Brooke does not believe that the play has a Christian
conclusion.
“In the end Faustus
does despair, the devil he has constantly feared tears him to pieces, and the
scholars draws back the curtain to reveal the gory mess that was ‘admired man’.
But, as with Tamburlaine*, inevitable death does not make a tragedy.
Tamburlaine is not tragic, Faustus is; and the difference lies in Faustus’s
tortured awareness that it should have been otherwise. Had his Will been what
he felt it to be, he would have been triumphant, independent of angels and
devils; he would have realized his supreme urge to self-originated power, and
Heaven and Hell remained mere fables. But as Faustus fails, greatness as Man
imagines it can only remain outside human power, must reside in superhuman God
and Devil; and so in the end, it is extinction not mercy that Faustus craves.
‘O
soul, be changed to little water-drops
And
fall into the ocean, ne’er be found’
That is not a
Christian conclusion; at its tragic end as throughout its length, Marlowe’s
Morality is inverted; there are still two Hells, Lucifer’s and Faustus’s. But
in the end, it would seem, Faustus has become fully conscious of Heaven as
well. If so, he still cannot or will not accept it: it stands for a way of life
he has rejected as unworthy of him; but it happens to be the one God insists
upon. Faustus becomes aware, not only that he is wrong, but that the power of
God is to have made man desiring a greatness he cannot achieve: that is
constant bitter irony that I have noted throughout the play – man’s nature is in direct opposition to his
fate”
*Tamburlaine the Great is the name of a play in two parts by
Christopher Marlowe. It is loosely based on the life of the Central Asian
emperor, Timur 'the lame'.
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