Dr. Faustus
Marlowe wrote the first great English tragedy about ambition: a scholar trades his soul for knowledge and power, then finds out too late that the price is real.
Read this if you…
- want to read an English play not by shakespeare, right before shakespeare
- want the first famous version of "selling your soul to the devil" even though its not great
- want context for Goethe's faust later
Skip this if you…
- want the best faust story (goethes faust part 1 is better)
- don't care about the literary lineage of the faust story
Why It Matters
Marlowe wrote the first great English tragedy about ambition: a scholar trades his soul for knowledge and power, then finds out too late that the price is real. It's the play that proved English drama could carry big philosophical questions, and it cleared the road for everything Shakespeare did next. "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?" is still one of the most famous lines in English theater.
The 
Take
Classic concept but ultimately scenes don’t fit together that well. Not that great of events happen
Where to go next
- Metamorphoses by Ovid. Dr. Faustus built on it. - The Chorus frames Faustus with Ovid's Icarus from the start — the waxen wings that 'mount above his reach' before melting — flagging the fall to come - Marlowe had translated Ovid himself, so the *Metamorphoses* is no decoration; it's the classical key to his scholar's ambition and ruin - Ovid's tales of transformation and overreach are the mythic backdrop against which Faustus's bargain plays out
- Romans by Paul. Dr. Faustus built on it. - Faustus opens by reading Romans 6:23 aloud from Jerome's Bible — "Stipendium peccati mors est," the wages of sin is death — and damns himself on it - The trick is the truncation: he stops the verse exactly before its second half, the grace that would have answered him - Knowing Paul's full sentence — death *and* the gift of eternal life — turns Faustus's despair into a deliberate, self-serving misreading
- Faust, First Part by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Dr. Faustus shaped it. - The English play that became a German legend — Marlowe's scholar selling his soul outlived Marlowe in a strange way - English touring actors carried *Dr. Faustus* to Germany, where it shrank into the popular Faust puppet plays - Goethe grew up on those puppet shows; the lineage runs Marlowe → puppet stage → the *Faust* that consumed his life
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Dr. Faustus shaped it. - Marlowe's damnation gave Wilde his ending — the soul-for-youth bargain that Wilde said was "old in the history of literature, but to which I have given a new form" - Wilde, an Oxford classicist steeped in Renaissance drama, lifts Faustus's despairing "Is't not too late?" straight into Dorian's own "It is too late" - And Lord Henry is Mephistopheles transplanted — the seductive tempter who talks a man out of his soul
- Paradise Lost by John Milton. Dr. Faustus shaped it. - Marlowe's Faustus gave Milton's Satan his deepest line — that hell is not a place but a condition of the self - Faustus's "Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it" is echoed in Satan's "Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell" (*Paradise Lost* IV.75) - The damned mind that carries its torment wherever it goes: Marlowe drafted it, Milton perfected it
- Richard III by William Shakespeare. Dr. Faustus shaped it. - Marlowe wrote the great damnation scene of the English stage — Faustus alone in his final hour, the clock striking, no mercy coming - Shakespeare took that language straight to Bosworth: Richard's conscience-haunted collapse the night before battle reworks Faustus's last-hour terror - The move is the lineage — private spiritual agony turned outward into a king's public breakdown
Depicted in Art
Faustus stands in a magic circle on the floor of his study, conjuring with a book and staff as a horned devil emerges from beyond.
1631
Faust reclines asleep while Mephistopheles conjures a swirling cloud of nude female figures spiralling through the air above him.
Luis Ricardo Falero, 1878
Faust seated at a chess-like table across from a sharp-featured Mephistopheles, the devil leaning in over the board with a sly grin.
Anton Kaulbach
Faustus in his study at the moment of the pact, an austere robed figure of Mephistopheles standing over the seated scholar.
Jean-Paul Laurens
Faust and Margaret meet on a sunlit street, Faust raising his hat as she walks past, Mephistopheles watching from the shadows.
Alexander von Liezen-Mayer, 1876
Marguerite, lit harshly by sabbath bonfires, clutches the limp body of her infant in despair on a desolate moor.
Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, 1911
Faust and Mephistopheles in an oak-paneled interior, the devil leaning over Faust's shoulder as the scholar studies a manuscript by candlelight.
Eugène Siberdt
Faust seated in his study before an open book, head bowed in melancholy as evening light falls across the shelves.
Ary Scheffer, 1831
A scholar rises from his desk in a darkened study, transfixed by a luminous magic disc inscribed with letters that hovers at his window.
Rembrandt van Rijn, 1652
Recommended Editions
Penguin Classics
2003
Bevington and Rasmussen's Penguin prints both the 1604 and 1616 texts plus The Jew of Malta in one volume. Notes are clear on the theology and the Faust legend behind it, and the price is right.
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Deep Dive
What It's About
This summary gives away plot details.
Notable Quotes
“Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?”
“Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.”