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Teaching Doctor Faustus

Get Marlowe'd.

  • Activities: 13
  • Quiz Questions: 65

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So, you're teaching an old-timey German folktale turned 1500s British morality tale?

Uh...yeah. Good luck. You're gonna want our help with this one. But luckily, we here at Shmoop are huge fans of Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe's enduring story of free will and the devil.

In this guide, you'll find

  • class projects about enduring themes in pop culture.
  • scaffolded analysis of all of Doctor Faustus' allusions.
  • debates—about doom. Good times.

You don't have to make a deal with the devil to make your students love Doctor Faustus—all you need is Shmoop.

What's Inside Shmoop's Literature Teaching Guides

Shmoop is a labor of love from folks who love to teach. Our teaching guides will help you supplement in-classroom learning with fun, engaging, and relatable learning materials that bring literature to life.

Inside each guide you'll find quizzes, activity ideas, discussion questions, and more—all written by experts and designed to save you time. Here are the deets on what you get with your teaching guide:

  • 13-18 Common Core-aligned activities to complete in class with your students, including detailed instructions for you and your students. 
  • Discussion and essay questions for all levels of students.
  • Reading quizzes for every chapter, act, or part of the text.
  • Resources to help make the book feel more relevant to your 21st-century students.
  • A note from Shmoop's teachers to you, telling you what to expect from teaching the text and how you can overcome the hurdles.

Want more help teaching Teaching Doctor Faustus?

Check out all the different parts of our corresponding learning guide.



Instructions for You

Objective: What we want students to do in this activity is to advocate (not necessarily for the devil, hah) for a side in one of the oldest slugfests in all of philosophical history: the power of free will versus predestination.

Our goal for this assignment is for students to actively craft and present their case for one interpretation of Doctor Faustus; at the same time we want students to be able to anticipate the arguments that might come from the other side. We want students to be able to trace and evaluate a philosophical position in the play, and also be able to use evidence to justify their case.

Materials Needed: A copy of the text and/or Shmoop’s handy summary

Step 1: Pose a few brainstorming questions to the class to jog a discussion about free will versus predestination: 

  • Was Faustus always doomed, or did he just choose the wrong path? 
  • Did anything influence Faustus along the way in his journey? 
  • Did he ever have a choice?

Encourage civil debate.

Step 2: Explain to students that they will take a side in this debate and craft a carefully worded argument for either predestination or free will as the guiding force in Doctor Faustus. The paper will require three specific parts:

  • A well-written five-paragraph essay arguing for one side of the debate (either freewill or predestination as the overarching force in the play).
  • A two-paragraph "Straw Man" argument where students describe what they think the other side would say about their argument.
  • A brief rebuttal to Part 2.

The papers should be approximately 700 words total, and should include specific references to the text.

Step 3: Once everyone’s finished, it’d be great to get a conversation going between the two sides of this debate. We don’t expect anyone to settle this in one day, but it’s a recurring theme in literature and so we think it deserves some serious discussion. Maybe that’s just our free will talking…

Instructions for Your Students

What's a more frightening thought: that you are in complete, total, and utter control of every decision of your life, or that your future is predestined and nothing you can do will change it? Think about it for a second, and try not to go screaming into the night. This age old debate rears its ugly head in Doctor Faustus: is Faustus (quite literally) damned if he does and damned if he doesn't, or does he just choose extremely poorly?

Today, we want you to take a side on the predestination vs. free will debate and craft an argument in support of your side but also create an example of how you think your opponents would respond to you.

Step 1: Listen to your teacher and think deeply about the topics of discussion. 

  • Was Faustus always doomed, or did he just choose the wrong path? 
  • Did anything influence Faustus in his journey? 
  • Did anything trick him or force his hand?

Step 2: Taking the discussion into consideration, now you’re going to craft a carefully worded argument for either predestination or free will as the guiding force in Doctor Faustus. The paper will require three specific parts:

  • A well-written five-paragraph essay arguing for one side of the debate (either freewill or predestination as the overarching force in the play).
  • A two-paragraph "Straw Man" argument where you’ll describe what you think the other side would say about their argument.
  • A brief rebuttal to Part 2.

The papers should be approximately 700 words total, and should include specific references to the text.

Step 3: Once everyone’s finished, it’d be great to get a conversation going between the two sides of this debate. We don’t expect anyone to settle this in one day, but it’s a recurring theme in literature and so we think it deserves some serious discussion. Maybe that’s just our free will talking…