Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe Essay -- Doctor Faustus Christop

dilute Faustus by Christopher MarloweElizabeth I came to the throne of England during a time of intense religious turmoil and political uncertainty. By the terminal of her reign, England stood as the first officially Protestant nation in europium however, tensions mingled with Protestants and the repressed Catholic minority continued to plague the nation. lots of the literature produced during the time of her reign reflected sensitivities to holiness and resulting political intrigues. In his turn of events Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe places the title character in a power scrape similar in form to those conflicts dominating Elizabethan bearing. Yet kind of than a battle among courtiers for royal favor, the battle in Doctor Faustus pits theology against the devil in a struggle for the possession of a bits soul. Reflecting the cultural and religious context of the sixteenth century, Marlowes Doctor Faustus comments on prideful ambition, which leads to a loss of salvation for human pawns in the cosmic power-struggle for souls. In a conflict similar to that existing in the midst of English Protestants and Catholics, Faustus must choose between God and the scratch, risking his eternal life in anticipating which will be the winning side. When Henry VIII stone-broke from the Catholic Church and established the monarch as the head of a new English Protestant Church, he made religion largely dependent on politics. In reference to Marlowes treatment of religion in Dr. Faustus, John Cox writes, Marlowes implicit reduction of the rehabilitation to a struggle for power is an acute response to the secularization introduced by the Tudors. . . . Protestants made religion a weigh of crown policy, and thus relatively a matter of mere power (114). When Ma... ...he struggle for power between God and Lucifer reflects the religiously-based political struggles under the reign of Elizabeth I. The horrors of the struggle for a mans soul in which the need for power exceed the gifts of Gods grace reflect on the consequences of a secularized arouse in which religious devotion is largely reduced to a matter of political supremacy.Works CitedBowman, Glen. Elizabethan Catholics and Romans 13 A Chapter in the level of Political Polemic. Journal of Church and State 47.3 (2005) 531-44.Cox, John D. The devils of Doctor Faustus. The Devil and the Sacred in English Drama, 1350-1642. Cambridge Cambridge UP, 2000. 107-126.Marlowe, Christopher. Doctor Faustus. Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1B. Edited by M.H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. New York W. W. Norton and Co. 2000. 991-1023.