Marlowe's Use Poetic Power in DR. Faustus is described here.

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2. o Critics recognized Marlowe as one of the greatest
poets of English literature.
o Marlowe’s poetic exellence was highly appreciated
even by his contemporaries.
o Swinburne pays tribute to him as:
“he was the first great english poet ,the father of english
tragedy and the creator of english blank verse”
o the romantic quality and the lyrical simplicity of his
great pastoral and the wealth of imagination in his
unfinished narrative poem regarded him as one of
the purest and greatest poets of england for all time.
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3.  He was the first great english poet to make use of
drama as a medium of poetic expression.
 Marlowe poetized the english drama or fused
together the lyric and the dramatic elements of
his contemporaries.
 In all of the marlowe ’s heroes faustus is the most
poetic as he is the prototype of marlowe himself
with his passionate love of beauty and yearning
for sensuos pleasures.
 Poetry is an essential ingredient in marlowe’s
plays that gives it quality and substance.
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4.  This sensitiveness to the beauty of sound in his
language is ,of course , felt more widely than in his
use of proper names.
 There is the most skilful choosing of vowel and
consonant to give the required effect.
 In his expressions , Marlowe is neither rhetorical
nor obscure , but speaks with the highest , bright
and lucid simplicity.
 Many of his happiest lines are woven from the
words of everyday speech often a sequence of
monosyllables. bsf1704470@ue.edu.pk 4

5.  Even in its less exalted verse passages , as in
chorus narratives and in some of the speeches
, this play is almost entirely free from the
rhetorical declamation ; the word fury which
marked he early Tamburlaine.
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6.  Doctor faustus shows most fully the
extent of his mastery of the new dramatic
measures.
 He introduced run-on-lines, varied the
accents here and there and shifted the
caesura _ that is pause about the middle
of line to suit the sense and subject.
 He introduced a rhythm of extreme
flexibility and power.
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7.  Marlowe was credited for perfecting the blank verse to a
great extent and giving it amazing force,variety and
rhythm.
 He use blank verse as a suitable medium and develop it on
right lines to serve the purpose of his poetical as well as
dramatic genius.
Conclusion:
 Marlowe ’s contribution to Elizbethan drama was great
and he was greatest predecessor of shakespeare who also
showed the way to him.
 So ,as a dramatist he could not perfectly develop his
dramatic technique. bsf1704470@ue.edu.pk 7

8.  Critics have pointed drawbacks in his plays that
he had neglected both character and plot that are
the most important element in a play.
 Marlowe’s poetic genious was regarded by all
critics that he was superb and masterly in use of
blank verse.
 Marlowe had a supreme gift of creating moments
with the use of poetry that the most dramatic
situations fails to satisfy.So, marlowe overrules as
a poet than a dramatist.
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