Customer Reviews
Fantastic - By: Katherine Radcliff, 02 Oct 2008 
Dr Faustus is a play about a man who has pretty much achieved everything. He's endlessly clever & successful but he wants MORE. I think that feeling of desire & ambition is still such a driving factorin today's society that it's impossible to miss the relevance. He begins to dabblein dark magic, excelling at it, & conjures Mephistophalis, who allows Faustus to sell his soul to the Devilin return for twenty five years of Mephistophalis's services. So come twenty five years of rather pointless, hollow fun & achievement (the style of the scenes during this time deliberately reflects their shallow nature) & then the time comes when Faustus must pay the price he has promised...
This play changed my life. I can't quite put my finger on it..It was a mix of the tasteful melodrama, the passion, the moral questioning, the ferocity of the character & the emotions caught upin his tale. The raw language of Dr Faustus is perfect to me. Although many jump to conclusions about its being ineloquent next to Shakespeare, it isin my opinion beautiful, haunting & full of energy. Marlowe isn't Shakespeare. He did come first however, he paved the way for Shakespeare entirely & he had a unique, unparalleled style that mixes the gritty with the hyperbolic.
Great Play - Terrible Edition - By: Benjamin Woods, 30 Aug 2008 
Do not be fooled by my rating, this is a fine play with one of the most important charactersin literature.
HOWEVER.
This edition is poor. If you are student you will find this text will quickly fall to pieces. Go for a different publisher.
One Of The Classics? - By: Young Stevie, 22 Jul 2008 
Hmm, not sure.
This is the only one of Christopher Marlowe's works that I've read so far & to be honest I was expecting a lot more.
Apparently Marlowe wasn't too big on Christianity so you would've thought that scripting a play like this, where an important individual sells his soul to be able to have anything his heart desires, he'd go to town. But it's almost like Marlowe is warning us against doing that. I'm not saying that Marlowe was a practising satanist but for a non-believer, let's call him, his imagination regarding what Faustus does once he makes the "sale" is non too extraordinary; Flies around a bit; Makes fun of the Pope & his Cardinals invisibly; Turns a bale of hay into a horse; Gets grapesin Winter for someone. That's about it.
It's quite short too, but does include the differences from the "B" text afterwards so you can compare the two so that's quite good.
Basically I thought it would move me a lot more than it did, but that might just be me.
Sweet analytics, 'tis thou hast ravished me! - By: , 03 Feb 2006 This play is possibly the best example of Elizabethan theatre. Its soliloquies are passionate & eloquent, & have a beauty & poetry to them that I feel surpasses even Shakespeare. The themes of the play are so much more interesting than usual themes, many of which are overly concerned with love - here Marlowe recognises the depravity of man's base nature & shows it to great theatrical effect. Strangely, considering the dislikeable nature of the protagonist & the vile deeds he commits, we are still sympathising with him when he meets his grisly end. This brings us back to the idea of forgiveness for all sins, & whether that does actually apply. Can any sin committed on earth be worthy of such eternal punishment? This play makes us question our ideas about God, about religion, about sin, about the afterlife, & about the effects of our own actions. It is a shocking & thought-provoking play which I can honestly say was a pleasure to study - & anyone who knows me will attest to my hatred of English Literature!
Read it - it will change your life.
A farcical drama but no tragedy - By: Jacques COULARDEAU, 06 Mar 2004 
This drama never reaches the level of a tragedy. Faust only signs his pact with the devil to know evanescent pleasures & aimless pointless powers. He becomes a trickster who builds a horse with straw & gets fun from mocking the Pope & supporting the German Emperor Charles V against him. He gets a glimpse of Helen, the object of the Trojan war, but about nothing else, except grapesin december & wine from anywhere. Faust is the dupe of the deal because he gets nothing serious, not even real love, from this devil whoin the end gets averything : the soul, the body, the flesh, the blood, the brain, & he can even tear every limb off the body of the foolish doctor. We could think it is a tale that supports the puritan fundamentalist vision of God & the devil, yet he laughs at the Pope, systematically creates havocin Wittenberg, Luther’s homeland, & he ridicules anything sacredin the world. Is Marlowe an iconoclast, or is he the precursor of Shakespeare who deals with these spirits as if they were dreams, nothing serious, just entertaining friendly beings, or even Purcell who reduces these witches to fairies who help humansin their matrimony ? Marlowe was a childin a way & he embodies both the total lack of respect of teenagers for anything adult, & the fears of childrenin front of the bad dark boogeymanin the cupboard or under the bed. This play has aged tremendously.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
