The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

About this book

Faustus, a brilliant German scholar who has mastered every branch of learning and found them all empty, turns to magic and conjures the devil Mephistopheles. He signs a contract in his own blood: for twenty-four years of power, knowledge and pleasure, with Mephistopheles as his servant, he will give his soul to Lucifer. Faustus spends his powers on pranks against the Pope, shows for an emperor and a vision of Helen of Troy, 'the face that launched a thousand ships', as the hour of payment draws near.

Context and significance

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593), Shakespeare's great contemporary, who was killed in a tavern brawl at twenty-nine, wrote the play around 1590, and it survives in two versions, of 1604 and 1616; this is the 1604 text. Faustus's final speech, as he waits for midnight, is one of the most powerful in English drama. Compare Goethe's Faust.

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