Doctor Faustus

Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is the first in a long line of dramatic adaptations of the story of Faust. Set in Reformation-era Germany, it tells the apocryphal story of a man who sells his soul to the Devil - here played by Mephistophilis. The echo of the Fall is not coincidental, as our good Doctor rejects the humble pursuit of higher knowledge for the absolute possession of the lower - if, of course, one can truly consider it to be a “lower” knowledge at all. It is, after all, considered the first great English-language tragedy for a reason. If you’d like to take a peek at the script, the version we’ll be using is Marlowe’s A-text.