Dr Faustus Final Soliloquy Essay

¬¬¬¬This passage comes from Faustus’ last soliloquy in the final moments of Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, in which he is addressing his impending death at the stroke of midnight. In this soliloquy, Faustus addresses his own salvation in the face of death by denying his previous ideas of God as something external to his own desires for power. He instead makes shallow pleas to God out of fear for the consequences of his own actions. Throughout the play, Faustus routinely rejects the idea of God’s sovereignty by investing in the power of “dark” magic furnished by a trade for a lifetime of servitude with Mephastophilis and Lucifer. It is only when this trade is derailed by Faustus’ own greed and desire for power …show more content…
He draws parallels between his own sacrifice of blood for the salvation of immortality seemingly granted by Mephastophilis in the beginning of the play and the blood Christ sacrifices for humanity in order to secure their redemption in the eyes of God. Faustus calls out for the play’s audience, and God himself, to “see, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament,” with “firmament” meaning sky in this context, in order to create these parallels between his own blood and Christ’s blood as a further parallel between Faustus’ own nature and the nature of the world (70). By conflating these two ideas, Faustus is able to convince himself that his own salvation is not his to bear at the brink of death as he claims that “one drop [of blood] would save my soul,” in reference to the sacrifices of Christ’s blood and not his own (71). Death instead represents the fulfillment of the figure of Christ’s own humanity in nature through the image of Faustus’ blood being spilt in both the metaphorical understanding of death as something beyond the power of life that runs throughout Faustus’ narrative and the physical blood he spills by his own hand in the beginning of the play. However, Faustus’ true intentions, and true lack of understanding the extent of his own need for salvation, is demonstrated through his return to his old way of thinking in the middle of the passage as he declares that “rend not my heart for naming of my Christ; / Yet will I call on him—O spare me Lucifer! / Where is it now? ‘Tis gone: and see where God stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!” (72-5). Faustus calls on Mephastophilis to take away the temptation of Christ’s offer of salvation that Faustus views as a betrayal to his own human power to “rend not my heart for naming of my Christ,” in which he again uses possessive