The Renaissance lay dormant in the minds of the men of the 13th and 14th centuries. Their work was considered heretical and they were burned at the stake. The repression of the 13th and 14th centuries was reversed as the power of the Church and its scholastic knowledge were transferred to all literate men with access to a local print shop and the money to buy a library of ancient works that were now being copied at incredible speeds. . This created a threat to the doctrinal power of the Church, resulting in a scientific revolution. The new power of scientific knowledge and the engines it was to build was the subject of two of the greatest playwrights of the age, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Marlowe identified the perceived threats that came from the irreverence of the Church and tradition. Shakespeare wrote a play centered on the great promise that was the Renaissance. Many in power feared that the promise of a return to old ideas was actually a demonic illusion of prosperity that undermined traditional doctrine. Others enjoyed the idea of ​​the new power that could be gained from conquering distant lands and using ancient books as tools to master the land. In Dr. Faustus, the main character Marlowe is intelligent in the sense that he can absorb and use knowledge from books, but he is ignorant whether the ideas are good or bad. For Dr. Faustus, Scripture, Aristotelian logic, and books of magic and necromancy are the same. They are all a means of gaining power over the material world. This is an example of the kind of irreverence toward Christian orthodoxy that led to the censorship of all ideas that were not doctrine. There was a fear that the old ideas were, by their very nature, pagan ideas. According to Mephistopheles... middle of article ......f gaining power, namely noble birth. Shakespeare's characters valued traditional European methods of gaining power. Prospero restores his birthright thanks to Ariel. The King of Naples is saved by Ariel, after Antonio hatches a plot to kill the king and put Sebastian in power. Spirit exists as a force of nature that must be commanded by the same political power structure that already existed. The second problem that Shakespeare's contemporaries faced was that of indigenous peoples. Shakespeare presents Caliban as initially curious, ignorant, then ultimately indecent and untrustworthy. Caliban despises Prospero, who until recently had striven to educate and care for Caliban. Prospero is superior to Caliban in every way. The classification of indigenous peoples as lazy savages would be a constant justification for making their lands available to Europeans..