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Dr. Faustus Essay: The Role of Helen of Troy

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The Role of Helen of Troy in Doctor Faustus

To adequately describe the role that Helen plays in Doctor Faustus, it is necessary not only to look at the scene in which she features, but also all the instances that Faustus takes some form of pleasure from physical and sensual things. We need to do this because this is what Helen is symbolic of; she represents the attractive nature of evil in addition to the depths of depravity that Faustus has fallen to.

It is fair to say that Faustus represents the quintessential renaissance man - it is his thirst for knowledge that drives him into his pact with Mephastophilis, indeed it is the Evil Angel that best summarises this:

Go forward, Faustus, in the famous art,

Wherein all …show more content…

Scene 5, lines 139-141

This marks the descent of Faustus from the intellectual seeking pleasures of the mind, to the hedonist seeking more sensual pleasures.

The appearance of Helen not only represents the fall from high minded intellectualism, but also the seduction of the classical, pagan, world. Faustus' desire to return to the ancient world is represented by not only Helen, the most beautiful woman that the ancient world produced, but also by the presence of the scholars. Classical Greece is supposed to be a time of great thinkers, plays and writers, so Faustus desires to go to this time. Helen's arrival is attended by the scholars, people of learning, who, by their dumb-foundedness, show the beauty of Helen:

Since we have seen the pride of Nature's works,

And only paragon of excellence,

Let us depart; and for this glorious deed

Happy and lest be Faustus evermore.

Scene 12, lines 21-24

It is the somewhat tame verse that these scholars supply that shows that the beauty that Helen represents is beyond mortal comprehension - her beauty, and what that beauty represent, are far more serious than Faustus gives them credit for. Indeed, when the scholars ask to see Helen, Faustus treats it as if it were just another conjuring trick, as was summoning Alexander the Great. This is, however, no ordinary conjuring trick; it

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