The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, commonly referred to simply as Doctor Faustus, is an Elizabethantragedy by Christopher Marlowe, based on German stories about the title character Faust, that was written sometime between 1589 and 1592, and might have been performed between 1592 and Marlowe's death in 1593. Two different versions of the play were published in the Jacobean era, several years later. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus is based on the Faust story, in which a man sells his soul to the devil for power and knowledge. On a deeper level, this play shows the decay of a person who chooses material gains (by commanding the devils to suit his desires) over spiritual belief and in doing so loses his soul. Doctor Faustus was first published in 1604, eleven years after Marlowe’s death and at least twelve years after the first performance of the play.
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2019
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Christopher Marlowe was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. He was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day. He greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe. Marlowe's plays are known for the use of blank verse and their overreaching protagonists. Marlowe was born in Canterbury to shoemaker John Marlowe and his wife Catherine. His date of birth is unknown, but he was baptised on 26 February 1564, and is likely to have been born a few days before. Marlowe attended The King's School in Canterbury and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he studied on a scholarship and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1584. Marlowe's first play performed on stage in London, in 1587, was Tamburlaine the Great. It is among the first English plays in blank verse, and with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, is generally considered the beginning of the mature phase of the Elizabethan theatre.