page_title: Christopher Marlowe
section_title: Doctor Faustus (c. 1588–1592)
hierarchical_section_title: Christopher Marlowe / Chronology of dramatic works / Doctor Faustus (c. 1588–1592)
caption_attribution_description: English: This is the artwork accompanying the printed playscript by English playwright Christopher Marlowe.
context_page_description: Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe, was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Modern scholars count Marlowe among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights and based upon the "many imitations" of his play Tamburlaine consider him to have been the foremost dramatist in London in the years just before his mysterious early death. Some scholars also believe that he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was baptised in the same year as Marlowe and later became the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright. Marlowe's plays are the first to use blank verse, which became the standard for the era, and are distinguished by their overreaching protagonists. Themes found within Marlowe's literary works have been noted as humanistic with realistic emotions, which some scholars find difficult to reconcile with Marlowe's "anti-intellectualism" and his catering to the taste of his Elizabethan audiences for generous displays of extreme physical violence, cruelty, and bloodshed.
  Events in Marlowe's life were sometimes as extreme as those found in his dramas.
context_section_description: First official record: 1594-1597.
  First published: 1601, no extant copy; first extant copy, 1604 (A text) quarto; 1616 (B text) quarto.
  First recorded performance: 1594-1597; 24 revival performances occurred between these years by the Lord Admiral's Company, Rose Theatre, London; earlier performances probably occurred around 1589 by the same company.
  Additional information (title and synopsis): Full title, The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus; a very large 35-character cast, plus other additional scholars, cardinals, soldiers, and devils. Based on the German Faustbuch, which itself can be traced to a fourth-century tale known as "The Devil's Pact," Marlowe's play opens with a Prologue, where the Chorus introduces Doctor Faustus and his story. Faustus is a brilliant scholar who leaves behind the study of logic, medicine, law and divinity to study magic and necromancy, the art of speaking to the dead. When he is approached by a Good and Bad Angel, it is the Bad Angel who wins his attentions by promising that he will become a great magician. Faustus ignores his other scholarly duties and attempts to summon a devil. By revoking his own baptism he attracts the attention of Lucifer, Mephistopheles and other devils. Faustus strikes a pact with Lucifer, allowing him 24-years with Mephistopheles as his assistant, but after the pact begins Mephistopheles will not answer Faustus' questions. The two angels return, but even though Faustus waffles, coersion from the devils has him again swear allegiance to Lucifer. Faustus achieves nothing worthwhile with his pact, warns other scholars of his folly, and the play ends with Faustus dragged off to Hell by Mephistopheles as the Chorus attempts a moral summation of events with an Epilogue.
  Additional information (significance): This is the first dramatised version of the Faust legend of a scholar's dealing with the devil. Marlowe deviates from earlier versions of "The Devil's Pact" significantly: Marlowe's protagonist is unable to "burn his books" or repent to a merciful God to have his contract annulled at the end of the play; he is carried off by demons; and, in the 1616 quarto, his mangled corpse is found by the scholar characters.
  Additional information (attribution): The 'B text' was highly edited and censored partly due to the shifting theatre laws regarding religious words onstage during the seventeenth-century. Because it contains several additional scenes believed to be the additions of other playwrights, particularly Samuel Rowley and William Bird (alias Borne), a recent edition attributes the authorship of both versions to "Christopher Marlowe and his collaborator and revisers." This recent edition has tried to establish that the 'A text' was assembled from Marlowe's work and another writer, with the 'B text' as a later revision.
  Evidence: No manuscripts by Marlowe exist for this play. The two earliest printed extant versions of the play, A and B, form a textual problem for scholars. Both were published after Marlowe's death and scholars disagree which text is more representative of Marlowe's original. Some editions are based on a combination of the two texts. Late twentieth-century scholarly consensus identifies 'A text' as more representative because it contains irregular character names and idiosyncratic spelling, which are believed to reflect the author's handwritten manuscript or "foul papers". In comparison, 'B text' is highly edited with several additional scenes possibly written by other playwrights.
caption: Frontispiece to a 1631 printing of Doctor Faustus showing Faustus conjuring Mephistophilis.
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