A Fool’s Errand: Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and the Parodic Use of Tragic Characterization in Early Elizabethan Drama*

Abstract

Herein I argue that Christopher Marlowe’s revered Elizabethan drama The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus subverts the allegorical conventions of the Medieval morality play, recasting the everyman figure—the protagonist tempted by personifications of sin—in an ironic light. As the title implies, the learned doctor is cast ostensibly as a tragic hero, yet the character to appear onstage is far from heroic, and his inevitable demise comes across as more pathetic than tragic. Whereas the classical tragic hero embodies larger-than-life qualities ultimately undermined by a devastating flaw, Marlowe’s protagonist possesses no such grandeur. In Marlowe’s hands, Doctor Faustus becomes a buffoonish clown, a figure of public ridicule offered up to assuage the anxieties of the Elizabethan audience. Marlowe’s take on the Faust myth speaks just as loudly to the present age—an age fueled by relentless technological ambition often tinged with ethical indifference and heedless of unintended consequences.