Doctor Faustus

I've felt so guilty about spending time doing things not related to law school that I haven't written this post. Doctor Faustus and Other Plays (Oxford World's Classics)is a legendary play by Christopher Marlowe. It's the story of a scholar who sells his soul to the devil. We read it for my Act One Great Books selection last month.

It is a quick read, as most plays are. I expected a five or three act structure, but Marlowe divides things up into I think 12 scenes. That did seem disjointed and at times uneven. I read a book of essays that confirmed that idea.Doctor Faustus: Divine in Show (Twayne's Masterwork Studies) states that many scholars think the version we have is more of a draft and that more than one author worked on it. (Again, this a quickish read if you don't read each essay. Something to read on the train where you can't study. The guilt, the guilt.) Faustus is a work like Dracula, that I enjoyed more by reading about the intellectual history and social issues that influenced the author than I did reading the work itself which was pretty good. I do think it would be marvelous on the stage where you'd get the effect of the costumes and set.
Got to get back to Torts. More later.