Notice that the Old Man calls Earth a "furnace," a descriptor generally reserved for Hell. To this pious man, Earth itself has been a Hell because he is so pure. Unlike Faustus, the Old Man was able to resist temptation and pride and will now be rewarded with Heaven. The Old Man acts as a foil that demonstrates Faustus's faults.

Notice that Faustus references tragic, ill fated love stories to describe his relationship with this paramour. He twists these stories and conveys them falsely. This creates a melancholic tone to this speech to a lover: his relationship with Helen is just as false, empty, and tragic as the stories he tells.

Arethusa is a nymph from Greek mythology. When Alpheus, the river god, saw her bathing naked, he became infatuated with her and began to pursue her all over the world. Arethusa, desiring to remain chaste, prayed to Artemis, the goddess of chastity, to save her. Artemis turned Arethusa into a stream to save her from the lecherous god. Notice again that Faustus gets this story wrong. He calls chaste Arethusa "wonton," suggesting that he does not know the story or he intentionally mistakes it.

In Greek mythology, Semele was one of Zeus's lovers. When his jealous wife Hera discovered the affair she disguised herself and befriended Semele. Hera pretended not to believe Semele about her lover, and convinced the young mortal to doubt her beloved. When Semele demanded that Zeus reveal himself to her, he was bound to an oath forced to give her anything she desired. Semele burst into flames as mortals cannot stare upon the gods. Zeus rescued their unborn son Dionysus before he burned with his mother.

Faustus gets this part of the story wrong as Paris never returns to Helen. He is killed in battle, and with his death Helen is either returned to Menelaus or in some accounts ascends to Olympus. This suggests that Faustus either does not know the story, which is unlikely, or that he is intentionally rewriting the story to fit his means.

Achilles was a Greek hero and the central hero of Homer's The Iliad. He accomplished great military feats during the Trojan War, including killing Hector, Troy's greatest hero, in hand to hand combat. He was invulnerable because as a child his mother had dipped him in the River Styx, holding on to him only by his heel. It was this one weakness that led to Achilles's downfall. At the end of the Trojan war, Paris shot Achilles through the heel with an arrow and killed him.

Notice again that Faustus is not looking for salvation, he is looking for immortality. Faustus's pact with the Devil can be interpreted as a fear of inevitable death, and his attempt to outsmart death.

This is the most famous line from Doctor Faustus, and has been so widely quoted that it became a common expression to indicate beauty. The "face that launched a thousand ships" is the mythological Greek character, Helen of Troy. Her seduction and subsequent abduction by Paris, the Prince of Troy, from her husband, Menelaus the king of Sparta, caused the Trojan War and brought about the downfall of Troy.

Ilium is another name for the city of Troy.

Notice how Faustus twists language at the end of this scene. To "clean" his thoughts should be to repent his sins. However, he uses "clean" to signify his desire to purge all thoughts of repentance.

Notice that Faustus is worried not about Hell but about death itself. He is not repenting for his sinful actions but wondering how he can escape death all together and continue living.

"Heavy cheer" in this context means "heavy heart." This colloquial saying means to be weighed down with sadness. The Old Man reluctantly leaves because he knows that Faustus will not repent his sins.

By this Faustus means kill himself. In the Christian tradition, suicide was considered blasphemous; whoever committed suicide was thought to go straight to Hell. Mephistophilis hands him a dagger so that he can end his life and fulfill his promise to Lucifer to suffer in Hell.

At the end of the play, Faustus fully recognizes the damnation that he has been pretending to ignore since the beginning. Notice though that Faustus does not react to the Old Man's warning the way a typical Renaissance character would. The recognition of his damnation and inevitable death does not make him repent. This suggests that Faustus cannot repent; he is predestined to die damned.

The Old Man is a memento mori, a Renaissance and Medieval literary trope, in which a ghost, skeleton, or person close to death would appear to remind the main character (and by extension the audience) of the need to repent in the face of inevitable death.

The Old Man is Faustus's foil. While Faustus remains beautiful because of his magic pact with the Devil, his soul is black and rotten. The Old Man, on the other hand, has a hideous exterior but a soul so beautiful Mephistophilis himself cannot touch it. The Old Man demonstrates Faustus's accursed nature by being exactly opposite of him.

Doctor Faustus exists in two very different Early Modern versions. The 1606 A Text, from which Owl Eyes took its material, and the 1616 B Text. The B Text is much longer and has been altered by other writers to comply with censorship standards and elaborate on some of the characters. The most markedly different scene in the B text, besides the added material that was not in the original, is Faustus's exchange with the Old Man. In the A Text, the Old Man's tone is severe and he acts as another sign of Faustus's damnation. In the B Text, the Old Man urges Faustus to repent and treats him with a sympathetic tone.

This is the last act of conjuring that Faustus does in this play. Notice that once again Faustus acts in service of someone else rather than to advance his own desires, power, or wealth. He seems to be serving, but he is not serving God so it will not redeem his soul.

Dardania is another name for Troy. Faustus responds by briefly outlining the story of Helen of Troy and her lover Paris in order to remind the audience who the play is talking about. This is a rhetorical advice that would have made the play more inclusive, and therefore more popular, to the lower class members of Marlowe's audience.

Helen of Greece, also known as Helen of Troy or Helen of Sparta, was considered the most beautiful woman in all of the world in Greek mythology. She was the daughter of Zeus and a mortal and the wife of Menelaus, the King of Sparta. Paris, the Prince of Troy, seduced and then abducted Helen and caused the Trojan War.