Worldling Doctor Faustus

Abstract

The myth of Faustus, which would become a major example of a literary myth of universal occurrence, was born in Germany, in the beginning of the 16th century, with the historical character of Georg Faust, a virtual blend of physician and performer. Although, it would be with the work of Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, that it would acquire the dimensions it would have in the whole European literature. In this drama, Marlowe recovers some elements from Medieval Theatre, moralities in particular, recreating and, in a way, subverting them in order to express his own conceptions on moral and religion, which were very far from the Catholic precepts that had made use of such theatre as an indoctrination instrument. More importantly, Marlowe appropriated some means from a theatre which had didactic purposes in its origin, transfiguring them in order to express the inner conflicts of his character, providing him with the human dimension which would be the mark of Elizabethan Theatre, and giving him the features that would make Faustus one of the founding myths of modern man.