THE ENGLISH FAUST BOOK

The Faustbuch was a tremendous success, on an international scale. Within two years there were some sixteen German versions, including additions to the original book, and a version in verse. The story soon spread abroad, with translations into Low German, Dutch, and French. In England the story of Faust had been referred to as early as 1572. In 1592 there appeared The Historie of the Damnable Life, and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus … according to the true Copie printed at Franckfort, and translated into English by P. F. Gent. This English Faust Book was actually a rather free adaptation, but it was to be almost the sole source of major elements of Christopher Marlowe's play The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, which was probably written later in the same year.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

Through a whole series of fortunate coincidences the cunning of history ensured that the story of Faust, unlike many other popular vagrant tales, was not relegated to the limbo of forgotten ephemera. More than anyone else it was Marlowe who established the myth; his tragic version of Faust's story lived on in the literary and theatrical tradition until Goethe finally gave it much larger scope two centuries later.

The three greatest pieces of luck in this process were: first, that the English translation of the Faustbuch came out in the period when the great age of the Elizabethan theatre was beginning; second, that it became known to Marlowe, then the country's greatest dramatist, in the last year of his life and at the height of his powers; and third, that Marlowe happened to be an anima naturaliter Faustiana himself.