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Faust (/ f aʊ s t /; German:) is the protagonist of a classic German legend based on the historical Johann Georg Faust (c. 1480–1540). The erudite Faust is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a deal with the Devil at a crossroads, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures.
The principal characters of Faust Part One include: Heinrich Faust (see also Faust), a scholar, sometimes said to be based on Johann Georg Faust, or on Jacob Bidermann's dramatized account of the Legend of the Doctor of Paris, Cenodoxus; Mephistopheles, the Devil; Gretchen, Faust's love (short for Margarete; Goethe uses both forms)
Engraving of Faust's pact with Mephisto, by Adolf Gnauth (circa 1840). A deal with the Devil [a], also known as a Faustian bargain, is a cultural motif exemplified by the legend of Faust and the figure of Mephistopheles, as well as being elemental to many Christian traditions.
In the legend, Faust makes a deal with the devil at the price of his soul, Mephistopheles acting as the devil's agent. The name appears in the late-sixteenth-century Faust chapbooks – stories concerning the life of Johann Georg Faust, written by an anonymous German author. In the 1725 version, which Goethe read, Mephostophiles is a devil in ...
Friedrich Theodor Vischer's Faust. Der Tragödie dritter Teil (Faust: Part Three of the Tragedy, 1862), a parody of Goethe's Faust Part Two; H. J. Byron's Little Doctor Faust (1877) (a musical burlesque at the Gaiety Theatre) W. S. Gilbert's Gretchen, an 1879 play based on Goethe's version of the Faust legend
Title page of one of the Höllenzwang grimoires attributed to D. Faustus Magus Maximus Kundlingensis (18th century). Georg Faustus (sometimes also Georg Sebellicus Faustus (/ ˈ f aʊ s t /; c. 1480 or 1466 – c. 1541), known in English as John Faustus, was a German itinerant alchemist, astrologer, and magician of the German Renaissance.
His legend notwithstanding, Newman has not been one to toot his own horn too loudly, and so his claims for “Faust” today are characteristically — almost comically — modest.
Subsequent commentators have identified this individual as the prototypical Faustus of the legend. [25] Whatever the inspiration, the development of Marlowe's play is very faithful to the Faust Book, especially in the way it mixes comedy with tragedy. [26] However, Marlowe also introduced some changes to make it more original.