SOURCE: "Marlowe: Dr. Faustus," in his Christian Fantasy from 1200 to the Present, University of Notre Dame Press, 1992, pp. 73-92.

In the following essay, Manlove explores some contrasts between Marlovian dramatic characters Tamburlaine and Faustus, focusing on the pursuit that each undertakes of materialistic and earthly rather than spiritual attainments.

Our soules, whose faculties can comprehend
 The wondrous Architecture of the world:
 And measure every wandring plannets course:
 Still climing after knowledge infinite,
 And alwaies mooving as the restles Spheares,
 Wils us to weare our selves and never rest,
 Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,
 That perfect blisse and sole felicitie.…
(Tamburlaine Part 1, II.vii.21-8)

These remarks might just have been made by Dante, whose Commedia was partly the product of a desire to fathom the furthest limits of reality, while at the same time being the expression of a scientific urge to know and to...