This thesis examines the nature of the heroes in four of Christopher Marlowe’s plays and concludes that Marlovian heroes are transitional men who embody both medieval and Renaissance concepts and who are tempted to pursue the Renaissance dream, but are continually haunted by the Christian dogma concerning the destiny of man. They resemble Adam and Lucifer in multiple ways as they strive, suffer, and fall in their attempts to gain power, wealth, knowledge, and godlike omnipotence. The attainment of power corrupts Marlovian heroes, and they reveal characteristics of the Machiavel as the term was understood in Elizabethan times. Their moment of death is significantly magnified as they rage, curse, stoically accept, or philosophize in poetic terror as their doom approaches. The plays included in this study are Tamburlaine: Part One and Part Two, The Jew of Malta, Edward II, and Doctor Faustus.

The purpose of the study is to establish the critical need for stage action in order to understand fully the theme of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. Marlowe's primary intent is to invert the morality play, illustrating the distortions and ambiguities of a systematized religion and to establish the human dilemma when man is faced with moral choices. To illustrate this inversion, Marlowe uses emblematic action for an effect opposite to that of the traditional moralities: Often this action goes beyond the emblem, becoming a metaphor for Marlowe's theme, man as a victim, conflicting within himself and within the system which governs his morality.Chapter one introduces this theme and the crucial need for staging Marlowe's ideas. The first chapter also establishes a compromise of the textual problems inherent within any study of Doctor Faustus. Since the study argues that audience reaction is important to Marlowe's intent, attention is paid to how audience response governs the play's interpretation.Chapter two is a critical review of the historical staging practices which must be considered when studying the dramatic text. Included are stage size, costuming, and special effects.Chapter three is the advancement of the thesis in a scene by scene analysis of the text with special attention to the action as metaphor. Considered is how audience reaction represents part of Marlowe's purpose; the increasing tension of the audience furthers Marlowe's concept of the ambiguities present when humans are faced with moral choices. This purpose is traced scene by scene with specific attention to how it is metaphorically portrayed on stage.Chapter four is separate as a director's book, with the text reproduced, together with the researcher's marginal notes on specific blocking and with footnotes emplacing and expanding on the metaphorical action as it appears in the text. / Department of English

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In the biographical sketch of Christopher Marlowe which prefaces his 1818 edition of The Jew of Malta, Oxberry wrote: "Of his (Marlowe's) family we know absolutely nothing; their very names are forgotten...Ali the genius or Marlowe...has not had the power to save the records of his life from oblivion." [...]

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Focusing on the A-text (1604) version of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus , this study further assesses biographical information on the poet and intellectual currents of the Counter Reformation, so as to investigate the play's relation to emergent trends of individualism in the Renaissance, recovery of the pagan past, and intellectual aspirations that could readily collide with orthodoxy. Clearly reflecting anxieties of the period about individual deviance from social norms through intellectual overreaching, Doctor Faustus powerfully testifies to the potential dangers of human aspiration and the scholarly spirit of unbounded learning. While thus exploring the exotic temptations of forbidden knowledge, the play resurrects and interrogates traditional taboos which related intellectual appetite to wrongful lust. Marlowe stages an explosive conflict between the conservative tradition of intellectual inquiry, which distrusted the unorthodox scholarship and Neoplatonic magic that some widely influential thinkers promoted in the Italian Renaissance, and Faustus's own creative desires, ambitions, and imagination. The tension between proscribed and prescribed knowledge climaxes in the invocation of Helen of Troy. While Helen's significance is complex, we find that, in relation to the play's concern with dissent from orthodoxy, she focuses the power of intellectual longing to seduce and ravish the mind. Apart from being a superior play, Doctor Faustus encapsulates Marlowe's awareness of his period's uneasy perception of unconventional thinking, and urges the importance of challenging restrictions on how much one is permitted to know.

This thesis is divided into four main sections as outlined in the following paragraphs. After a brief introduction setting out the purposes and limitations of the thesis, we examine Marlowe’s critical reputation from his own time to the present. We find that he was largely ignored as a playwright until he was "rediscovered" by the Romantic critics at the beginning of the nineteenth century. These critics created the myth of Marlowe as a passionate young rebel against an orthodox world, a myth that persisted well into the twentieth century. When we come to the twentieth century, we divide Marlowe critics into the Romantic (those who maintain the image of Marlowe as a rebel against orthodoxy) and the anti-Romantic (those who view him as a traditionalist). Representative works from each group are examined. It is then decided that this thesis, while it does not deny the validity of the Romantic approach, is anti-Romantic since it seeks to emphasize the traditional side of Marlowe’s writing. We then proceed to a discussion of the morality play in order to set out a working definition of the genre. This is done by an examination of the sources and the history and development of the morality and by a more extensive examination of its outstanding characteristics. We find that there is present at least one of three basic themes: the conflict of good and evil for the soul of man, contempt of the world, and the debate of the Heavenly Virtues for the soul of man after death. Certain stock characters constantly reappear, the most important of which are the Everyman type, the Vice, the Devil, the Worldly Man, the Good and Evil Angels, and Death. Two basic structural types are used, the first showing a central character who is influenced by alternating groups of good and evil figures, and the second making use of a comic subplot, alternating scenes of moral didacticism with scenes of comic relief. Other characteristics of moralities are found to be the extensive use of debate and the lack of a realistic space-time concept. We then define the morality as a didactic play using one or more of the characteristic themes, stock characters, and one of the structural patterns outlined above. We then proceed to compare Edward II with this definition. Thematically, we find that the conflict between good and evil for control of man’s soul is present in the conflict between the nobles and Gaveston for control over the king. This is developed in the morality fashion, showing the central figure succumbing to vice, repenting, and ultimately gaining salvation. The theme of contempt of the world is also present particularly in the story of Mortimer and Isabella, whose rise and fall is found to follow the pattern of the "Worldly Man" morality. We then proceed to show that thematically Edward II is a combination of two morality play types, the "good and evil conflict" type and the "Worldly Man" type, and that the conflicting roles that characters are required to play in these two structures sometimes gives rise to character ambiguity. An examination of the character types present in the play shows that Edward plays the Everyman role in the "good and evil" structure and the Heavenly Man in the "Worldly Man" structure, Mortimer’s character is found to be ambiguous because he is forced to play a virtuous counsellor within one structure and the Worldly Man in the other. The same applies to Isabella. Less important characters lack this ambiguity and function in a more straightforward manner. Kent represents Moderation, Gaveston is the Vice, Spencer and Baldock are assistant Vices, Lightborn is Death, and Prince Edward is Justice. Structurally, Edward II follows the pattern of a central character coming under the influence of good and evil characters alternately. Debate is of limited importance in the play and the concept of time is loose, as is the concept of space. The thesis concludes that although there are a number of morality play elements in Edward II, the play cannot be regarded as a morality because it does not teach an overt lesson. Although certain precepts are embodied in the text of the play, Marlowe himself seems to withold moral judgment on the action. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate