Hamlet and Dr. Faustus: Questioning

Hamlet and Dr. Faustus: Questioning Morality of the Supernatural

Both William Shakespeare's "Tragedy of Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark," and Christopher Marlowe's play "Dr. Faustus" are Elizabethan dramas that feature protagonists grappling with profound ethical issues address the limits of human life and power. "Hamlet" addresses the question of when and if it is moral for a man to take revenge, while "Dr. Faustus" deals with the question of how much power and knowledge human beings should be allowed to have in relation to God. Both plays introduce supernatural elements on stage to heighten the questions posed by these dilemmas, although "Hamlet" never entirely draws the drama to a conclusion that fully resolves the morality of the protagonist obeying the request of his father's ghost to avenge a "most foul murder" (III.2). Faustus' deal with Mephistopheles, in contrast, is revealed as clearly immoral and foolish. This ambiguity is why "Hamlet" still provides philosophical inspiration for modern readers, while the more straightforward morality play "Dr. Faustus" reads more like a comedy or a Renaissance-era curiosity.

Dr. Faustus" tells the tale of a scholar who is frustrated by the limits of his knowledge. No matter what he knows, Faustus cannot divine the secret of eternal life: "If we say that we haue no sinne/We deceiue our selues, and there is no truth in vs.Why then belike we must sinne, / and so consequently die, / I, we must die, an euerlasting death.

What doctrine call you this? Che sera, sera: / What will be, shall be; Diuinitie adeiw." (I.1). Faustus sells his soul to the devil for power on earth, and much of the rest of the play is devoted to watching Faustus display his delights in his powers, until he meets with eternal damnation at the end. "Hamlet," in contrast, does not seek out a visitation from beyond, although he begins the play as disenchanted with his existence as Faustus: "God! God! / How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, / Seem to me all the uses of this world!" (I.1). But unlike Faustus, Hamlet's discontent is not the result of selfishness, and his frustration with the limits of human life. Rather it is rooted in Hamlet's disgust with humanity, specifically his mother's hasty marriage to his uncle Claudius. Unlike the rest of the court, Hamlet demands why the king and queen have so little moral feeling. True, like Faustus Hamlet bemoans the limited nature of human life but not because of the brevity of his own life, but because of the brevity of his father's life and his ability to challenge the court's lack of concern with ethics.

When Hamlet receives an uncalled-upon visitation from beyond, he agrees to obey his father's command to take revenge upon Claudius, crying "oh my prophetic soul," upon hearing of Claudius' evil deed (I.5). Initially, rather than seeking to master the supernatural world like Faustus, Hamlet appears to be mastered by it -- he seems intent upon vengeance, at his dead father's will, he does not control his father's ghost like Faustus controls his demons. But over the course of the play, Hamlet's relationship to his quest becomes more problematic. Hamlet does not turn upon Claudius immediately; rather he pretends to be mad to have time to think. In his famous soliloquy, "To be or not to be," Hamlet muses that death is an "undiscovered country," from which no traveler returns, denying the reality of his father's ghost (III.1). Like a modern man, Hamlet doubts the material nature of the hereafter, unlike Faustus' utter conviction in the reality of demons Like Faustus Hamlet fears: "that sleep of death what dreams may come" but he confronts this ethical consideration as well as a mixed trust in the reality of the supernatural. He tests the ghost's word by staging a play that will replicate the method by which Claudius killed his father, and swears he'll "take the ghost's word at a thousand pound," but rather than engage in bloody violence like a savage, he cannot bear to stab Claudius in the back (III.2). Instead, he constructs a feeble excuse as to why he cannot, showing that for Hamlet, the ethics of revenge, if not Claudius' evil are always in doubt. For Faustus, the power of not being seen, of play-acting and pageantry and the ability to have power over another man of life and death are never with a higher purpose, and also never to be ignored and not taken advantage of: "But now, that Faustus may delight his minde,/and by their folly make some merriment,/Sweet Mephasto: so charme me here,/That I may walke inuisible to all, and doe what ere I please, vnseene of any" (III.2).

The ability to doubt and to question both the supernatural and his own character above all else is what makes Hamlet a more interesting character, and a more moral individual than Faustus in contemporary as well as Renaissance terms. Faustus, given the power of invisibility, joyfully torments the Pope for fun, while Hamlet's invisibility inspires the prince to muse about the ethics of his apparently duty-bound task to kill. Hamlet goes back and forth, at once whipping himself into a state of vengeance upon the sight of Fortinbras who is going to war for a tiny patch of land in the name of his father's honor, then ruefully recognizing: "That to Laertes I forgot myself; / for, by the image of my cause, I see/the portraiture of his" because of his accidental murder of Laertes' own father Polonius (VI.2). Faustus' selfish quest ultimately reveals him to be a man impressed with shallow beauty and trinkets and power, not insight, although he claimed to have exhausted the libraries of Wittenberg. Faustus never sought out what was right; he sought only to please himself. With ultimate power, Faustus plays jokes on the Pope and conjures up images of sinfulness, and when given a choice between salvation and desire, he chooses a false image of Helen: "Her lips sucke forth my soule, see where it flies" (5.1)