Topic: THE SIN OF FAUSTUS

Name: Chauhan Sejal  Arunbhai

Subject: The Renaissance Literature

 Paper: 1

Roll no:31

M.A. Part I Sem I

Year: 2013-15

Submitted to: M.K.Bhavanagar University

THE SIN OF FAUSTUS

           The Christian theology of sin, which was current in Marlowe’s time, had been stated by St.Augustine in his classic work with which, Marlowe had in all probability, a first-hand acquaintance. According to Augustine, man had been created with the power to move upward to God, or downward to degradation and misery. All sins, says Augustine, consist in turning away from godly things which are changeable and insecure. A man who becomes proud, curious, and self-indulgent, is caught up in a life which, compared to the higher life , is no better than death . All earthly evil results from a perversion of the human will. The root of that perversion lies in  the  impulses of pride and egoism . Pride is , indeed , the beginning of all sin ; and the beginning of the pride of man is to fall from God .

              

                   The ideas and concepts of St. Augustine find a direct expression in the language and action of Doctor Faustus. Faustus’s pride, the willfulness of his falling from God, his egoistic ambition to become his own god-these are clear in everything he says and does.

Moreover, Faustus commits this sin formally, that is , deliberately , without the shadow of an excuse or reason except his will to do so. Taking this as its theme, the play should be regarded not only as an allegory , but as a morality .                    

                    Possible excuse for Faustus’s sin could have been passion or ignorance .One or the other would have diminished or totally abolished Faustus’s moral responsibility by taking his action out of his power. But Faustus , in his first sixty-five lines , shows himself without a trace of either . He does not mention lusts of the flesh. He is free from a lust for gold which he dismisses as “external trash“.He is free from a desire for worldly honours which he has already enjoyed in ample measure .He longs for n something else. If there is in him any ambition of some kind or another, it is of an undetermined nature this impulse, though   urgent, is not clearly or even dimly conscious of a goal. As for ignorance, Faustus is an expert in all the arts, from logic to jurisprudence. He has achieved a remarkable success in all these and, reviewing them one, he finds that none of them has anything to give him any more. Therefore it is not among them that he will find a goal to which he may direct his impulse to activity. The only goal left, it seems, is that of affairs not of this earth: the super-natural rather than the natural .Opening Jerome’s Bible, he finds, as his first lesson in the supernatural in the words: “The wages of sin is death.”There is, he learns, such a possibility as that man should sin, and sin humiliates man in death .He shrinks from the lesson.  As all men have sinned , and he is already involved in death. This he rejects outright, preferring his own idea of what fact is or should be to what he can see that it is:

                         “If we see that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and there is no truth in us,

                          Why, then, belike we must sin, and so consequently die:

                          Ay, we must die an everlasting death.

                          What doctrine call you this, Che sera, sera , _

                          What will be, shall be? divinity,  adieu .         

                     Thus Faustus commits the sin of pride He no longer feels the need to review the sciences so that he may discover in what direction to employ himself. External authority denied, conscience puts to sleep, there is no direction which is forbidden. Not wishing to profess the useful arts, he will become a magician and will attain supernatural power. He seeks the world of profit and delight, of power, of honour , of omnipotence . Through the door of pride the passions have begun to invade Faustus, and he welcomes every one. As has already been said, Faustus’s sin has not the shadow of an excuse. It is not the result of suasion but a pure act of the will, and the will turns to evil.

                    After pointing out and emphasising Faustus’s pride, Marlowe proceeds to narrate the consequence of that pride. These consequence include Faustus’s consenting to accept mistresses instead of the wife he wanted, his enjoying the vision of the Seven Deadly Sins, and Marlowe in this play, is that it may be replete with acts like these.

                    Yet one of Mephistophilis’s first speeches is a rebuke to pride. Mephistophilis bluntly tells Faustus’s ‘’conjuring speeches ’’, but that he came because the devils always rush to capture the soul of a man who is inclined to renounce God and scriptures. Faustus might have learnt, if he had paid sufficient attention to this statement of Mephistophilis, that, far from becoming omnipotent, he would receive nothing except at a price. Though informed in all frankness that he is able to exercise supernatural  powers only that he many ultimately be dragged down to hell , he protests defiantly , saying that he thinks hell to be a fable and that the word ‘’damnation’’ does not terrify him . Such is his pride that he maintains his own opinion against Mephistophilis who has come direct from hell and to whom he is talking only because he believes him to have come from there. This willful blindness, this persistence in self-deception, is brought out most clearly in the passage in which he inquires about the fate of Lucifer. He is told by Mephistophilis that Lucifer fell because of ‘’aspiring pride and insolence ’’(the very sin of which Faustus himself is now guilty). When Mephistophilis refers to the eternal joys of heaven which he has lost and when he speaks of his feeling ‘’tormented with ten thousand hells’’, Faustus’s arrogance or self-conceit does not in any way diminish; on the contrary he mocks at Mephistophilis:

                              What , is great Mephistophilis so passionate? , …

                              Learn thou of Faustus’ manly fortitude,                       

                              And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess.

                       Doctor Faustus may be regarded as a tragedy of presumption. Faustus, a man of humble origin, has acquired great learning, but his pride and arrogance cause him to over-reach and himself. Marlowe had said in Tamburlaine that Nature ‘’doth teach us all to have aspiring minds’’. This aspiration finds dismisses the traditional subjects of study_philosophy, medicine, law and divinity. He turns instead to magic, anticipating the ‘’world of profit and delight, of power, of honour, of omnipotence’ ’which he hopes to attain. He reviews the various uses to which he proposes to put the magic skill that he expects to acquire. This review shows his ardent curiosity, his desire for wealth and luxury, his longing for power, and his nationalism. Faustus’s remark that ‘’a sound magician is a demi-god’’ compels us to recognize the presumptuous nature of his ambition. He obviously aims at becoming something more than man. We find him, too, feeling somewhat uneasy in his conscience. This uneasiness finds an external expression in the respective admonitions of the Good and the Evil Angels. The Good Angel asks Faustus to lay aside the damned book of magic lest it should tempt his soul. He asks Faustus to read the scriptures and warns him against incurring ‘’God’s heavy wrath.’’ This warring makes us fear for a scholar who has already won much of our sympathy. Our fear is heightened when, in the next scene, into two Scholars, speaking about Faustus, deplore the fact that ‘’he is fallen into that damned art for which they two are infamous through the world’’.                                                                                                                           

                           In scene III of Act I, Faustus succeeds in summoning Mephistophilis and agrees to the devil’s suggestion that he should become a follower of Lucifer. In Scene I of Act II, Faustus signs the bond with blood, and questions Mephistophilis about hell; in Scene II of this Act, he question Mephistophilis about astronomy and  of  witnesses an infernal parade of the Seven Deadly sins which is intended to divert his mind from thoughts of repentance. As Lucifer puts it, Faustus will be shown ‘’some pastime’’ and when Faustus makes a reference to paradise and the creation of Adam, Lucifer replies: ’’Talk not of Paradise nor creation: but mark this show : talk of the devil and nothing else.’’

                           In the first scene, Faustus runs through all the branches of human knowledge and finds them inadequate to his desires. Logic can only teach argument; medicine stops story where human desire is most thwarted, since it cannot defeat death; law is a mercenary pursuit; divinity is most disappointing as it is based on the recognition of man’s mortality and man’s fallibility. He turns instead to magic because it is ‘’a world of profit and delight, of power, of honour, of omnipotence’’. He decides human status, or a revolt against the law of his creation.

                            But when he is last seen alone in his study it is the opposite sin which contributes to his damnation; this is the sin of despair. However much, in his state of fear, he may call on God or Christ , it is the power of Lusifer which he really believe in. It is to Lusifer he prays, in this last monologue:

                        “O spare me , Lusifer ! “, and “ Ah , rend not my heart for naming of my Christ !”

  Presumption and despair have been regarded as two of the gravest sins  , “ for presumption takes away the fear of God , and desperation the love off  God .” They are the two faces of the sin of pride. Faustus  , tormented by devils , is obsessed by their power ; but the Old Man is safe from them because of his faith .                      

                              “The great reversal from the first scene of the play to the last can be defined in different ways : from presumption to despair ; from doubt of the existence of hell to a belief in the reality nothing else ; from a desire to be more than man to the recognition that he has exclude himself from the promise of delay when the moment comes to honour it ; from aspiration to deity and omnipotence to a longing for extinction . At the beginning Faustus wished to rise above his humanity; at the close he would sink below it, be transformed into a beast or into little water drops “.

                          Faustus’s original sin is a usurpation upon deity and a repudiation of humanity. Though surely a part of Faustus’s admitted “surfeit of deadly sin “, sensual delight is meeting with Mephistopilis , talked of living “ in all voluptuousness “. Faustus’s relation to the deity is though envy and cupidity , not through charity . His imitation of God is as a rival. He wishes to ascend above humanity and feels unhappy to reflect , “ yet art thou still but Faustus , and a man”. He repudiates the image of God in favour of what he calls Mephistophilis fratris imagine.

                           The new world of  . Faustus is a world of illusion University of Wittenberg ring with the words sic probo plays ridiculous tricks upon the Pope and his court. It is true that much of the central portion of the play is believed to have been so ,it does serve a purpose . In the very degradation of these comic and farcical scenes , we may see the tragedy of Faustus . Upon the first appearance of Mephistophilis , Faustus had indicated his rejection of reality in the refusal to accept the devil in his own true shape and had asked him to appear before him as a friar .From that point onward , Faustus’s hold upon reality steadily diminishes , and the degrading buffoonery _first with the Pope , later with the honest Knight , and then with the poor Horse –Courser_ serves to emphasise the disintegration of Faustus’s human dignity . Even the conjuring games of the low life character , Robin and Ralph, point by parallelism to the pettiness of Faustus’s accomplishments . Reality is for Faustus no longer substantial and important. He has rejected creation in favour of chaos, because only in this way could he continue to avail the services of Mephistophilis. Mephistophilis asks him to think only of hell, “for thou art damned “ ; and Lusifer devil only . So Faustus, having rejected God and having lost his own humanity , must now reject creation also . The quality of his own existence is therefore determined by the  “ norm “ of chaos . It is in this context that the seemingly irrelevant farcical scenes in the middle of the play become meaningful as showing Faustus’s acceptance of chaos.

                    The very fact of Faustus’s fame is accompanied with buffoonery, and this is quite proper. Indeed, his position is not very different from that of a wandering juggler, entertaining various courts with his tricks and entertaining himself with irresponsible pranks. His magic performances are far removed from his earlier hopes. It was his desire to do great things, to “chase the Prince of Parma from our land, and reign sole king of all our  province“. He had also thought that the Emperor would rule only by his permission and under his authority. Instead of all this, he finds himself employed as an entertainer to the Emperor, and finds himself rewarded with money at the end of his performance. The spirits who , he had hoped would drag huge argosies from Venice and “ from America the golden fleece “ do bring a bunch of grapes for the pregnant Duchess of Vanholt , but this  only shows the long distance they can travel , and beyond but this Faustus’s power hardly seems to extend. Faustus even accepts  the patronage of those whom once he had hoped to patronize. Such contrasts between what Faustus originally wanted to do and what he actually does subsequently, constitute one of the effective ironies of the tragedy. The demands for Knowledge and for power finally cease. The last request is for Helen. and this request is another symbol of his repudiation of humanity and his “ marriage “ with hell .

                    The two blood pacts may also be seen as having much significance in this connection. It is symbolically essential that Faustus’s commitment to hell should be signed with his blood, that is, with his most intimate being. At the time of his singing  the first pact, his most intimate being. At the time if his singing the first pact, his blood protests, but not at the time of his singing it on the second occasion . There is meaning in this  difference, for much has happened in twenty-four year . The Good Angel has appeared to Faustus four times, to urge repentance and the need of divine mercy. The last time Faustus sees the Goo Angel is just before the appearance of Lusifer who is annoyed with Faustus and who forbids all thought of creation:’’ Talk not of paradise nor creation .’’ Beyond this point, Faustus cannot again either see or hear the direct messenger of heaven. His heart is hardening, he later admits, and his only hope is the vague belief in a last-minute reprieve:’’ Christ did call the thief upon the cross.’’ But there is no doubt that there is still hope till the time of the second blood bond and the demonic union with Helen. Indeed the Old Man’s function is to indicate that Faustus still can ‘’call for mercy, and avoid despair’’, and he informs Faustus that there is an Angel hovering over his head waiting to pour divine grace into his soul. But, being threatened with dire consequences, Faustus seeks Mephistophilis’s pardon instead of acting upon the Old Man’s advice to seek God’s pardon. This is his ultimate rejection of the deity , and of humanity too.

              The play closes, as it opens, with Faustus significantly alone. A little before his last soliloquy, he tells the Scholars in anguish that he “must remain in hell for ever-hell, ah, hell, forever!” And then the Scholars leave, and he is alone. His  life has come full circle. He desires escape, not because of his love for God but because of his fear of hell. Gripped by the tension and anguish of the last moments of his life, he once more explicitly and feverishly repudiates his humanity. He would like to be change into some beast, nay into little water-drops. Thus he rejects not only humanity and immortality, but even the most basic sentience or animation. As he utterly repudiates his existence, the demons come, and the plot of the play ends. The rejection of humanity which constituted the character of Faustus is complete, and the plot closes, as it had of opened, with this. It is in this terms that the play achieves unity, and it is by virtue of this unity that the play depicts the writer’s understanding of the human condition which has never been more central to the plight of man than it is in our own time. That human condition has thus been stated by an eminent man of our time:

             “The super-man in the measure that his power increases , becomes poorer and poorer. The more we become super-men, the more we become in human”

              Thus, the following points, then, emerge from this brief discussion: (1) The fact of the pervading, and increasing, sensuality of Faustus should not push into the background the fact that his fall is due to the spiritual sin of pride. (2) In some cases what has been taken to be straightforward sensuality has rather an intellectual quality that should be regarded as “curiosity’’, and this curiosity is of great importance in our consideration of the central acts. (3) In the representation of Faustus’s character, the presence of this vice of curiosity mediates the transition between his essentially spiritual pride and his sensuality. The double appearance of the succubae who impersonates Helen symbolizes this transition: She appears first to satisfy the curiosity of the Scholars, and appears again to satisfy Faustus’s sensual desire.