Articles & Essays Book Reviews Creative Writing
Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Volume 19 Number 1, April 2018
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Changing World, Changing Order: Political (Self)Consciousness in Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great and Dr. Faustus
By
University of Strasbourg, France
Abstract:
A deep concern about change and instability characterises the Elizabethan and Jacobean consciousness of society, politics and religion. The introduction of Italian humanism, the Reformation, the religious and political crisis which eventually led to the establishment of the church of England, as well as new scientific discoveries induced articulate Englishmen who witnessed England's growing ascendancy in the European as well as in the global picture, to explore flux and variety with an ever-increasing necessity and fervour in the second half of the sixteenth century. This (self)consciousness towards the concept of change during late Tudor and early Stuart epochs is wholly conceivable. Social and political structure in Tudor England was founded upon a correspondent idea of cosmic order that assumed stability and hierarchy as the objective outward reality. Yet, I believe that a fervour for change did emerge along with this rigid, all-encompassing world picture as the century progressed.
"[…] It is to literature that we must look, particularly in its more concrete forms, if we hope to discover the inward thoughts of a generation" (Lovejoy, 2001: 17). Hence, in this paper I explore Christopher Marlowe's two prominent plays to shed some new light on English (self)consciousness about change in the early modern era. Marlowe's theatrical world puts forth confusion and insecurity vis-à-vis the emerging socio-political crisis in the English society. His characters undertake the burden of self-definition in a shattered world whose moral and ideological principles are seriously put into question. Confronting the burden of a self-conscious search for a new identity in a world lacking Christian retributive justice, Tamburlaine and Faustus start to locate the ultimate meaning of man's life and his inevitable death in emerging temporal, secular values.
Alfred North Whitehead famously urges that "it is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression. Accordingly, it is to literature that we must look, particularly in its more concrete forms, if we hope to discover the inward thoughts of a generation"(Lovejoy, 2001: 17). Norton and Sackville's much praised The Tragedy of Gorboduc (1562) is, perhaps, the best dramatic expression of the prominent Elizabethan world view at the heart of which do lie the two principles of divine order and social degree. Written during the dawning years of Astraea, Gorboduc is a didactic play about the momentousness of divine political order and social degree in the commonwealth; values which are inherently jeopardised by social disorder and civil war in the play. Thus, one can observe that an implicit sense of insecurity and menace vis-à-vis the Tudor social and political commonplaces underlies every affirmation of these values throughout this tragedy. Accordingly, trying to reinvigorate the traditional notions of order and degree in the commonwealth, wise Philander warns the king that ignoring these values brings about chaos and social destruction:
I speake not this in enuie or reproche,
As if I grudged the glorie of your sonnes,
Whose honour I beseche the Goddes to increase:
[…] Onlie I meane to shewe my certain rules,
Whiche kinde hath graft within the mind of man,
That nature hath her order and her course,
Whiche (being broken) doth corrupt the state
Of myndes and thinges, euen in the best of all.
(I, ii, 280-282, 287-291)
In the opening dumb show of the play, likewise, the traditional values of unity and order are stressed upon: "Hereby was signified, that a state knit in vnytie doth continue stronge against all force, But beynge deuyded, is easely destroied" (Norton and Sackvill, 2005: 96). Moreover, the author of the play dramatises the young princes' pride and willfulness in ignoring the legitimate counsellors' grave advice which brings destruction and chaos to the state.
A fear of change, mutability and socio-political chaos permeates Gorboduc. The young prince, Ferrex, creates social disorder with his unnatural pride and ambition, nevertheless subjects are not allowed to express their resistance to the crown as it was propagated, in Tudor ideological system, that rebel would bring nothing but destruction and damage to the body politic. In spite of all the socio-political conflicts that we witness in the play, the authors never put into question the political and ideological doxa of the Tudor England. There is apparently no reservation about the validity of social and political paradigms in the commonwealth, nor any self-conscious critiques of or preoccupations about the commonplace attitudes or basic social relations in the realm. Everything is solid and divinely predestined while subjects and their leaders are merely supposed to act in accordance with the so-called natural order of things to guarantee prosperity and salvation. The play is merely concerned with the preservation and perpetuity of the political life in the realm and thus no attention is paid to personal identity nor to private relations. Redemption is secured and the promise of divine prosperity, in the closing lines of the play, best delineates the centrality of the idea of natural order in Elizabethan epistemé:
But now happie man, whom spedie death
Depriues of life, ne is enforced to see
These hugie mischiefes and these miseries,
These ciuil warres. These murders and these wronges
Of iustice. Yet must God in fine restore
This noble crowne vnto the lawfull heire :
For right will alwayes liue, and rise at length,
But wrong can neuer take deepe roote to last.
(V, ii, 1789-1796)
The social and political condition of England in the sixteenth century exhorted a cult of absolute authority on the political level. Anxieties about the social instability resulting from the economic crisis as well as the memories of the recent civil war, the defense of royal supremacy and the constant external threats from Spain, Italy and France were the three main elements underlying the Tudor notion of political authority. The concept of a divinely ordered universe and the world view associated with it was the principal tool for Tudor monarchs to enhance and practice their despotism. The Homilies, preached from the pulpits, became the officially authorised means to shape the subjects' consciousness and reinforce the absolutist political theory. The lessons of authority and order were best expressed in Homilies and political and religious theorists adhered , therefore, to the sermons of Homilies. Rebellion against the authorities was considered to be the most vicious kind of sin (Griffiths, 1859: 105) and subjects never had a right to resist the rulers as it was believed that to resist the authority was to resist God. The advocators of the dominant religious ideology argued that even "our Saviour Christ himself and his Apostles received many and diverse injuries of the unfaithful and wicked men in authority : yet we never read that they, or any of them, caused any sedition or rebellion against authority" (Griffiths, 1859: 109). In the second half of the 1580s when the threats from Spain and Rome reached its height and, simultaneously, the crisis of succession to the throne became more and more disturbing, Richard Crompton not only stressed the principles of order and obedience, but also advocated that it is unlawful for the citizens to "[…] enter into the examinations of causes or matters appartayning to ye Prince and soveraigne governor" (Crompton, 1587: B2-B4).
The Tudor idea of order incorporated a divine cosmological view point and corresponded, more or less, to the traditional concept of the 'Great Chain of Being'. All the universe was created on the basis of a fixed degree and in a divinely ordained chain of existence:
Almighty God hath created and appointed all things, in heaven, earth, and waters, in a most excellent and perfect order. In heaven he hath appointed distinct (or several) orders and states of archangels and angels. In earth he hath assigned and appointed kings and princes, with other governors under them, all in good and necessary order. (Griffiths, 1859: 105)
Man, for instance, remains between angels and beasts in this chain of degrees and he cannot go beyond that precise position in the hierarchy of God's creatures. Likewise, there was a determined order in the heavens, nature, human body, commonwealth and body politic. Order was also characterised by a wise and rational correspondence among all parts of the chain and guaranteed a perfect harmony among all degrees of creation. Accordingly, the hierarchical structure of cosmos, for example, was reflected in the socio-political formation of the state by which I mean that there were those—kings and princes— who were of a higher degree than other ordinary people in the commonwealth.
To Tudor theologians and political theorists order signified fixity, immutability and stability. Alteration was the greatest threat for the social and political solidity as it would engender chaos and chaos implied a return to the pre-creation disorder. Sir Thomas Elyot, among others, maintains that God's creation enjoys a perfect state of order and degree and accordingly warns his readers that "[…] take away order from all things, what should then remain? Certes, nothing finally, except some man would imagine eftsoons, Chaos, which of some is expounded, a confuse mixture" (Elyot, 1834: 3). Moreover, this idea of order was considered to be natural and divine. Thus, hierarchical order in the body politic and in the whole commonwealth likewise corresponded to a godly, natural order predestined by the heavens. Bishop John Aylmer advocates that nature is God himself and it embodies a divine order spread through the whole world and engrafted in every single component of it (Aylmer, 1559: C3). Ergo, socio-political security and perpetuity of the state were guaranteed by the preservation of the divine order as God would never leave this world without means of order and stability. The introduction of this transcendental approach to early modern political theory implied that kings were God's representatives on the earth who maintained social and political order through their offices.
Yet, one should not forget that this fervently propagated religious ideology was not at all the only voice heard from political or intellectual circles of the time. There is little doubt that the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras were characterised by a (self)consciousness towards change and variety that developed and matured about the turn of the seventeenth century. It seems to me that it is exactly due to this reality that conservative religious thinkers of the time started to reconsider and clarify the principles of the traditional natural law and divine order. As a matter of fact, conservative theologians who witnessed the rise of an intense preoccupation with secular, changing values in Elizabethan era articulated and reemphasized the commonplaces of the Tudor idea of order in their books and pamphlets.
A concern with change and variety encouraged discussions about social, religious and even economic aspects of life in the sixteenth century. The introduction of Italian humanism in the beginning of the century inspired fierce arguments vis-à-vis temporal as well as transcendental issues. These theoretical controversies were intensified later on throughout the second half of the sixteenth century as social, political and intellectual tensions grew under the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In this epoch, social, political, historical and economic phenomena were increasingly the subject of secular and temporal investigations by scientists in different fields. Different aspects of human life were studied through analytical and secular approaches and the recourse to religious and scriptural interpretations of socio-political diseases continuously lessened. Very often referred to as a radical writer who acknowledged novel socio-political standpoints in his writings, Sir Thomas Smith, for instance, advocates that this world and all the physical phenomena associated with it are subject to change and decay and that man can ameliorate the state of things if he wisely interferes with worldly events:
[…] if all this doe faile (as it were great pitie it should) yet such is the nature of all humaine things, and so the world is subject to mutability, that it doth many times faile : but when it doth, the prince and common wealth have the same power that their predecessors had, and as the husbandman hath to plant a new tree where the olde fayleth, so hath the prince to honour vertue where he doth find it.(Smith, 1906: 39)
Smith acknowledges that no single commonwealth does agree with another in all points and characteristics. Accordingly, we can claim that he promotes the Machiavellian nominalist political theory which urges that each human community is a separate and independent social entity whose problems have to be treated on the basis of its own particular socio-political circumstances rather than an absolute, divinely-ordained model of governance.
One can hardly claim that Elizabethan intellectuals prompted a new order and system of values which wholly subverted the traditional religious world view of their time; yet there is little doubt, on the other hand, that their self-conscious preoccupations with change, variety and development promoted a novel standpoint in perceiving the meaning of man's social and private life. This rupture with the inherited medieval way of observing and interpreting the temporal phenomena is best delineated in literature of the epoch in general, and in its drama in particular. To many literary critics and specialists of the early modern period, Shakespeare's theatre manifestly dramatises these crucial shifting paradigms in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Cesar L. Barber acknowledges that "[Shakespeare] wrote at a moment when the educated part of society was modifying a ceremonial, ritualistic conception of human life to create a historical, psychological conception", concluding, accordingly, that his "[…] drama can be seen as part of the process by which our culture has moved from absolutist modes of thought towards a historical and psychological view of man" (Barber, 2012: 14-15, 251). Yet, I think that along with Shakespeare, and perhaps slightly earlier than him, Christopher Marlowe reflected, in his theatre, upon the emerging doubts and questions concerning the pertinence of the traditional order in early modern English society.
Marlowe's theatrical world is self-contradictory and full of philosophical ambiguities. Even though the traditional religious ideology and the socio-political structure associated with it already exist, they seem to be inadequate in responding to people's new questions and needs. Marlowe's characters probe their surrounding world and once they see the contradictions in this world, they tend to go beyond the established, propagated ethical and social norms of their society which seems to be morally hollow. His protagonists possess a huge amount of energy and due to the ethical emptiness of their world and its insecurity, they self-consciously tend to (re)define their personal and social identity. Each one of them yearns for amassing an asset. Barabas gathers wealth, Faustus craves knowledge and Edward Gaveston and Tamburlaine desire for power. But, we should be mindful that all these efforts by each of Marlowe's heroes to gain his temporal goal presents a search for a means to an end : (re)definition of personal and social identity and obtaining salvation. This search becomes crucial in Marlowe's theatre when we learn that with the decline of Christian retributive justice in this world, each character perceives salvation and damnation "[…] in an eternity after death but under temporal, secular, existential conditions [as] damnation is, for the most part, the painful state of [self]consciousness"(Masinton, 1972: 8).
In Tamburlaine the Great (1590), Marlowe puts on stage the individual lust for political power. Will for sovereignty and dominance fashions Tamburlaine's personality and guides his actions in the play. He evidently violates the principles of order and degree in the commonwealth when he calls himself "a greater man" than the Sultan who countermands the royal letters and commands (I Tamburlaine, I, ii, 21-22). He furthermore claims : "I am a lord, for so my deeds shall prove" (I Tamburlaine, I, ii, 34). In a famous passage from Act four, Tamburlaine reminds the incarcerated Bajazeth of his royal supremacy and warns against an act of treason:
The chiefest God, first mover of that sphere
Enchas'd with thousands ever shining lamps,
Will sooner burn the glorious frame of heaven
Than it should so conspire my overthrow.
But, villain, thou that wishest this to me.
Fall prostrate on the low disdainful earth,
And be the footstool of great Tamburlaine,
That I may rise into my royal throne.
(IV, ii, 8-15)
Once he redefines his own socio-political identity, Tamburlaine is obliged to assume the full burden of the responsibilities of this new position. The tragic consequences of self-definition soon emerges when Tamburlaine is torn between Zenocrate's wishes and his political obligations and ambitions:
Zenocrate. Yet would you have some pity for my sake.
Because it is my country's and my father's.
Tamburlaine. Not for the world, Zenocrate, if I have sworn.
Come, bring in the Turk.
(IV, ii, 123-126)
Here, he is to renounce Zenocrate's demand to pursue his own political goals. In fact, to escape the tragic outcomes of self-definition, Tamburlaine self-consciously politicises the need for submission in a private relationship.
When he seizes Cosroe's crown and becomes the king of Persia, Tamburlaine, who thinks of himself as the most powerful and prosperous man on the earth, asserts:
Though Mars himself, the angry god of arms,
And all the earthly potentates conspire
To dispossess me of this diadem,
Yet will I wear it in despite of them,
As great commander of this eastern world,
[…] So ; now it is more surer on my head,
Than if the gods had held a parliament
And all pronounc'd me king of Persia.
(II, vii, 58-62, 65-67)
After all his temporal achievements, Tamburlaine seems to fantasize himself as being more delighted and sublime than God in Heaven. He desires to "become immortal like the gods" (I, ii, 200) through the secular salvation he seeks in absolute political authority. Unlike many protagonists of the well-known genre of Elizabethan revenge tragedy, Tamburlaine seeks no revenge and by calling himself, instead, "Scourge and Wrath of God" (III, iii, 44), he continually rejects his own authentic identity and self-consciously seeks a new self in the political sphere associated with monarchy. Accordingly, we can observe that he experiences a state of instability due to an ill-defined identity he claims to (re)construct for himself; a personal insecurity that Zenocrate discerns in him and, hence, warns :
Those that are proud of fickle empery,
And place their chiefest good in earthly pomp,
Behold the Turk and his great emperess !
Ah, Tamburlaine, my love, sweet Tamburlaine,
That fightst for sceptres and for slippery crowns,
Behold the Turk and his great emperess !
Thou that, in conduct of thy happy stars,
Sleep'st every night with conquest on thy brows,
And yet wouldst shun the wavering turns of war,
In fear and feeling of the like distress,
Behold the Turk and his great emperess !
(V, ii, 290-300)
Zenocrate's connection with the traditional notion of order as a member of a royal family as well as her appeasing love for Tamburlaine provides him with a chance to release himself from the burden of procuring political power through bloodshed and therefore to reconstruct a solid, secure identity for himself on the basis of the inherited divine rules. Nevertheless, until almost the end of the first part of the play, Tamburlaine is endeavoring to gain political power and shape his new self through aggressive actions:
'Twas I, my lord, that gat the victory.
And therefore grieve not at your overthrow,
Since I shall render all into your hands.
And add more strength to your dominions
Then ever yet confirmed th' Egyptian crown.
The god of war resigns his room to me.
Meaning to make me general of the world ;
Jove, viewing me in arms, looks pale and wan,
Fearing my power should pull him from his throne ;
Where'er I come the fatal sisters sweat.
And grisly death, by running to and fro
To do their ceaseless homage to my sword.
(V, ii, 383-394)
In the closing scene of the first part of the play, Tamburlaine eventually "takes truce with all the world" (V, ii, 467), buries the symbols of the traditional political order, that is to say "the great Turk and his fair Emperess" with honour, and unites his beloved princesses Zenocrate. At this point, he seems to occupy, individually and politically, the dominant position. He assumes, in other words, a newly reconstructed socio-political identity which promises, in one way or another, the establishment of a new system of social values and political order.
But Zenocrate's death in the beginning of the second part of the play demolishes Tamburlaine's newly reconstructed socio-political subjectivity and forces him to regretfully reflect upon the inevitableness of death which underlies the ultimate meaning of life. Accordingly, I think that the whole second part of the tragedy puts forth a self-conscious preoccupation with mortality as a result of the hero's loss of the desired identity. Although Tamburlaine accomplishes more victories in the second part of the play, it is believed that his kingdom and established order will collapse with his death and damnation:
THERIDAMAS. Now, in defiance of that wonted love
Your sacred virtues pour'd upon his throne,
And made his state an honour to the heavens,
These cowards invisibly assail his soul.
And threaten conquest on our sovereign ;
But if he die, your glories are disgrac'd.
Earth droops and says that hell in heaven is plac'd.
(V, iii, 10-16)
In the closing lines of the play, the desperate, helpless Tamburlaine feels the tread of death: "For Tamburlaine, the scourge of God, must die./ Meet heaven and earth, and here let all things end." (V, iii, 248-249)
Although the issue of mortality is explored in Tamburlaine the Great, I believe that in none of his plays does Marlowe centralise the meaning of life vis-à-vis the inevitability of death as he does it in Dr. Faustus (1592). Faustus' passionate quest for salvation only results in an awareness towards the limits of secular values and informs him that such values hardly enable man to distinguish redemption from damnation. Yet, one should be heedful that Faustus' quest is initially marked by an evident lack of self-consciousness towards his own capacities and limitations as a human being and that he becomes progressively aware of his own condition with the development of his self-consciousness in the course of the play. Not dissimilar to Tamburlaine, Faustus also starts his quest from a state of unselfconsciousness and underestimates his own capabilities. At the outset, Tamburlaine seeks prosperity in an earthly kingdom as his world view is shaped under the influence of an old, traditional order, but he finds out his potentials as soon as he (re)defines his own identity and constructs his true self in the world. By the same token, Faustus initially seeks salvation by adhering to inherited sources of meaning and accordingly his reasoning and knowledge are merely confined to the traditional Christian sources. Yet, the process of a self-conscious reconstruction of his identity could be witnessed throughout the play.
An incongruity between the traditional divine order and a newly defined world picture can be observed in Faustus' character. While his identity is rooted in the Christian tradition, he investigates the truthfulness of this tradition with a considerable amount of energy and will. Faustus repudiates the principles of his religious ideology as he self-consciously endeavors to establish a new secular system of values to achieve redemption. Faustus' extended use of the term appetite is a metaphor which indicates the transformation of the Holy Communion into a temporal type of Eucharist as he endeavors to unite with the world. He understands appetite as Hobbes defines it : "[…] whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire that is it which he for his part calleth good" (Hobbes, 1994: 28), yet he is not totally ready to adhere to it in his temporal and spiritual life. He is torn between God and evil and accordingly states:
Now, Faustus,
Must thou needs be damn’d, canst thou not be sav’d.
What boots it, then, to think on God or heaven?
Away with such vain fancies, and despair;
Despair in God, and trust in Belzebub:
Now, go not backward, Faustus; be resolute:
Why waver’st thou? O, something soundeth in mine ear,
“Abjure this magic, turn to God again!”
Why, he loves thee not;
The god thou serv’st is thine own appetite,
Wherein is fix’d the love of Belzebub:
To him I’ll build an altar and a church,
And offer lukewarm blood of new-born babes.
(II, i, 2-14)
In this scene, Faustus takes part in his "last supper" to establish and develop a secular system of values which secures his salvation through his own self-sacrifice by symbolically pouring his congealed blood as a sign of sacrifice to the devil.
Throughout the action, Faustus reflects upon the inevitability of man's mortality vis-à-vis the possibility of redemption. He thus addresses Valdes, reassuring him that: "Valdes, as resolute am I in this/ As thou to live: therefore object it not" (I, i, 135-136). But his conscience disturbs his peace of mind. Faustus' only association with the Heaven is merely through the Good Angel which itself seems to be a superficially plausible, yet misleading link. The Good Angel first appears to Faustus while he is contemplating secular texts:
GOOD ANGEL. O, Faustus, lay that damned book aside,
And gaze not on it, lest it tempt thy soul,
And heap God’s heavy wrath upon thy head!
Read, read the Scriptures:—that is blasphemy.
(I, i, 71-74)
Yet, we can infer that the Good Angel's appearance is as illusory as Faustus' own imaginations. This piece of advice might be indicative of an agitated conscience rather than being the words of a celestial messenger. Later on, likewise, Faustus calls Christ to grant him salvation but is visited, instead, by three devils from Hades and therefore he wonders: "Accursed Faustus, where is mercy now?" (V, i, 70).
C. L. Barber argues that Faustus expresses his self-consciousness via poetry in his quest for the meaning of life and salvation:
The high poetry, the bombast, of Marlowe […] is not shaped to express what is, whether a passion or a fact, but to make something happen or become—it is incantation, a willful, self-made sort of liturgy. […] the hero constantly talks about himself as though from the outside, using his own name so as to develop a self-consciousness which aggrandizes his identity, or cherishes it, or grieves for it: "Settle thy studies, Faustus, and begin.. ."; "What shall become of Faustus, being in hell forever?" (Barber, 1964: 117)
This reinforcement of self-consciousness through the poetic structure is also substantiated by the incidents of the action. Reflecting upon the changing shapes of the devil in response to his behest, for example, Faustus states:
How pliant is this Mephistophilis,
Full of obedience and humility.
Such is the force of magic and my spells.
Now, Faustus, thou art conjuror laureate.
(I, iii, 29-32)
Here, Faustus the magician is addressed. In fact, when Faustus decides on magic and tries his "[…]brains to get a deity" (I, i, 63), he becomes exhilarated so as to "conjure in some lusty grove/ And have these joys in full possession" (I, i, 152-153). But, he admits, later on, that appetite is his god. I think that it is Faustus' efforts to perceive the soul through physicality, to apprehend the spiritual via the temporal that marks his quest for appreciating the meaning of perdition, salvation and self-consciousness. Arthur O. Lovejoy outlines this reconciliation of the temporal with the transcendental in Faustus' character as a confrontation between the medieval outward-looking world view on the one hand, and an emerging standpoint, during the early modern period, with a tendency to promote inner-secular self-identification, based upon creativity and change, on the other. Thus, Lovejoy advocates that this confrontation between those two world views conveys that "temporal realization of the Absolute reaches its highest point in man, a being capable of self-consciousness. Man is the creation in which God fully becomes an object to himself. Man is God represented by God. God is a man representing God in self-consciousness. […] Man is God wholly manifested" (Lovejoy, 2001: 320-321).
Regardless of the amount of attention Faustus pays to the religious worlds of Heaven and Hell, salvation and damnation, his apprehension of these transcendental notions is to be understood within a different context; that is to say the world of social relations. He summons devils in this world without even taking an evil action, but exclusively through his wicked contemplations. Devils appear to him before he conjures, which testifies to the superflousness of the witchcraft. Accordingly, Mephistophilis argues:
when we hear one rack the name of God,
Abjure the Scriptures and his Saviour Christ,
We fly, in hope to get his glorious soul;
Nor will we come, unless he use such means
Whereby he is in danger to be damn’d.
Therefore the shortest cut for conjuring
Is stoutly to abjure all godliness,
And pray devoutly to the prince of hell.
(I, iii, 47-54)
Faustus faces his metaphysical questions and hesitations in this world. This "prince of hell" to which devil refers to be prayed, is, in reality, nothing but Faustus' desires in his world of social life. I am of the opinion that if Faustus looks for redemption in worldly delights and pleasures, and if he summons the devil by his thoughts, then his metaphysical conception goes beyond his contemporary Christian teachings in terms of the locus and functions of the Heaven and Hell. Thus, he maintains that "this word 'damnation' terrifies not me/ for I confound hell in Elysium" (I, iii, 59-60). Heaven and Hell are not two separate entities for Faustus, therefore he scorns Mephistophilis who declares that "why this is hell, nor am out of it" (I, iii, 74-75), and calls him, accordingly, "passionate/ for being deprived of the joys of heaven" (I, iii, 82-83). Later, Faustus discusses Hell with Mephistophilis and describes it as a mythical fable. While Mephistophilis advocates that "for I tell thee I am damned and now in hell", Faustus replies : "nay, and this be hell, I'll willingly be damned" (II, i, 135-136). Notwithstanding the fact that he gains a lot of secular knowledge, Faustus is not able, in my view, to fully experience and appreciate a self-made hell unless he obtains a complete self-consciousness. Unlike his counselor, Faustus has not conceived the transient nature of temporal heaven and that is why Mephistophilis is reluctant to "dwell upon the suffering that Faustus cannot grasp as real" (Palmer, 1964: 62).
The well-known Helen scene embraces, perhaps, the best piece of poetry in Marlovian canon. It puts forth a magic moment of passionate bliss and joyfulness which unites salvation and damnation, body and soul, the temporal and the spiritual:
FAUSTUS. Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?—
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.—
[Kisses her.]
Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!—
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
(V, i, 99-105)
Faustus adheres to Helen's beauty to transcend mortality and hollowness. Like Christianity and its rituals, Helen's kiss promises immortality and salvation, but it remains a temporal heaven for Faustus. Here, Faustus acquires an earthly heaven in return for the Garden of Eden. Accordingly, one can claim that Faustus finds his heaven in Helen's figure and, therefore, replaces the traditional Christian redemption with a secular salvation. The famous line "And all is dross that is not Helena" (V, i, 105), delineates Faustus' standpoint towards the promised redemption of man's soul reaching heaven and it reverberates, quite strikingly, Mephistophilis' comment upon heaven: "All place shall be hell that is not heaven" (II, i, 124).
As Faustus gets close to his end, his temporal prosperity and delights also gradually vanish. In this condition Mephistophilis advocates that "[…]his labouring brain/ Begets a world of idle fantasies/ To overreach the devil" (V, ii, 12-14). Is Faustus totally aware of his own end? In order to overcome the devil, as Mephistophilis states, he must incarnate his fantasies and accept the full burden of his own self-definition. At this point, Faustus has to associate redemption with the traditional world order as he defines his own personal truth and transcendental end. In the closing scene of the play, amidst thunder and lightning, Faustus pleads for the last time:
It strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell!
O soul, be chang’d into small water-drops,
And fall into the ocean, ne’er be found!
Thunder. Enter DEVILS.
O, mercy, heaven! look not so fierce on me!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while!
Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!
I’ll burn my books!—O Mephistophilis!
(V, ii, 180-187)
When the play ends, Faustus is in a state of bewilderment. It is unlikely that he is penitent for his past, yet one cannot be sure that he fully appreciates his own self-definition in a newly established world order. He certainly acknowledges the needs of body and soul which are unified and jointly redeemed. This point of view finds its best expression in the Helen scene in which sexual consummation is associated with immortality and redemption of the soul. In the end, Faustus recalls his earthly bliss and desires to revitalise its magic. Accordingly, I believe that he goes beyond the limits of the traditional divine order yet remains on the threshold of an existential emptiness which casts doubt upon the validity and perpetuity of his newly-established world order. Thus, "the question of whether in principle Faustus can repent", notes Dollimore, "[…] is less important than the fact that he is located on the axes of contradictions which cripple and finally destroy him" (Dollimore, 2010: 111-112).
In Tamburlaine the Great and Dr. Faustus Marlowe puts on stage an obsolete world order, decaying and nonredemptive, to which man can no longer adhere to define the meaning of his private and social life. Yet, this inherited episteme and its underlying Christian ideology is the only source of meaning the early modern man possesses in which he is obliged, in one way or the other, to locate the new identity and socio-political order he wishes to reconstruct. Masinton correctly notes that in this era there was an "[…] anxious uncertainty or a corrosive skepticism deriving from the awareness that the religious foundations of medieval philosophy and the age-old assumptions of order and degree were being superseded by empirical thinking, the new ethic of power, and the growth of capitalistic enterprise" (Masinton, 1972: 77). Yet, I am of the opinion that reactions to this disquietude does not merely bring about personal failure and damnation for those heroes who endeavor to contravene the basic tenets of the established order, but depict the weakness of this declining old world picture. This anxiety about the confrontation between old traditions and emerging values is, perhaps, best explained by Karl Jaspers when he discusses the nature of the tragedy of transition:
The old is justified in asserting itself, for it still functions; it is still alive and proves itself through its rich and elaborate traditional patterns of life, even though the seed of decay has already begun its fatal germination. The new is justified also, but it is not yet protected by an established order and culture. For the time being it still functions in a vacuum. But it is only the hero, the first great figure of the new of way of life, whom the old, in a last frantic rally of all its forces, can destroy. Subsequent breakthroughs, now untragic, will succeed. (Jaspers, 1969: 49)
There is little doubt that Marlowe's plays show the characteristics of a tragedy of transition, produced in an age marked by a radical epistemological and ideological shift in every level of the English socio-political life. While empirical thinking, scientific method and imperialism were at their early phases of development in this epoch, Christopher Marlowe anticipates their rather unconventional and complex course of evolution in his plays. In this manner, Marlowe's energetic and enthusiastic heroes, who would self-consciously go beyond the demarcated limits of private and social life in early modern period, might anticipate the new order and source of meaning in the subsequent centuries despite their own horrors and fall.
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