Faustus
The doctor whose appetite for knowledge is also a refusal of limits.
Renaissance · Tragedy · c. 1592
Doctor Faustus
Christopher Marlowe
A scholar, bored of every faculty, sells his soul for twenty-four years of magic. He performs tricks for emperors and cannot repent. The clock is the play’s real antagonist.
Faustian tragedy
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Characters
Mephistopheles
The devil who is already in hell, and says so.
The Good and Evil Angels
Conscience as a split chorus the hero will not obey.
Themes
Knowledge and damnation
To know as a form of overreaching; to delay as a form of doom.
Time
Twenty-four years that pass like a trick, then like a verdict.
Motifs
Echoes
Other works that share a motif with this one.