Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus

Introduction

Christopher Marlowe’s life was full of speculation and adventure so I decided to personally search about his life and find out what caused his death/disappearance, about his atheism and the infamous moral play doctor Faustus, he was a great Elizabethan playwright, born in Canterbury Kent on 6 February 1564, He was born the same year as William Shakespeare during the reign of Elizabeth I. His father John Marlowe was a shoe maker and the family must have been quite well off because Christopher was sent to the Kings School. But why would an atheist like him write a moral play like doctor Faustus?

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Why did He die/disappeared?

There are many conspiracies and theories about his death and mysterious life on 30 May, 1593 the day

4 The moral play “the tragic history of the life and death of doctor Faustus”

In 1601, the stationer Thomas Bushell published a book called “the play of Doctor Faustus." An edition/copy of the play may have been printed that year, but there is no existing copy to be found. And what I find really interesting about the play is that it’s so corrupt that it’s impossible to determine whether or not Marlowe wrote the complete play as it.

Here is the plot overview: “Doctor Faustus is the story of a scholar who has exhausted every field of knowledge and yet scorns these accomplishments as being inadequate for greatness, power and glory. Faustus turns to magic--even to black magic--and calls upon the minion of Lucifer requiring him, Mephistopheles, to fulfill his aspirations for power and unlimited knowledge. Mephistopheles agrees in an underhanded sort of way, knowing that what he grants is itself limited by the bounds of Lucifer’s authority over a both. Faustus, though quailing with fears--and seeing the warning "Homo fuge" ("Fly, man") written upon his arm as he readies to sign in blood the contract with the Devil--nonetheless sells his soul to the Devil for twenty-four short years of magical tricks, books of limited

In the end, all abandon Faustus, the scholars and the Good Angel leaving him to face the torturing devils alone. His mutilated body is later found, and the Chorus enters to explain the tragic lessons to be learned from Doctor Faustus 's regretted choices.”

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Conclusion

Overall, Christopher Marlowe was a great Elizabethan playwright; he wrote the moral play doctor Faustus, he was famous for his proposed “atheism” which turned out to be likely false or not as we know “atheism” now and used it to cover up the fact that he was a spy, but authorities possibly killed him for being accused of “atheism” which opened up many mysterious things about his life. In my opinion Marlowe was a catholic sympathizer and used his reputation as an atheist to hide his secret life as a spy and draw more