dr.faustus
INTRODUCTION: Christopher Marlowe was the greatest of Shakespeare predecessors. He may be regarded as the true founder of English drama. He was born in 1564, two months before Shakespeare, in the town of Canterbury. He was the son of a poor shoe-maker. Through the kindness of a patron, he was educated at the town Grammar school and then in the university of Cambridge. Christopher
Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day. He greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright. He graduated at the age of nineteen; and then went to London where he became an actor, living in low-tavern atmosphere of excess and wretchedness. In 1587, at the age of twenty- three, he produced his first play, Tamburlaine, which brought him instant recognition.
Thereafter, although he led a wretched life, he remained loyal to a high literary purpose. In five years while Shakespeare was serving apprenticeship, Marlowe produced all his great work. Then he was stabbed in a drunken fight and died wretchedly as he had lived. He was only twenty-nine when he died. The epilogue of Faustus could very well be inscribed on his tombstone:
Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, And burned is Apollo’s laurel-bough That sometime grew within this learned man.
Doctor Faustus, a talented German scholar at Wittenberg, rails against the limits of human knowledge. He has learned everything he can learn, or so he thinks, from the conventional academic disciplines. All of these things have left him unsatisfied, so now he turns to magic. A
Good Angle and an Evil Angel arrive, representing Faustus' choice between Christian conscience and the path to damnation. The
Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day. He greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright. He graduated at the age of nineteen; and then went to London where he became an actor, living in low-tavern atmosphere of excess and wretchedness. In 1587, at the age of twenty- three, he produced his first play, Tamburlaine, which brought him instant recognition.
Thereafter, although he led a wretched life, he remained loyal to a high literary purpose. In five years while Shakespeare was serving apprenticeship, Marlowe produced all his great work. Then he was stabbed in a drunken fight and died wretchedly as he had lived. He was only twenty-nine when he died. The epilogue of Faustus could very well be inscribed on his tombstone:
Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, And burned is Apollo’s laurel-bough That sometime grew within this learned man.
Doctor Faustus, a talented German scholar at Wittenberg, rails against the limits of human knowledge. He has learned everything he can learn, or so he thinks, from the conventional academic disciplines. All of these things have left him unsatisfied, so now he turns to magic. A
Good Angle and an Evil Angel arrive, representing Faustus' choice between Christian conscience and the path to damnation. The