Dr Faustus quotes

Dr Faustus quotes

1. And glutted more with learning's golden gifts (C1:24)

   • links to gothic excess - gluttony being one of the seven cardinal sins. 

2. Nothing so sweet as magic to him (C1:26)

   • Ironic use of adjective- "sweet" would normally be associated with innocence.

3. Divinity, adieu! (1:48)

   • Faustus dismisses 4 practices - medicine, law, philosophy and divinity - this shows Faustus turning away from God.

4. necromantic books are heavenly! (1:50)

   • This is a paradox - juxtaposing necromancy (evil) with ideas of heaven (divinity) to create irony.

5. This word damnation terrifies not him (2:57)

   • Dr. Faustus's arrogance possible denial.

6. leaving these trifles of men's souls (2:60)

   • Over reaching - beyond the "trifles" of other men, looking to the powers of hell to satisfy his desires - egotistical. 

7. Why this is hell, nor am I out of it (2:75)

   • eternal hell - this suggests hell is a state as well as a physical place and has echoes of Paradise Lost - I bore a hell within me, also referenced in Frankenstein.

8. O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands/ Which strike a terror to my fainting soul

   • This shows Mephastophilis giving Faustus an opportunity to back out of the contract, telling him to turn back and away from Lucifer.

9. Seeing Faustus hath incurred eternal death (2:87)

   • Faustus has been damned eternally, the opposite of eternal life from Christ - Christ died to conquer death however as Faustus has binded himself to the devil, he is compelled to an eternal death.

10. So he will spare him four and twenty years (2:90)

    • Living entirely in the moment - Faustus is willing to sell his soul to the devil for twenty four years of pleasure - this would have shocked an Elizabethan audience that valued the soul over physical being.