Recall Aeschylus, Ovid, and Graves and write an essay to respond to Deats’s questions, discussing the similarities between Faustus and the protagonists of the Greek myths, as well as substantial differences that set Marlowe’s hero apart from Prometheus, Daedalus, and Icarus.

The prompt asks you to approach the analysis of the character of Faustus, using the opposition “knowledge vs. wisdom” as a frame of reference. Unfortunately, your paper doesn’t use the assigned approach altogether. This is the prompt that was given
– According to Sara Munson Deats, “A central crux of the tragedy concerns the motivation of its protagonist. What drive impels the eminent Doctor Faustus to devise his own destruction?

Is it desire for worldly pleasure, forbidden knowledge, godlike power, or a combination of all three?” (211). Some critics liken Faustus to Prometheus, who had to suffer eternally for challenging Zeus’s monopoly on knowledge and power. Marlowe’s Chorus compares Faustus’s downfall to that of Icarus: “His waxen wings did mount above his reach, / And melting heavens conspired his overthrow” (1.1.21-22).

Recall Aeschylus, Ovid, and Graves and write an essay to respond to Deats’s questions, discussing the similarities between Faustus and the protagonists of the Greek myths, as well as substantial differences that set Marlowe’s hero apart from Prometheus, Daedalus, and Icarus. What messages does Christopher Marlowe deliver to us?