No. 18 - Doctor Faustus

by Christopher Marlowe

edited by Sylvan Barnet

Started: March 7
Finished: March 10

Notes: This is the famous play of a man who makes a deal with the devil. I've been meaning to get to this one for a long time. The author was a contemporary to Shakespeare, and possibly a sometimes companion and confidante to the famous playwright. Though Marlowe was famous enough in his time. I'm especially interested in this one in that it could give me story ideas for my John Dee character. The play itself is only about 80 pages in this book, but there's loads of commentary and extras, which I'm interested in.

Mini review: The play itself at first seems a bit simplistic when compared to the works of someone like Shakespeare, but as the further readings about the play helped me to understand, there is much more going on than meets the eye. Especially the modern eye, because there is so much forgotten or disremembered from the Elizabethan period. This book is a bit dry at times for the layman, but still quite interesting. I didn't so much get story ideas from this, though I picked up some thematic and plot-structure ideas.