the Old man in "Dr. Faustus"

Introduction: Faustus’s great final soliloquy consummates the play. The last scene of the play is the most poignant  The last scene, be it in the form of Helen’s presence or the final beseeching of  Doctor Faustus, makes Marlowe reach the flights imagination.  We may divide last scene of the play into three parts: First the Helen Episode, Second the Old Man and the Last soliloquy of Doctor Faustus. The three parts of the play make up the whole last scene to abide in our thoughts.

The Helen Episode: When ‘music sounds’ and Helen passes across the stage, her sanctity is mirrored in the awed calm of the scholars. Her “heavenly beauty passeth all compare” She is the pride of the nature’s work. Here outburst the eternal words of praise for Helen from Doctor Faustus who, in the most ravishing way, loses himself in the arms of Helen to avoid his imminent doom.

Was this the face that launce’d 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.

I will be Paris, and for love of thee.

Instead of Troy , shall Wittenberg be sack’d:

And I will combat with weak Menelaus,

And wear thy colors on my plumed crest;

Yes, I will wound Achilles in the heel,

And then return to Helen for a kiss.

O, thou art fairer than the evening air,

Clad in the beauty of a thousands starts;

Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter

Faustus’s poetry for Helen shows his ultimate desperate condition and his futile effort to evade the eternal doom.

The Old man: Doctor Faustus is ‘But a man condemned to die.’ Soon after the appearance of Helen, the old man approaches Doctor Faustus to reconcile him. The Old Man’s compassionate advice to Faustus adds a new dimension to our senses of the human predicament.

Yet, yet, thou hast an amiable soul if sin by custom grows not into nature.

The Old Man is, rather the last man trying to      pull Faustus from the snaps of death. But           Faustus, as he is eternally doomed, must   reach his self-imposed torments of hell.

The Last hour: As Faustus’s fascination for Helen, ‘The only paragon of excellence’ reveals the Renaissance characteristics of love and adoration of classical art and beauty, Helen epitomizes the charms of classical art, learning and beauty. And her shade of apparition may also be the symbol of sensual pleasures of life which is but transient, and leads to despair and damnation. If it is so, the old man represents Christian faith with its obedience to the laws of God and its needs for prayer and penitence that can assure eternal joys and bliss.  Doctor Faustus knows that his end is approaching. The proud and puffed scholar of Wittenberg, who once dreamed of becoming a Jove on the earth, ironically craves to be transformed into some mean creature so as to escape his doom. And when the last hour strikes, we find the anguished cry of a terror-stricken man who is facing his damnation.

O, it strikes: No body turn to air,

Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell,

O, soul, be changed into little water drops.

And fall into the ocean, never be found!

Critics and scholars of one opinion that the last scene of the play is highly consummate and grim.