The False Dichotomy in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus

OF ALL THE GREAT ENGLISH PLAYS Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus has a unique power to fascinate even the postmodern mind. After all, where but in the arts can we safely lose ourselves in the enjoyment of such characters as good and evil angels, God, Satan, the Pope, demons, whores and gluttons? Where but in literature can we find, the black and white certainty of good versus evil? The story of Faustus is well known, the brilliant German academic, who sold his body and soul to Lucifer in exchange for 24 years of reckless abandon and earthly dominion. It is conventional to blame Faustus for his own fall, but was he not in fact a victim of Mephistopheles’ demonic sophistry? Was Faustus not led into a false dichotomy in which he believed that he had to choose between God and Lucifer?

The character of the demon Mephistopheles has attracted the attention of both audiences and literary critics. Mephistopheles is perhaps the most complex and the most interesting character in the play. Sometimes we see more of the demon’s inner life and feel more of his anguish, than we do of Faustus’ own. As an audience, we come to identify with Mephistopheles, the faithful servant and anguished soul, who many times warns Faustus that hell is real. Mephistopheles first appears in response to Faustus conjuring, but as he explains, he actually comes of his own accord, “For when we hear…