Nature teaches us to have “aspiring minds,” wrote Christopher Marlowe. His Doctor Faustus believes “a sound magician is a mighty god.” Faustus and Shakespeare’s Prospero are accomplished scholars whose hunger for knowledge pushes them past the limits of available knowledge into black magic. Their drive to control others this way, and the threat of damnation for doing so, captured the Renaissance imagination. They are solitary and manipulative with a flair for the spectacular. Each faces an unforeseen reckoning. With close reading and group discussion, we ask: Where does superior intellectual accomplishment end and dangerous hubris begin? Who decides this? Do we face in today’s technology any such “aspiring minds”? Use the Norton “Doctor Faustus” (Kastan) and the New Cambridge Shakespeare “The Tempest” (Linley). We’ll have videos (Richard Burton as Faustus!).
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