From Marlowe to Miller

This book focuses on the different ways in which the dialectic between man s innate potential for self-transcendence and his inherent limitations has been dramatized by Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Eugene O Neill, and Arthur Miller in some of their plays. It shows how the belief in man s capacity for self-transcendence is presented as a veritable, though unsuccessful, attempt at Godhead in Marlowe s Tamburlaine the Great and Doctor Faustus, whereas in Shakespeare s Richard the Third and Macbeth it is presented as an overvaulting political ambition to attain kingship and earthly glory by illegitimate and irreligious means. Coming to O Neill and Miller, this book sees The Hairy Ape and Death of a Salesman as two modern variations on the same old idea; for, after all, the American dream of success with its emphasis on human self-sufficiency was, to a large extent, a modern secular reincarnation of the Renaissance idea of man s innate potential for self-transcendence.