The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

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Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), Cambridge-educated and a leading figure of the English Renaissance stage, wrote The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus in the early 1590s, drawing on the German Faustbuch tradition (translated into English as The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus) about a scholar-magician who bargains with the devil. The play was first performed in the early-to-mid 1590s by the Admiral's Men, with Edward Alleyn likely in the title role. It survives in two printed texts, the shorter "A-text" (1604) and the longer, revised "B-text" (1616), whose differences have long occupied scholars and editors. Marlowe fuses medieval morality-play structure - complete with a Good Angel, an Evil Angel, and personified Seven Deadly Sins - with Renaissance humanist anxieties about the limits of knowledge and the dangers of overreaching ambition. Written substantially in blank verse, the play helped establish that form as a dominant medium of English tragedy before Shakespeare's major works. Marlowe's own violent death in 1593, before the play reached print, has fed persistent legend linking his life to Faustus's transgressive hunger for forbidden knowledge and worldly power.

Doctor Faustus, a brilliant German scholar, grows dissatisfied with logic, medicine, law, and divinity, concluding that necromancy offers powers that "stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man." Aided by fellow magicians Valdes and Cornelius, he conjures the devil Mephistopheles and strikes a pact: twenty-four years of unlimited knowledge and power, sealed in his own blood, in exchange for his soul, to be delivered to Lucifer when the term ends. Despite warnings from a Good Angel and troubling omens, Faustus proceeds, gaining a book of spells and Mephistopheles as his servant. He glimpses chances for repentance - urged on by his own doubts and later by an Old Man - but repeatedly turns back, distracted by Mephistopheles, a pageant of the Seven Deadly Sins, and worldly amusements. Comic subplots involving Faustus's servant Wagner and the clowns Robin and Rafe parody his magical ambitions on a lower social register. Faustus travels to Rome to torment the Pope, performs tricks at the imperial court of Charles V, and conjures a vision of Helen of Troy, exclaiming over the face "that launched a thousand ships." As the twenty-four years run out, Faustus is overwhelmed with terror and remorse, but finds himself unable to genuinely repent or believe in God's mercy. In the final scene, scholars find him distraught; at midnight, devils drag him off, and his mangled body is discovered the next morning, his soul lost to damnation.

• The perils of overreaching ambition and forbidden knowledge
• The conflict between Renaissance humanism and medieval Christian morality
• Sin, damnation, and the possibility (and failure) of repentance
• The corrupting nature of power and pride
• Free will versus predestination
• The gap between aspiration and human limitation
• Magic and the supernatural as metaphors for intellectual transgression
• Time, mortality, and the terror of judgment

• ◆Blank verse - elevated unrhymed iambic pentameter, called Marlowe's "mighty line," driving the play's soaring rhetoric
• ◆Soliloquy - Faustus's opening and closing speeches expose his inner ambition and despair directly to the audience
• ◆Morality-play allegory - the Good Angel, Evil Angel, and Seven Deadly Sins personify the psychomachia (battle for the soul)
• ◆Dramatic irony - the audience senses Faustus's doom long before he admits it to himself
• ◆Comic subplot - the clownish antics of Wagner, Robin, and Rafe parody and undercut Faustus's grand magical schemes
• ◆Chorus - framing prologue and epilogue speeches set up and moralize the action, echoing classical tragedy
• ◆Foreshadowing - repeated omens and warnings anticipate Faustus's inevitable damnation

• ◆The blood pact - Faustus's self-signed contract symbolizes irrevocable spiritual commitment and self-destruction
• ◆Mephistopheles - embodies both the seductive promise and the hollow reality of demonic power
• ◆Helen of Troy - a conjured illusion representing worldly beauty and pleasure substituted for spiritual salvation
• ◆The Seven Deadly Sins pageant - externalizes the corrupted state of Faustus's soul
• ◆The clock striking midnight - marks the collapse of Faustus's borrowed time and the certainty of judgment

Doctor Faustus helped popularize blank verse as the medium of English tragedy and established the Faust legend as a touchstone of English literature, decisively shaping later treatments of the overreaching scholar-magician who trades his soul for knowledge or power. It is regarded as one of the most important precursors to Shakespearean tragedy, particularly in its use of the extended soliloquy to dramatize inner psychological conflict. The play's fusion of morality-play allegory with Renaissance tragic ambition influenced subsequent English drama's treatment of temptation and damnation, and it remains the definitive English dramatic version of the Faust story, later reimagined by writers such as Goethe.

• ◆Numerous stage revivals in modern British theatre, including productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company
• ◆1967 Nevill Coghill and Richard Burton film adaptation, Doctor Faustus

• The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus (English Faustbuch)
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust
• Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great
• Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta
• William Shakespeare, Macbeth

1. 1The play survives in two substantially different early printed texts, the 1604 A-text and the 1616 B-text, and scholars still dispute which is closer to Marlowe's original.
2. 2Marlowe was killed in a fatal stabbing in Deptford in 1593, before the play was printed, fueling later speculation connecting his life to Faustus's fate.
3. 3Legend holds that real devils were once believed to have appeared on stage during performances, terrifying actors and audiences alike.
4. 4Edward Alleyn, the leading tragedian of the Admiral's Men, is traditionally associated with originating the role of Faustus.