Dr Faustus: Marlowe As A Dramatist
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The period of Marlowe's dramatic activity comprises six brief years, from 1587 to 1593. Yet during those six years he wrote six splendid plays- all reflecting the lust for empire, the lust for lucre, the lust for knowledge, the lust for beauty- these from the background as well as the mainspring of each play.
Tamburlaine was Marlowe's first powerful trumpet-blast, Historically the play was literally epoch-making. Its boldness in conception and style immediately set a fashion, Tamburlain (1587) encouraged Marlowe to " pen his Second Part". Tamburlain is the story of Scythian shepherd who dreams of world conquest and achieve his aspiration magnificently.
Tamburlaine brought Marlowe into fame, but his highest achievement in drama is his Second play, Doctor Faustus. The story is that of Faustus a scholar who sells his soul to the Devil in his eagerness, for the acquisition of universal knowledge. It is a play of vast conflict, fearful failure, intense feeling, stirring emotion; it is a play whose central idea is that of loss. Over and above Dr Faustus is Marlowe's highest achievement.
The first great thing done by Marlowe was to break away from the medieval conception of tragedy, as in medieval drama tragedy was the thing of Princes only. It dealt with the rise and fall of the Kings or royal personalities. Over and above long sensuous speeches, lack of action, talkative ghosts and horrible scenes of gruesome murders, were very much there. As a young man of twenty-three he came forward with the aim to redeem the drama from its past futility. With it English tragic drama was for the first time dignified with high passion and poetry.
In fact the play Dr Faustus is structurally very weak and cannot be overlook Levin's comments on the structural weakness of the play:
"Examined more technically the play has a strong beginning and even a stronger end but its middle section, whether we abridge it or bombast it out, is unquestionably weak"
Marlowe has rightly been called the 'Morning Star' of the great Elizabethan drama. And as a morning star of Elizabethan drama. He was really 'the Columbus of the new literary world. We may conclude the remarks of Schelling:
"Marlowe gave the drama passion and poetry; and poetry was his most precious gift. Shakespeare would not have been Shakespeare if Marlowe had never written or lived. He might not have been altogether the Shakespeare we know."
At the very outset of Dr Faustus we note that Marlowe belonged to the age of Renaissance. In fact, Marlowe was too much under the influence of the Renaissance conception of greatness as taught by the great Machiavelli.
All his four plays from his pen were indeed exemplary of the tragic art in dramatic poetry. It was passion, vigour and poetry that the populance thirsted for. And these were exactly the gifts that Marlowe brought to the drama.
We may begin by quoting Swinburne's very just and relevant remarks regarding Marlowe:
"Before him there was neither genuine blank verse nor a genuine tragedy in our language. After his arrival the way was prepared, the paths were made straight, for Shakespeare.
Marlowe was one who loved by the gods. Hardly twenty-nine years did he lived. When he was invited to join the chorus of the inheritors of unfulfilled renown. Had he lived longer he would surely have achieved greater name and fame and proved himself to be a serious rival of Shakespeare.
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