To fully appreciate the complexities of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (1588-89), you have to look at his source: the Faustbuch (1587). According to Wikipedia (we haven't been able to check this, though) the original letter is held by the Ingolstadt city archive and it is dated 27 June 1528.

Though sources differ on various points, contemporary writers are at pains to mention Faust's evil reputation: for example, in a note written by a junior mayor of Ingolstadt instructing that city officials 'deny free passage to the great and Doctor Faustus'. Having died around 1540 in Germany, the real Dr Faustus is recorded in contemporary sources (such as University records, letters and diaries) as being well-travelled and knowledgeable: some sources even report that he referred to the Devil as his 'Schwager', meaning 'crony'. Though long a point of contention with historians, the existence of a real Dr Faustus is now accepted as fact.

In taking a German story and using it as material for an English play, Marlowe transposed the legend into a startlingly different context with the result that this famous play posed some awkward questions to contemporary audiences, as it still does for modern audiences today. The plot itself, however, is not Marlowe's own: the story existed in a German work, the Faustbuch from 1587 Marlowe's play has been called of this tradition. The Dr Faustus we encounter in Marlowe's play is a Renaissance scholar with the ambition of Icarus ('His waxen wings did mount above his reach'). Modern yet medieval, contentious yet conservative, tragic hero or tyrannical villain: both play and protagonist of Christopher Marlowe's infamous Doctor Faustus present the audience with a maze of contradictions which have divided critics since its first performance. It helps us see how Marlowe's creation of a tragic Faustus makes a big difference to the moral character of the story. Although it contains many of the key elements, it approaches its central character in a very different way.

In this essay undergraduate Lizzie Davis looks at the story behind Marlowe's play.

Christopher marlowe faustus