By Comparing One Drama

It can be said that Faustus is not portrayed entirely as a villain; he is a tragic hero, a protagonist whose character flaws lead to his downfall. The traditional meaning of ‘Hamartia’ can be applied here as it implies that due to mistake of an individual, it causes their downfall. Faustus’ mistake was clearly presumption, pride and love of vain, earthly, moral pleasures. Marlowe fills him with tragic grandeur in the early scenes of the play and his ability to make “spirits fetch what (he) please”.

The logic he uses to reject religion may be flawed, but there is something impressive in the breadth of his ambition, that “stetcheth” as far as man’s imagination, even if he pursues it through blasphemous means. In Faustus’s soliloquy after the two angels have whispered in his ears, his rhetoric outlines the modern quest for control over nature, in this case through magic rather than through science, in glowing, inspiring language. He offers a long list of impressive goals, including the acquirement of “strange philosophy”, “for orient pearl” and “gold”, that he believes he will achieve once he has mastered the dark arts.

While the audience is not expected to approve of his quest, his ambitions are impressive. Later, the actual uses to which he puts his magical powers are trivial, however, at this point in the play, Faustus’s dreams are admirable. These plans are ambitious and inspire awe, if not sympathy. They lend a grandeur to Faustus’s schemes and make his quest for personal power seem almost heroic, a sense that is reinforced by the eloquence of his early soliloquies.

He wants knowledge beyond human capacity which is his ultimate downfall. Satan also is delighted with his choice to revolt against heaven when he states “better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. ” He believes that the “mind is its own place” and therefore it can make a “Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven”. This is quite a modern idea of hell, that it is within you as opposed to a physical place. This also makes Satan and his fellow rebel angels optimistic about their future as he tells him “all is not lost”.

Despite this internalising of hell being beneficial to Satan it is not the case for Faustus as Mephistopheles states “why this is hell, nor am I out of it. ” He depicts the sadness that arises with a separation from God and therefore he clearly demonstrates the dangers of rebellion. He experienced “eternal bliss” and now he believes his hell to be ‘ten thousand hells’. In spite of Faustus believing hell to be a “fable”, he will ironically repent for his blasphemous ways at the end of the play and Faustus is no longer proud, but he is afraid to turn to God.

One can instantly draw parallels with both Satan and Faustus as like Satan, Faustus rebels against God however, he realizes that the freedom from Christian ideology he hoped for is only another form of slavery under the power and ambition of Satan. Therefore the internalisation of Hell shows the delights of ambition for Satan, as he believes he can make the best of hell now that he rules over it, whereas it proves to be dangerous for Faustus who is separated from God. One can argue that in the Christian framework of the play, true greatness can be achieved only with God’s blessing.

By cutting himself off from the creator of the world and embracing his blasphemous nature, Faustus is condemned to mediocrity. He has gained the hold world, however the short amount of time of “twenty four” years amounts to nothing when compared to the eternity after death. Both Satan and Faustus both feel that they can be more powerful than God. Satan “trusted to have equalled the most high” but he was unaware of the power of the “all-ruling heaven” and the “upmost power” God possessed.

Likewise Faustus’s danger of ambition was that he believed human knowledge to be “too servile and illiberal for” him. Marlowe portrays Faustus’ ambition as dangerous as it was the cause of his demise. The Chorus’s image of Faustus as an individual “swoll’n with cunning of self-conceit” immediately gives the impression of impudent boldness that is immediately combined with the Greek myth of Icarus, a boy whose father, Daedalus, gave him wings made out of feathers and beeswax.

Icarus did not heed his father’s warning and flew too close the sun, causing his wings to melt and sending him plunging to his death. In the same way, Faustus “mount[s] above his reach” and suffers the consequences. It can be said that Marlowe used the theme of hubris as a warning to the audience, who would be likely to be wary of ambition as it was looked down on as a negative personality trait in Christian England. Ideas around at the time such as Pico Della Mirandola’s “The Chain of Being” reinforced religious opinion into people’s everyday lives.

In the Oration of the Dignity of Man, Mirandola justifies the importance of the human quest for knowledge within a neo-Platonic structure. He believed the idea that men could ascend the chain of being through the exercise of their intellectual capacities and this was an insightful belief as it supported the dignity of human existence in this earthly life. The root of this dignity lay in Mirandola’s declaration that only human beings could change themselves through their own free will, whereas all other changes in nature were the result of some outside force acting on it.

Faustus clearly embodies the views of such humanists as a intellectual, he is seen as a inspirational individual ascending the chain of being, despite the fact that he knowingly attains this status through Lucifer. Morality plays were used to strengthen people’s Christian principles, as Dr. Faustus also does by discouraging ambition. Belsey held the opinion that this play is the midpoint between the medieval era’s theological metaphor of Everyman and the post-Enlightenment source of important ideas, such as the centrality of freedom, democracy and reason as primary values in society.

However once Faustus actually gains the practically limitless power that he so desires, his horizons seem to narrow. Everything is possible to him and the possibilities are endless, but his ambition is somehow exhausted. Instead of the grand designs that he contemplates early on, he contents himself with performing conjuring tricks for kings and noblemen and takes a strange delight in using his magic to play practical jokes on simple folks. It is not that power has corrupted Faustus by making him evil: indeed, Faustus’s behaviour after he sells his soul hardly rises to the level of true wickedness.

In doing so he is allowing the audience to decide whether Faustus is truly damned the instant he blasphemes or the moment he uses “necromancy” to conjure Mephistopheles. In using this technique, he further separates himself from traditional, medieval themes of morality and securely places himself within the Renaissance era. Rather, gaining absolute power corrupts Faustus by making him mediocre and by transforming his boundless ambition into a meaningless delight in worldly life.

Satan in Paradise Lost, is the embodiment and the root of all evil and his discontent with his level of power in Heaven and his attempts “to set himself in glory above his peers” results in him being “hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky,” cast into the “bottomless perdition, there to dwell in adamantine chains”. He is caught in the throes of reckless hubris and is consequently cast into the pits of Hell. The juxtaposition of the adjectives, “ethereal” and “bottomless” exemplify the vast change between Milton’s Heaven and Hell.

The light that heaven contains connotations of a lofty, bright and knowledgeable place and in contrast Hell is portrayed as without end, in darkness and evil. Despite his loathsome circumstance his ambition never wavers, “Satan is an artistically convincing portrait of pride, ambition and envy” and due to these character flaws he is relentless in his pursuits. His unquenchable lust for power and importance thrust him into action even in the most vile of places, “the lower still I fall, only supreme in misery – such joy ambition finds! “.

It can be said that Satan seems to mirror Oliver Cromwell, which has led many critics to believe that Milton based this character on him. Cromwell himself experienced both the delights and dangers of ambition as he was voted into the government after the English Civil War and the conflict with Charles I, but soon after the English public soon began to dislike him due to his ambition for power. Milton was a great supporter of Oliver Cromwell and wrote pamphlets to depose a tyrannical monarch, much like the actions of Cromwell and the demise of Charles I.

The double meaning of “tract” in the beginning of the poem can be directly linked to Milton’s distribution of these political leaflets as during the time there were referred to as “tracts”. The rhetoric that Satan uses in Paradise Lost is almost identical to Milton’s own rhetoric concerning Charles I. He was furious at Charles’ refusal to call parliament and take council, so Satan’s contrast, calling on his demons for council is a stark contrast to God’s and Charles’ authoritarian methods.

Satan resolves to take advantage of his new position in Hell, and petitions the other demons to join him with claims that “here we may reign secure, and, in my choice, to reign is worth ambition, though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven”. He seeks to make Hell his kingdom and go one step further to take revenge against God and extend his power. Satan is filled with drive and ambition; he goes out on his quest much like a classic epic hero. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky argues that the Satan became a unduly appealing character because of attributes he shares with the Greek Titan Prometheus.

It has been called “most illuminating” for its historical perspective on Satan as embodying both positive and negative values. His view has also been significant in pointing out the ambiguity of Prometheus and consequently Satan. However it can be seen that the essence of evil has so polluted Satan’s soul that it is become him; he is the font from which spring all evil entities, such as sin and death. He is filled with “darkness visible” that is also seen within the “pit” of Hell. In some instances it seems that Satan falls so deeply into the “dungeon” of Hell that any rationality, even his purposeful ambition, is forgotten.

He comes “furious down to be revenged on men” on earth, crying “woe to the inhabitants on Earth! “. Evil infests every pore of his plan for mankind. He plans to destroy those who had done him no harm, in retaliation towards the one who has destroyed his ambitious attempt to grasp ultimate power over all other creation. His plans to corrupt and ruin these favourites of God are his nefariously crafted attempts to deliver “what I owe to his commands above, who hates me and hath hither thrust me down into the gloom”. There is no division between good and evil for Satan, all is evil and as a result he is damned.

For all of their goals and aspirations, ambition delivers to Satan and Faustus only destruction and ruin. To Satan it brings a destruction and complete decimation of his soul; to Faustus a literal destruction as it brings about his death. The continual pursuit of ambition leaves one constantly in insatiable want of power, of control, or more, bigger, better. Those desires and plans must be fulfilled at any cost, leading frequently to the most seemingly effective method – evil devices. Though the intention might not be initially evil, the fruition is often just that.