The theatrical device of performing a play within another play has been employed for centuries, most notably in European theatre and literature (Fisher and Greiden xi). The play within a play “describes a strategy for constructing play texts that...

Throughout Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus, the themes of sin, damnation and redemption are presented somewhat ambiguously. The key focus of this ambiguity, is the identification of Faustus’ point of no return with regards to the damnation of his...

Sometimes, the Devil—or, at least, one of his most trusted minions—really is in the details. In Christopher Marlowe’s play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, the most compelling hero is not the eponymous main character. Doctor Faustus, with...

The period referred to as the Golden Age of English Drama was a revolutionary period when it came to the portrayal of human thought and behavior in society. Some would even argue that this period in Renaissance England was a major influence in the...

Shakespeare’s minor characters are as often as diverse and essential to the plot as their protagonist counterparts, used within his plays to illuminate the main characters’ goals and feelings. The presence of these personages also expands upon the...

Doctor Faustus’ closing speech is unquestionably the most emotional scene in Dr. Faustus. His mind moves from idea to idea in desperation and he spends his final hour in vain hoping that he may be spared from his fate. He looks inward for an...

Christopher Marlowe’s play entitled, Doctor Faustus, tells the story of a curious and ambitious man who has grown tired of focusing on all of the traditional areas of study, and wishes to learn something less known by others. Faustus is intrigued...

A play can have power over its audience, whether it simply captivates them with its plot or makes them question their beliefs with its commentary. Though while the actors are the ones directly exercising this power over the audience, it is the...

Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Shakespeare’s The Tempest present similar definitions of “power” through the differing circumstances of their protagonists. Power, in these plays, can be thought of as “control of the unknown.” If one character has...

The most compelling characters in modern literature and plays are the ones whose motivations tend to be complex, thus demand a deeper analysis of which part of their conscious their decisions arise from – the impulsive Id, the balancing Ego, or...

The relationship between the body and soul is one obsessed over by playwrights since the morality plays of the medieval period. Renaissance writer Christopher Marlowe and 20th century American playwright Bernard Shaw are no exceptions to this: in...

The Renaissance period in European history oversaw a dramatic disintegration of beliefs that had largely helped to structure contemporary society, such as the belief that the Christian faith should be the epicenter of everyday life. It is...

In both the medieval morality play The Summoning of Everyman, first performed in 1510, and Christopher Marlowe’s Renaissance Drama Doctor Faustus, the search for progress arises through the themes of religion, morality and avarice. In Everyman, ...

The English Renaissance notably developed alongside a volatile political backdrop intertwined with internal conflict, dynastic instability and, perhaps most importantly, religious tension. Religious settlement in the sixteenth and early...

"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 genre of revenge tragedy has been both popular and unique in its ability to simultaneously arouse feelings that appear to be unrelated in its audience: vengeance and sympathy. What makes this genre vary from play to play, however, is the...

Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare wrote plays in England during a time when Jews were banned from the country, making it unlikely that Jewish characters in their plays would amount to more than anti-Semitic stereotypes. Both Marlowe’s ...

The issue of religion is a prominent theme throughout Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta. It is the driving force of the events of the play, as Barabas’s quest for total revenge is kicked off with the Christian governor Ferneze singling out...

The period referred to as the Golden Age of English Drama was a revolutionary period when it came to the portrayal of human thought and behavior in society. Some would even argue that this period in Renaissance England was a major influence in the...

Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine was a great milestone in Elizabethan drama and shocked audiences of the time with its unconventional tragedy plot and strikingly successful characters. Marlowe’s unusual approach with the character of Tamburlaine...

Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, Part 1 is one of the greatest examples of the use of emblematic staging in the early-modern period. The more iconographic style which preceded in the theatres, gave way to a much more fluid visual...