Dr Faustus

by Christopher Marlowe

Dr Faustus, first performed in 1594, was a theatrical sensation from the outset: one performance in its first run was abandoned as the actors became convinced there was ‘one devil too many amongst them’. Marlowe transformed a moral prose tale (The English Faustbook, translated from German into English in 1592) into a compelling, disturbing drama of a scholar’s struggle with his own desires, emphasising Faustus’ own responsibility for his damnation

Jake Maskall as Mephistopheles and Scott Handy as Dr Faustus (Hampstead Theatre, London 2006)

At the start of Dr Faustus, we see Faustus in his study restlessly turning over his books and rejecting in turn logic, medicine, law and theology. He embraces instead the ‘heavenly’ study of magic, summoning Mephistopheles, and, in exchange for 24 years of pleasure, political and magical power, signs away his soul and body to eternal damnation.

Each age has claimed the play as its own. William Hazlitt, in 1820, praised Marlowe’s ‘lust of power…a hunger and thirst after unrighteousness, a glow of the imagination’. Publicity for the 2018 Globe production asked, ‘Dr Faustus: what are we prepared to sacrifice in the pursuit of power?’