“Renaissance” is a French word that means “rebirth”

.This epoch which we conditionally call “Renaissance”, is characterized (apart from the economic development) by rapid development of arts, architecture, music, and poetry. Renaissance initiated in Italy approximately in the XIV century; in England, where culture developed more slowly, this movement developed only in the the XVI century. During this era ideology shifted to a new direction. Whereas the medieval people looked at the earthly life as a preparation to the eternal life - which, in spite of the superstitions of these dark ages did not belittle their earthly pleasures - the worldview of the Renaissance people was directed to their mundane existence. From here derived the main philosophic principle of this epoch - anthropocentrism, according to which the human is the supreme purpose of the universe's creation. Therefore the Renaissance intellectuals were called humanists. The early humanists rebelled against the feudal, ecclesiastical and mystical worldview of the medieval ages, under the motto of the free development of people as individuals. This movement finds its reflexivity in the rapid development of lyrical and epic poetry (Spenser, Sydney, Shakespeare, Milton), metaphysical poetry (Donne, Herbert) and dramaturgy (Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare again).  Humanists for the first time declared the independence of a human: every person gained the right to create himself, to choose his own path, to aspire to success and prosperity, to look for the beauty in the surrounding world (This paragraph is partially borrowed from Renaissance Aesthetics, A.F. Losev, no direct quotations, translation mine). In this essay, I will demonstrate the focus on the individual in the works of Marlowe, Shakespeare and Herbert.

1. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

     I would not make bold to decide who was the first author to create a titanic figure, but Marlowe’s doctor Faustus certainly forestalled (served as antitype for) such gigantic figures as Raskolnikov (Dostoyevskiy) and Dorian Gray (Wild). I base that not merely on the fact that Doctor Faustus was written earlier, but because these ambitious characters very much remind me of Doctor Faustus. In the world of Faustus the question about the rights of us, simple small people, is in the air with an insoluble persistence, “to be or not to be”. The creative work of Marlowe, certainly, influenced that of Shakespeare, because direct references to Doctor Faustus and Mephastophilis we find in Shakespeare’s comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor, which suggests that even Shakespeare paid tribute to Marlowe’s talent.

      While it is commonplace to argue that Marlowe’s Faustus is the child of his time, when people decided that they achieved the freedom of unrestricted thought and knowledge, let’s look at this scary image of this glorified Doctor. He is a titan, who sold his soul to the devil in order to achieve the power of knowledge (or more like the power of power) and who turns to himself in the third person as “Doctor Faustus”, which sounds nearly like “Our Majesty”. His great figure bears the stamp of Renaissance gigantism. Here is how he sets off on his “individualistic” sojourn:

...Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires.

O what a world of profit and delight,

Of power, of honor, of omnipotence

All things that move between the quiet poles

Shall be at my command: emperors and kings... (I, 53-57)

Such a promising beginning. And what does our giant do, having achieved the inhuman power of black magic? He is bored to death (sorry for the pun) and goes on playing practical jokes. In the invisible state he steals the pope’s food;  provides the horse-courser with a horse that turns into a heap of straw. Here we can see a grand image of a creature, busy with self-praising, but at the bottom this creature with all its cannibalic individualism is only a pitiable nonentity, cursing himself for his gigantism:

Cursed be the parents that engendered me:

No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer...(13, 103-104)

Maybe it is not very nice of me to make fun of what Marlowe called The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. But did Marlowe really think he was writing a tragedy? I doubt it. In contrast to the philosophic direction of Goethe’s Faustus (sorry, I did not read it, just briefly passed through with the purpose of fulfilling this assignment), Marlowe’s Faust is indeed a play, written freely, a little chaotically, with humor which would be enough to deprive of sleep for a few nights even Shakespeare. Whereas Goethe’s Fausust promulgates human power, human superiority, human possibilities, Marlowe in his Faustus satirizes such qualities. Most clearly this satire is shown in the episode where his servant Robin steals Faustus’ “conjuring books” with the purpose to “make all the maidens in our parish dance at my pleasure stark naked before me” and “make [Rafe] drunk with ipocrase at any tavern in Europe for nothing” (Scene 6). (Uh, I just read in the preface to Doctor Faustus in the Norton edition that “it is quite possible that these comic scenes are the work of a collaborator”. Give me a break! Anyway, Marlowe or a collaborator, whoever took a hand in the work, the play stands with comic scenes.)

      In order to show that I did not yawn during Dr. Kolbrener’s lessons and to demonstrate “the depth and detail of my knowledge” let me add that this play is a morality play, because Marlowe finishes it with a moral:

...Regard his hellish fall,

Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise

Only to wonder at unlawful things:

Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits

To practice more that heavenly power permits. (Epilogue

Fausus’ fate is very much medieval, whose characters stood on the cross-roads between good and evil and had to make a choice. Thus, according to  unshakable medieval logic, Faustus is damned to eternal suffering.

It looks like I said all I could about the “individual” in Doctor Faustus. And I just now realized that what Marlowe described in his play demonstrates not “emergence of the individual” INTO being during the golden age, but rather “emergence” OUT of being during the decline of the golden age. My goodness, Renaissance is so varied.