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This guide breaks down the prologue of Christopher Marlowe’s Dr Faustus for high school and college literature students. It focuses on the prologue’s role in setting up the play’s plot, themes, and narrative voice. You will find actionable resources for class discussion, quiz prep, and essay drafting.
The prologue to Dr Faustus establishes the protagonist’s background, frames the play’s moral stakes, and introduces the core conflict of ambition against religious doctrine. It is delivered by a Chorus figure that sets expectations for the tragic arc that follows. Use this analysis to ground all subsequent reading of the play, as every key plot point ties back to details laid out in the prologue.
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The prologue of Dr Faustus is the opening spoken segment delivered by a Chorus, a holdover from classical Greek drama used in Elizabethan theater to orient the audience. It skips traditional epic framing to focus directly on Faustus’s ordinary origins, his academic success, and the fateful choice to pursue forbidden knowledge that drives the play’s action. It explicitly signals that the work will be a tragedy, not a historical or comedic story.
Next step: Highlight three lines in your copy of the prologue that explicitly signal the play’s tragic outcome to reference in your first reading notes.
Action: Look up 2 key facts about Elizabethan beliefs about magic and religious heresy to contextualize the prologue’s moral framing.
Output: 1 short bulleted list of context facts to attach to your prologue notes.
Action: Annotate every line of the prologue for word choice related to success, excess, and punishment.
Output: A fully annotated copy of the prologue with color-coded notes for each thematic category.
Action: Link the prologue’s narrative choices to at least two later scenes in the play.
Output: A 1-page connection log that tracks how prologue details appear in subsequent acts.
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Action: Read the prologue once for general understanding, then a second time to highlight any lines that reference ambition, morality, or fate.
Output: A color-coded annotated copy of the prologue with 3-5 marked lines tied to core play themes.
Action: As you read the rest of the play, note every scene that references or expands on a detail first shared in the prologue.
Output: A 2-column log that matches prologue lines to corresponding later scenes, with 1-sentence notes on the connection.
Action: Use your annotations and connection log to draft a 5-sentence analysis of the prologue’s narrative purpose.
Output: A polished short response you can use for class participation, homework, or exam study notes.
Teacher looks for: Clear understanding of the prologue’s content, speaker, and basic narrative function, with no factual errors about key details.
How to meet it: Reference specific details from the prologue in all analysis, and confirm you can correctly identify the Chorus as the speaker before submitting work.
Teacher looks for: Explicit links between prologue details and broader themes, events, and character choices across the full play.
How to meet it: Include at least one connection between a prologue detail and a later scene in every essay or short response about the prologue.
Teacher looks for: Recognition of how the prologue fits into Elizabethan dramatic conventions, including the use of a Chorus and tragic structure.
How to meet it: Add 1-2 sentences about how the prologue follows or subverts common Elizabethan play opening conventions to your analysis.
The prologue serves three core functions for the play. It orients the audience to Faustus’s background, sets the play’s genre as a tragedy, and establishes the moral lens through which viewers should interpret Faustus’s choices. Use this information to frame all your initial predictions about the play’s plot before moving to Act 1.
Every major theme of the play is introduced directly in the prologue. These include the danger of unchecked ambition, the conflict between secular knowledge and religious faith, and the weight of personal responsibility for one’s choices. Jot down these three themes in your notes and track how they appear in every subsequent scene.
The Chorus is an impartial narrator, not a character in the main action of the play. Its detached tone signals that the audience should view Faustus’s choices as a cautionary example, not a heroic story. Note the contrast between the Chorus’s plain speech and Faustus’s elaborate rhetoric in your first read of Act 1, Scene 1.
The prologue explicitly says the play will not cover grand wars, royal courts, or mythic feats. This choice frames Faustus as an ordinary, relatable person, making his tragic fall feel more accessible to the audience. Use this detail in class discussion to explain why Marlowe’s tragedy feels relevant even for modern viewers.
If you have a class discussion about the prologue coming up, prepare one question about the Chorus’s narrative role and one question about the prologue’s thematic framing to contribute. Practice phrasing your questions clearly so you can speak comfortably when the conversation starts.
If you are writing an essay about Faustus’s tragic arc, open your outline by mapping the prologue’s explicit claims about Faustus’s fate to his final lines in the play’s last scene. This will give your essay a clear, consistent throughline that ties the entire work together.
The prologue is spoken by a Chorus, a classic Elizabethan dramatic device that serves as an impartial narrator to orient the audience to the play’s context and themes.
Marlowe reveals the tragic ending upfront to shift audience focus from plot surprise to analysis of why Faustus makes the self-destructive choices that lead to his downfall.
The prologue establishes Faustus’s background, sets the play’s moral and thematic framing, and signals to the audience that the work is a tragedy focused on personal choice and consequence.
Yes, referencing the prologue strengthens almost any essay about the play, as it provides explicit narrative and thematic context that supports arguments about character, theme, and structure.
Editorial note: This page is independently written for educational support. Verify specifics with assigned class materials and the original text.
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