Doctor Faustus (play)

This article is about the play by Christopher Marlowe. For other uses, see Doctor Faustus.

The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus
Frontispiece to a 1620 printing of Doctor Faustus showing Faustus conjuring Mephistophilis. The spelling "Histoy" is agreed to be a typographical error.[1]
Written byChristopher Marlowe
CharactersDoctor Faustus

Lucifer
Mephistophilis
Belzebub
Seven deadly sins
Pope Adrian VI
Charles V
Duke of Saxony

Helen of Troy
Date premieredc. 1592
Place premieredEngland
Original languageEarly Modern English
GenreTragedy
Setting16th century Europe

The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, commonly referred to simply as Doctor Faustus, is an Elizabethan tragedy by Christopher Marlowe, based on German stories about the title character Faust. It was probably written in 1592 or 1593, shortly before Marlowe's death. Two different versions of the play were published in the Jacobean era several years later.[2]

  1. ^ "CLASSIC POETRY for Christopher Marlowe's Deathday: The Survival of "Doctor Faustus"".
  2. ^ Logan, Terence P.; Denzell S. Smith, eds. (1973). The Predecessors of Shakespeare: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. p. 14. No Elizabethan play outside the Shakespeare canon has raised more controversy than Doctor Faustus. There is no agreement concerning the nature of the text and the date of composition... and the centrality of the Faust legend in the history of Western world precludes any definitive agreement on the interpretation of the play...