Of all the literary legends that have been successfully mined by more than one ambitious artist, the sell-your-soul-to-the-devil trope, rolled out by Christopher Marlowe in the 1604 play “The Tragical History of D. Faustus” and reinvigorated by Goethe’s “Faust” two centuries later (and notably referenced by 19th-century opera composers Gounod and Berlioz), has been one […]
