L'eredità letteraria di Marlowe: Faustus e Tamburlaine

Vita e carriera di Marlowe

He lived in the same period of shakespare, studied in Cambridge and lived in London writing plays when he wasn't in trouble with law.

He worked as a diplomat and entered the court circle. He was imprisoned twice for murder and atheism but he was during a fight in a inn.
The myth of Faustus is one of the most famous in western culture originally a work inspired to the magician Johann Faustenand. The main character, Faustus, is a hero but at the same time a villain who desires the universal knowledge and obtain it by selling his soul to devil. The story became so popular that it started to be played also in puppet theaters. The play is often interrupted by comic scenes to lighten the mood of this dark play. Marlowe focuses on one man's determination to push the boundaries established by religion and tradition to satisfy his own ambition.

Elementi del rinascimento e del medioevo

In the play there are some elements typical of the renaissance and other of the middle age, like: the presence of angels, devils, magic and morality elements typical of the middle age, on the other hand there is an insatiable thirst for knowledge results from the aspirations of a new age.

Doctor Faustus is written in blank verse and prose; verse for the main story, prose for the comic scenes.

Interpretazioni successive di Faustus

Later Wolfgang von Goethe write the interpretation of the story of Faustus, who became symbol of thirst of knowledge, aspect that lead him to rebellion against god and the society but at the end he still go to the heaven because his ambition doesn't have to be punished. The version of Goethe was later elaborated by other authors, for example Arrigo Boito' Metistophele and Thomas Mann's doktor Faustus where the main character became a metaphor for nazi's germany.

Marlowe's Tamburlaine

Tamburlaine e il successo di Marlowe

The play which made Marlowe famous among Elizabethan audiences was Tamburlaine. He wrote the first part when he was only 23 and, due to its success, the second part soon followed. The figure of Tamburlaine was inspired by the Mongolian conqueror obsessed by his lust for power but who becomes prey to loneliness and frustration in the second part of the tragedy, Both Faustus and Tamburlaine are over-ambitious and symbolize man as master of his own destiny, who dares to challenge the gods.