In 1675, Edward Phillips in his Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum called Christopher Marlowe "a kind of second Shakspeare." High praise indeed; but, at the time of Marlowe's death in 1593, Shakespeare might well have been in fairness thought a kind of second Marlowe. Both were born in 1564, but by 1593 Shakespeare's hand could be seen on stage in only The Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Henry VI plays, and possibly The Taming of the Shrew. Marlowe had written Dido, Queen of Carthage, The Massacre at Paris, The Jew of Malta, the two parts of Tamburlaine, Edward II, and, of course, Doctor Faustus. In 1593,pride of place belonged to Marlowe, and the vector of influence seems clearly to move from him to Shakespeare rather than the other way round. ...
Renaissance England’s great tragedy of intellectual overreaching is as relevant and unsettling today as it was when first performed at the end of the sixteenth century. This edition provides newly edited texts of both the 1604 (A-Text) and 1616 (B-Text) versions of the play, each with detailed explanatory annotations.
"Sources and Contexts" includes a generous selection from Marlowe’s main source, The Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Dr. John Faustus, along with contemporary writings on magic and religion (including texts by Agrippa, Calvin, and Perkins) that establish the play’s intellectual background. This volume also reprints early documents relating to the writing and publication of the play and to its first performances, along with contemporary comments on Marlowe’s scandalous reputation.
Twenty-five carefully chosen interpretations—written from the eighteenth century to the present—allow students to enrich their critical understanding of the play. These diverse critical essays include classic analyses by Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, and A. C. Swinburne, among others, and recent criticism from, among others, Michael Neill, Katharine Eisaman Maus, Alison Findlay, Stephen Orgel, and David Bevington.
A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
Introduction
Editorial Procedures
Textual Notes
The Texts of Doctor Faustus
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (A-Text, 1604)
The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus (B-Text, 1616)
Sources and Contexts
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Richard Baines · [Letter]
Thomas Beard · From The Theatre of God's Judgements
William Vaughan · From The Golden-Grove, Moralized in
Three Books
Anthony a Wood · From Athenae Oxonienses
David Riggs · From Marlowe's Quarrel with God
COMPOSITION AND PUBLICATION
Document 1 : Stationers' Register, January 7, 1601
Document 2: Stationers' Register, September 13, 1610
Document 3: Henslowe's Diary, November 22, 1602
Michael J. Warren · From Doctor Faustus: The Old
Man and the Text
Leah Marcus · From Textual Instability and Ideological
Difference: The Case of Doctor Faustus
Eric Rasmussen · The Nature of the B-Text
EARLY PERFORMANCE
Philip Henslowe
Thomas Middleton
Anonymous
John Melton
William Prynne
THE FAUST LEGEND
,anonymous · From The History of the Damnable Life
and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus
Sara Munson Deats · Doctor Faustus: From Chapbook
to Tragedy
Tradition
Susan Snyder · Marlowe's Doctor Faustus as an Inverted
Saint's Life
Jonathan Dollimore · Dr. Faustus (c. 1589-92):
Subversion through Transgression
Michael Neill · From Anxieties of Ending
Roma Gill · "Such Conceits as Clownage Keeps in
Pay": Comedy and Dr. Faustus
Ideas and Ideologies
Charles G. Masinton · [Faustus and the Failure of
Renaissance Man]
Alan Sinfield · Reading Faustus's God
Marjorie Garber · [Writing and Unwriting in Doctor
Faustus]
Katharine Eisaman Maus · [Marlowe and the Heretical
Conscience]
Alison Findlay · Heavenly Matters of Theology:
A Feminist Perspective
Stephen Orgel · [Magic and Power in Doctor Faustus]
Performance
David Bevington · Staging the A- and B-Texts of
Doctor Faustus
George Bernard Shaw · Review of Doctor Faustus,
July 2, 1896, Acted by Members of the Shakespeare
Reading Society
William Tydeman · [Doctor Faustus on the Stage]
Christopher Marlowe: A Chronology
Selected Bibliography