The Tragicall History of [the Life and Death of] D[octor] Faustus

Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus exists in two distinct forms, which have become known as the A- and B-texts. The A-text was first printed in 1604, with further editions in 1609 and 1611. The B-text was first published in 1616, and printed twice more before 1625, in 1619 and 1620. The play’s earliest attested performance, by the Lord Admiral’s Men starring Edward Alleyn as Faustus, was recorded by Philip Henslowe on 30^th September 1594, the year after Marlowe's violent death. It was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 7^th January 1601, and Henslowe recorded payments to William Birde and Samuel Rowley for additions to the play in 1602. These additions may or may not be coterminous with the additional material included in the longer B-text; on the textual history of the play, see Rasmussen (1993).

The additions to the play testify to its continuing success on the stage; later accounts recall its dramatic special effects, including fireworks, thunder, and lightning, and circulate stories about performances in which an extra devil appeared on stage (see Sofer, 2009). By the second half of the seventeenth century, however, tastes had changed; Samuel Pepys and his wife saw the play in 1662 after the reopening of the playhouses, and were not impressed. On the performance history of the play, see Menzer (2018).

From the twentieth century, increased interest in Marlowe and his works has led to a proliferation of productions and editions of Faustus. The version of the play selected as copy-text has varied due to current trends and the preferences of the editor; Boas (1932), Bowers (1974), and Jump (1962) used the B-text, while the more recent editions by Ormerod and Worthan (1985), Gill (1989), and Keefer (1991) reinstate the A-text. Others have opted to present both texts together, including Greg’s parallel-text edition (1950), and more recently Bevington and Rasmussen’s two-text Revels edition (1993). The present online edition offers diplomatic, semi-diplomatic, and modernised versions of both the A- and B-texts.

Bevington, David, and Eric Rasmussen eds. 1993. Doctor Faustus A- and B-texts (1604, 1616). Manchester: Manchester University Press. 

Boas, Frederick S. ed. 1932. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. London: Methuen.

Bowers, Fredson ed. 1973. The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gill, Roma ed. 1989. Dr. Faustus. London: A&C Black.

Greg, W. W. ed. 1950. Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, 1604-1616. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Jump, John D. ed. 1962. Doctor Faustus. London: Methuen.

Keefer, Michael ed. 1991. Dr Faustus, Christopher Marlowe. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview.

Menzer, Paul. 2018. “The Devil and Doctor Faustus.” In Kirk Melnikoff and Roslyn Knutson eds. Christopher Marlowe, Theatrical Commerce, and the Book Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 214-27.

Ormerod, David and Christopher Wortham eds. 1985. Dr Faustus: The A-Text. Nedlands, W.A.: University of Western Australia Press.

Rasmussen, Eric. 1993. A Textual Companion to Doctor Faustus. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Sofer, Andrew. 2009. “How to Do Things with Demons: Conjuring Performatives in Doctor Faustus.” Theatre Journal 61 (1): 1-21.

The earliest edition of the A-text survives in a single copy, held by the Bodleian Library in Oxford (Arch. A e.125). A facsimile of this edition was produced in the Tudor Facsimile Texts series in 1914. The text is in quarto, comprised of signatures A-E⁴ F³. The Bodleian copy, with twentieth-century binding, is part of the Malone collection; Malone made some manuscript notes, but as they appear on a page inserted before A1r (the title page) and are not of early modern provenance, they have not been transcribed here (see the Bodleian Library catalogue entry). The title reads: ‘THE TRAGICALL | History of D. Faustus. | As it hath bene Acted by the Right | Honorable the Earle of Nottingham his seruants. | Written by Ch. Marl.’ This is followed by the printer’s emblem, which (appropriately) represents a scholar with one hand pulled upwards by a pair of wings, and the other dragged down by a weight (similar emblems appear in Alciati and Whitney). The colophon reads: ‘LONDON | Printed by V[alentine] S[immes] for Thomas Bushell. 1604.’ A woodcut ornament appears on A2r, below the title, and an emblem with the motto ‘SVCH AS I MAKE SVCH WILL I TAKE’ occupies the final portion of F3r. The text is printed in black letter, with speech prefixes and running heads in roman, and stage directions in italic. Act and scene divisions are not indicated.

The 1616 B-text likewise survives in a single extant copy, held by the British Library (C.32.d.26). It is a quarto edition, comprised of signatures A-G⁴ H³. The title reads: ‘The Tragicall History | of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. Written by Ch.  Mar.’; an early hand has filled in ‘Marklin’ in ink, and a later hand has crossed out the added ‘klin’ and written ‘low’ underneath it in pencil. There is a woodcut illustration of Faustus in his study standing within a magic circle and holding a book and a staff, conjuring a devil who kneels just outside the circle. The colophon reads: ‘LONDON, | Printed for Iohn Wright, and are to be sold at his shop without Newgate, at the signe of the | Bible 1616’; there is some damage to the surface of the page, which makes the latter part (from ‘signe’ to ‘1616’) partially illegible. The text is mostly printed in black letter, with headings, stage directions, and proper nouns in roman type. Act and scene divisions are not indicated. The pages have been closely trimmed at the top and bottom, so that the running heads on the one hand and the signature references and catchwords on the other are sometimes sliced through. In the present diplomatic edition, where sufficient text remains to indicate that such text is present as expected, this has been transcribed without further notation; where it has been cut off altogether, no text has been entered.