Doctor Faustus: With The English Faust Book

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Description

This edition of the 'A' text, with supporting documents that include selections from The English Life of Faustus, contemporary testimonies to Marlowe's 'atheism', and passages from the 'B' text, offers a startling new context in which to understand this play, its comedy, and its tawdry representation of demonic magic. In this light, argues Wootton, Marlowe's Faustus both reflects the centrality of comedy to the Faust legend and plays an ambiguous role in a crucial intellectual debate of the playwright's time.

Reviews

This is an excellent edition; I really appreciate the clear Introduction and the exceptionally useful notes. I look forward to using this text with a freshman literature class who will really benefit from the helpful textual apparatus. --Charlotte England, Department of English, Salisbury University

The inexpensive paperback will allow this student-friendly text to be added to the reading list of a variety of high-school and college courses. Teachers as well as students will find the Introduction here very useful. --Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance

"The decision to embed much of the B-text (1616) into the full A-text (1604) of the play was a creative compromise (as Lynch admits) in order to offer students as much of Marlowes full intention about the story as possible. The gray highlighting of the incorporated B textual material allows the reader access to the later textual material but also does not so intrude that the original A text cannot be read independently.... The meshing of the two versions can be very informative especially for teachers of theater and performance/ drama and teachers of writing, as well as for instructors in literature. I can imagine a theater instructor, for example, discussing with students what was/is lost/gained/ changed moving from the 1604 to the 1616 version of the play and how those changes might impact not just the themes but the actual performances of the play. An instructor in writing clearly could do much with the Lynch edition, especially in discussions about revision/ rewrites and the process of play writing." --June-Ann Greeley, Professor of Languages and Literature, Sacred Heart University

Author Bio

David Wootton is Anniversary Professor of History, University of York.