Once Faustus actually gains the practically limitless
power that he so desires, however, his horizons seem to narrow.
Everything is possible to him, but his ambition is somehow sapped.
Instead of the grand designs that he contemplates early on, he contents
himself with performing conjuring tricks for kings and noblemen
and takes a strange delight in using his magic to play practical
jokes on simple folks. It is not that power has corrupted Faustus
by making him evil: indeed, Faustus’s behavior after he sells his
soul hardly rises to the level of true wickedness. Rather, gaining
absolute power corrupts Faustus by making him mediocre and by transforming
his boundless ambition into a meaningless delight in petty celebrity.
In the Christian framework of the play, one can argue
that true greatness can be achieved only with God’s blessing. By
cutting himself off from the creator of the universe, Faustus is
condemned to mediocrity. He has gained the whole world, but he does
not know what to do with it.
The Divided Nature of Man
Faustus is constantly undecided about whether he should
repent and return to God or continue to follow his pact with Lucifer.
His internal struggle goes on throughout the play, as part of him
of wants to do good and serve God, but part of him (the dominant part,
it seems) lusts after the power that Mephastophilis promises. The
good angel and the evil angel, both of whom appear at Faustus’s shoulder
in order to urge him in different directions, symbolize this struggle.
While these angels may be intended as an actual pair of supernatural
beings, they clearly represent Faustus’s divided will, which compels
Faustus to commit to Mephastophilis but also to question this commitment
continually.
