About the Book

Dr. Faustus is a book about a doctor who desires knowledge of the black arts, because he is unsatisfied with the knowledge he can gain as a man alone.  He assumes that all men commit sins and therefore are doomed to go to Hell anyway, so he gives his soul to the Lucifer in exchange for Mephistophilis a devil to perform his every wish and command for "four and twenty years."  He lives his life making fools of those who oppose him, traveling the world and meeting the Pope and dukes, completing wishes that other people request of him, and having his devil conjure the deceased.  As...