Christopher Marlowes Dr. Faustus - An Insatiable Desire...

Christopher Marlowes Dr. Faustus - Corrupted by an Insatiable Desire for Knowledge, Wealth And Power The Renaissance period is characterized by a grand desire for acquisition of knowledge and a passion for emerging individuality. Scholars and educators . . . began to emphasize the capacities of the human mind and the achievements of human culture, in contrast to the medieval emphasis on God and contempt for the things in this world (Slights 129). However, the whirlwind of change brought on by the budding ideas of Humanist thinkers was met with a cautious warning by one the greatest writers of the era. Christopher Marlowes Dr. Faustus acts as mask, containing and disguising the dramatists criticisms of Renaissance thinking.†¦show more content†¦Marlowes protagonist is a learned scholar who is driven by an insatiable desire for more knowledge, more wealth and more power. After preaching of his academic successes, he exclaims, Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man (Barnett 104). He is frustrated by the stagnation of his knowledge declaring then read no more, thou has attained that end (104) and decides both law and physic are for petty wits (106). He desires . . . a world of profit and delight,/Of power, of honor, of omnipotence (105). His lust for knowledge through magic evolves into greater goals to use the black sons of hell (155) to gain physical wealth by stealing gold from India and to ransack the ocean for orient pearl (106). After speaking of wealth, he yearns for power stating he wants to be sole king of all the German states when he says Ill levy soldiers with the coin they bring And chase the Prince of Parma from our land And reign sole king of all our provinces (106). Following this remark, his desires reach new heights when he declares Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war Than was the fiery keel at Antwerps bridge Ill make my servile spirits invent (106). These lines show that he is going to create new methods of war to use against humans. His desires have