📚 The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1616 version) (Christopher Marlowe)

The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, commonly referred to simply as Doctor Faustus, is a play by Christopher Marlowe, based on the Faust story, in which a man sells his soul to the devil for power and knowledge. Doctor Faustus was first published in 1604, eleven years after Marlowe’s death and at least twelve years after the first performance of the play. “No Elizabethan play outside the Shakespeare canon has raised more controversy than Doctor Faustus. There is no agreement concerning the nature of the text and the date of composition… and the centrality of the Faust legend in the history of the Western world precludes any definitive agreement on the interpretation of the play. This recording uses the 1616 quarto, published by John Wright, which contains significant alterations from and additions to the quarto of 1604. The text of the first quarto was used for a previous Librivox recording. (Summary by Wikipedia and Algy Pug)

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1616 version) | LibriVox

Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus tells the tale of Dr. John Faustus’ pact with the devil. Having mastered traditional academic fields, he turned his attention to the dark arts of magic and necromancy. The pact involves 24 years of power, in which he visits the Pope and performs illusions for European nobility. All along he is challenged to repent and be saved, however the devils (Mephistophilis and Lucifer) actively block, intimidate and physically threaten him whenever he thinks about repenting. In the end, his soul is cast into hell.

I was inspired to read the text by The Minefield podcast’s “Not a Bookclub”.

The lesson of the tragedy of Doctor Faustus probably remains the ridiculousness of the exchange of long-term beatitude for short-term prosperity and pleasure. The bill always comes due. But what Marlowe also reminds us is that the punishment is already present in the solipsism, the self-enclosure of the lives heedlessly devoted to pleasure. As Mephistopheles puts it, “for where we are is hell”.

What is the moral of Marlowe’s ‘Doctor Faustus’? – ABC listen

Interestingly, Kate Flaherty makes the link between Faustus’ pact and the pact so many of us inadvertently go into today in a world of social media and attention. This has thinking about Simone Weil and attention as something we do, rather than something done.

I listened to the LibriVox reading of Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. This is the 1616 edition, rather than the 1604 edition that was discussed on the podcast.

With all that said, my first memory of ‘Faust’ was my teacher, whose first name was Faust. In his first lesson he came in and announced:

Yes, my name is Faust and no I did not sell my soul to the devil.

Nice teacher, but sadly cannot remember much beyond that. Although he did teach me Catcher in the Rye.