The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus: Week 7 (FINAL)

Oh, For Half a Drop of Christ's Blood

[The Sun or the Fall of Icarus by Merry-Joseph Blondel (1819); public domain]

Faustus finally repents.

It is a true deathbed repentance, albeit one of the most horrific kinds.

Yet, although Faustus repents, he does not call on God as the Scholars and others throughout the play have urged him to do.¹ So, as we know by the end of the play, he is not saved but is dragged by Lucifer’s demons into hell.

Theologically, the play is more nuanced than this and, I think, ambiguous. As we’ve seen, Faustus is urged over and over, and given many opportunities, to repent and turn to Christ. But he doesn’t, at first out of refusal and then in convincing himself he can’t because it’s too late.

In this final scene, Faustus specifically says that he is guilty of blasphemy. The Bible says that the one unforgivable sin is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (which is a particular, though debated, form of blasphemy²). More interesting, from a literary perspective, is how Marlowe tantalizes us with this question over and over throughout the play: within the terms of the text, could Faustus have been saved, despite making his deal with the devil? The play doesn’t give an answer: it gives us characters who see it differently and who present their urgent cases for their views, compelling us to consider these questions for ourselves. Will we heed the Good Angel or the Evil One? Will we accept the vial of grace as the Old Man urges Faustus to do? Will we believe the Tempter over the Son of God?

Regardless, Faustus’s tragedy spirals toward its cumulative end. The play is quintessentially Renaissance because it resurrects so vividly elements of classical culture: Helen of Troy, the Chorus, supernatural intervention, and this textbook form of tragedy itself.

Classical tragedy features a noble hero who suffers a downfall through a combination of the forces of Fate and his own hamartia, sin, missing the mark, or tragic flaw.

Faustus captures this tension perfectly. (Notably, however, there is a modern twist in that Faustus, as we are told in the Prologue, was not nobly born, but of “base stock” and rises through his early success in life.) In Lucifer, Faustus has encountered a force parallel to (although not exactly the same as) the Greek concept of Fate. Yet he has, as the opening lines of the Prologue tell us, become “swollen with cunning” (or knowledge) until “his waxen wings did mount above his reach,” an allusion to Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and came crashing down to earth. Marlowe uses the classical imagery to suggest the Christian sense of pride, hubris, as the Greeks called it.

In this final scene, as Faustus seems earnestly to lament (and then truly to suffer anguish and fear in that final speech), he still seems, to me, to be tinged with pride. Listen as he tells the Scholars that it is too late for him:

But Faustus’ offence can ne’er be pardoned:  the serpent  that tempted Eve may be saved, but not Faustus.  Ah, gentlemen, hear me with patience, and tremble not at my speeches!  Though my heart pants and quivers to remember that I have been a student here these thirty years, O, would I had never seen Wittenberg, never read book! and what wonders I have done, all Germany can witness, yea, all the world; for which Faustus hath lost both Germany and the world, yea, heaven itself, heaven, the seat of God, the throne of the blessed, the kingdom of joy; and must  remain in hell for ever, hell, ah, hell, for ever!  Sweet friends. what shall become of Faustus, being in hell for ever?

Putting aside the doctrinal question of whether or not Faustus has committed the unpardonable sin, I think there is a keen psychological question here in terms of how pridefully Faustus views himself and what he’s accomplished. He sees his own deeds as too great for God to forgive. He reminds us of all of the wonders he has done and seems to lament the loss of more of these wonders for the world than to feel true sorrow and humility before the Lord.

And yet here, and in the rest of the scene, his anguish is real. The tenderness and care between Faustus and the Scholars are deep and real as they seek to see him saved and he appeals to them, “Talk not of me, but save yourselves, and depart.”

Here is Richard Burton playing this scene in a 1967 film adaptation of the play:

Faustus at last calls out to Christ as the Devil is literally pulling Faustus away as he attempts (too late) to turn to the Lord. If read closely and truly understood, these lines are moving and horrifying:

O, I’ll leap up to my God!—Who pulls me down?—

     See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!

     One drop would save my soul, half a drop:  ah, my Christ!—

     Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!

     Yet will I call on him:  O, spare me, Lucifer!—

     Where is it now? ’tis gone:  and see, where God

     Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!

     Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,

     And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!

Oh, for half a drop of Christ’s blood. Alas! It is too late for Faustus, but not for us.

If you are not a Christian—and maybe even if you are—the power of Christ’s blood—blood!—is something weird to grapple with. But if you think about the simple way in which blood is and symbolizes life, then it’s not so strange. To call on Christ is to choose life. To call on Lucifer is to choose death. This is the simple truth of the play.

The complex part of the play is the way in which Faustus is a character who draws us in even as he is to be condemned. To be sure, Faustus went beyond his proper bounds. Marlowe makes that very clear. Yet Marlowe invites us to admire Faustus, too. We both blame and weep for Faustus, do we not? He is so haughty and proud, and yet he suffers so. And herein lies the ultimate tragedy: a destruction that would not have happened to a lesser man because a lesser man would not have even tried to fly near the sun, and in not trying would not have failed.

Yet the Chorus gets the last word:

Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,

     And burned is Apollo’s laurel-bough,

     That sometime grew within this learned man.

     Faustus is gone:  regard his hellish fall,

     Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise,

     Only to wonder at unlawful things,

     Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits

     To practice more than heavenly power permits.

Farewell, Dr. Faustus.

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Next week, I will continue my series on platform and publishing with another installment. Then we will begin reading some of the poetry of John Donne! We’ll start with “Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God.”

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BOOK NOTE:

I’m doing a lot of reading these days as research for the book I’m writing on calling. My basic thesis is that we are all called to pursue truth, goodness, and beauty in all that we do. One of the books I’ve read in this research is Jordan B. Cooper’s In Defense of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful: On the Loss of Transcendence and the Decline of the West.

I’ve studied a fair amount of philosophy, particularly in aesthetics. I found Jordan’s book to be both an excellent overview of classical, biblical, and modern views of the transcendentals (the good, true, and beautiful) and a fairly detailed examination for a book of this brief length. He tells a coherent and fairly complete story. My views about Western civilization aren’t quite as pessimistic as Jordan’s, but he is a sober-minded, fair thinker. He is also a clear and engaging writer.

"Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” – Simone Weil³

1. Not all repentance is true repentance. I suppose some is just regret.

2. https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/what-unpardonable-sin

3. Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. By Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr (London: Routledge, 2002), 117.