In the literary canon, Marlowe's Dr Faustus is a pre-Gothic text.

In the literary canon, Marlowe's Dr Faustus is a pre-Gothic text. What aspects of the play do you consider to be relevant to the study of The Gothic? What dramatic impact would these features impart in performance?

Key aspects of the Gothic are highlighted within Dr Faustus, despite Marlowe being before the time when the Gothic was acknowledged as a set genre. It is even so that some aspects Marlowe explores are relevant with today as religious and psychological themes are exploited to develop controversial ideas that can still be debated within the Gothic society.

The exploration of the supernatural

Dr Faustus contains probably the most key aspect of the Gothic genre: the supernatural. Marlowe explores the idea of necromancy; the conjuring the of the dead which would have both shocked and incline curiosity within both the contemporary and modern audience. Much of Mephistopheles' conjuring's include the idea of producing an illusion of the dead with the likes of Helen of Troy and Alexander the Great. This exploration of conjuring the dead is a classic gothic convention and explores the transgression of boundaries between the living and dead and essentially what is right and wrong. It also explores the unknown; is death the end? is there and afterlife? These questions are explored in Dr Faustus as an example of curiosity to bring back great figures of the past; being the the ability to do so could raise questions on whether it is right or not.

The exploration of transgression in religion

There is a very clear Gothic feature that is present throughout is the idea of Heaven and Hell, usually presented in binary opposition to each other.This also relates to the theme of Grace and Damnation; a battle which Faustus submits to. However though there are many idea's on the religious aspect, the most poignant one is the psychological idea of hell on earth in its literal form. Mephistopheles, when asked about Hell, says that "this is hell, nor am I out of it" creating the idea that Heaven is a place, but hell is a more of a psychological state of being. This suggested idea is so forward thinking of Marlowe that the dramatic quality of it going against the previous belief that Hell is a place would strike great fear into the audience. 

The transgression of boundaries and the search for knowledge

Doctor Faustus was written at a time when the boundaries of knowledge were expanding at an extremely rapid rate. In natural science and technology, new ideas and discoveries abounded. Marlowe probably was influenced in this aspect to show the overreaching protagonist as crossing the boundary and ignoring the rules. This is very gothic feature in most texts and lead to the downfall of the main character as they surpass curiosity, leaving the dramatic message that boundaries are there with a purpose. Faustus is representative of this thirst for knowledge. His long monologues in Scene 1 dramatise his command of - and impatience with - established branches of knowledge and his desire to move beyond them. The use of words like ‘glutted’ and ‘surfeits’ suggests that Faustus goes beyond the satisfaction of hunger for knowledge and delves into one of the 7 deadly sins. This is an example of gothic at its best as the language suggests the excessive; the need to have and know more. Too much of one thing leads to a downfall and as a result leaves a dramatic message to the audience.