SOURCE: Hadfield, Andrew. “A Possible Source of the Horse-Corser Episode in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus.” Notes and Queries 39, no. 3 (September 1992): 303-04.

In the following essay, Hadfield suggests that an episode in Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus was adapted from a passage in Beware the Cat.

It is generally agreed by scholars that the incident of the horse-corser in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, extant in both ‘A’ and ‘B’ texts, is either the work of Marlowe's anonymous collaborator or co-written by the collaborator with Marlowe.¹ It is possible that this episode may have been adapted from a passage in William Baldwin's Beware the Cat, perhaps first published in 1561,² entered into the Stationers' Register between 22 July 1568 and 22 July 1569³ and surviving in two editions of 1570 and 1584 recorded in the STC.⁴

In Doctor Faustus, scene xv,⁵ Faustus sells the horse-corser a horse for forty dollars and warns him not to ride the animal into water...