Imagining the Mage in English Renaissance Drama: "Doctor Faustus", "The Alchemist", "The Tempest"

This paper considers three plays of the English Renaissance in which the figure of the magician looms into particular prominence: "Doctor Faustus" by Christopher Marlowe, "The Alchemist" by Ben Jonson, and "The Tempest" by William Shakespeare. These works are examined in relation to the conflicting conceptions of occult studies that were prevalent in Elizabethan England, and to some of the real-life characters who exemplified these conceptions in the popular imagination. Both The Alchemist and The Tempest make explicit allusion to Marlowe’s tragedy, their respective protagonists reflecting contrasting facets of the ambivalently conceived Faustus of that play. Whereas Jonson’s objective is to expose the cupidity and charlatanry involved in the occult practices of his day, Shakespeare, more interested in the metaphorical implications of such practices rather than the reality, is concerned to vindicate the constructive role played by a redeemed “magic” that enhances the potentialities of human life without doing violence either to natural or to divine law.