The Faustian Equation

Magic = Dramatic Art = Science = Power = Fun = Death

1)  Faustus initially imagines magic will make him creatively powerful, enabling him to control natural forces and to reshape the physical world.

2)  The play increasingly represents magic as a dramatic art, a playing which imitates control of natural forces to unnatural ends.

3)  The play of magic anticipates the emergence of modern science in the next century, a way of playing with real control of natural forces to serve humanity's artificial ends.

4)  Science offers power to do and undo, to shatter and reshape appearance, to rewrite the world-theater, and this power is intoxicating.

5)  Rewriting the world's theater, whether you're Marlowe kicking the Pope or Shakespeare killing the king, is fun.

6)  Somehow, as the play's scenes slide faster and faster toward Faustus' doom, all that magic, power, science, art, and fun ends in death.