The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus: From the Quarto of 1616
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus: From the Quarto of 1616
Christopher Marlowe's masterpiece imagines a scholar so desperate to transcend the limits of human knowledge that he summons a devil and signs away his soul. Doctor Faustus, a brilliant mind eaten alive by restlessness, trades twenty-four years of infernal power for the chance to pierce nature's secrets and satiate a hunger that respectable learning cannot fill. The play crackles with his defiance, his spectacular feats of magic, and the creeping horror as Mephistophilis returns again and again to collect what's owed. Marlowe wrote this in an age when audiences reportedly screamed at the sight of real flames and demons bleeding across the stage. It's a tragedy of ambition taken to its logical extreme: not just what Faustus loses, but the void at the center of a man who wanted everything except what salvation might offer.
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“Hell is just a frame of mind.””
— Christopher Marlowe
“He that loves pleasure must for pleasure fall.””
— Christopher Marlowe
“Faustus: Stay, Mephistopheles, and tell me, what good willmy soul do thy lord?Mephistopheles: Enlarge his kingdom.Faustus: Is that the reason he tempts us thus?Mephistopheles: Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.(It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery.)””
— Christopher Marlowe
“Mephistopheles: Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of GodAnd tasted the eternal joys of heaven,Am not tormented with ten thousand hellsIn being deprived of everlasting bliss?””
— Christopher Marlowe
“Fools that will laugh on earth, most weep in hell.””
— Christopher Marlowe
“Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place, for where we are is hell, And where hell is must we ever be.””
— Christopher Marlowe
“Was this the face that launched a thousand ships/And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?””
— Christopher Marlowe
“What art thou Faustus, but a man condemned to die?””
— Christopher Marlowe
“The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike””
— Christopher Marlowe
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Marlowe, Christopher. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus: From the Quarto of 1616. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-tragical-history-of-doctor-faustus-from-the-quarto-of-1616-1dd9441c-aa99-42bc-a079-e9b3e73ebe1d.Marlowe, C. (n.d.). The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus: From the Quarto of 1616. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-tragical-history-of-doctor-faustus-from-the-quarto-of-1616-1dd9441c-aa99-42bc-a079-e9b3e73ebe1dMarlowe, Christopher. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus: From the Quarto of 1616. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-tragical-history-of-doctor-faustus-from-the-quarto-of-1616-1dd9441c-aa99-42bc-a079-e9b3e73ebe1d.
