Doctor Faustus of Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragicall History of Doctor Faustus does not recognize his limitations.  His desire to command a discipline outside his abilities (necromancy) is ironically inspired by his extensive education. It is not knowledge itself that compels Faustus to decide to conjure the devil, but simply because of the fact that he considers himself a master of each of his disciplines.  Once Faustus has become proficient in a field of study, he moves on to another in order to gain more knowledge and (so he believes) power.  Along with acquiring expertise, Faustus also becomes more arrogant and prideful; he considers himself to be extremely proficient in each of his disciplines.  Unfortunately for Faustus, the pride and arrogance he gained along with his knowledge are what ultimately lead to his downfall. He turns to the study of necromancy because he is unfulfilled by the kind of “external trash” (Marlowe I.i.35) that the other disciplines address in their practice.  Faustus now wants physical command over that which he has intellectual command.  Yet necromancy is apparently not enough for Faustus. Even within the last hour of his life on Earth, Faustus pleads for his magic powers stop time—something that is outside of his abilities as a spirit and a magician (I.xiii.58-79).  Marlowe’s introduction of Faustus as an Icarus-like figure is most appropriate; his eyes are forever tilted upward, yet his human-formed waxen wings are an inadequate mechanism for reaching the spheres of gods and Heaven.  Although the fundamental reason Faustus is doomed is because of his thorough education and studies, the knowledge (or the disregarding of the knowledge) of each of his disciplines has its own separate role in the damnation of Faustus.

               The part that medicine plays in Faustus’ downfall has more to do with the fact that he ignores the laws of medicine than anything else.  As he attempts to sign away his soul in his own blood, it will not flow (I.v.64-69).  Faustus’ body acts unnaturally again, just after he manages to get his blood to run long enough to sign his name; his arm bears the words “homo fuge” or “man flee” (I.v.77).  As a medical doctor, Faustus must know that his body is acting in a very strange and abnormal fashion.  His body is desperately working to stop him from signing his soul away to the Devil, yet, with just as equal desperation, Faustus forces himself to ignore even the knowledge he has great pride in possessing in order to obtain power via this pact.  He is so focused on simply making the agreement fall into place that he is willing to excuse away the clear signals from his body that are, very literally, telling him to escape.  This is the only moment throughout the play that Faustus ignores the knowledge gained from his education; when he could have listened to the powerful statements that his body was telling him, and prevented the pact from ever taking place.

               Faustus’ knowledge of law takes a much more active role in his damnation than medicine.  Mephastophilis almost immediately flatters Faustus by asking him to draw up a sound pact that would give his soul to Lucifer in exchange for Mephastophilis’ servitude (I.i.34-35, 95-110).  This pact means little, especially to the Devil—Lucifer and Mephastophilis manage to break the rules of the contract multiple times—however; the pact does act as something that the evil characters can all reference if Faustus rebels against the rules that he wrote himself.  When Faustus’ becomes uncertain about the agreement after Mephastophilis’ disinterest in and inability to feed Faustus’ desires, the Good Angel and the Evil Angel impose their reactions to Faustus’ wavering. In the end, however, it is the Evil Angel that prevails because it reminds Faustus of the pact (I.v.177-192).  Later, when the Good Angel comes quite close to convincing Faustus to repent, (he manages to call for Christ) Lucifer shows himself and scolds Faustus: “Thou talk’st of Christ, contrary to thy promise. /Thou should’st not think of God; think of the devil” (I.v.264-265). Faustus is quickly convinced and charmed by Lucifer. He feels legally bound to uphold his side of the agreement despite whatever insufficient services Mephastophilis and Lucifer give to him.  A sagely old man nearly convinces Faustus (yet again) to repent in order to save his soul.  Yet in the end Mephastophilis pressures him with threats and reminds him of the pact: “Thou traitor, Faustus: arrest thy soul /For disobedience to my sovereign lord. /Revolt, or I’ll in piecemeal tear thy flesh” (I.xii.51-59).  Although the prospect of being torn apart by a devil is a terrifying one, it is more likely that Faustus is convinced by the legal vocabulary that Mephastophilis is using, and cannot stomach the thought of being considered a “traitor” and “disobedient” through breaking the pact. He even reconfirms his promise to Lucifer by once again signing his name in blood for Mephastophilis.  In the end, Faustus is more devoted to his knowledge of the law and rules within the pact he has signed than the chance of saving his soul.

               When Faustus is throwing away his books in the initial scene of this play, he begins with his book of philosophy. Faustus vents his frustration with the practice by saying, “Is to dispute well logic’s chiefest end? /Affords this art no greater miracle? /Then read no more, thou hast attained the end” (I.i.8-10).  Faustus has defined philosophy (according to Aristotle’s terms) as the practice of debating without ever truly coming to a conclusion or subsequent action. Faustus performs this practice quite a bit throughout the play, despite his denunciation of philosophy.  The first moment that Faustus waivers on signing his soul away in the play is when he enters his study (his room for thought, reflection, learning, and practice) after having summoned Mephastophilis and is then waiting for him to return from hell.  Faustus immediately begins asking himself unanswerable questions about his actions and the weight of his decision to conjure the Devil to serve his selfish desire for power (I.v.1-14).  He talks himself in rhetorical, philosophical circles, and it is only when the Good Angel and Bad Angel take their cue to come and direct him that Faustus points himself in a definite direction—to that of Mephastophilis (I.v.15-26).  Because of Faustus’ extensive practice of philosophy, he seems almost incapable of reasoning his way out of even the most uncomplicated of situations. The Good Angel is trying to direct him away from interaction with the Devil, as is his conscience and body, yet Faustus never recognizes that what he is doing is endangering his soul’s well being.  He has learned to question everything without the pressure of coming to any conclusion or decision, so when the Evil Angel or Mephastophilis or Lucifer himself manage to catch Faustus when he is in a frenzy, they simply refer him back to the pact—the law, one of the disciplines he can depend on—in order to convince him.  Faustus habitually agrees with them and continues on until his ultimate damnation despite these little philosophic tornadoes of confusion.  When they do take place, a figure from hell is always ready to point once again to the agreement to keep him focused.  Even at the very moment he is being pulled into hell, Faustus is simply throwing out questions about how he could have prevented his damnation, yet he never took any legitimate action (despite the earnest attempts of many) to escape his doom.  Thus he chattered himself out of any effort to save his own soul.

               Because of his study of theology, Faustus interacts with devils and angels and responds to his chances to repent with a much too intellectualized and removed manner.  All of his decisions are based on what he has learned and been told—never on faith.  When Faustus introduces the Bible that he is about to discard he reads, “Stipendium peccati mors est” or “For the wages of sin is death” (I.i.39). Faustus completely ignores the second portion of the verse: “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Footnote 2).  Faustus only understands the Bible in part, not in a holistic sense.  He does not have a legitimate comprehension of its message; if he did he would have known that no scripture would simply say that to sin will lead to death.  Even as Mephastophilis is before him, claiming the existence of hell, Faustus states that he simply does not believe in any hell other than Elysium (Marlowe I.iii.58-60).  Faustus is trying to intellectualize the spiritual world by claiming his beliefs to be true, despite the fact that a representative from hell is telling him otherwise. He cannot comprehend that which does not seem to make logical sense. He later mocks Mephastophilis once again for claiming the existence of hell, by saying, “Tush, these are trifles and mere old wives’ tales” (I.v.134).  Faustus is failing to recognize the weight of the situation he has gotten himself into—he is rather stroking his ego by scoffing at a devil.  He is too concerned with being intellectually sound to see the danger his soul is in.  When the Good Angel and the Bad Angel argue with Faustus in the fifth scene of the play, the Evil Angel convinces Faustus by saying, “Thou art a spirit, God cannot pity thee,” while the Good Angel tells him to simply repent (I.v.188-189).  If Faustus had paid attention to the message of the Bible over simply learning the facts and names within it, he would have known that one should always listen to the Good Angel and, second, that God always pities mortals on earth, (whether have transformed themselves into spirits or not). But Faustus did not care to learn the Bible in this way.  He concerned himself with details and elements in order to “master” it in some respect versus comprehending the holistic concerns of the text.

Faustus’ “study” and practice of necromancy is therefore a total farce and, although it did lead to gaining the attention of the Devil, played close to no role in Faustus’ damnation. Faustus’ fifth discipline is given to him by Lucifer himself. Lucifer comes and scolds Faustus for attempting to repent, and then gives him a book: “peruse it thoroughly, and thou shalt turn thyself into /what shape thou wilt” (I.v.335-36).  In taking this book, Faustus has accepted not only a gift from the Devil himself, but also his teachings.  By studying its lessons Faustus learns  many powers, yet does nothing more with them than cruel tricks on naïve mortals.  He becomes a mere bully with the power of optical deception and flight, despite the fact that his initial desire was to become a powerful magician with the help of Lucifer as, “A sound magician is a mighty god” (I.i.62).  Yet this vision seems to dissolve after his interaction with the Devil and the reading of his book.  Faustus takes all of his powers and knowledge and hope, and manages to do nothing more than wicked trickery for twenty-four years.  By the end of the play, Faustus has never come close to getting anything he truly wants: a wife, the secrets of the world, Helen of Troy, the ability to halt time; with this book he was given a distraction from the shortcomings and apparent limitations of what he is getting in return for his soul. Lucifer gives him the knowledge and access to give him a bit of power, but it is nothing but sparks and phantoms.

               When the Devil gives Faustus the book of tricks, Faustus says to him, “Great thanks mighty Lucifer; this will I keep as chary as /my life” (I.v.337-338).  When he is being pulled down into hell he shouts, as a final attempt to bargain, “Ugly hell gape not! Come not, Lucifer! /I’ll burn my books—ah, Mephastophilis!” (I.xiii.112-113), and those are the final words of the dialogue in the play, as well as of Faustus during his life on earth.  He promises to take as close care of Lucifer's book as his own life, yet he offers it up as a sacrifice in exchange for his life in his last moments. Faustus is ignorant of how to care for and preserve even something as precious as his life and soul.  He promises to hold the book as closely to him as his life—but he does not know how!  He learned no secrets from his books. Mephastophilis points to them when Faustus asks for the secrets of the world and magic (I.v.163-174). He did not draw from them what he could have, only facts, pride and arrogance—only the belief that he deserved power, which he was unable to use for his benefit. Just as Faustus was unable to know the truths of the Bible because he approached it in a sterile, intellectual fashion, so too did he remain ignorant of the “secrets” of his other disciplines he so badly wanted to learn. They were all there—hidden within the text of his books.