Dávid Bíró_ Christoper Marlowe's Heroes_83

Dávid Bíró:

Marlowe’s Heroes The Development of the Marlovian Hero

in the Playwright’s Most Important Dramas

Bíró Dávid:

A marlowe-i hősA marlowe-i hős fejlődése a

drámaíró legfontosabb darabjaiban

Budapest, 1976

ELTE University, Department of English,

MA dissertation

© Dávid Bíró The use of this thesis is subject to the acceptance

of copyright regulations and the author's permission.

(At the beginning of 2011,the author keyed the text of his thesis

into his computer.)

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Contents

I. Introduction 3

II. Tamburlaine 9

III. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus 26

IV. The Jew of Malta 40

V. Edward II 45

VI. Concluding Remark 52

VII. Select Bibliography 53

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I. Introduction

In this thesis I am trying to find out the special characteristics of the Marlovian hero. I shall

analyse the characteristics of Christopher Marlowe’s most important protagonists. According

to my view, too, there is a development to be perceived in the most important dramas of

Christopher Marlowe. “The whole story of Renaissance humanism is told in for Elizabethan

tragedies: the two parts of Tamburlaine the Great, Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta and

Edward II. To claim so much for Marlowe’s plays is not, I think, to fabricate a Renaissance

summer from one swallow. ”1 I have a dual aim: I would like to show in these heroes the

particularly Renaissance elements, and I would like to show that there is a development

towards dramatic objectivity in the Marlovian drama.

Though the data concerning Marlowe’s life are very few, we are nevertheless

compelled to analyse his dramas and protagonists in the light of his career. Perhaps no

Elizabethan playwright has this feature. With Marlowe, however, it is absolutely necessary

that we should speak about certain aspects of his life. Without having these data, we cannot

start our work.

Christopher Marlowe was born in 1564 as the son of a Canterbury shoemaker. His

father was venerable member of the town’s citizenry. Of Marlowe’s childhood we know

nothing, but we may infer that he had probably seen certain morality plays in his native town.

At the age of fifteen Marlowe was enrolled into King’s School of Canterbury. He began his

studies at the maximum age for entrance. The cause for this might have been that it was only

very late when the young boy’s talents were discovered. Young Christopher Marlowe could

enter university only with the help of a scholarship founded for talented but poor boys.

Students studying under this scholarship were meant for the clergy, but Marlowe did not take

the holy orders. He went up to London and became very famous as a playwright in a very

short span of time. Marlowe belonged to the so-called university wits. These young

graduates from the universities if Oxford and Canterbury were not ordained as priests of the

Anglican Church: they rejected the hitherto so usual and accepted career waiting for a

clergyman. They were sons of the advancing bourgeoisie, but not in the field of material

progress. They expressed their infinite spiritual aspirations in their dramas. As there was a

great need for dramas most of them became playwrights. With this activity they did not earn

1 Molly Maureen Mahood, Poetry and Humanism. (London: Kennikat Press, 1967), p. 54

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very much. Loose and reckless living, drinking, gambling and too much work put a terrible

end to their lives. They were men torn out from the usual course of life. They were exposed

to great humiliation, yet they lived a very adventurous and joyful life. Consequently, their

style is exuberant, and it is often very blurred. The genre of the time is the drama. In the

Elizabethan age, though it represented a social equilibrium, tensions were very great.

Between the Middle Ages and the era of Capitalism until then hidden and invisible hopes

arose, and these hopes were at variance with both the old habits and traditions and the

coming new. Briefly, this age, the second half of the 16th century, is a conglomerate, in which

the forces of the old, the coming new and the spiritually infinite hopes of Humanism and the

Renaissance are vividly to be seen. Tension and movement behind a seemingly safe

equilibrium: these are the most appropriate words characterising that age – hence the artistic

mother tongue of the age is the drama.

Marlowe belonged to the university wits. In fact, he was the greatest among them. He,

too, after having taken his degree at Cambridge University in July 1587, went up to London

to try his fortune. Though in many respects a typical university wit, Marlowe must be

separated from his fellow playwrights in one respect. It is highly probable that Marlowe

gained access to the higher aristocracy. We know, for example, that he was on friendly terms

with Sir Walter Raleigh. By Elizabethan standards Marlowe’s output as a playwright was

very limited. Thomas Dekker or Thomas Heywood wrote as many plays in one year as

Marlowe in six. As a matter of fact, playwriting was a kind of industry which had to be

pursued very intensely if one wanted to make a living from it. We can be sure that Marlowe

was an exception from this. In his dramas Marlow shows scholarly care in elaborating his

details, although in following his sources he commits blunders too. For Tamburlaine the poet

used a great number of historical sources and the famous atlas of Abraham Ortelius. In Hero

and Leander Marlowe exemplifies unprecedented skills in verse technique. This improved

technique and the quantity of work which had to be devoted to his wrings are unlikely to

have been achieved in so short a span of time without considerable opportunity for reflective

pleasure. Christopher Marlowe must have been backed by certain members of the

Elizabethan aristocracy. The most important among them was Sir Walter Raleigh, one of the

best and most revolutionary figures of the time. A circle of scientists, scholars and aristocrats

gathered around him. This circle is often referred to as the “School of Night” or “Raleigh’s

Club”. It had a very bad reputation for freethinking and atheism. The only direct evidence we

have of Marlowe’s association with Raleigh comes from an informer’s report from 1593 on

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the activities of a certain Richard Chomley, one of Marlowe’s friends. We learn from this

document that Chomley “said and verily believeth that one Marlowe is able to show more

sound reasons for atheism than any divine in England is able to give and prove, and that

Marlowe told him that he hath read some atheist lecture to Sir Walter Raleigh.” Reports like

this about this circle and Marlowe are numerous and what is more is important, they can be

found in various independent sources. Even though the accusation of atheism was a very

vague term, yet with Marlowe the case is quite a different one. With some reservations Paul

Kocher’s view can be accepted: “Criticism of Christianity appears in all biographical

documents as the most absorbing interest of his life.” 2 I do not intend to go into details here.

I merely enumerate those sources that indicate that Marlowe, the former student of divinity

was really engaged in the criticism of religion: (1) Robert Green’s attack against Marlowe;

(2) the Baines libel; (3) Thomas Kyd’s letter to Sir John Puckering; (4) Thomas Kyd’s

unsigned letter to Sir John Puckering; (5) Thomas Kyd’s waste and papers; (6) Thomas

Beard’s pamphlet “The Theatre of God’s Judgement.

To illustrate the tone of these documents, I quote from the last one. Marlowe, the

document describes, “fell to that outrage and extremity that he denied God and his son Christ

and not only blasphemed the trinity but also (as it is credibly reported) wrote books against it,

affirming our Saviour to be but a deceiver, and Moses to be but a conjurer and seducer of the

people, and the Holy Bible to be but vain an idle stories, and all religion but a device of

policy.”

We can agree with Paul Kocher’s assessment: “He became one of the spokesmen of a

tendency, For free thought was stirring in England in a vague, unorganised way during the

last fifty years of the century. Underneath the intonations of the unorthodox writers one can

hear it rising; this mutter of revolutionary dissidence. But in Marlowe we may see the

quintessence of it drawn together and revealed.”3

But whence this hatred of religion? Besides the above-mentioned atmosphere, some

personal factors ought to be taken into account. Among them we could mention the very

strict rules prevailing at Cambridge which the young divinity student had to observe. A

fellow of St. John’s College gives the following account about the mode of existence pursued

2 Paul Kocher, Christopher Marlowe. A Study of his Thought, Learning, and Character. (New York: Russell &

Russell , 1962) , p.68

3 Ibid. p.318.

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at Cambridge at least by the poor students. “There be diverse there which rise daily about

four or five of the clock in the morning, and from five till six of the clock use common

prayer, with an exhortation of God’s words, in a common chapel, and from six until ten of

the clock use either private study or common lectures. At ten of the clock they go to dinner,

whenas they be content with a penny of piece of beef among four, have a pottage of both of

the same beef with salt and cut meal and nothing else. After this slender diet they be either

teaching or learning after five of the clock of the evening, whenas they have a supper not

better than dinner…”4

There were periods when going into town was strictly prohibited, and even bathing in

the Cam River was very much resented. So we have to picture to ourselves a man studying

under such circumstances and coming from a non-noble family. As a poor student,

Christopher Marlowe was allowed to study only divinity. The later creator of Tamburlaine

may have been strongly aware of the limitations imposed upon him. Yet, apart from

inevitable hardships, Marlowe also benefited very much from his university years. He could

study the great works of Latin and Greek literature. In his dramas he made use of this

knowledge. But an author writing for the popular stage could not ignore his country’s

folklore traditions. As a matter of fact, Marlowe, similarly to Shakespeare, unites two

aspects of culture, and the result is a strange mixture in style, which also has a tendency to

lapse into the ridiculous. This aspect becomes clear when the lofty elements of mythology

are mixed with the ferocity and harshness of folklore.

Marlowe did not belong to the best students, but he gained some reputation for his

translation of Ovid’s Amores. In 1587 he got his M. A. which university authorities were

reluctant to give. Marlowe’s degree was granted only at the interference of the Privy Council,

declaring that Marlowe had been employed „in matters…touching the benefit of the

country.” This letter also denies that Marlowe had planned to go to Rheims „and to remain

there”. It is probable that Marlowe was employed in spy activities. The political situation was

tense at the time and Sir Francis Walsingham gathered information from all over Europe.

Perhaps Marlowe was really sent to Rheims, and joined Catholic seminarits there. In his

drama titled The Massacre of Paris we find strikingly abundant evidence for his

acquaintance with foreign policy and with possible plots against the Queen. Paul Kocher, one

of the greatest authorities on Marlowe is probably right when he points out: “Again surely

Marlowe’s mission for the Privy Council in 1587, problematically continued as spy work in

4 John H. Ingram, Christopher Marlowe and His Associates (London: Richards, 1904), pp. 67-68

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later years, does not show him moving with normal fitness in Elizabethan society. Resort to

the underworld has never been considered the mark of a man’s harmony with life.”5

The poet spent the last months of his life mainly in the county of Kent at Scadbury, at

the country house of Thomas Walsingham. Marlowe was working on his last work Hero and

Leander, when warrants for his arrest were issued. His former friend, Thomas Kyd was

arrested earlier. Among Kyd’s papers the police found a bundle of papers titled “Vile,

heretical conceits denying the deity of Jesus Christ our saviour”. Being examined under

torture, Thomas Kyd said those papers had belonged to Marlowe. At this moment the poet’s

life was at stake, but he escaped, because he was able to quote the text by heart about which

he said he had copied it out of a theological treatise. It contained the denial of theories

rejecting the trinity. That Marlowe was in possession of such a book was evidence for his

continued interest in theology. The treatise denied the views of a certain John Asselton

whose main point is that if Jesus Christ was subject to human sufferings, as we are told in the

New Testament, he cannot be God.

On 20 May 1593 Christopher Marlowe was killed in a tavern brawl. Again, the poet

was in the company of dubious characters: Ingram Frizer, Robert Poley and Nicholas Skeres.

According to the story told at inquest on 1 June, after supper Marlowe and Frizer quarrelled

over the “reckoninge”, and Frizer stabbed Marlowe in self-defence. Marlowe was probably

assassinated, his spy activities and outrageous views somehow involved. Two days before his

death, a horrible list of his alleged views was submitted to the Privy Council. The lines of

Richard Baines libel run like that: "I think all men in Christianity ought to endeavour that the

mouth of so dangerous a member may be stopped". There is a strong probability that

Marlowe was assassinated his seditious life and resort to the underworld being involved. All

in all, we see Marlowe as lonely man aloof from normal society, and never attaining normal

and innocent happiness.

The most talented of the university wits died at the age of 29, and his early death

becomes understandable, if we consider his rebellion against contemporary society with all

its limitations.

Although we can say with great certainty that Marlowe attacked religion, yet in The

Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, which is partly a personally experienced artistic vision,

the playwright appears as a man keenly aware of the fact that the individual’s life may be

5 Paul Kocher, op. cit. p. 318

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threatened with damnation. Using 20th-century language we could express this same thought

like this: Marlowe is aware that the individual’s life is threatened by eternal and total failure.

Faustus, for all his knowledge, for all his divine aspirations is eventually a failure. Marlowe,

who in The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, strongly identifies himself with his hero,

describes his own fate, his own self. Marlowe, as far we can infer, never found, even for a

short span of time, harmony in life.

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II. Tamburlaine

Marlowe’s first success was Tamburlaine which was presented by the Lord Admiral’s Men

in 1587. The first part was directly followed by a sequel which was also a great success.

Marlowe was fully conscious that he created something new and soaring, something

unprecedented in the history of drama:

“From jygging vaines of riming mother wits,

And such conceits as clownage keepes in pay,

Weele leade you to the stately tent of war

Where you shall heare the Scythian Tamburlaine

Threatening the world with high astounding tearms

And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword.

View but this picture in this tragicke glasse,

And then applaud as you please.”6

In this prologue we find a very interesting remark: “View but this picture in this

tragicke glassse.” That means that the playwright, when starting to write his play, had

already known that his story for all its glamour, will have a tragic end. In this context the

word “tragicke” does not mean tragic in the genuine sense of the word, it merely means that

the fall of the hero will also be presented.7 When considering both parts of the play, we see

that the technique of the play is quite flawed. Marlowe applies the so-called accumulative

plot structure. “In the cumulative plot, the same type of incident was repeated again and

again, in a crescendo and with a quickening tempo up to the catastrophe. Tamburlaine goes

from one conquest to another. The only advance is numerical.”8

This kind of plot structure has aesthetic implications, too, because it can be very well

used for showing how a certain passion gradually becomes a human flaw, leading to the fall

of the hero. Another fault of the play is that we do not have witty and fluent conversations in

6 Fredson Bowers (Ed.), The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe: Vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 79 (Henceforward Complete Works Vol. I)

7 This is the medieval concept of tragedy. As the wheel of fortune turns, the fall of the hero will also be presented.

8 Muriel Clara Bradbrook, Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 41

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it. We have disconnected lyric passages in it, and we do not find the usual ease in the speech

of the characters. Besides that, the language of the drama does not fluctuate with the

appropriate sensitivity. A lofty tone is kept up throughout the whole of the play, which, at

least for us, tends to become boring, though there are some passages that strike us with their

beauty.9 In spite of these shortcomings, Tamburlaine was a tremendous success. How can we

account for that?

Firstly, the topic itself, a man conquering empires was very actual at a time, when

England started to acquire her colonies. Secondly, what young Christopher Marlowe felt was

also the prevailing tone of society. What did this tone manifest in? It manifested itself in a

nation expanding, in the pursuit of riches, while being fascinated by the beauty and the

splendour of the world. Here we can observe how the Renaissance spirit is liberated from the

fetters of the old order. The drama is about victorious conquests. We are in 1587, the year in

which the Spanish Armada was defeated.

The play was a tremendous success because it expressed the general mood of society

very well. The spectators of the play were little Tamburlaines, and in the play itself

Christopher Marlowe who was in the first phase of his career, identified himself with his hero

to a great extent. However, this identification with the hero was not absolute. As the play

proceeds, Tamburlaine’s lust for power becomes increasingly inhuman. At some points of the

play, Tamburlaine is a hero whom Elizabethan audience necessarily rejected. One of the

effects of the drama is this alternating feeling of sympathy and hatred for the protagonists.

Before beginning the analysis of the play, let us have a look at the historical

Tamburlaine, at Timur Khan. He belonged by race to the western Tartars who fell apart from

the main body of the empire when the great empire founded by Jenghiz Khan and brought to

its full power by Kublai Khan disintegrated. After a youth of struggles with rival leaders and

Mongolian tribes in the neighbourhood of Samarquand, by the year 1369 he had consolidated

a kingdom for himself in the territory of the Caspian Sea. With this as a base, Tamburlaine

proceeded to the conquest of Northern India and hence to that Anantolia and Persia. In the

year 1402 he met and overthrew Bajazet, the head of the Turkish empire, and was proceeding

against the Turkish empire, when he died in 1405. So we have to emphasize that the original

Tamburlaine was not of low birth. Yet in the historical accounts of the 16 th century it is often

mentioned that he was of low birth, a simple shepherd. With Marlowe this aspect is very

9 Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage already anticipates the possibilities of and potentials in the playwright’s style.

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important. Marlowe used a a great number of sources for his plays (Petrus Perondinus, Pedro

Maxia and Pierre de la Primauday) and he used them with scholarly care. But this did not

prevent Marlowe from from presenting the rude animal-like features of his hero. In fact, he

could grasp the essence of this figure which was a strange mixture of spiritual love and

refinement on the one hand and relish in the most barbarous deeds on the other side. In that

respect, we find another linking feature to the social atmosphere of the age. Queen Elizabeth,

for instance, was both a lover of music and fine poetry and, if necessary, a relentless tyrant

resorting to torture. The noble aristocrat, too, had to fulfil the demands of the age. The ideal

was the so-called “uomo universale”. The aristocrat was expected to be both a lover or

perhaps the maker of poetry, and a relentless soldier plundering Indians and Spaniards.

Let us consider the play, mainly the figure of the protagonist, and try to identify those

aspects which must have appealed to contemporary audience. We will also clarify the role of

fortune in Tambrurlaine. In the first scene of the play we do not yet see the protagonist. We

learn that Tamburlaine as the leader of a gang of robbers causes considerable trouble in the

decaying empire of Persia. The weakling Mycetes is not an apt king, and he is replaced by

Cosroe who is crowned on the stage. How often shall crowns be given and distributed in this

play. (The crown, as the symbol of power, has an important role on the Elizabethan stage.

We should think of the famous dumb show in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.) Already at the

beginning of the play, we feel the intoxication with power. This effect is achieved through

the enumeration of geographical names. We may be sure that half of them were only

euphonious names for the Elizabethan audience. When Cosroe is crowned, Ortygius says the

following to the king:

“We here doo crown thee Monarch of the East,

Emperor of Asia, and of Persea,

Great Lord of Medea and Armenia:

Duke of Assiria and Albania

Mesopotamia and of Parthaia,

East India and the late discovered Isles

Chiefe Lord of all the Euxine sea

And of the ever raging Caspian Lake:

Long Live Cosroe mighty Emparour.”10

10 Complete Works Vol. I, p. 84

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The audience did not know where these countries were located, yet they were affected

by the intoxicating effect of these poetical enumerations and crownings on the stage. It is

only in the second scene that we meet Tamburlaine who has just taken Zenocrate prisoner.

He is very proud and self-assured:

“I am a Lord, for so my deed shall proove,

And yet a shepheard by my Parentage.”11

For the first time we find here a very important and recurring thought which will often

reappear in Marlowe’s plays: it is not noble birth that determines a person’s worth but their

deeds. We should not be surprised that a shoemaker’s son indulged in emphasizing this

thought over and over again. Tamburlaine declares that Zenocrate is worth more than all the

possessions of the Persian crown, which the stars have promised to him. Here we realize that

Tamburlaine’s self-complacency originates in part from his being a chosen and exceptional

man. Being chosen, Tamburlaine believes, is attributable to his metaphysical power.

Nevertheless, we shall soon realize that another factor also plays an important role here.

Tamburlaine’s apparel and bodily appearance fascinates Theridamas:

“A Scythian Shepherd so imbellished

With Nature’s pride, and richest furniture?

His looks do menace heaven and dare the Gods,

His fiereie eies are fixt upon the earth.”12

We hear that Tamburlaine’s energies are partly directed against the Gods. The

dialectics between heavenly sanctions and the hero’s will, this latter being often directed

against the gods, is a recurring idea of the play. When Tamburlaine’s presumption becomes

too great, when he wants to march against the Gods, this equilibrium is upset. Tamburlaine’s

hybris becomes too great, and the hero has to die. So we can say about the protagonist that he

is presented as chosen by metaphysical power, and partly as someone directing his power

against God. This latter aspect gains further confirmation in Tamburlaine’s famous words:

“I hold the Fates bound fast in yron chaines,

And with my hand turne Fortunes wheel about,

And sooner shall the Sun from hes Spheare,

Than Tamburlaine be slaine or overcome.”13




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Marlowe reflects the atmosphere of the age. If we examine the character of Tamburlaine

superficially, we could say that the man of the Renaissance expresses his self-confidence.

But on closer examination, we could say that Fortune’s fickleness is represented by the wheel

of fortune moving up and down. Fortune is fickle, but the man of the Renaissance tries to

overcome this fickleness. Concerning the problem of fate and fortune, we are confronted

with the conflict between the power and effectiveness of the individual and the mysterious

power of fate manifesting itself in the fickleness of fortune. In ancient times the power of the

Morai, the power of the three white-robed godesses of a person’s destiny was felt to be a

relentless power. When the feelings of metaphysical necessity began to crumble, the goddess

Fortuna of the ancient Romans came into being. By prayers and exhortations the favour of

Fortuna could be procured. In the Middle Ages this goddess of the Romans was retained

along with Christian belief of providentia dei. She served the power of God’s omnipotence

and her fickleness became an instrument of punishment for the individual. The symbol of the

power of Fortuna is the wheel of Fortune, with its turning up and down. The wheel of

Fortune had to be grasped at the right moment, and later when the situation was not

favourable anymore, this wheel had to be relinquished. At the end of the Middle Ages the

intensity of metaphysical feeling began to crumble, and this, in turn, led to a strengthening of

the individual’s self-confidence. Indeed, the individual, just the protagonist of this drama,

strove to show his worth and power in mighty achievements. Yet, apart from an increased

sense of self-worth and a general turning away from transcendence, the individual still

retained the old fears of metaphysical powers. When Tamburlaine says, „ I hold Fates bound

in yron chaines”, he declares that, based on his achievements and merits, he was able to

overcome „the Fates”. But only such things we still fear are aspects of life that have to be

overcome and chained down. However much Tamburlaine achieves, the fear of possible

failure is still a limiting factor. In Tamburlaine we see man’s power directing Fortuna, but

this goddess still retains her fickleness. Fortune is a goddess.

The problems of Fortune versus the individual’s worth is reflected also in the words

of Menaphon. He remarks about Tamburlaine that, based on his own merits, Tamburlaine

had become his Fortune’s master.

The contradiction between Fortune and individual power and merit was strongly

present in the thinking and political philosophy of the times. The Florentine Niccolò

Machiavelli tries to give recommendations to his readers about the ways of overcoming

Fortune’s fickleness. According to him, the power of man should manifest virtú. For

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Machiavelli virtú is the pure force in form, it is the notion for the highest and most powerful

life force. It is beyond evil and good, it is pure energy which may manifest itself in the

treachery of Agathokless or in the wise leadership of Theseus. And here we can return to

Tamburlaine who shows much more of virtú than The Prince of Machiavelli. In the 25th

chapter of the work, titled “What Fortune can effect in Human Affairs, and how to withstand

Her”, Machiavelli points out: “It is not unknown to me how many men have had, and still

have, the opinion that the affairs of the world are in such wise governed by fortune and by

God that men with their wisdom cannot direct them and that no one can even help them; and

because of this they would have us believe that it is not necessary to labour much in affairs,

but to let chance govern them. This opinion has been more credited in our times because of

the great changes in affairs which have been seen, and may still be seen, every day, beyond

all human conjecture. Sometimes pondering over this, I am in some degree inclined to their

opinion. Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that Fortune is the

arbiter of one-half of our actions , but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or

perhaps a little less.”14

If we compare the last sentence with Tamburlaine’s thoughts, it becomes clear that

Marlowe’s protagonist has much more virtú than described by Machiavelli in the above

passage. In the course of the drama, Tamburlaine cannot be overcome by human power, by

any human adversary. He is overcome only by death which, in turn, stems from a

presumptuousness that simply does not know any limits. The issue of Tamburlaine’s

moderation and presumptuousness will be discussed later.

After Cosro has been won over to Tamburlaine’s side, this is what the hero of the

play says:

“And with our Sun-bright armour we march,

Weel chase the Stars from heaven, and dim their eies

That stand and muse at our admyred armes.”15

We realise again that the hero is intoxicated with a sense of power to such an extent that he

wants to fight the Gods themselves.

Yet this attitude does not exclude another one. Before Cosroe and Tamburlaine march

against the weakling Mycetes, Tamburlaine also says that they will win because the

14 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (translated by W. K. Marriott), (Forgotten Books, 2008), p. 94


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“… Fates and Oracles of heaven have sworne

To roialise the deeds of Tamburlaine”16

Mycetes is defeated. The humorous play with the crown (Mycetes wants to hide it)

belongs to the “progress in pomp” character of the play. 17 This feature of the drama is also

stressed by the balanced structure of scenes in the drama. The playwright aims to balance the

scenes throughout the whole of the play. (This is seen, for example, when before a battle both

Bajazet and Tamburlaine brag about their prowess.) This structure is probably related to the

“casting methods and the traditional formulas of the homiletic stage”.18

We get the following description about the protagonist:

“Of stature tall, and straightly fashioned,

Like his desire, lift upwards and divine,

So large of limbs his joints so strongly knit,

Such breadth of shoulders as might mainely beare

Olde Atlas burthern.”19

The role of Tamburlaine was a very suitable one for Edward Alley, the most talented

actor at the time. He, too, was a tall sturdy man, and he must have achieved a wondrous

effect bowing to his thundering speech and the gorgeous robe he wore. And what does

Cosroe say about him? In view of my explanation, about the conflicting forces of Virtu and

Fortune, this will be comprehensible: “His merits show him to be his fortune’s master and the

king of men.” Tamburlaine’s way to the Persian throne leads through Cosroe, who upon

learning that his forces have been attacked by Tamburlaine, says the following:

“What God or Feend, or spirit of the earth,

Or monster turned to manly shape…..20

And later:

“…he was never sprong of humaine race,

Since with the spirit of his feaerfull pride

He dares so doubtlessly resolve of rule,


17 Harry Levin, Christopher Marlowe: the Overreacher (London: Faber & Faber, 1965), p. 47

18 David M. Bevington, From Mankind to Marlowe : Growth of Structure in the Popular Drama of Tudor England. (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968)



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And by profession so ambitious.”21

In this drama we face a superman striving for power. Machiavelli wrote his The

Prince for the would be ruler and conqueror without any legitimacy. Tamburlaine is of low

birth. He is a shepherd’s son. He feels within himself the natural instinct for fighting and

conquest.

“Nature that fram’d us of four Elements,

Warring within our breasts for regiment,

Doth teach us all to have aspyring minds:

Our soules, whose faculties can comprehend

The wonderous Architecture of this world:

And measure every wandering plannets course:

Still climbing after knowledge infinite,

And alwaies mooving like the restless Spheares,

Wils us to weare our selves and never rest,

Untill we reach the ripest fruit of all,

That perfect blisse and sole felicitie

The seet fruition of an earthly crowne.”22

It should be noted that Tamburlaine uses here the first person singular, as if he were speaking

a didactic text. The conception of the four elements is also mentioned here. The four

elements were arranged in the following hierarchy: earth, water, air and fire. Though the

elements were arranged in a hierarchy in the great chain of beings, they were at perpetual war

with each other. Evidently, Marlowe’s text is written within the framework of the world-view

of the middle ages until the sudden crescendo of blasphemy at the end of the monologue. The

last lines of the monologue are “both in thought and in language a conscious denial of the

Christian view that the summum bonum of men is the attainment of bliss in heaven.”23 The

fact that this warfare among the elements is part of Nature’s processes should encourage us

to have aspiring minds. This passage represents the typical Marlowe. It can be observed that

whenever the poet’s thoughts become increasingly lofty and sublime, he turns towards the

stars, the planets and the ever-moving spheres. Shakespeare has perhaps Marlowe in mind

when he makes his Theseus say:



23 Kocher, op.cit. p.76

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“The poets eye in fine frenzy rolling

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven.”24

The fact that Tamburlaine changes here from the first person singular to the first

person plural has generally escaped the critics’ attention: In this monologue the first person

plural expresses a sort of identification between the audience and the protagonist and I did

not say without reason that “little Tamburlaines” were watching the play.

The third act is devoted to Tamburlaine’s victory over Bajazet. Before the battle, we

have the “progress in pomp” motive again. The two sides threaten each other in a ceremonial

way. Here, for the first time Tamburlaine expresses that his task is divinely sanctioned. He

declares for the first time that he considers himself the scourge of God. After his victory

Tamburlaine says he wants to conquer the whole world. The fourth act is the siege of

Damascus. The martial customs of the protagonist are described as follows:

“The first day when he pitches down his tentes

White is their hew, and on his silver crest,

A snowy Feather spangled white he weares,

To signify the mildnesse of his minde:

That satiate with spoile refuseth blood.

But when Aurora mounts the second time,

As red as scarlet is his furniture,

Then must his kindled wrath be quencht with blood,

Not sparing any that can manage armes.

But if these threats move not submission

Blacke are his collours. Blacke Pavillion,

His speare, his shield, his horse, his armour, his plumes

And Jetty Feathers menace death and hell.

Without respect of sex, degree or age.

He raceth all his foes with fire and sword.25

Meanwhile Tamburlaine keeps his former adversary in a cage. While Bajazet is being

humiliated, Theridamas asks Tamburlaine the following question: “Dost thou think that

Mahomet will suffer this?” At this point, Therimadas begins to realize that the protagonist

24 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1


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has become too arrogant and that this arrogance may result in Tamburlaine’s fall. The

protagonist’s arrogance is very important, as it will have an explanatory role when clarifying

the problem of Tamburlaine’s death. In the last scene of this act Tamburlaine crowns his

contributory kings:

“Deserve these tytles I endow you with,

By valour and magnanimity.

Your byrthes shall be no blemish to your fame,

For vertue is the fount whence honor springs”26

In the scene showing the siege of Damascus it is not clear why the governor, who has

been previously been informed about the Tamburlaine’s martial customs, sends out the

virgins. The fine rhetoric of the first virgin does not move Tamburlaine’s heart to pity.

Tamburlaine adheres to his martial customs. He will not relent:

“I will not spare these proud Egyptians,

Nor change my Martiall observations,

For all the wealth of Gehons golden waves.

Or for love of Venusm would she leave

The angrie God of Armes, and lie with me.

They have refusde the offer of their lives,

And know my customs are as peremtory

As wrathfull Planets, death or destinie.”27

The reader notices the words: “my customs are as peremtory/ As wrathfull Planets,

death or destinie.” This is yet another reference to the planets. Marlowe makes the readers

feel that the hero acts as a metaphysical medium. Tamburlaine, by thinking that he fulfils

God’s will, finds an excuse for his cruelty. We can agree with M. C. Bradbrook: “There is no

hint in the verse of the physical sufferings of the virgins; they are a set of dummies.”28

Christopher Marlowe does not intend to show the sufferings of the group virgins pleading for

mercy. The playwright is playing with Tamburlaine’s soldiers and armies like a child with his

toys. Later on the reader of the play can read Tamburlaine’s monologue about Zencorate’s

sufferings. It is fine poetry, but it does not fit into the organic flow of the play. It comes after

the massacre scene. Although Tamburlaine recognizes the contradiction, we feel it verges on



28 M. C. Bradbrook, op. cit., pp. 138-139

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the ridiculous that the hero of the play, after having ordered the massacre of the virgins,

should speak about poetic beauty. It must be conceded though that the historic Tamburlaine

united in his character cruelty as well as an adoration of beauty.

Tamburlaine says:

“But how unseemly is it for my Sex,

My discipline of armes and Chivalrie,

My nature and the terrour of my name,

To harbour thoughts effeminate and faint?”29

At the end of the monologue he emphasizes again, now for the third time in the drama, that

“…Vertue solely is the sum of glorie,

And fashions men with true nobility”30

In a historical sense, Tamburlaine’s love is unique, as it is directed to one woman

only. Yet the hero’s love for Zenocrate is too sublime, and it is not directed towards the loved

woman as a person. For Tamburlaine Zenocrate is just a poetic means for the creation of

sublime aspirations. Although this is not a great fault of the play, the reader must admit that,

in terms of the play, Tamburlaine’s love for Zenocrate is not presented convincingly.

Zenocrate is not a superhuman being. She knows that her husband’s cruelty, if

continued, will result in divine retribution. She begs Jove and Holy Mahomet for forgiveness,

and this is important in terms of understanding the last scenes of the play. Zenocrate fears

that the Gods may punish her husband for his arrogance and cruelty.

“Ah myghty Jove and holy Mahomet

Pardon my Love, oh pardon his contempt,

Of earthly fortune, and respect of pitie,

And let not conquest ruthely purswede

Be equally against his life incenst.”31

There are even more passages forecasting Tamburlaine’s fall in the second part of the

play. At the end of the first part Tamburlaine makes peace with the world, although he

declares he wants to conquer the whole world:




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“The God of war resignes his roume to me,

Meaning to make me Generall of the world..”32

Tamburlaine’s last victory opens the way for his marriage with Zenocrate. At this

point the first part of Tamburlaine ends. “Despite the many incidental tragedies the kingly

casualties along the way, the First Part is not a tragedy, it is a heroic play or romantic

drama…” 33

Clearly, in the second part of Tamburlaine the play loses much of its intensity. The

success of the first part induced Christopher Marlowe to write the second part of

Tamburlaine:

“The generall welcomes Tamburlaine receiv’d

When he arrived last upon our stage,

Hath our Poet pen his second part,

Wher death cuts off the progress of his pomp,

And murdrous Fates throwes al his triumphs down.”34

The reader learns that Tamburlaine’s fall will be presented as a consequence of

“murdrous Fates. It is generally conceded that Tamburlaine Part I has a unity of the parts

with the whole which Tamburlaine Part II does not possess, and that Marlowe attempted to

do twice what could only be done once.

In the first part of the play the unity of the drama was ensured by the hero himself. In

the second part of Tamburlaine we see how the poet fills out the blanks with his imagination.

In Act I of the second part, we can see the Turks making truce with Sigismund. Marlowe

makes a mistake here because this peace treaty was concluded between Amurath II and

Vladislaus of Poland and Hungary. The truce made it possible for Amurath II to withdraw his

troops from Europe. Yet this happened not because of the threat caused by Tamburlaine, as it

is shown in Marlowe’s drama. By the time this peace treaty had been signed, Tamburlaine

was already dead. The peace treaty was sworn in the name of Christ and Mahomet

respectively, yet it was renounced by the papal legate. He urged the immediate invasion of

the Turks’ undefended territories. At Varna, on the coast of the Black Sea, the Ottoman army

defeated the Christian army. This event is shown in the play.


33 Levin, op.cit. p. 96


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Paul Kocher tries to point out that the playwright’s hatred of Christianity. In a wider

sense it cannot be denied that there is some intention in such an obvious example of bad

faith. But Kocher’s thinks that Marlowe wanted to smuggle into the text of his play another

of his famous blasphemies cannot be accepted. Paul Kocher writes, “ Orcanes reverts twice

to the gibing little «if» clause. (…) Bonfinius’ passage affirms the existence of Christ;

Marlowe’s puts it into the conditional.”35

“Then if there be Christ,as Christians say.”

“If there be Christ, we shall have victorie.” 36

Although I accept much of the biographical evidence for Marlowe’s hatred of

religion, I do not believe much significance should be attributed to these “if”s. After all it

does not come as much of a surprise that a Turk doubts the existence of Jesus Christ.

But let us return to Tamburlaine whose military achievements do not fascinate his

youngest son and his wife anymore. Yet the cumulative plot goes on, and Tamburlaine’s

military commanders continue their campaign. Their reports sound boring to modern ears,

yet the Elizabethan audience must have been intoxicated with these enumerations. Perhaps

they did not follow the plot of the drama very closely. The only important thing for them

must have been that the drama’s sublime tone be kept up throughout the whole play. The

“contributory kings” receive their crown as a recognition of their achievement:

“Wel said Argier, receive thy crowne again.”37

“Thanks king of Morocus, take your crowne again.”38

“Thanks king of Fesse, take here thy crowne again.”39

Throughout the whole play the love of pomp and ceremonies plays an important role.

Crowns are being handed over, the spectators can see ceremonial movements on the stage

accompanied by ceremonial speech. It is highly probable that Marlowe traced the route of his

heroes’ campaigns on the world famous atlas of Ortelius, on the “Theatrum Orbis

35 Kocher, op. cit. p. 92 and 96

36 Complete Works Vol. I, p. 168 & 169




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Terrarum”40 Marlow was playing “a great game of chess with his kings and conquerors for

pieces, and for chess board the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.”41

Tamburlaine’s coming fall is anticipated by Zenocrate’s death. Meanwhile Calaphine,

who hopes to be able to overcome Tamburlaine, says the following:

“We shall not nourish any doubt,

But that proud Fortune, who hath followed long

The martiall sword of Tamburlaine

Will now retaine her old inconstancie..”42

This, again, shows that Tamburlaine’s fortunes cannot be influenced by human

forces. The protagonist’s life will have to be destroyed by superhuman forces, by the Gods,

by the wrath of Gods. The central part of the second part of Tamburlaine is quite mediocre.

The story of Olympia is superfluous, and it is not integrated into the play. Calyphas,

Tamburlaine’s youngest son does not participate in a battle, and incurs Tamburlaine's wrath.

When the playwright got to this part of his play he must have felt that there are perhaps also

other virtues than martial courage. Calyphas’comic words about war and about risking one’s

life in war anticipate Falstaff’s words against martial courage.

“The bullets fly at random where they list.

And should I goe amd kill a thousand men,

I were soon rewarded with a shot,

And sooner far than he that never fights,

And should I goe and do no harme nor good,

I might have harme, which all the good I have,

Join’d with fathers crowne would never cure

Ile to cardes: Perdicas”43

40 Mary Ethel Seaton, “Marlowe’s Map ”. Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association 10 (1924) pp. 11-35 (Mary Ethel Seaton suggests that Marlowe made use of Ortelius’s “Theatrum Orbis Terrarum” for the geography of his “Tamburlaine.”)

41 Roy W. Battenhouse: “Tamburlaine’s Passions” In: Clifford Leech (ed.), Marlowe: A Collection of Critical Essays (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1964), pp. 57-68

42 Complete Works Vol. I, pp. 175-176

43 Complete Works Vol. I, pp. 193

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After having won the battle, Tamburlaine kills his own son for having not participated

in it. From then on, Tamburlaine’s arrogance and hubris assume superhuman and dangerous

proportions. One of Tamburlaine’s adversaries says:

“Thy victories are growne so violent,

That shortly heaven, fild with the meteors,

Of blood and fire thy tryannies have made,

Will poure down blood and fire on thy head.”44

Yet Tamburlaine continues to be victorious. The cumulative plot structure goes on.

After the siege of Babylon, the protagonist’s arrogance and hybris become so great that he

challenges Mahomet himself. He sees men worshipping Mahomet in vain. Tamburlaine sent

millions of Turks to hell, yet he lives untouched by Mahomet. That is why he says:

“Now Mahomet, if thou have any power,

Come downe thy selfe and worke a myracle,

Thou art not woorthy to be worshipped,

That suffers flames of fire to burn the writ,

Wherein the sum of the religion rests.

Why sendst thou not furious whyrlwind downe,

To blow thy Alcaron to thy throne,

Where men report, thou sittst by God himselfe,

Or vengeance on the head of Tamburlaine

That shakes his sword against his majesty,

Seeke out another Godhead to adore,

The God that sits in heaven, if any God,

For he is God alone, and none but he.” 45

The hero dies within “thirty lines” of daring Mahomet to come down from heaven

and “work a miracle”. When the deeds and actions of the hero had become too inhuman, he

has to die. Tamburlaine dies when his hybris reaches its peak, this death being a sort of

punishment sent by the gods. This is very remarkable as the same thing happens to other

Marlovian heroes. Marlowe’s heroes reach the culmination point of their pride directly



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before their death, e. g. Tamburlaine, Mortimer and Gaveston. Tamburlaine dies because of a

sudden illness. He is not defeated by a human adversary but by an illness sent by the Gods.

The spectators of the play are witness to a clear case of divine retribution. Therefore, I

cannot agree with Kocher’s views: “What the ending of the play leaves us with is then

simply the conclusion that death comes even to the mightiest. It is inconceivable that on the

whole this renunciation of a pagan God, hated by the Elizabethans, in favour of one who is at

least approximately Christian could have been a blasphemy deserving immediate

retribution.”46 Kocher seems to ignore that Zenocrate and even Theridamas feared that the

hero will be punished by divine retribution. Tamburlaine, the superhuman hero, proves to be

a normal man:

“What daring God torments my body thus,

And seeks to conquer mighty Tamburlaine,

Shall sickness proove me now to be a man,

That have been tearmed the terror of the world?”47

Tamburlaine does not say he has hopes of a life after death. He is consoled by his

earthly achievements, and by the thought that his life will be carried on by his son’s great

deeds.

“My flesh devided in your precious shapes,

Shall still retaine my spirit, though I die,

And live in your seedes immortally.”48

Some critics state that the play should be regarded as a didactic work exhorting the

Elizabethan audience to shun sin. Immoderation is a great sin, it is the cause of tragic fall.49

However, this theory is applicable only for the end of the play. Throughout the whole of the

work we can see a glorification of power and divine aspirations.

Tamburlaine represents the first stage in the evolution of the Marlovian hero. In this

play the world is still wide and it offers all its riches to Tamburlaine. A tragedy in the

genuine sense of the word is not presented in this play. Christopher Marlowe projects his

lyric self, which is congruence with the spirit of contemporary society, onto the figure of

46 Kocher, op. cit. p. xx



49 Roy W. Battenhouse: “Tamburlaine’s Passions” In: Clifford Leech (ed.), Marlowe: A Collection of Critical Essays (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1964), pp. 57-68

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Tamburlaine. Tamburlaine is the only character in the play that is more than a cliché figure.

The hero stands above all the other dramatis personae and there is no real dialogue and

interaction between the hero and the other characters. All attention is focussed on the hero

whose psychology, despite some changes, remains basically the same. Towards the end of

the play, secondary characters gain in significance, especially based on their criticism of

Tamburlaine. These characters are also powerful, and they also speak in a bragging tone. The

hero of the play is animated by virtu so that he can acquire an “earthly crowne” or perhaps

something even more. Tamburlaine’s love is not well portrayed in the play. With some

exaggeration we could say he falls in love only to have moments of ecstasy. But let us turn

now to the following great drama of Christopher Marlowe wherein the limitations of the

world manifest themselves to a greater extent, thus producing a genuine tragedy.

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III. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

As far as the text of the play is concerned, we have to distinguish between two versions.

Though editors prefer the 1616 version to the one published in 1604, I shall base my analysis

on the earlier version of the text. The 1604 version of The Tragical History of Doctor

Faustus is a great play in spite of the trivialities and the occasional disappointments, whereas

the 1616 edition is weaker in the fine passages and longer and more tedious in the weak ones.

The 1616 version of the play with all the parts that it emphasizes leads away from what is

valuable in the play, and destroys what we accept in the 1604 text as a balance of fineness

and triviality. We know that William Byrd and Samuel Rowley were paid for their additions

to the 1616 version of the play. We cannot entirely discard the possibility that the middle part

of the play does not originate from Marlowe. This is another reason why we choose a version

of the play that contains less of the style of the middle part of the play. Furthermore, I will

not discard certain passages as not Marlowe’s. After all, the 1604 version is a complex work

and it can be dealt with only as one unity. A method whereby I ignore certain lines as not

those of Marlowe is not feasible because I cannot draw an absolutely clear borderline

between Marlovian and non-Marlovian parts.

My second reason for regarding the play as one entity is that there is no point in

refusing the authorship of Marlowe with regard to the obscene parts, as Marlowe was also the

author of The Jew of Malta, a play that does contain a lot farcical and somewhat obscene

elements.

The source of the play is the German Historia von D. Johann Fausten published by

Johann Spies in Frankfurt in 1587. This book was translated into English very soon after its

publication. Faustus was a historical figure, and the most famous humanists of Germany

knew him. The earliest record about the existence of Faustus is a letter of Johann Triphemus,

abbot of Sponheim, who warns his friend against Faustus as a fraud and a cheater. It is

related in the letter how dr. Faustus introduced himself: “Magister Georgicus Sabellicus–

Faustus Junior–Fons necromanticorum–astrologus magus–secundus crimonaticus–

agromaticus phyromanticus–in hydra arte secundus.”

But Faustus was not only a cheater. He must have possessed some academic

knowledge, too. A mere cheat would not have been mentioned by so many people. The life

of the real Faustus is traceable between 1506-1536 in the records of his contemporaries.

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He must have been a fahrender Scholast, partly a cheater and charlatan and partly a

genuine scientist. The German Faustbuch exhorts us to shun Faustus’ dangerous quest for

knowledge and also exhorts us to be pious Christians. The hero of the German Faustbuch is a

popular hero. And as such he often performs deeds and tricks for which it was not worth

selling his soul to the devil. At the description of such events it becomes clear that the

anonymous author sympathizes with Faustus. Apart from the fact that the author attributed to

his hero some of his Renaissance intellectual curiosity, the work comes from a Protestant

writer. The Protestant spirit of the book becomes visible when Faustus’s adventures with the

Pope are being described. But other factors also convince us of the Protestant spirit of the

book. We could say that the Faustus of the Volksbuch is depicted as the opposite of Luther.

Before Faustus is carried off by the devil, he cries: „Wo ist meine feste Burg. Wo ist mein

Schutz und Aufenthalt? Wo ist mein Aufenthalt?” While Luther is a firm believer, Faust

dubitates; Luther respects the Bible, but Faustus throws it away; Luther does not trust reason

and science, whereas Faustus has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Luther overcomes

the devil, who has reputedly appeared to him, but the reformer chased him out of his chamber

by throwing his inkstand at him. The German Fausbook describes the awful nemesis that

overtakes a man who has sold himself to the devil, to the powers of evil, to gratify his pride,

lust and his thirst for knowledge.

Marlowe’s play, which, originally, was not divided into acts and scenes, begins with

the Chorus. The name comes from classical drama, but here it is merely an explanatory

prologue recited by a single actor. From this Prologue we learn those facts that are also

related in the German Faustbook, and also of its English translation. The most important

points are that Faustus was born of parents of “base stock” and that he started his career at

Wittenberg university studying theology. (This was the discipline that a poor but talented

undergraduate was allowed to study.) Christopher Marlowe was also born of “base stock” ,

and he started his career at Cambridge University. He, too, found his way to Cambridge with

the help of a scholarship founded for giving assistance to talented but poor boys. Already at

the beginning of the play, we learn that Faustus’ fall will also be presented: We are reminded

of the legend of Icarus and Daedalus:

“His waxen wings did mount above his reach

And melting heavens conspired his overthow”50

50 Fredson Bowers (Ed.), The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe: Vol. II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 79 (Henceforward Complete Works Vol. II), p. 161

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After the exit of the “Chorus” the curtain of the back-stage is drawn and the

spectators discover Faustus in his study, Faustus is urging himself to discard university

wisdom. But he is also in fear. He sort of murmurs his thoughts about the various disciplines

and ideas to himself.

He is not fully self-conscious, otherwise he would use the first person singular.

Faustus urges himself to be a “divine in show”. As a matter of fact that is what Marlowe did.

After having been awarded his B.A., he studied for his M.A. without any intention of

becoming a priest. Logic, medicine and law are rejected as worthy fields of study, until

Faustus gets to divinity. Marlowe was reputed to have cited alleged contradictions in the

Bible, and so does also his protagonist, Faustus. Let us consider Faustus’ train of thought in

greater detail. Faustus first cites from Romans 6:23 from the Vulgata:

“Stipendium peccati mors est: ha! Stipendium, etc.

The reward of sin is death? That's hard.” 51 52

in greater detail. Faustus then quotes from 1 John 1:8 from

“Si peccasse negamus fallimur

Et nulla est in nobis veritas

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves,

and there's no truth in us.”53

Two statements from the Bible are put together, which, of necessity, takes us to the

following train of thought: We are guilty, and we have to recognise that, otherwise there is no

truth in us. At the same time, we know from the Bible that the reward of sin is death.

Consequently, we have to die. And Faustus adds we have to die an eternal death. If such a

conclusion can be drawn from the Bible, Faustus argues, it might as well be thrown away.

The sense of damnation is also ready present here. However, when Faustus takes the second

quote, he forgets to read on (King James Bible/1 John 1:9): “But if we confess our sins, he is

faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from unrighteousness.”

51 Complete Works Vol. II, p. 163

52 Perhaps it is not mere coincidence that the quote is taken from Paul’s Letter to the Romans. God has chosen people either for salvation or damnation in advance. God’s arbitrary will gets a great emphasis in the epistle.


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It is partly Faustus’ fate that he yields to the temptations of the devil. Already here we

can feel that the devil’s hand is at work. In fact, in the 1616 Quarto we can find a passage

referring to that. There, the devil, before he fetches off, Faustus says the following:

“I doe confesse it Faustus, and rejoyce;

Twas ( that when you wer’t i’ the way of heaven

Damb’d up thy passage, when thou lookst the booke,

To view the Scriptures, then I turned the leaves

And led thine eye.”54

Faustus, the overreaching figure of Renaissance aspirations cannot gratify his desire

for knowledge with university subjects, and, this is why he reverts to magic. With magic he

can dominate the universe, with magic he can be transformed into what he wants to become,

a divine being.

“A sound magician is a demi-god… “55

The figures of Valdes and Cornelius are Marlowe’s inventions. They are not to be found in

the sources that the playwright used for writing this drama. Valdes and Cornelius lead

Faustus on to magic. Cornelius says:

“Valdes, first let him know the words of art,

And then all ceremonies learn’d.

Faustus may try cunning by himselfe.”56

They themselves do not want to get into danger. They serve as decoys, inducing Faustus to

take concrete steps to begin magic.57 After this scene, we hear no more about them. But

Faustus wants to take a decisive step now. And what a great eagerness manifests itself in this

hero. Now that he knows what he has to do to achieve his aims, he says:

“For e’re I sleep I'le try what I can do:

This night I'll conjure though I die therefore.”58




57 W. W. Greg: “The Damnation of Faustus” In: Clifford Leech (ed.), Marlowe: A Collection of Critical Essays (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1964), pp. 92-116


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Magic played an important role in Elizabethan times, when heretofore unknown possibilities

and desires appeared which could not be realised because technology was not advanced. In

this historical period “white magic” was sharply distinguished from “black magic”. In white

magic the scientist wanted to achieve his aims through supernatural wisdom, whereas in

black magic the magician reverted to infernal forces. In the eyes of contemporaries black

magic was a capital crime. The theme itself, a man making a deal with the devil was an

extremely dangerous one. Faustus reverts to black magic and he succeeds in conjuring up the

agent of hell, Mephistopheles

Faustus is not an atheist in the strict sense of the word, i.e. he is not without God and

the forces of evil. He accepts the existence of the beliefs against which he is revolting, but to

alleviate his conscience, he turns the existing religious values upside down:

“This word ‘damnation’ terrifies not me,

For I confound hell in Elysium.”59

The appearance of the legate of hell and, later on, that of the prince of hell, Lucifer must have

been terrifying for contemporary audience. Sometimes even the actors believed that an

additional person appeared, the devil himself, on stage. As for the devil, he is out of hell, yet

he feels himself to be in hell:

“Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.

Think’st thou that I who saw the face of God,”

And tasted the eternal joyes of Heaven,

Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,

In being depriv’d of everlasting blisse?”60

Marlowe, the former student of theology, makes his devil speak in compliance with

the principles of modern theology which interprets hell as a state of mind. Faustus himself

consoles the devil for having lost eternal bliss in heaven. Faustus is the man in revolt

consciously incurring eternal death. Faustus, using his diabolical skills, makes a pact with the

devil. He would conclude a pact with the devil even if he had as many souls as there are stars

in the sky.

“By desperate thoughts against Jove’s deity

Say he surrenders up to him his soule,



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So he will spare him four and twenty years,

Letting him live in all voluptuousnesse,

Having thee ever to attend on me,

To give me whatsoever I demand:

To slay mine enimies, and aid my friends,

And alwaies be obedient to my will.”61

At this point it is worth casting a glance at the place of Christopher Marlowe’s

Faustus in the history of European literature. Whereas Marlowe’s Faustus possesses manly

fortitude in incurring eternal death, Goethe’s Faust is a much more sophisticated figure:

“Werd ich zum Augneblicke sagen:

Verweile doch! du bist so schön!

Dann magst du mich in Fesseln schlagen,

Dann will ich gern zugrunde gehen!

Dann mag die Totenglocke schallen,

Dann bist du deines Dienstes frei,

Die Uhr mag stehn, der Zeiger fallen,

Es sei die Zeit für mich vorbei!“62

Faust says that his life should be destroyed by the devil, and devil may put him into

fetters, if he regards life as worth being accepted. Faust’s embitterment is so great that, at the

time of the devil’s appearance, he says: when I find single moment of full satisfaction, I am

yours and you can have my life, my body and soul. Fortunately, Goethe’s Faust, at the end of

his life, affirms his life, but this, in turn, separates him from the devil. We can say, therefore,

that Goethe’s hero makes a pact with the devil that is different from that of Marlowe’s hero.63

Marlowe’s Faustus sells his soul to the devil unconditionally, whereas Goethe’s hero sells his

conditionally, and with the fulfilment of this condition, the affirmation of the moment, all

what Goethe’s intellectual devil stands for, i. e. hatred of human reason and the rejection of

the progress of mankind are destroyed.

In Elizabethan tragedy, contrary to Greek tragedy, where the hero confronts a hostile

force with an undivided soul, the Elizabethan hero has a soul torn with contradictions: the 61 Complete Works Vol. II, p. 171

62 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust Der Tragödie erster Teil, (Leipzig: Reclam Universal Bibliothek, XXXX), p.55

63 A. C. Bradley: The Shakespearean Tragedy (London: Macmillan, 1992 ), see the first lecture titled: “The Substance of Shakespearean Tragedy”

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inward struggle taking place inside the hero is strongly emphasized. Marlowe’s Faustus is

influenced by the Good Angel and the Evil Angel. However, he follows the Evil Angel until

the very end, when repentance does not work anymore.

The Evil Angel stands for the “New Forces” and the Good Angel for the “Old

Forces”. These two angels are at combat for Faustus’ soul. By using these two figures,

Marlowe follows the tradition of old morality plays. Yet in the morality play the protagonist

is saved. With help coming from the Good Angel, he recognizes his sins and repents. The

hero of the morality plays is saved. Faustus is not saved. He is a genuinely tragic hero. He

stands between the religious optimism of the Middle Ages and the irreligious optimism of the

Age of Reason. Both the Middle Ages and the Age of Reason rejected tragedy. But where

does Faust’ tragedy originate from? The explanation could be that during the Elizabethan

age both the forces of the “old” and those of the “new” were incompatible with each other.

Marlowe’s tragedy shows the clash between the medieval and the Renaisance concepts of

life. Because of this tension life itself becomes problematic. It ceases to be a central value

for the ethical man.64 This means that the soul of these heroes is torn by so intensive

emotions and contradictions that the intensity of these emotions in itself often implies and

anticipates the protagonist’s impending doom.

At such times the idea of beautiful death is created65 because social and spiritual

tensions are so intense that life, the very fact of staying alive loses its significance. The full

intensity of life can only be attained in the hero’s tragic death. In The Tragical History of

Doctor Faustus the playwright shows in a masterful way how the forces of the “Old” destroy

the hero. In The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus we can trace the forces of the “Old” in

the following way: human life is threatened by the real possibility of eternal failure.

Marlowe’s contemporaries would have said: human life is threatened by the real possibility

of damnation, this damnation originating from pursuing an “earthly crowne”. In contrast to

64 György Lukács, A modern dráma fejlődésének története [The History of the Development of Modern Drama] (Budapest: Kisfaludy-Társaság, 1911), volume I, p. 57. //Georg Lukács, Entwicklungsgeschichte des modernen Dramas (Darmstadt und Neuwied: Luchterhand Verlag, 1981) p. 46: „Das sind die Zeiten, in denen das Leben, da es völlig problematisch geworden ist, für den ethischen Menschen keinen zentralen Lebenswert mehr bedeutet.”

65 Ibid., p. 57 //Georg Lukács, Entwicklungsgeschichte des modernen Dramas (Darmstadt und Neuwied: Luchterhand Verlag, 1981) p. 46: „Und nachdem es in Gegensatz zu den wichtigsten Werten des Menschen geriet, wird die Wertung für die schon oder noch zum Tode Verurteilten entschieden: es wird die Ideologie des schönen Todes geboren.”

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this, the forces of the “New” encouraged men with until then unprecedented intensity to seek

that “earthly crowne”.

On the surface of it The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus shows the triumph of the

old value system, it shows the working of God’s laws, but at some level, we also feel a

sympathy with the hero. All sensitive readers share the sublime feeling which surrounds the

hero in his fall, and despite the fact that Faust’s soul is damned the students give him a due

burial.

Faustus knows what he does. He knows that in all probability he incurs eternal death.

It is altogether fitting that he should say “consummatum est” after having finished writing

down the text of the pact. Besides the terrible implications of the “irony” of the words

“consummatum est” (John 19:30), we realize that by this act (he writes the contract in his

own blood) Faustus really gives away his soul to the devil. After having finished writing

down the pact, devils enter the room and dance around Faustus, and they give him a beautiful

robe and crown.

Thus, Faustus’ contract is perpetuated. The hero thinks for a moment that hell is only

a fable, yet the devil explains to him that hell is reality: wherever he is, there is hell, too. The

devil says that hell is actually a state of mind, but if it be only a state of mind, he will be

willingly damned there where now the devil himself is to be found: “walking, disputing, etc.”

We see that Christopher Marlowe is much more sensitive than the author of the German

Volksbuch. Apart from the traditional pictures about hell, he introduces another kind of hell,

too. When Faustus is unable to repent, when he is wavering between the Good Angel and the

Evil Angel, “he is experiencing that hell, which Mephostophilis has told him to be personal.

To make personal hell tolerable, one must «take his mind out of it», «have a good time»,

«make most out of life»”.66 That is why Faustus is always given a kind of entertainment by

the infernal powers whenever he falls into despair.

“Marriage is but a ceremoniall toy,

And if thou lovest me thinke no more of it”67

It was not by chance that the devil was told to appear in the apparel of a monk, and it

is not by chance again that the devil compels Faustus to indulge in lechery by making him

66 J. B. Steane, Marlowe, a Critical Study (London: Cambridge University Press, 1964)


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accept a kind of celibacy. Faustus remains lonely throughout the play. Whatever his

achievements may be, he, in a deeper sense, remains alone.

Earlier in the drama the devil had to be consoled by Faustus, but now the devil

consoles despairing Faustus with typical Marlovian blasphemies.

“Faustus: When I behold the heaven then I repent

And curse thee wicked Mephostophilis,

Because thou has deprived me of those Joyes

Mephostophilis: ‘Twas thine owne seeking Faustus, thanke thyself

But thinkst thou heaven is such a glorious thing?

I tell thee Faustus it is not half so faire

As thou or any man on earth.

Faustus: How provst thou that?

Mephostophilis: Twas made for man; then he is more excellent.68

So we see that not only Faustus’ mind is wavering, but that of the devil, too. This

kind of wavering is an adequate reflection of the spirits of the times.

Much has been written by critics about the hollowness of Faustus’ pact with the devil.

This, critics tell us, becomes clear in the middle part of the play which is not doubt much less

well-written than the beginning and the concluding parts. “The structural weakness, however,

corresponds to the anticlimax of the fable, it lays bare the gap between promise and fruition,

between the bright hopes of the initial scenes and the abysmal consequences of the last.”69

After all, Faustus gets very much from the devil. He gets conjuring books, his questions

about the universe are partially answered, he enjoys the hottest whores, he visits hell and

heaven, he conjures up Helen, and later on he becomes her lover and, though a man “born of

base stock”, he wins the favour of the Emperor. We have to concede that Faustus also

performs deeds for which it was not worth selling his soul to the devil. Yet it is perhaps by

virtue of these tricks that Faustus assumes the characteristics of a typical hero who, alongside 68 Complete Works Vol. II, p. 179-180

69 Levin, op. cit. pp. 146-147. This is a common feature of the Elizabethan theatre which always used comic interludes in the tragedies. In fact, “the comic scenes are not haphazardly at odd intervals throughout the play.” (Bevington, op. cit., p. 276.) And “in every pair of alterations the transition from sublimity to triviality, and the concluding phase of each alteration serves as a satiric moral commentary on the scene that has gone before,” (Bevington, op. cit. 276.) For example, the scene Wagner and the Clown is a Parody on the scene of Faustus with the Devil.

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with his protagonist’s lofty aspirations, fulfils also the demands of a cruder popular taste as

well.

After a debate on astrology, Faustus wants to repent, but he is lured away from

thoughts of repentance by the “entertainment” presented to him by the devil. The appearance

of the Seven Deadly Sins, taken over from morality plays, is quite boring. Later on, we also

see Faustus conversing with the Emperor in whose court he conjures up Alexander the Great

and his paramour. Faustus also conjures up Helen of Troy, thereby winning the sympathy of

the scholars.

Following his last “fit of repentance” which could have saved his soul, he is bullied

into signing another pact with the devil. Whereas at the beginning of the play the protagonist,

does not repent because he “confounds hell in elysium”, and because he is too eager to drive

the benefits from the pact with the devil, as the drama draws to its end, he fails because he

does not believe fully and passionately in the grace of God. “Catholic, Calvinist and

Lutherean all agreed that man, of his own nature, was too weak and corrupt to repent of his

sins unless God chose to give him the grace to do so. On the other hand, the Catholic church

and the more moderate Protestants whom Marlowe followed in this instance, declared that

grace was obtainable by any man who really sought it, and that everybody was able to seek

it.”70 The Old Man tells Faustus:

“I see an Angell hover ore thy head,

And with a vyoll full of pretious grace,

Offers to poure the same into thy soule,

Then call for mery, and avoyd despaire.”71

But that warning does not help. In fear of physical pain, Faustus wants to avoid being

torn to pieces by the devil, he signs his pact with devil again, and to “glut the longing” of his

“heart”s desire”, he asks for Helen. He gets her in the “twinkling of an eye”. Then Faustus

says about Helen:

“…sweet embraces may extinguish cleare,

Those thoughts that disswade me from my vow.”72

Faustus flees into love. He believes that, through love, he will become immortal:

70 Kocher, op. cit. p. 109



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“Sweet Hellen make me immortal with a kisse:”73

Apart from that Helen is “more lovely than the monarch of the sky”. Thus, it can be

said of the hero that he attempts to achieve an integrity which is over God, over damnation

and hell. However, Faustus cannot be saved. He is to be crushed by the system against which

he is consciously revolting. We should not forget that there is a deeper meaning in Faustus

damnation. Faustus tells the scholars:

“O, would I had never seene Wittenberg, never read a book…”74

Faustus knows that he had lost the innocence of his intellect as a result of acquiring

knowledge. In the last chapter of the German Faustbook titled “Oratio Fausti ad Studiosos”,

the hero says the following: “Denn ich sterbe als ein böser und guter Christ.”

Why is Faustus a bad Christian? Because he is convinced that his future fate is

damnation. He says:

„But Faustus offence can nre be pardoned,

The serpent that tempted Eve may be saved, but not Faustus.”

Why is Faustus at the same time a good Christian? In his last monologue Faustus

tries to repent of his sins passionately, but earth is deaf to his prayers. The last monologue is

Faustus’ last and most desperate quarrel with the forces which lead to his destruction, his

eternal failure and damnation.

At midnight the devil fetches off Faustus to hell: the contract has expired, the time

allotted to Faustus has come to its end. The clock indicating the passing of time with its

sombre chime is a very clever device whereby a sense of impending horror is expressed. It is

eleven o’ clock. First, Faustus begs God to the celestial spheres, i.e. time so that he may have

some time for repentance. He addresses God:

“O, I’le leape to my God: who puls me downe”75

It is interesting to observe the protagonist’s words. He wants to “leape” up to God,

and doubts even the possibility of being prevented from doing so. There is no real humility in

his prayer, only deep desperation manifests itself in his words. Then Faustus sees Christ’s




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blood in the firmament: the sky is covered by the blood of Christ, and just one half drop

would save him:

“See, see where Christ’s bloud streames in the firmament,

One drop would save my soule, halfe a drop, ah my Christ.”76

But Christ vanishes even when Faustus implores him:

“Where is it now? ‘tis gone77

Then God’s angry face appears and Faustus is frightened of it:

“Stretches out his arm, end bends his irefull Browes:”78

Then Faustus throws himself on the ground:

“Mountaines and Hils, come, come and fall on me,

And hide me from the heavy wrath of God.79

But the earth is deaf to his prayers. Then he turns to the stars:

„You starres that raign’d at my nativity.

Whose influence has allotted death and hell:

Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist…”80

At the beginning of my analysis I pointed out that a sense of lurking damnation had

surrounded the hero before the appearance of the devil. The starts that “raigned” at Faustus’

“nativity” do play an important role in the drama. This does not mean, however, that I deny

that Faustus has a free will in determining what he actually does, because Fate, represented

by the stars, presupposes a certain character in which it may manifest itself. However, fate

must be different from character and must encounter it, so that fate and character can unite in

those wonderful and mysterious moments of meeting. This was wonderfully expressed in the

above-quoted lines. George Steiner is right when he points out that: “Tragedies end badly.

The tragic personage is broken by forces which can be neither fully understood nor

overcome by rational prudence.”81





80 Complete Works Vol. II, p. XXX

81 George Steiner, Death of the Tragedy (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1961) p. 8

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The second part of the monologue shows Faustus’ other attempt to escape. He wishes

to be on the lowest point of the great chain of beings, he wishes to become a soulless brute so

that he can avoid damnation. But nothing helps now. The clock strikes, thunder and

lightning are heard and a shrieking Faustus carried off by the devil.

This monologue is a masterpiece, and one of the many reasons for this is that the

rhythm of the verse pulsates according to the changing emotional tension of the monologue.

Marlowe’s sympathy with his hero and a sense of identification with him become clear from

the closing words of the scholars.82 After finishing the play, the reader has a feeling that

George Steiner describes as follows: “Man is ennobled by the vengeful spite or injustice of

the Gods. It does not make him innocent, but it hallows him as if he had gone through a

flame.”83 Yet, on closer examination, it is rather the Elizabethan spectators of this tragedy

that must have felt this way. For us the catharsis of the The Tragical History of Doctor

Faustus seems to be somewhat incomplete. This is explained by the drama’s epic character,

and because of the great number of digressions that we, with our refined sense of humour, do

not really find so ridiculous anymore.

Now let us try to determine the place of this drama in the evolution of the Marlovian

hero. Similarly Tamburlaine, Faustus is a lonely overreacher seeking the attainment of

unattainable goals. But, in contrast to Tamburlaine, Faustus’ fall is genuinely tragic, as it is

an eternal fall, whereas Tamburlaine still has hopes when he dies. “Tamburlaine’s arrogance

is indeed overthrown–if death in the midst of victory is overthrow–but Marlowe depicts his

fall with none of the agonizing truth, the intensity of personal realization which characterizes

Faustus.”84

In Tamburlaine we are made to realize what one feels when personality is liberated

from the inhibiting bonds of the past. Man liberated from the spirit of the Middle Ages can

achieve very much but he often falls into excesses, cruelty and barbarity. In the The Tragical

History of Doctor Faustus the optimistic mood of the Renaissance starts to fade. Faustus’

world is no longer the optimistic world of the Renaissance; the limits of this world have been

narrowed down. Faustus is no longer the supreme hero of the Renaissance In The Tragical

History of Doctor Faustus the world surrounding the hero of the drama appears with greater 82 However, we cannot agree with the Erich Heller’s view, quoted by Steane according to which the “sensibility of the writer is in a state of flagrant insurrection against the opinion of his fable”. (Steane, op. cit. p. 365)

83 George Steiner, Death of the Tragedy (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1961) p. 10

84 Kocher, op. cit. p. 106

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intensity, and the interaction between the hero and his surrounding world is more realistic.

The subplot (Wagner and students, Wagner and the clown) comments on the main plot.

Following Tamburlaine, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus represents the second step

in the evolution of the Marlovian hero. The following section of the thesis discusses The Jew

of Malta, and tries to highlight the third stage of the development of the Marlovian hero.

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VIII. The Jew of Malta

The play opens with a bold stroke. Machiavelli enters as the prologue of the drama. He tells

his audience he has not come to England to read a lecture but

“….to present the Tragedy of a Jew,

Who smiles to see how full his bags are cramb’d,

Which mony was not got without my meanes.

I crave but this, Grace him as he deserves,

And let him not entertained the worse

Because he favours me.”85

Machiavelli’s views are not directly included in the text of the prologue, but the

spiritual kinship between Marlowe’s Machiavelli and the real Machiavelli is very great.

Marlowe’s Machiavelli seems to echo the views of the playwright:

“I count Religion but a childish Toy,

And hold there is no sinne but Ignorance.”86

Niccolò Machiavelli’s, The Prince describes the different ways of how a person may

come to power, and how he can preserve his power. In Machiavelli’s treatise moral

considerations do not seem to play a role. The concept of realpolitik, a policy based primarily

on sheer power and exempt from all moral considerations had become a commonly known

idea in the age of the Renaissance. As a matter of fact, Barabas symbolizes this policy.

Barabas’ figure is to a great extent indebted to the indirect influence of Machiavelli. Marlowe

also fulfilled the expectation of the general public to portray Jews based on the prevailing

prejudices of the age.

Although we cannot be absolutely certain whether Marlowe had a first-hand

knowledge of Machiavelli’s works, we do know that the playwright knew Innocent Gentillet’s

work which, while sharply denouncing Machiavelli, gave but a distorted picture of his views.

Gentillet’s discourse against Machiavelli became a source from which hundreds of writers

who never read a word of the original work of Machiavelli drew their knowledge of

Machiavellianism. Italy where, as we learn later, the protagonist of the play, Barabas

committed his monstrous crimes, had a very bad image in the eyes of Elizabethans.



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Roger Ascham, an Elizabethan scholar and writer, warns against the “Englishman

Italianated” with the following words: “If someone yet do not well understand what is an

Englishman Italianated I will plainly tell him. He, that by living and travelling in Italy,

bringeth home into England out of Italy the religion, the learning, the policy, the experience,

the manners of Italy. That is to say, for religion papistry or worse, for learning less

commonly than they carried out with them: for policy a factious heart, a discoursing head, a

mind to meddle in all men’s matters: for experience plenty of mischiefs, never known in

England before, for manners a variety of vanities, and change of filthy living.”87

The first scene of the The Jew of Malta shows Barabas sitting in his counting house.

The intoxication with riches was a common social sentiment. We learn that Barabas’

commercial missions and business undertakings were crowned with success. He is visited by

his countrymen who tell him that he, too, has to appear in front of the governor. As Barabas

hesitates to part with half of his fortune, his whole fortune is confiscated by the governor of

Malta. Barabas, the Jew is a man who suffered a serious grievance but his retaliation is out of

proportion with his sufferings. Barabas is “framd of finer mold than common men.”88 But he

is at the same time a lonely person, and he has a humane relationship only with his daughter.

The rich old Jew with a fair daughter is a typical motif of European literature. Although the

beginning of the play has a serious tone, later on it develops into a comic and grotesque

farce. This contradiction is perhaps attributable to Marlowe’s intention of ridiculing

immanent values. “The curious dilemma [I would say difference between the beginning and

the final parts of the play] has come about through the transference of a secular story into the

structure of a moral drama.”89 But I think Marlowe’s intention of ridiculing the inherent

values of society is more important. Through their thoughts, the rascals of this drama satirize

the Catholic church, a church that was detested by Elizabethan society. Indicating yet another

turning point in the development of the Marlovian hero, at this point the drama turns into a

farce. Everything, every aspect of human life is ridiculed here. The interaction between the

dramatis personae and society is stronger here, yet Christopher Marlowe turns the events of

the drama into a farce. Here are some examples:

“Barabas: When sast thou Abigail?

87 Robert Ascham, The Schoolmaster (London, Bell and Daldy, 1863), p. 79 This book was originally published in 1570 (London, Iohn Daye).


89Bevington, op. cit. 231

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Ithimore: To day.

Barabas: With whom.

Ithimore: A Fryar.

Barabas: A Fryar? false villaine, he hath done the deed.

Ithamore: How, sir?”90

The dialogue assumes the traits of a farce even that of a satire directed against the Catholic church:

Abigaill:…and witness that I die a Christian

2nd Friar: …and a virgin, too, that grieves me most.’91

After such turns of events, the concluding lines of the drama cannot really be taken

seriously:

“So march away, and let due praise be given

Neither to Fate nor to Fortune but to Heaven.”92

After having witnessed that the more cunning side has outwitted the less cunning one,

the Governor wants to be grateful to heaven. In this play no character is fundamentally better

than the other. Abigaill is perfectly right when she says:

“But I perceive there is no love on earth

Pitty in Jews, nor piety in Turks.”93

This drama is not a tragedy, yet it is not a comedy either. It is, as T. S. Eliot puts it, a farce:

“If one takes the The Jew of Malta not as a tragedy, or as a ‘tragedy of blood’, but as a farce,

the concluding act becomes intelligible…and if we attend with careful ear to the

versification, we find that Marlowe develops a tone to suit his farce, and even perhaps that

this tone is his most powerful and mature one. I say farce, but with the enfeebled humour of

our times the word is a misnomer; it is the farce of the old English humour.” 94 A “farce of the

old English humour” seems to be a good expression. The tone of Marlowe’s play is similar to

that of the Pardoner’s Tale with its “three youngsters haunting vice and ribaldry/ Riot and

gambling…” When Chaucer’s three youngsters die as a result of treachery, we have in us a

complex feeling of malicious joy, compassion, horror but also a sense of the ridiculous, too.


91 Complete Works Vol. I, p. 307 92 Complete Works Vol. I, p. 335


94 T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. (London: Methuen, 1950), p. 92

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Chaucer’s whole story has a sense of childish naughtiness. Although the drama starts

seriously, from the end of the second act it cannot be taken seriously, and what we get is, in

fact, a bad drama with anti-semitic overtones.

Some critics maintain that Barabas begins his series of crimes in response to his

grievances. But, on a closer scrutiny of the play, this is not true. Barabas was already a

criminal also in Italy. His crimes represent a return to his old nature:

“Being young I studied Physicke, and began

To practice first upon the Italian:

There I enrich’d the Priests with burials.”95

Barabas is not simply a criminal, he is also the incarnation of the figure of vice of the

medieval morality plays having also a number of farcical traits. As a not wholly secularized

incarnation of vice, Barabas has to carry on with his evil actions even though these a actions

are not always adequately motivated. Barabas captures Malta by trickery, and he could take

revenge on the Governor. Yet he does not do so, because the hero, being the incarnation of

vice, must continue his intrigues until the bitter end.96 Barabas is not a psychologically

motivated person, he is a cliché figure. In contrast to this, in the Merchant of Venice the

protagonist is a psychologically realistic figure throughout the whole of the play.

Shakespeare shows the man in Shylock, the merchant of Venice, whereas Marlowe’s Barabas

is a cliché figure and a ludicrous monster. Barabas finds his second self in Ithamore. He

instructs his figure as follows:

“Hast thou no trade? Then listen to my words,

And I will teach thee that shall stick with by thee:

First be thou voyd of these affections,

Compassion love, vaine hope, and hartlesse feare,

Be moved at nothing, see thou pitty none,

But thy selfe smile when Christians moane.”97

There is genuine hatred in Barabas’ words, yet this hatred verges on the ridiculous.

The above speech is followed by Ithamore’s anti-semitic remark:


96 I believe Harry Levin is wrong when he writes: “He has authority now, but Malta hates him. Instead of playing upon the fear of the islanders, he proposes to earn their gratitude by ridding them of the Turks.” (Levin, op. cit. p. 99 ) Barabas being the embodiment of vice, there is no textual evidence for Barabas wanting to earn the gtatitude of the islanders.


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“Oh, brave master, I worship your nose for this.”98

This work is not a great play99, but indicates a decisive turning-point in the evolution of the

Marlovian hero. The Jew of Malta can be regarded as Christopher Marlowe’s absurd drama,

in which all inherent values are relentlessly destroyed. Although the hero is eventually

punished, a “moral” drama without a deeply justified and felt sense morality is absurd. The

versification of the plot often moves on the edge of the ridiculous. The atmosphere of farce

and satire that the playwright creates in connection with the plot estranges us from the

subject of the play. Marlowe seems to have a critical attitude to the plot of his own play, to

the excesses in the plot. There is not one aspect of the plot, there is not a single ethical value

that is not ridiculed in this play. In the absurd drama there is also a general lack of ethical

attitudes.

In Marlowe’s next drama, a decisive turn towards dramatic objectivity takes place.

From Tamburlaine on, we can observe how the playwright becomes capable of writing

drama dialogues with all their turns. It is in The Jew of Malta where a decisive step is taken

towards real drama dialogue. The interaction between the hero of and the other dramatis

personae becomes more important, and accordingly the structure of the drama also changes.

It involves peripeteia, i.e. “the play moves forward in a series of jumps: each small action is

ironically constructed.”100 Although in The Jew of Malta, in this absurd farce, there is no

morality and all values are lost, and although Muslims, Jews and Christians are all farcically

abhorrent, Barabas still remains the “lonely hero”–„lonely” in inverted commas because we

cannot pity him, because he is a dummy (personification of „Vice”) rather than a real flesh-

and-blood character. Despite all his ridiculous and farcical character traits, Barabas is a

„lonely” hero revolting not against God, as Faustus did, but against the whole of society. This

is true even though Anti-Semitism existed in Elizabethan England, and Marlowe fulfilled

the expectation of the general public to portray Jews based on the prevailing prejudices of the

age.


99 David Daiches writes: “…the ambition of Barrabas, the Jew of Malta, lacks the central drive of either Tamburlaine or Faustus, and the play, though it has some moments of grim irony lacking in any of Marlowe’s other works, falls apart as a series of uneven episodes.” (David Daiches, A Crtical History of English Literature, Volume 1 (London: Secker & Warburg), p. 244

100 Muriel Clara Bradbrook, op. cit. pp.

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V. Edward II

From the point of craftsmanship, Edward II is the beast achievement of Christopher Marlowe. The

full title of the first publication of the play is The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of

Edward the Second, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer. However, this play

does not contain those sublime passages that previously characterised Christopher Marlowe’s

dramas. In the early plays Marlowe showed protagonists who were more strongly portrayed

than the minor figures of the plot, characters who suppressed everybody in the background.

In this play the world’s limitations are much more strongly felt. The atmosphere of the drama

is very depressing. With some exaggeration, but certainly with some validity, we can agree

with Miss Mahood: “In Marlowe’s Edward II the final stage of the humanist’s self-

destruction is portrayed: the denial not only of human spirituality but of life itself.”101

Marlowe’s personal views are not discernible in the play, or if they do appear, they

manifest themselves only in a vague way. The playwright achieved here for the first time a

kind of dramatic objectivity. Inferring from their characters, all the dramatis personae act as

in harmony with their character. This is a play in which Marlowe managed to achieve a

dramatic objectivity.

Marlowe shows a great skill in handling his historical sources. In doing so, he is able

to find a deeper meaning in the behaviour of his dramatis personae. He deviates from

Raphael Holinshed Chronicles not because he wants to misrepresent the facts, but in order to

grasp and reflect the essence of the conflict between the play’s dramatis personae.

When Edward II’s predecessor, Edward I died, he was on the way to make himself

absolute master of England and Scotland both. In the last years of his life he had gone far to

break the baronial opposition. An able successor might have destroyed constitutional liberty.

Parliament might have become not an opposition or a critic to be conciliated, but a useful cog

in the machine of royal government. In contrast to this, Edward II (1307-1327) was a wanton

and lax ruler. He incurred the anger of the baronial party by preferring his minions to the

barons’ power. Edward’s first act as a king was the recall of Piers Gaveston from

banishment. Edward I banished Piers Gaveston to France “least the prince, who delighted

101Molly Maureen Mahood, op. cit. p. 81

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much in his companie, might by his euill and wanton counsell fall to evil and naughty rule.” 102

In 1312 the baronial party captured and beheaded Piers Gaveston. Edward was

deposed by Parliament in 1327. The king was kept prisoner in Kenilworth Castle. After

having been tortured for a long time, he was brutally murdered at the behest Roger Mortimer.

The Oxford History of England gives the following description of Edward II:

“Edward lived a life devoid of noble purposes or laudable ambition. He lowered the

reputation of his country abroad and at home, he was the means of brining about the most

serious crisis since 1066. It was his own fault which delivered him into the hands of his own

enemies. Memories of it were to haunt the dreams of his grandson, Richard II, and it opened

the way for monastic conflicts and the decline of the medieval monarchy.”103

Yet for the sake of depicting the essence of collisions, Marlowe deviates from his

historical sources. In reality, the conspiracy of Mortimer and Izabella was revealed only three

years after Edward II’s death. In contrast to the play, Izabella could not have been the mature

wife resenting Edward’s connection with Mortimer, because at the time of her marriage with

Edward she was still a child. Raphael Holinshed sympathizes with the baronial party in its

struggle against the king, and deplores the loss of national prestige that England suffered in

her wars with Ireland, Scotland and France.

In contrast to this, Christopher Marlowe sympathizes with Edward II. Edward’s

relation to Piers Gaveston is homosexual friendship. The playwright’s own life probably

explains why he sympathizes so much with his hero. According to the Baines libel Marlowe

must have said that “St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ and leaned alwaies in his

bosome, that he used him as the sinners of Sodoma” and that “all they that love not Tobacco

& Boies were fooles". Homoerotic love plays a role in Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage

and also in Hero and Leander.

The Queen describes his husband’s love to Gaveston as follows:

“For my lord the king regardes me not,

But dotes upon the love of Gaveston.

He claps his cheeks, and hanges about his neck,

102 Charles R. Forker (ed.), Edward the Second By Christopher Marlowe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), quoted on page 141

103 May McKisack, The Fourteenth Century, 1307-1399 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959)

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Smiles in his face, and whispers in his eares.

And when I come, he frownes as who would say

Go whether thou wilt seeing I have Gaveston.”104

The king has been corrupted by Gaveston who according to Raphael Holinshed

“passing his time in voluptuous pleasure and riotous excesse (…) furnished his court with a

companies of iesters, ruffians, flattering parasites, musicians and other vile a naughtie ribalds

that the king might spend both daies and nights in iesting, plaieng and and banketing, and in

such filthie and dishonourable exercises”.105 The baronial party under the leadership of

Mortimer hated Gaveston for this. Roger Morimer asks the king the following question:

“Why should you love, whom the world hates so?”

The king answers:

“Because he loves me more than all the world,

And none but savage minded men,

Would seeke the ruin of Gaveston,

You that be noble should pitie him.”106

This part of the drama shows the basic conflict of the drama. This is caused by

Edward’s character which produces a collision between Edward’s royal duties and his

personal desires. He hates the world because it takes his beloved Gaveston from him. He

does not have the dignity and sense of responsibility expected of him as a king. Edward is not

a soldier, a commander and a ruler. Edward is irresolute and irresponsible, and he regains his

royal dignity and power only when driven by anger at the baronial party for having killed

Gaveston. Then, only for a short time, he acts as a king should.

Yet Edward II is overcome by the baronial party. He is seized and forced to abdicate.

Act V of the drama is real tragedy: the king is forced to abdicate but he can hardly part from

his crown. He, similarly to Faustus, would like to stop time. Edward II still wants to remain

king for a while. Once his crown is wrested from him, his life has nothing more to give.

“Death offers him a release, a defeat of a defeat he has already suffered.”107

Edward II says: 104 Complete Works Vol. II, p. 22

105 Charles R. Forker (ed.), op. cit, quoted on p. 329


107 Molly Maureen Mahood, op. cit. p. 82

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“…now sweet God of heaven,

Make me despise this transitory pompe,

And sit for aye inthronized in heaven,

Come death, and with thy fingers close my eyes,

Or if I live, let me forget myselfe.”108

The king says:

“Farewell, I know the next newes that they bring,

Will be my death, and welcome shall it be,

To wretched men death is felicitie.”109

He also says:

“I know not, but of this am I assured,

That death ends it all, and I can die but once.

Leicester, farewell.”110

By common consent the peak of the drama is the death scene of Edward II. Charles

Lamb writes: “The death-scene of Marlowe’s king moves pity and terror beyond any scene

ancient or modern with which I am acquainted.”111 Let us consider this scene in more detail.

For Lightborn, the professional murderer, murder is a fine trade. He practices it with the

nicety of an expert and with similar satisfaction not just only for the reward:

“You shall not need to give instructions,

Tis not the first time I have killed a man.

I learnde the first time in Naples to poison flowers,

To strangle with a lawne thrust through the throte.

To pierce wind-pipes with a needles point,

Or whilst one is asleepe, to take a quill

And blow little power in his eares,

Or open his mouth, and powre quick silver downe,

But yet I have a braver way then these.”112

108 Complete Works Vol. I I, p. 78



111 Charles R. Forker (ed.), op. cit, quoted on p. 94


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In this drama, similarly to The Jew of Malta, the land of murderers and assassinations is Italy.

Mortimer orders to kill Lightborn right after he has committed the deed. That is why

Mortimer says the following:

“Mortimer: Take, this, away and nevr see me more

Lightborne: No?”

Here, Mortimer realizes that he might have revealed his intentions, and that is why he

continues as follows:

“Mortimer: No, unlesse thou bring me newes of Edwards death.”113

This sinister conversation reminds us of Macbeth. Edward II’s death is so horrid that

not only the king, but the overreaching man of the Renaissance is also humiliated. Lightborn

is only cog in the great political mechanism. After he has fulfilled his task, he has to

disappear. Lightborn is not mentioned in the historical sources, his figure was invented by

the playwright. His name has, among others, also an extremely comic overtone.

Mortimer is a Machiavellian figure. In order to eliminate the traces of his crime and

of the murderer, he uses an ambiguous and sinister sentence, and has the assassin, Lightborn

executed. Lightborn indulges in cruelty. He tortures Edward II with relish. He lets the king’s

hopes oscillate between staying alive and fear of death.

In contrast to Mortimer, Piers Gaveston is not a Machiavellian figure in pursuit of

power. He just wants to make the most of his relationship with the king whom he loves

genuinely. Gaveston’s low social origin, resented very much by the barons, is often

mentioned throughout the play. Gaveston hates the barons and his arrogance reaches its peak

before the barons capture him:

“Yet lustie lords I have escapt your handes,

Your threats your larums, and your hot pursutes,

And though devorced from king Edward’s eyes,

Yet liveth Pierece of Gaveston unsurprizd,

Breathing in hope/ malgrado all your beards

That muster rebels thus against your king

To see his royall soveraigne once againe.”114



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After Gaveston’s fall, the minions appear, but in the case of the Spencers the evil side

of having minions is not as much emphasized as in the case of Gaveston. Gaveston’s fall

exemplifies tragedy in its medieval outlines.115 The same is valid for Mortimer. First he is a

patriot urging his king to become a genuine ruler of his country, but later he becomes a

Machiavellian villain whose fall is presented in terms of the fickleness of fortune. Mortimer,

at the peak of his power, believes he can master fortune. He says he is able turn fortune’s

wheel as he please, and he is proud of being feared instead of being loved:

“Feard am I more than lov’d, let me be feard,

And when I frowne, make all the court looke pale 116

Machiavelli also dealt with the question whether it is better to be loved rather than to

be feared or to be feared rather than to be loved. “It may be answered that one should be

both, but because it is difficult unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than to

be loved, when of the either must be dispensed with. ”117

Mortimer is a pagan villain who seems to completely lack a moral conscience. He

does not repent of his sins. When his demise and death comes, he merely feels anger at his

fate:

“Base fortun , now I see, that in thy wheele,

There is a point, to which men aspire,

They tumble headlong downe: that point I touchte,

And seeing there was no place to mount higher,

Why should I greeve at my declining fall?”118

Edward II is a well-constructed play. In that sense, we may say that Edward II

represents the closest approach to Shakespeare’s plays. It is not a drama with just one hero.

All the dramatis personae in Edward II seem to be real persons with real motives. The

115 In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Monk’s Tale we find the same concept of tragedy (Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales. /Translated into modern English by Neville Coghill./ (London: Penguin Books, 1971) p. 207

“In Tragic Manner I will now lament The griefs of those who stood in high degree And fell at last with no expedient

To bring them out of their adversity.”


117 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (translated by W. K. Marriott), (Forgotten Books, 2008), p. 66


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dialectic between the protagonist of the play and his surrounding world is fully and

comprehensively portrayed in this drama. Edward II is no longer a hero with the mindset of a

Tamburlaine who could only be overcome by death. The hero’s dejection and misery become

so great that we can speak of tragedy in the genuine sense of the word. Edward II welcomes

death as a kind of release from his terrible sufferings.

With Edward II we get to the concluding point of and to the last stage in the

development of the Marlovian hero. This drama is complete in terms of dramatic objectivity

and structure. It is a well-constructed play, without the excesses, without “those brave

sublunary things” (Michael Drayton on Marlowe in 1628) that were so typcial of Christopher

Marlowe’s previous plays.

Christopher Marlowe died at the age of twenty-nine. Throughout his short artistic

career he did not have the opportunity to unite a well-formed and balanced drama structure

with his sublime poetry, but Edward II seems to have come closest to this point.

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VI. Concluding Remark

In this thesis I attempted to analyse Christopher Marlowe’s four great dramas from two

points of view: A.) I analysed the Marlovian hero and the Renaissance traits of the

Marlovian hero. B.) In the course of my analysis, I paid special attention to the

development of Marlowe’s craftsmanship and the development of the Marlovian drama

structure.

A.) Concerning Christopher Marlowe’s heroes, we may agree with Miss Mahood’s

standpoint. She points out that, “the whole story of Renaissance humanism” is

told in the four major dramas of Christopher Marlowe. She also states that,

“through the course of the four tragedies, the Marlowe hero shrinks in stature

from the titanic hero to the puny, and his worship of life gives place to that

craving for death which is the final stage of a false humanism’s dialectic.” 119 I

accepted this view, and the whole thesis is an elaboration of this idea.

B.) Though viewpoint A.) cannot be totally separated from viewpoint B.), we can

point out the following: In the four dramas there is a growing tendency towards

dramatic objectivity wherein, as we move on in chronological order from play to

play, the dialectics between the Marlovian hero and his surroundings becomes

increasingly important. However, this stronger interplay between the Marlovian

hero and his surroundings also influences the character traits of the Marlovian

hero.

119 Molly Maureen Mahood, op. cit. p. 55

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VII. Select Bibliography

I. Texts

1. Bowers, Fredson (Ed.): The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe: Vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973)

2. Bowers, Fredson (Ed.): The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe: Vol. II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973)

3. Tucker-Brooke, C. F. (Ed.): The Works of Christopher Marlowe (Oxford: Clarendon, 1953)

4. Ellis-Fermor, U. M.(Ed.): “Tamburlaine the Great” In: Marlowe the Dramatist. The Works and Life of Christopher Marlowe (London, 1930)

5. Boas, F. S. (Ed.): “The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus” Marlowe the Dramatist. The Works and Life of Christopher Marlowe

6. Bennett, H. S. (Ed.): The Jew of Malta and the Massacre at Paris. (London:Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1931).

7. Charles R. Forker (Ed.), Edward the Second By Christopher Marlowe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994)

II. Monographs and Studies on Christopher Marlowe

1. Battenhouse, Roy W.: “Tamburlaine’s Passions” In: Clifford Leech (ed.), Marlowe: A Collection of Critical Essays

2. Greg, W. W.: “The Damnation of Faustus” In: Clifford Leech (ed.), Marlowe: A Collection of Critical Essays (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1964), pp. 92-116

3. Ingram, John H.: Christopher Marlowe and His Associates (London: Richards, 1904)

4. Kocher, P.: Christopher Marlowe. A Study of his Thought, Learning, and Character. (New York: Russell & Russell , 1962)

5. Levin, H.: Christopher Marlowe: the Overreacher (London: Faber & Faber, 1965)

6. Mahood , M. M.: Poetry and Humanism. (London: Kennikat Press, 1967)

7. Seaton, M. E.: “Marlowe’s Map ”. Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association 10 (1924) pp. 11-35

8. Steane, J. B.: Marlowe, a Critical Study (London: Cambridge University Press, 1964)

III. Monographs on the theory of the drama

1. Bradbrook, M, C.: Themes and Conventions of Elizabethan Tragedy. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973)

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2. Bradley, A. C. : The Shakespearean Tragedy. (London: Macmillan, 1992 )

3. Bevington, D. M.: From Mankind to Marlowe : Growth of Structure in the Popular Drama of Tudor England. (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968

4. Heinrich, G.: Faust. (Budapest: Franklin Társulat, 1914 )

5. Eliot, T. S.: The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. (London: Methuen, 1950)

6. Lukács, György.: A modern dráma fejlődésének története. (The History of the Development of Modern Drama) (Budapest: Kisfaludy-Társaság, 1911)

7. Lukács, Georg, Entwicklungsgeschichte des modernen Dramas (Darmstadt und Neuwied: Luchterhand Verlag, 1981)

8. Steiner, George: Death of the Tragedy. (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1961)

IV. History, Social History

1. Black, J. B.: The Reign of Elizabeth: 1558-1603 (Oxford: Oxford Univesrity Press, 1949)

1. Machiavelli, Niccolò: The Prince. (Chicago: Great Books of the Western World, Volume 23 1952)

2. Machiavelli, Niccolò, The Prince (translated by W. K. Marriott), (Forgotten Books, 2008)

3. McKisack, May: The Fourteenth Century, 1307-1399. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959)

4. Tillyard, E. M. W.: The Elizabethan World Picture (London: Chatto & Windus, 1943)

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