If you make a deal with the Devil, are you then damned for all eternity? This is the situation Doctor Faustus must face when his ambitions as a scholar and magician take an ominous turn. Having sold his soul to Lucifer in exchange for twenty-four years of power and pleasure, can Faustus repent and be saved-or is it too late? This play, critically acclaimed as Christopher Marlowe's greatest work, boldly and imaginatively explores the age-old question: "What profits a man if he gains the whole world, yet loses his own soul?" Marlowe gives life to this concept in Faustus-a single man in whom Heaven and Hell do battle. Using both broad humor and deadly seriousness in this daring work, Marlowe addresses the essence of the human soul. Investigating the liability of knowledge, the interplay of free will and fate, and the perversion of power, Faustus's story has as much relevance to us today as it did to audiences in the sixteenth century.
