Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, performed by Oxford Theatre Guild, December 2013

Bored with study, Doctor Faustus looks for a short cut to infinite knowledge in his magic books -- and raises Satan’s little helper, Mephistopheles, who joins the renegade scholar as they rampage across Europe. Faustus squanders the Devil’s promised prize of knowing it all in his pursuit of shallow and hedonistic pleasures; after all, the payment demand for his immortal soul seems so insignificant. In a world where the internet grants us boundless knowledge and we fill precious time with cat antics, pornog