John Addington Symonds

Abstract

Doctor Faustus is more nearly allied in form to the dramatic poems of our own days, which present a psychological study of character to the reader, than any other work of our old theatre. Marlowe concentrated his energies on the delineation of the proud life and terrible death of a man in revolt against the eternal laws of his own nature and the world, defiant and desperate, plagued with remorse, alternating between the gratification of his appetites and the dread of a God whom he rejects without denying. It is this tragic figure which he drew forth from the substance of the German tale, and endowed with the breath and blood of real existence. He traced the outline with a breadth and dignity beyond the scope of the prose legend. He filled it in with the power of a great poet, with the intensity of life belonging to himself and to the age of adolescent vigour. He left us a picture of the medieval rebel, true in its minutest details to that bygone age, but animated with his own audacious spirit, no longer mythical, but vivified, a living personality.