Write Short note on Christopher Marlowe

Ans. Christopher Marlowe has deservedly been called the greatest dramatist before. Shakespeare. He was the greatest of the University wits. In the short span of twenty-nine years, he was able to give a new look to the English drama through the reforms he effected in its theme and its language. Write Short note on Christopher Marlowe

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It was a double reform. He announčed his plan of reform in his prologue to Tamburlaine, his first paly. He ridiculed the ‘jigging veins of rhyming mother- wits’ and such conceits as clowning keeps in play. Write Short note on Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe short biography

It was he, more than many others, who helped to draw English drama from the old rut of Morality and rambling Interludes and set it firmly on the straight road to greatness.

The themes he chose for his plays were as gave him the opportunity to create Titanic characters infused with the Machiavellian idea of individualism and confrontation with an inexorable Fate.

And these themes were draped in a language infused with truly poetic charm and beauty. It has been rightly said that even if the dramatist in Marlowe is forgotten, the poet in him will live forever.

Tamburlaine brought Marlowe into fame, but his highest achievement in the drama is his second play, Doctor Faustus. In the former, he had imaginatively pictured a man, whose lust was for limitless power.

Tamburlaine was a Scythian shepherd, who had fixed his destiny at the world’s topmost point, “the perfect bliss and sole felicity” of the mightiest throne.

In Doctor Faustus (the full title is The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus), Marlowe once again deals with the same idea of a passionate struggle to reach beyond the grasp of ordinary mortals.

Christopher Marlowe

But this time he tells the story of a magician named Faustus to attain a godhead “A sound magician is a mighty God.”

The story of Faustus, although associated with a real person of sixteenth-century Germany, is merely the fullest form of a legend which in one shape or another is as old as man. In Doctor Faustus, Marlowe presents a young German scholar named Faustus.

This scholar gets weary of the various branches of knowledge available to him and finally turns to the study of magic or necromancy.

Faustus discovers that universal power will be within his reach if he acquires proficiency as a magician. Marlowe records the inner struggle of Dr. Faustus. When the Good Angel and the Bat Angle seek to influence him in their different ways, he refuses to listen to the advice of the Good Angel. The scholars of Wittenburg feel sorry for him, but he’ does not care.

The first act of magic is to summon the ugly devil Mephistophilis who agrees to serve him and give him twenty- four years of voluptuous happiness, provided he surrenders his soul to Lucifer, the arch-Devil, at the end of that period., Thus Dr. Faustus sells his soul to the Devil for twenty-four Years of pleasure and the gift of knowledge.

The contract is faithfully executed for the stipulated period of twenty-four years. During this period Faustus travels extensively throughout the world” doing what he likes, wherever he’ goes, even playing practical jokes like a wayward mischievous child.

As the fateful day draws near, his conscience (in the form of an old man) urges him to repent, but Mephistophilis reminds him of his contract and his obligation not to offend Lucifer.

With’ the help of Mephistophilis he summons the lovely Helen of Troy to amuse him as a lover during the last days of his life. The invocation to Helen contains beautiful poetry. Addressing the spirit of Halen.

Christopher Marlowe Doctor Faustus summary

Faustus says:- “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships And burnt the topless towers of Illium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.”

The last scene of the play reaches tragic intensity, When the clock strikes the hour, Faustus’ utters a last poignant plea to be saved from the impending doom, but is carried away by the Devils.

Marlowe borrows the story of his play from the German Fanstbuch. The story is followed in the main outlines and to some extent in its crudities, but it is given a significance far beyond that of medieval magic.

Christopher Marlowe Dr Faustus

It becomes one of the noblest expressions of the Renaissance genius and Marlowe’s temperament. In the audacity of his desires and the luxurious abandon of his imagination, the magician becomes, as it were, a symbol of Marlowe’s age when fresh wonders of the mind and the world were being revealed and men’s hopes of the attainable were Youthfully ardent.

The spirit in which Faustus ventures to gain the offered. “World of profit and delight. of power, of honor, of omnipotence.” is felt to be akin to the zeal which fired the Elizabethan rovers to the quest for new regions beyond the seas and to grasp. “From America the golden fleece That Yearly stuffs old Philip’s treasury.”

Write Short note on Christopher MarloweThe mingled stuff of his dreams, his equal ecstasy in things of the senses and the spirit, in riches, power, and ambiguities resolved, in the songs of blind Homer and Helen’s beauty, stamp him clearly as of the Elizabethan Renaissance. Doctor Faustus is a play in the Morality tradition.

The presence of the Good and Evil Angles in the play has been attributed to the influence of the morality tradition. Again the introduction of the ‘seven Deadly Sins is supposed to link Dr. Faustus with the Morality play. Write Short note on Christopher Marlowe

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