Doctor Faustus

Renaissance England's great tragedy of intellectual overreaching is as relevant and unsettling today as it was when first performed at the end of the sixteenth century. This edition provides newly edited texts of both the 1604 (A-Text) and 1616 (B-Text) versions of the play, each with detailed explanatory annotations. Sources and Contexts includes a generous selection from Marlowe's main source, The Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Dr. John Faustus, along with contemporary writings on magic and religion (including texts by Agrippa, Calvin, and Perkins) that establish the play's intellectual background. This volume also reprints early documents relating to the writing and publication of the play and to its first performances, along with contemporary comments on Marlowe's scandalous reputation. Twenty-five carefully chosen interpretations-written from the eighteenth century to the present-allow students to enrich their critical understanding of the play. These diverse critical essays include classic analyses by Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, and A. C. Swinburne, among others, and recent criticism from, among others, Michael Neill, Katharine Eisaman Maus, Alison Findlay, Stephen Orgel, and David Bevington. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) was born in Canterbury the year of Shakespeare’s birth. Like Shakespeare, he was of a prosperous middle-class family, but unlike Shakespeare he went to a university, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he received the bachelor’s degree in 1584 and the master’s degree in 1587. The terms of his scholarship implied that he was preparing for the clergy but he did not become a clergyman. Shortly before he received his M.A. the University seems to have wished to withhold it, apparently suspecting him of conversion to Roman Catholicism, but the Queen’s Privy Council intervened on his behalf, stating that he “had done her majesty good service” and had been employed “in matters touching the benefit of the country.” His precise service is unknown. After Cambridge, Marlowe went to London, where he apparently lived a turbulent life (he had two brushes with the law and was said to be disreputable) while pursuing a career as a dramatist. He wrote seven plays--the dates of which are uncertain--before he was yet again in legal difficulties: he was arrested in 1593, accused of atheism. He was not imprisoned, and before his case could be decided he was dead, having been stabbed in a tavern while quarreling over the bill.