When is faustus damned

O, no end is limited to damned souls! Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul? Or why is this immortal that thou hast?

Now, body, turn to air, Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell! Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while! Ugly hell, gape not! Shirley Williams, rising above party politics, claimed democracy had been put up for sale.

Deals with the devil are rarely implied, even metaphorically. Back to basics, then, for the harsh authentic flavour, the ancient hubris, the true terrible price, of soul-selling. There were reports of real devils appearing onstage during the play. His accessibility to knowledge is not limitless.

He finds this out near the beginning of the play when shortly after selling his soul he asks Mephastophilis to tell him who made the world and Mephastophilis says, "Move me not, for I will not tell thee Faustus has been cheated. He sold his soul in order to get one thing--unlimited knowledge, and it is denied him. He plans to become the fastest, the brightest and the most powerful. When he finds out that his ultimate goal is out of reach, his hopes fail him and Faustus gives up.

When he is brought before the King and Queen, instead of using his power to throw them off the throne so that he can rule in their place, he wins their affections with tricks. He uses his magic to bring the Queen grapes in the middle of January and to show the King the ghost of Alexander the Great.

When he is done with his display the King says, " Now, Faustus, must thou needs be damned; Canst thou not be saved! What boots it then to think on God or heaven? Away with such vain fancies, and despair— Despair in God and trust in Belzebub!

Now go not backward. Faustus, be resolute! To God? My heart is hardened, I cannot repent. Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or heaven, Swords, poison, halters, and envenomed steel Are laid before me to dispatch myself.

And long ere this I should have done the deed Had not sweet pleasure conquered deep despair. I am resolved, Faustus shall not repent! Sweet Mephostophilis, thou pleases me. Whilst I am here on earth let me be cloyed With all things that delight the heart of man. My gracious lord, not so much for injury done to me, as to delight your Majesty with some mirth, hath Faustus justly requited this injurious knight; which being all I desire, I am content to remove his horns.

Mephostophilis, transform him. And hereafter sir, look you speak well of scholars. Yet will I call on him: Oh spare me, Lucifer!

The impossible solution of finding a salvation in God, is followed by a double appeal to Nature itself to hide him from the Devil. And, once more, Marlowe makes use of the contrastive technique through the opposition of elevation and descent, but this time he even reverses it since he first introduces the descent into Earth, not seen as the descent into Hell as before, but simply as a place where to hide:.

Mountains and hills, come, come and fall on me, And hide me from the heavy wrath of God! Then will I headlong run into the earth; Earth gape! Oh, no, it will not harbor me! You stars that reigned at my nativity, Whose influence hath allotted death and hell, Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist Into the entrails of yon laboring clouds, That when you vomit forth into the air, My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths, So that my soul may but ascend to heaven. It takes Faustus half an hour to work out those impossible solutions, since:.

Pressed as he is, Faustus still tries to find other solutions with the difference that, now, he considers even the possible solution of a limited damnation using a process opposed to the previously used reductio but similarly painful:.

O God! Another astounding contrast, this one, for a man who has just asked for more time. And Time seems to be the leit motiv of the whole passage; misspent earthly time, denied time for salvation, eternal time of damnation, too short a time, too long a time, no more time to live for pleasure, infinite time to live under torture and pain, but all those time possibilities and possible times are now reduced for Faustus to the endless time of torment when he admits that:.

When such a solution is judged as impossible, Faustus tries for more.