Dr. Faustus Close Reading

Evil Angel: Thou art a spirit, God cannot pity thee.

Faustus: Who buzzeth in mine ears I am a spirit?

Be I a devil, yet god may pity me. (v.189-92)

Scene 5 is when Faustus signs the contract that binds his soul to Lucifer.

After signing his name to the paper, he talks with Mephistophilis and asks questions about hell, the earth, the stars, and heaven. He asks for a wife, but marriage is a sacrament and therefore forbidden by Lucifer. Faustus begins to have second thoughts, and announces that he will repent. The good and evil angels, or Faustus’ conscience, then enter for the second time in this scene and try to give him two different pieces of advice. As usual, the evil angel is right.

Literally, the passage is saying that it isn’t too late for Faustus, and he can be saved if he will repent. But, being Faustus, a foolish man, he doesn’t exactly get it. In line 192, he seems to hear only the first half of line 190 and only the second half of line 189. It appears that he takes these two fragments of advice and butchers them into one. He is now w

Faustus is a smart guy, but he was so blinded by greed and ambition that he didn’t think everything through, like an intelligent person would. Maybe he could have realized that what he was doing was wrong, repented, and not ended up like he did. Nobody can really tell exactly what Marlowe was trying to say here, or even if he is trying to say anything special at all. Nonetheless, I believe every good story has a moral of some kind.

rongly assuming that he can and will be saved even if and because he is now a devil. He thinks that God has pity for him because he sold his soul, and that’s his ticket out of hell. He is not correct by any means.

Moments of confusion like this happen to Faustus often, and almost always when his conscience shows up. At the start of scene 5, before Faustus signs the contract, he is alone in his study talking to himself about his situation. He is saying he should be resolute and not to turn back, even though he hears a voice in his head telling him to return to God. He decides that he will not, because God does not love him, or at least not as much as Belzebub. When he says

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