“The Old Man as a Mirror Stage Reflection of Dr. Faustus: A Lacanian Reading”

Ahmed H. Kadhim Al-Abedi

English Department, College of Education for Humanities, University of Karbala, Karbala, Iraq

Ahmed H. Kadhim Al-Abedi was born on April 28,1979 in Baghdad, Iraq. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in English Language from the College of Arts, University of Kufa in 2012. He obtained a Master’s degree in English Literature from the Faculty of Foreign Languages University of Tehran,2018. He contributes his expertise to the English department at the University of Karbala. He specialized in English Drama and Literary Criticism.

Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus remains a powerful exploration of human ambition, spiritual conflict, and the psychological fragmentation of the self. Among the lesser-discussed characters, the Old Man who appears in the final act of the play offers a profound symbolic presence. Though seemingly minor, he represents a crucial turning point in the protagonist’s psychological trajectory. From the perspective of Jacques Lacan’s Mirror Stage theory, the Old Man may be read as a reflection or projection of Faustus’s ideal ego—a spectral embodiment of what Faustus could have become had he resisted temptation. This analysis reframes the Old Man as not merely a moral figure, but as an unconscious mirror reflecting the fractured self of Faustus.

Research Question: How does the figure of the Old Man in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus function as a Lacanian mirror of Faustus’s ideal ego, and what does this reveal about the protagonist’s internal psychological conflict?

Lacan’s Mirror Stage describes the moment when a child first identifies with its reflection, producing an “ideal ego” that is both empowering and illusory (Lacan, 2006, p. 76). This ego becomes a lifelong object of desire—a stable, whole self that the subject can never fully achieve. Applying this theory to Doctor Faustus, the Old Man represents a version of Faustus that is spiritually intact, serene, and reconciled with divine grace. He embodies the ideal self that Faustus desires but has failed to attain due to his pact with Lucifer.

In Act V, Scene I, the Old Man urges Faustus to repent and abandon Mephistophilis, assuring him that “mercy is infinite.” His serenity contrasts sharply with Faustus’s torment and fragmentation. From a Lacanian lens, this encounter can be seen as Faustus confronting a mirror image of what he might have been had he resisted his desire for omnipotence. However, just as Lacan argues that the ego is an illusion constructed by the subject, the Old Man’s presence is ethereal, ghostly—more of a spiritual hallucination than a tangible figure. This aligns with the idea that the ideal ego remains forever out of reach, creating a split within the self (Evans, 1996, p. 119).

Faustus’s violent reaction—his command to Mephistophilis to torture the Old Man’s soul—reflects a symbolic destruction of the mirror. Unable to reconcile his current fragmented self with the image of wholeness the Old Man presents, Faustus responds with aggression and denial. This moment of rupture underscores the psychological instability central to his tragedy. As Felman (1982) argues in her study of psychoanalysis and literature, “The gaze into the mirror is not a recognition but a misrecognition… a fracture between being and seeing” (p. 19). Faustus’s encounter with the Old Man is precisely this misrecognition: a painful awareness of what he is not and what he can never become.

Thus, the Old Man is not simply a moral voice or divine messenger but a Lacanian mirror that reflects Faustus’s spiritual and psychological failure. He encapsulates both the potential for redemption and the impossibility of achieving a unified self once that potential is lost.

Recommendation for Future Research:

Further studies could explore other characters in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama through Lacanian psychoanalysis, particularly using the Mirror Stage to examine internal identity conflicts. Comparative research might also explore how the motif of the “ideal self” appears in characters like Macbeth, Hamlet, or Milton’s Satan, offering a broader view of Renaissance drama’s engagement with fractured subjectivity.

References

Evans, D. (1996). An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Routledge.

Felman, S. (1982). Literature and Psychoanalysis: The Question of Reading: Otherwise. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Lacan, J. (2006). Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English (B. Fink, Trans.). W.W. Norton & Company.

Marlowe, C. (2005). Doctor Faustus (M. Keefer, Ed.). Broadview Press.