Dr Faustus: The A-text

Christopher Marlowe

University of Western Australia Press, 1985 - Drama - 159 pages

"On 30th May 1593 Christopher Marlowe was stabbed to death in a tavern brawl after a dispute about the 'recknynge'. He was 29. His best known play, Doctor Faustus, was probably first performed in 1590 or 1591, but the first extant edition was not to appear until 1604. It was published again in 1616 in an expanded version now thought to have been debased by the extensive commissioned additions of two contemporary hack writers. Almost all subsequent editions have followed the second or 1616 edition, the B-text, or have attempted an inconsistent synthesis of the two. This new edition, however, conforms to the findings of the most recent Marlowe scholarship, and is based upon the shorter 1604 edition, or A-text, which is now generally agreed to be much closer to Marlowe's original draft."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Contents

• Christopher Marlowe: ix
• The Date of Doctor Faustus: xiii
• The Source: xv

About the author

Christopher Marlowe was born in Canterbury, England on February 6, 1564. He received a B.A. in 1584 and an M.A. in 1587 from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. His original plans for a religious career were put aside when he decided to become a poet and playwright. His earliest work was translating Lucan and Ovid from Latin into English. He translated Vergil's Aeneid as a play. His plays included Tamburlaine the Great, Faustus, The Jew of Malta, and Dido, Queen of Carthage. His unfinished poem Hero and Leander was published in 1598. In 1589, he and a friend killed a man, but were acquitted on a plea of self-defense. His political views were unorthodox, and he was thought to be a government secret agent. He was arrested in May 1593 on a charge of atheism. He was killed in a brawl in a Deptford tavern on May 30, 1593.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Dr Faustus: The A-text; Open University set book
• Author: Christopher Marlowe
• Editors: David Ormerod, Christopher Wortham
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: University of Western Australia Press, 1985
• Original from: Indiana University
• Digitized: Jan 15, 2009
• ISBN: 0855642327, 9780855642327
• Length: 159 pages
• Subjects: Drama / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Drama / General; Literary Criticism / General