Reviewed by: The Faust Legend: From Marlowe and Goethe to Contemporary Drama and Film by Sara Munson Deats Katherine H. Paul Sara Munson Deats. The Faust Legend: From Marlowe and Goethe to Contemporary Drama and Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, 275 pp. In her 2019 book The Faust Legend: From Marlowe and Goethe to Contemporary Drama and Film, Sara Munson Deats chronicles the life of the Faust legend from its forerunners and early iterations through its contemporary musical theatre and film adaptations. Each chapter is dedicated to a different chronological period, beginning with the background and early origins of the Faust legend. Her first chapter, "The Background of the Faust Legend" focuses on the origins of the Faust legend. It begins by looking at the Magus Legends, Simon Magus, St. Cyprian, and Theophilus, whose fantastic feats and superhuman powers align with many of the traits associated with Faust as the legend takes shape. Deats then discusses medieval biblical and morality plays as an important step in the development of the Faust legend because of their allegorical nature and their use of a devil or Antichrist figure that sets the stage, so to speak, for future Faust and Mephistopheles characters like those in the early literary version of the story. Then, the mysterious historic Faust is discussed. Deats outlines the issues of [End Page 381] time and namesake that are associated with this person and speaks broadly on whether or not a true Faust existed. A discussion of the Faustbooks, both the English and German versions, with a more in-depth look at the English version of this text, completes the first chapter. Her second chapter is dedicated solely to Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. Deats offers a complete look at the text, speaking on issues related to publication date and authorship, and also includes a brief synopsis of the performance history. She then offers two close readings of the text: one Christian reading and an alternative reading of the play. The inclusion of these close readings of the text makes this chapter great secondary source material for any Faust-focused course in English or in German, offering a means of making students aware of what the text itself presents to readers and suggesting methods that students could use to examine a text more closely. Goethe's Faust is the focus of the third chapter, "From Hero to Harlequin." The chapter begins with a brief explanation of the time following Marlowe's success with Doctor Faustus, during which others turned Marlowe's Doctor Faustus into farces, harlequinades, or puppet shows. It was these farces and puppet shows that influenced German versions in the same style, which Deats posits are likely the first place that Goethe encountered the Faust material. She includes a brief discussion of the date of the play and she emphasizes the influence of the Zeitgeist of the sixty-year period during which Goethe wrote the text. She also briefly writes about Faust's performance history, in which she mentions the difficulty, or rather intimidation, factor of producing a play of that length. It is here that she mentions Peter Stein's ambitious 2000 production of both Faust I and Faust II in their entirety, a feat not attempted by many. She then digs deeper into the content of Goethe's adaptation, pointing out some of the changes Goethe made, like his redemption of Faust from hell's flames. She also mentions Goethe's transformation of Marlowe's text and hero into "a magnificent drama that fits no category, a phantasmagoric epic with a biblical flame, numerous fantastic masques and pageants, an aspiring hero, and a surprise happy ending." In addition to her initial discussion of the play and its context within its literary tradition and within Goethe's time, she offers an alternative reading of the play as well, in which she discusses the political exploitation of the play and how different ideologies have used the text for their specific purposes. She finally offers a more traditional close reading of both Faust I and Faust II, in which she addresses some of the more traditional concerns associated with the work. The fourth chapter marks a transition in...