Marlowe's dramatic activity comprises six brief years, from 1587 to 1593. Yet those six years produced six splendid plays. As the writer of genuine tragedy, all his works illustrated his individualistic conception of tragedy. The classical Greek conception modified by the Renaissance spirit, the conception which portrays `the struggle between the overweening soul, typically Renaissance in its insatiable ambition, and the limitations which it seeks to overcome'. Doctor Faustus was probably written in 1592, although the exact date of its composition is uncertain. The idea of an individual selling his or her soul to the devil for knowledge is an old motif attached to the historical persona of Johannes Faustus. The immediate source of Marlowe's play seems to be the anonymous German work Historia von D. Iohan Fausten of 1587, which was translated into English in 1592, and from which Marlowe lifted the bulk of the plot for his drama.

Doctor Faustus essentially...