2023年4月浙江自考英美文学选读复习笔记：Christopher Marlowe

Born in 1564, Christopher Marowe (1564-1593) was the son of a Canterbury shoemaker.Schoarships took him first to the King's Schoo, and then Cambridge. During his stay at Cambridge, his career as a man of etters got started. His pay, Tarnburaine, written before he eft Cambridge, turned out to be a sweeping success on the stage. When he came to London in 1584, his sou was surging with the ideas of the Renaissance, which ater found exssion in Dr. Faustus. Marowe had aso the unbrided passion and the conceit of a young man who had just entered the reams of knowedge. He became an actor and ed a tempestuous ife in the foowing six years since his first great success. On May 30, 1593, Marowe was kied in a quarre over a tavern bi in Deptford.

As the most gifted of the "University Wits," Marowe composed six pays within his short ifetime. Among them the most important are: Tamburaine, Parts I & II (1587-1588), Dr. Faustus (1589？), The Jew of Mata (1590?) and Edward II (1592-1593). Marowe's non-dramatic poetry incudes Hero and Leander," the Passionate Shepherd to His Love," and a verse transation of Ovid's Amores.

Tamburaine is a pay about an ambitious and pitiess Tartar conqueror in the fourteenth century who rose from a shepherd to an overpowering king. By fouting the given order and tramping on despairing princes, Tamburaine dispayed a high-aspiring mind that was sef-created and carried by ove and dreams beyond the imits of mora existence. His victories were a triumph of immense natura energy and of ruthessness over equay crue but weak and decadent civiizations. By depicting a great hero with high ambition and sheer bruta force in conquering one enemy after another, Marowe voiced the sume desire of the man of the Renaissance for infinite power and authority. In fact, Tamburaine is a product of Marowe's characteristicay Renaissance imagination, fascinated by the earthy magnificence avaiabe to men of imaginative power who have the energy of their convictions.

Dr. Faustus is a pay based on the German egend of a magician aspiring for knowedge and finay meeting his tragic end as a resut of seing his sou to the Devi. The pay's dominant mora is human rather than reigious. It ceebrates the human passion for knowedge, power and happiness; it aso reveas man's frustration in reaizing the high aspirations in a hostie mora order. And the confinement to time is the crueest fact of man's condition.

Marowe's greatest achievement ies in that he perfected the bank verse and made it the principa medium of Engish drama. Previous writers ike Saekvie and Norton had adopted the bank verse, which, under their pens, was rather infexibe and coud produce merey exotic effects. It is Marowe who brought vitaity and grandeur into the bank verse with his "mighty ines," which carry strong emotions. To achieve this, Marowe empoyed hyperboe as his major figure of speech, which, instead of referring to the exaggeration of the anguage, indicates the poetic energy and intensity conveyed through the verse.

Marowe's second achievement is his creation of the Renaissance hero for Engish drama. Such a hero is aways inspaniduaistic and fu of ambition, facing bravey' the chaenge from both gods and men. He embodies Marowe's humanistic idea of human dignity and capacity. Different from the tragic hero in medieva pays, who seeks the way to heaven through savation and God's wi, he is against conventiona moraity and contrives to obtain heaven on earth through his own efforts. With the endess aspiration for power, knowedge, and gory, the hero interts the true Renaissance spirit. Both Tamburaine and Faustus are typica in possessing such a spirit. They seek power and knowedge respectivey. Tamburaine, being a crue conqueror, finds consummate happiness in subduing other kingdoms. No enemy, except Death, can defeat him. His death ends in gory athough he finay admits his imitations of achievements, and even his imitations as a human being.In portraying Faustus, a more introspective and phiosophica figure, Marowe praises his soaring aspiration for knowedge whie warning against the sin of pride since Faustus's downfa was caused by his despair in God and trust in Devi.

Though Marowe is masterfu in handing bank verse and creating dramatic effects, he is not so strong in dramatic construction, and compared with Shakespeare, his women characters are rather pae. But his briiant achievement as a whoe raised him to an eminence as the pioneer of Engish drama.