ABSTRACT
Though fi rst performed almost 300 years before the word “ecology” was coined, Doctor Faustus contains many seeds of ecological ideas inherent to the dawn of early modern philosophy, science, and commerce in European society. The continuous fascination with Christopher Marlowe’s play is to a large extent due to its ominous forewarnings of the consequences of over-extending, over-consuming, and over-reaching (the central idea of Harry Levin’s well-known study of Marlowe). In most scholarship on this canonical drama, Faustus’ hunger for political omnipotence and magical omniscience is given precedence over his will to control and exploit nature limitlessly.1 My close investigation of Doctor Faustus and Marlowe’s biography will reveal an ecocritical core that has been overlooked or at least understated previously.
