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E211: British Literature to 1760 Christopher Marlowe Study Questions Alfred J. Drake. Office: Hum. 520 | W 3-4 | ajdrake@ajdrake.com Doctor Faustus 1. To what degree do you find Faustus a sympathetic character? Are there any sympathetic characters in this play? If so, how much influence do they have? Explain. 2. Why, exactly, does Faustus make his bargain? What does he expect to gain for selling his soul? 3. How does the play handle the passage of time in its beginning, middle, and end? Why the difference? 4. How are the serious and the comic scenes related? (Scenes 3, 4, and 5 would be a good example.) What does the relationship between comic and serious scenes suggest about the quality of Faustus' bargain? 5. To what extent does Faustus take Mephistopheles seriously? How does Mephistopheles handle Faustus' occasional bouts of remorse or fear for his future? 6. When Faustus sees Helen, he asks, "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?" Do you think Faustus sees Helen the same way the audience sees her? Why or why not? 7. By the end of the play, why can't Faustus repent when he is called upon to do so? What lesson is Marlowe imparting about the effects of sin? 8. Critics have seen this play as a comedy, and not a tragedy. Do you agree or disagree? That is, what constitutes a tragedy, and what about Marlowe's play is or is not tragic? "Hero and Leander" 1. How does the narrator establish distance from the story told? What results from this distance for you as a reader? 2. What is the relationship between the gods' amorous affairs and the affair of Hero and Leander? Consider both the set-piece references to the gods and their actual interaction with the two lovers in the poem. 3. What view of love emerges from this poem? Is the focus on idealism, eroticism, both? Explain. 4. Compare this poem's handling of sexual love with Spenser's treatment of sexuality in the "Epithalamion." Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and Sir Walter Ralegh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" 5. Judge for yourself: whose argument wins? Why? 6. Try writing your own reply to Marlowe's poem, or a counter-reply to Ralegh's rebuttal. Edition: Abrams, M.H. et al. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vols. 1A, 1B, 1C. 7th. edition. New York: Norton, 2000. ISBN #'s: 1A = 0393975657, 1B = 0393975665, 1C = 0393975673.
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