66	THE DRAMA OF HUMAN GREATNESS
Enter CHORUS
chorus. Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
And burned is Apollo's laurel-bough
That sometime grew within this learned man.
Faustus is gone: regard his hellish fall,	120
Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise,
Only to wonder at unlawful things.
Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits
To practise more than heavenly power permits.	[Exit.
POINTS FOR DISCUSSION
 1.	Why is the hero of a tragedy so often a king?
 2.	Faustus is only a German doctor.  In what_3 then_5 does his greatness
consist?
 3.	Which passage in the play links it with the Morality Plays?   Find
another passage which is a similar but less obvious link.
 4.	What means does Marlowe use to win our sympathy for Faustus in
his ambition for limitless power?
 5.	The greater part of the play is taken up with the 'inner conflict', the
conflict in the mind of Faustus. Is there any 'external conflict' ?
 6.	How does the last speech of Faustus illustrate the difference between
'dramatic time' and real time? Would the speech be improved if they
were made to coincide?
 7.	Marlowe 'concentrated attention upon the greatness of the man,
rather than upon the greatness of his overthrow'. Illustrate this from
the extract.
MACBETH
By WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
the story. At the beginning of the play Macbeth appears as the
deliverer of his country from foreign invasion, winning
Golden opinions from all sorts of people
and regarded by his king with absolute confidence. Line after line
of his speeches shows how vividly aware he is of the significance
of human actions and of the irrevocable consequences of crime;
and yet he himself murders Duncan, the king, whose virtues he
freely acknowledges. Such a deed seems inexplicably unnatural,