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

[2] The play is well-known for a famous line: "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

[5] On 22 November 1602, the diary of Philip Henslowe recorded a £4 payment to Samuel Rowley and William Bird for additions to the play, which suggests a revival soon after that date.

In Histriomastix, his 1632 polemic against the drama, William Prynne records the tale that actual devils once appeared on the stage during a performance of Faustus, "to the great amazement of both the actors and spectators".

[6] Given its source in the Historia von D. Johann Fausten, published as a chapbook in Germany in 1587, and the fact that the earliest known translation of the latter work into English was in 1592, the play was probably written in 1592 or 1593.

A subsequent Stationers' Register entry, dated 7 January 1601, assigns the play to the bookseller Thomas Bushell (variant written forms: Busshell or Bushnell),[8] the publisher of the 1604 first edition.

[17] Some scholars[22] believe that Marlowe developed the story from a popular 1592 translation, commonly called The English Faust Book.

He stresses the importance of the soliloquies in the play, saying: "the soliloquy, perhaps more than any other dramatic device, involved the audience in an imaginative concern with the happenings on stage".

[27] By having Doctor Faustus deliver these soliloquies at the beginning and end of the play, the focus is drawn to his inner thoughts and feelings about succumbing to the devil.

Frey also explains: "The whole pattern of this final soliloquy is thus a grim parody of the opening one, where decision is reached after, not prior to, the survey".

In the first scene of the play, Faustus expresses his boredom and impatience with the various branches of knowledge and concludes that only magic is worth learning.

When Wagner tells them he is with Valdes and Cornelius, the scholars worry that the magicians have corrupted him and leave to inform the rector of the university.

Faustus has been called to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, where he and Mephistophilis conjure Alexander the Great and his paramour and give a knight cuckold's horns for being a heckler.

Among the most complicated points of contention is whether the play supports or challenges the Calvinist doctrine of absolute predestination, which dominated the lectures and writings of many English scholars in the latter half of the sixteenth century.

According to Calvin, predestination meant that God, acting of his own free will, elects some people to be saved and others to be damned—thus, the individual has no control over his own ultimate fate.

This doctrine was the source of great controversy because it was seen by the so-called anti-Calvinists to limit man's free will in regard to faith and salvation, and to present a dilemma in terms of theodicy.

According to this view, the play demonstrates Calvin's "three-tiered concept of causation," in which the damnation of Faustus is first willed by God, then by Satan, and finally, by himself.

[32] "Ravished" by magic (1.1.112), Faustus turns to the dark arts when law, logic, science, and theology fail to satisfy him.

Nicholl, who connects Faustus as a "studious artisan" (1.1.56) to the "hands-on experience" promoted by Paracelsus, sees in the former a follower of the latter, a "magician as technologist".

Readers initially feel sympathy for the demon when he attempts to explain to Faustus the consequences of abjuring God and Heaven.

[36] In 1958, another BBC television version starred William Squire as Faustus in an adaptation by Ronald Eyre intended for schools.

There have been several adaptations on BBC Radio and elsewhere: Doctor Faustus has raised much controversy due to Faust's alleged interaction with the demonic realm.