ABSTRACT
Marlowe's temperament was very different from Chapman's. It was precisely the trivial and erotic aspects of Musaeus's poem which attracted him, since it was these aspects which he amplified in his own translation, or rather, rewriting of the poem. Traditionally, ritual magic of the kind practised by Faustus was aimed mainly at discovering hoards of hidden gold. The action is tragic, but not epic: it takes place well away from the epic action of the main story. Properly, it belongs to pastoral, since Paris was a shepherd; and the story is partially represented in George Peek's pastoral play Arraignment of Paris. The main reason why Doctor Faustus resists an easy assimilation to Elizabethan humanism is because its source has no conception of the division of learning between divinity and humanity on which Renaissance humanism ultimately rests.
