According to Mayer, Christopher Marlowe not only takes credit as one of the most celebrated predecessors of Shakespeare but also the “true founder of English drama” (37). The most apparent disparity between Doctor Faustus and Everyman is the fact that the former has a traceable author while the latter’s playwright remains anonymous. This section attempts to tell apart the difference in attributes of the two plays as well as their similarities.

Being a century apart in terms of their publication, each addresses eschatological predicaments of Christians relative to their choices between damnation and redemption or salvation. Each play attempts to address the subject of sin and redemption but in a completely peculiar or dissimilar manner.

The difference in periods and the context of each play in literature informs a raft of disparities that exist between the two plays, the medieval Everyman and Renaissance’s Doctor Faustus. Literary elements including setting, plot, characterization, and themes of each play inform the basis of their similarities and differences.Ĭomparison of Doctor Faustus and Everyman This paper compares the two plays by outlining their differences and similarities. Superhuman characters like angels and God sometimes take part as characters. Characterization in such is typically replete with the personification of virtues, vices, objects, activities as well as other qualities. Jump (25) defines morality plays as Christian doctrine dramatizations or sermons delivered in theatrical performance. In the same vein as Marlowe’s work, Everyman in a strict sense sets out to conjure Christian moral lessons through allegorical representations in a time-specific context. On the other hand, Everyman is traced to the fall of the 1400s within the medieval period by an unidentified playwright (Cummings). Faustus, who bears the brunt of different life’s dilemmas. As a genre study, Doctor Faustus embodies a recurrent sense of morality and a historical allegory scripted in a hero’s tale, Dr.

Marlowe’s play was written and first published in the Renaissance-era, approximately 1604, and then revised in 1616 (Jump). Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus and Everyman by an anonymous playwright are morality plays, written and published at different periods.

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