Once upon a time in Germany, there was a traveling mountebank who was thought to have sold his soul for magical powers. A pamphlet of this "strange, eventful history" came into the hands of Christopher Marlowe, who wrote his greatest tragedy based on this. Oddly enough, the play was performed in Germany, and puppeteers saw at once that this could be a gold mine. They worked up scripts, fitted up puppets, and a star was reborn!
Alice Wallace located 5 different German scripts of this play, translated them, and brought them together into one two-hour tragedy. Two parallel characters show the tragic and the comic side of this drama: Faust, whose ambition is boundless, wants power and knowledge; Hanswurst, his servant, just wants to know where his next meal is coming from. As time runs out, Faust wracks his brain to escape his fate. Does he?
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