Audiobook The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

Doctor Faustus, a brilliant scholar dissatisfied with the traditional limits of human knowledge in philosophy, medicine, law, and divinity, turns his brilliant mind toward necromancy. Guided by the German magicians Valdes and Cornelius, he successfully summons the demon Mephistophilis and strikes a fatal bargain with Lucifer: twenty-four years of absolute power, supreme knowledge, and unrestrained sensual indulgence in exchange for his immortal soul and body. Sealed in his own blood with the ominous warning to flee inscribed upon his arm, Faustus embarks on a global tour of mischief and wonder, conjuring spirits, mocking the Pope, baffling the Emperor with visions of Alexander the Great, and gratifying every fleeting desire, including the ghostly beauty of Helen of Greece.

Throughout these twenty-four years, good and evil angels constantly pull at the scholar’s conscience, urging repentance while diabolical forces harden his heart into despair. Despite moments of deep remorse and the desperate pleas of an old man urging him toward the path of life, Faustus repeatedly silences his own conscience, convincing himself that his damnation is absolute and that divine mercy is forever beyond his reach. He plunges deeper into hedonism and intellectual arrogance, using his demonic servant to summon historical phantoms and indulge his every whim.

As the final hour approaches, the scholar’s bravado completely dissolves into agonizing terror as he confesses his catastrophic mistake to his fellow academics. Refusing their desperate offers to pray for his salvation, he spends his last sixty minutes pleading in vain for the clock to stop, for his soul to dissolve into the ocean, or for mountains to fall and hide him from the wrath of God. When the clock finally strikes twelve, a fierce tempest of thunder and lightning breaks across the room, and devils descend upon the scholar to tear his body apart and drag his tormented soul down into eternal darkness.