History & The Arts
Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
...artificial restrictions on human potential. He has gone as far as his human condition will allow him to go, but wants to go further still, which means transforming himself into a ‘mighty god’, ‘a deity’ (ll. 64, 65), a goal he feels only magic will enable him to realise. When Faustus declares that he wants to achieve something that ‘[s]tretcheth as far as doth...