Duality in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus

Abstract

Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus suffers from a severe crisis which arises out of a dilemma between his religious belief and his desire for knowledge with the assistance of the evil. This dilemma gives way to a condition which may be called irreversible condition which neither he can accept nor can he nullify. Now from the Christian perspective, he is a wicked characters quite like Cain, Reuben, Absalom. So, this irreversibility gives an opportunity to pip into the story whether Faustus’ redemption is possible or not through repentance or lamentation. In this process, this paper will discuss those events and characters in details who work as both active and passive agents to give it a chance to take a reversal in Faustus’ life and death. Here in this, we see the good angel and bad angel which works as his own conscience; the divine signal from the divinity and the Old Man at the near end.