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