Doctor Faustus

Shakespeare's most Marlovian tragedy — ambition, supernatural temptation, and a protagonist who sees his damnation clearly and walks toward it anyway

Milton's Satan shares Mephistopheles's eloquence and self-awareness — 'Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell' directly echoes Marlowe's hell-as-psychological-state

Another scholar-protagonist paralyzed between action and thought — Hamlet inherits Faustus's intellectual restlessness without his fatal ambition

The Romantic era's Faustus — a scientist who overreaches, creates what he cannot control, and is destroyed by the knowledge he sought

Another bargain for experience at the cost of the soul — Dorian's portrait is his blood pact, and beauty is once again the instrument of damnation

Kurtz is Faustus in the Congo — brilliant, overreaching, undone by the power he sought. 'The horror' echoes Faustus's final recognition