ABSTRACT
After Christopher Marlowe the first literary man of prominence to interest himself positively in the Faust tradition was the German dramatist and critic G. E. Lessing (1729–1781). Lessing was probably familiar with the stage play as early as his student days but the impulse to modernize and deepen the content of the play doubtless came from a performance of the Schuch troupe which he saw in Berlin in 1754. The earliest evidence which we have that he was working on a Faust play is in a letter from Moses Mendelssohn dated Nov. 19, 1755.
