Doctor Faustus

First performed in the 1590s, this tragedy presents the German scholar Faustus, who, dissatisfied with philosophy, medicine, law, and divinity, turns to necromancy and binds himself by contract to the devil Mephistopheles for twenty-four years of service. He questions spirits about cosmology, summons pageants of Alexander and Helen, and wastes much of the term on tricks at imperial and papal courts and on practical jokes. As the appointed night approaches, scholars and a good and a bad angel frame his last hours. The play is a moral tragedy about knowledge bought at the price of a soul, written in blank verse intercut with comic prose scenes.

Quarter bound in black cloth, red paper boards decorated in black and gold. Black endleaves. Black slipcase with Marlowe's signature in gold.