critics (faustus)

Jeffery - Faustus is

a vulgar sorcerer

Wagner - Marlowe’s Faustus

is anything but a hero

Taine - Marlowe’s Faustus is the living, struggling, natural, personal man,

not the philosophic type Goethe has created, but a primitive and genuine man

Duxfield - Doctor Faustus does little

to pursue the grand project which he sets for himself

Duxfield - we are given ample reason

to anticipate a vehement propounding of Christian values

Pincombe - for all Faustus’s learning,

he is still a dilettante when it comes to wisdom

Duxfield - one can ask

just how bad Faustus actually is

Duxfield - Faustus and Adam

both transgress after being overcome by curiosity, that most human of instincts

Deats - Dr Faustus

is a “womanless drama”

Wischik - it is fair to say

that Faustus represents the quintessential Renaissance man

Wischick - Faustus ceases to be

a seeker of knowledge, but a seeker of pleasure

Smith - the text is

clearly promoting an atheist agenda

Ornstein - Faustus’ choice of necromancy

is foolish as well as self-destructive

Wischick - Helen is symbolic of

the attractive nature of evil in addition to the depths of depravity that Faustus has fallen to

Ornstein - from the beginning, he is too glutted with self-conceit

to see that his mastery over Mephistophilis is mere appearance and that he defies heavenly law only to accept the bondage of hell