![]() ![]() ![]() Whoever's match went out first 'lost' and played the damned Doctor. Both actors entered, lit a match and watched it burn. Each night, the decision as to who plays Doctor Faustus and who plays Mephistophilis was made live on stage. This particular issue reveals more clearly the stakes of Doctor Faustuss ambiguous duality: for every pair of available interpretations, one toes the line of cultural acceptability, while the other leaps far over that line.A charitable interpretation means that the play is doing what audiences expect, and indeed what audiences will accept. Sandy Grierson and Oliver Ryan shared the roles of the embittered academic Faustus and the demon Mephistophilis. But as he begins to revel in his new powers, the world around him starts to collapse and the clock inexorably counts down to the final moment of reckoning. Twenty four years of absolute knowledge and infinite power in exchange for his soul. Despite being tormented by doubt, Faustus agrees to the deal and signs in blood. Risking everything, he conjures the demon Mephistophilis and asks him to strike a deal with Lucifer. Another version of Doctor Faustus was printed in 1616. ![]() The earliest surviving record of a performance of the play dates from 1594, and the earliest surviving printed text is from 1604. Frustrated with the futility of religion, law and science he is desperate for a deeper understanding of the universe – and for the worldwide fame that it will bring. When exactly Marlowe wrote Doctor Faustus is unknown, but it must have been between about 1589 and his death on. Faustus is a brilliant but embittered academic, a solitary scholar who has exhausted the confines of human knowledge. ![]()
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