Ambition in Marlowe's drama

This thesis is intended to emphasize Christopher Marlowe's interest in the theme of ambition and to point out the dichotomy that characterized this attitude. A survey of the Elizabethan conceptions of ambition shows that the playwright's contemporaries were also strongly interested in the theme of ambition and would regard it as a sin which threatened the order embodied in the great chain of being and which diverted man from his concern with the after life whose value was acknowledged as paramount. [...]