Christopher Marlowe

Doctor Faustus joins the proverbial style of The few of Malta to a moving ‘tragicall history’. Blinded by avarice and bad faith, Barabas dies as a shadow, a symbol of anarchy. Faustus, however, dies as an individual who has achieved a measure of self-awareness. Both as a learned fool and spiritual Jew, Faustus often resembles Barabas. His magic, like the Jew's impatient righteousness, inverts genuine wisdom, turning it into wicked pastime or sport. But in Doctor Faustus wisdom itself has become brighter, more accessible to worldly minds. Malta, as we have seen, is a ‘fatal labyrinth of misbelief.’ The one potentially wise character, Abigail, attempts to escape from the follies of this world altogether. Christian ideals distorted by the inhabitants of Malta rarely emerge in explicit statement and action. The audience must watch a series of scenes from life under the Old Law – ‘hatred, debate, emulacions, wrath, contentions, sedicions, heresies, Enuie, murthers, dronkenness, glottonie, and suche like’ (Galatians 5:20–1). Malta may well appear as it did to M. M. Mahood, to be a ‘world which has cut itself off entirely from the transcendent’. Like Ithamore in his foolish song to Bellamira, Marlowe seems to have chosen Dis, god of Hades, as his muse. Throughout the play this demonic spirit vexes the guilty worldlings, providing much laughter but little delight.

In Doctor Faustus on the other hand, Dis baits both hero and audience with the pleasures of the imagination.