In Christopher Marlowe's narrative poem Hero and Leander, a major obstacle confronts the reader in the form of attempting to separate the narrative voice of the poet Marlowe from that which W.L. Godshalk calls "the sensibility of a dramatized...

On the afternoon of June 11, 1814, at the home of Lady Sitwell, George Gordon, Lord Byron, upon seeing his cousin Lady Anne Wilmot Horton in "a mourning dress of spangled black" (Leung 312), was so moved that by the next day he had written "She...

Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and Andrew Marvell’s “To his Coy Mistress” offer powerful examples of sensual, carpe diem Renaissance poetry. In both poems, the poet-speakers attempt to spur their beloveds into action...

The poems “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” by Sir William Raleigh, and “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe have the same central theme, that love and nature are beautiful but don’t last forever. Both authors use...

Although the nature vs. nurture debate seems as though it is a rather contemporary argument, it was actually a common thematic element of Elizabethan literature. Christopher Marlowe, in particular, focused on human behavior and the influences of...

Thomas Campion and Christopher Marlowe have explored the concept of ‘the ideal’ in ‘A Man of Life Upright’ and ‘Come Live with me, and be my Love,’ respectively. Campion delves into the idea that a man may be more content in life by upholding...

“The dominant mode of ethical thinking in the Renaissance argued that the passions should be governed by reason to ensure good order in society.”

A paradox exists in Renaissance ethics: passions – by definition, ‘barely controllable’ – should be...

The gods as depicted in Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander are beings that exist outside of the realm of morality, living near humans but bound by separate rules and ideas. This is especially true in relation to sexuality, and the senses of...

Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander challenges 16th century Christian teaching. Christian teaching on desire stems from Thomas Aquinas’ Natural Law which is a set of moral laws intended to identify God’s purpose for human life. One of the five...

What is truth but the best of us in all of us. Great truths are portions of the soul of man. There are no facts, only interpretations. There is no one truth, or ‘the truth’, but there are as many truths as there are perspectives, and there are as...

The depiction of the Seven Deadly Sins serves a vital role in understanding the contexts through which works of literature explore religiosity and morality. Within both Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus and Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, the portrayal of the...

In the world of theatre, there are many plays in which the central figure is one who harnesses extreme personality traits above all others. For example, Sophocles' Oedipus is a fatherly king with great ambition and strength; and Shakespeare's...

Throughout the course of The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, a complex relationship develops between Dr. Faustus and the devil Mephastophilis that can be characterized by Faustus' total dependence on his counterpart and a mutual sense of...

In both plays, Twelfth Night and Doctor Faustus, there exists a high and a low (or comic) plot. This plot division serves as a parallel - the actions and characters in the low plot coincide with the actions and characters in the high plot. The...

In Doctor Faustus, good and evil are presented as two polarized ideas: God and Heaven on one side, and Lucifer and Hell on the other. Contrasting representations of this division also appear, such as the old man and the Good Angel opposed to...

"Religion hides many mischiefs from suspicion" (I, ii, 279-280)

Religion, as Barabas describes in this quotation from The Jew of Malta, acts as a measure in defending one's actions as moral or just. Christopher Marlowe presents this use of...

The traditional Christian message Christopher Marlowe was working with during the time he wrote Doctor Faustus stated that one should avoid leading a life of temptation and sin, the origins of which were rooted in an enterprising proprietor of...

Among the various definitions of tragedy, the one most commonly proffered is: a play that treats - at the most uncompromising level - human suffering, or pathos, with death being the usual conclusion. According to Aristotle's Poetics, the purpose...

Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus presents a protagonist who sells his soul to the devil for god-like knowledge and power. The tension in Faustus surfaces from the protagonist’s self-damnation, for he is constantly reminded and aware of his...

Throughout both ‘Paradise Lost’ and ‘Doctor Faustus,’ the authors draw upon the ideas of responsibility, free will, and blame. Marlowe, in ‘Doctor Faustus’, melds the conventional religious ideology of the Middle Ages with the comparatively new...

In Act 1 Scene 1, Marlowe continues to subtly parody the structure of a typical Aristotelian tragedy, following the Chorus’ unusual introduction with a seemingly orthodox dialogue from the protagonist, Dr Faustus. However, he does not interact...

The literature of the English Renaissance demonstrates a remarkable range of attitudes towards women. While there are significant proclamations of chivalric attitudes towards women such as Walter Raleigh's devotion to Queen Elizabeth I, nearly...

Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus depicts a clash between the values of the medieval world and the emerging humanism of the Renaissance. During the Middle Ages in Europe, God is the center of intellectual life, and in art and literature, the...

Two concepts often appear to be in conflict or contrast at the heart of Gothic fiction; the dualities of good and bad are often critical to the formation of the literature. Within ‘Dr. Faustus’ the battle between good and bad is particularly...