Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Magic and the Supernatural
The supernatural pervades Doctor Faustus,
appearing everywhere in the story. Angels and devils flit about,
magic spells are cast, dragons pull chariots (albeit offstage),
and even fools like the two ostlers, Robin and Rafe, can learn enough
magic to summon demons. Still, it is worth noting that nothing terribly
significant is accomplished through magic. Faustus plays tricks
on people, conjures up grapes, and explores the cosmos on a dragon,
but he does not fundamentally reshape the world. The magic power
that Mephastophilis grants him is more like a toy than an awesome,
earth-shaking ability. Furthermore, the real drama of the play,
despite all the supernatural frills and pyrotechnics, takes place
within Faustus’s vacillating mind and soul, as he first sells his
soul to Lucifer and then considers repenting. In this sense, the
magic is almost incidental to the real story of Faustus’s struggle
with himself, which Marlowe intended not as a fantastical battle
but rather as a realistic portrait of a human being with a will
divided between good and evil.
Practical Jokes
Once he gains his awesome powers, Faustus does not use
them to do great deeds. Instead, he delights in playing tricks on
people: he makes horns sprout from the knight’s head and sells the
horse-courser an enchanted horse. Such magical practical jokes seem
to be Faustus’s chief amusement, and Marlowe uses them to illustrate Faustus’s
decline from a great, prideful scholar into a bored, mediocre magician
with no higher ambition than to have a laugh at the expense of a
collection of simpletons.
