Doctor Faustus

Marlowe's scholar who sells his soul to Mephistophilis for twenty-four years of power and knowledge.

Specifications & Metrics

author

Christopher Marlowe

type

Tragedy

era

Elizabethan (c. 1592)

language

Early Modern English

setting

Wittenberg, Rome, and Vienna

source text

The German Faustbuch (1587)

acts

5 acts

Relative Scale in Plays

Core Principles & Analysis

• Marlowe adapted the 1587 German Faustbuch about the historical Faust legend.
• The 1604 A-text and 1616 B-text differ enough to feed centuries of editing debate.
• Goethe's later Faust grew from the same legend Marlowe dramatized.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Doctor Faustus (play)