Dr Faustus: the A-text, C. J. Wortham, Christopher Marlowe, D. A. Ormerod

On 30th May 1593 Christopher Marlowe was stabbed to death in a tavern brawl after a dispute about the 'recknynge'. He was 29. His best known play, Doctor Faustus, was probably first performed in 1590 or 1591, but the first extant edition was not to appear until 1604. It was published again in 1616 in an expanded version now thought to have been debased by the extensive commissioned additions of two contemporary hack writers. Almost all subsequent editions have followed the second or 1616 edition, the B-text, or have attempted an inconsistent synthesis of the two. This new edition, however, conforms to the findings of the most recent Marlowe scholarship, and is based upon the shorter 1604 edition, or A-text, which is now generally agreed to be much closer to Marlowe's original draft.