The Relationship of Body and Soul Anonymous College

The relationship between the body and soul is one obsessed over by playwrights since the morality plays of the medieval period. Renaissance writer Christopher Marlowe and 20th century American playwright Bernard Shaw are no exceptions to this: in their renowned texts Doctor Faustus and Pygmalion are fascinated with the question of what it means to be a human being. Both playwrights suggest that loss of soul forces a human to become reliant upon other characters, to fulfill the purpose and function that the missing soul might have performed. Whilst Faustus is able to gain an admirable position of power in his surroundings, Eliza must gain her soul back to achieve a such levels of control. Nonetheless, it is clear that a loss of soul results in significantly greater damage and devastation than it does profit, and orchestrates the tragedy of both texts.

Both Shaw and Marlowe present protagonists who willingly forsake their souls- leaving their identities contingent upon those of other characters- who serve to repay the function of the missing souls. Marlowe’s Britain was entrenched in the Christian tradition which deemed men inexorably bound to the Calvinist faith, and whilst Faustus scorns religion throughout the text, he cannot...