How The Picture of Dorian Gray drew on Dr. Faustus
A documented line of influence: Oscar Wilde demonstrably engaged Christopher Marlowe’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Dr. Faustus
Christopher Marlowe · 1588
RenaissanceThe influenced
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde · 1890
The Age of the NovelRelevance
7/10
On The Picture of Dorian Gray’s page
- Dorian's last unheeded plea replays Faustus's death-bed scene — both men believe repentance has come too late, and Wilde borrows the very phrase: "It is too late" from Marlowe's "Is't not too late?"
- Lord Henry is a transplanted Mephistopheles, the tempter steering a man toward his own ruin
- Wilde called the soul-for-youth idea "old in the history of literature" — Marlowe's Dr. Faustus is where that bargain got its definitive English form
On Dr. Faustus’s page
- Marlowe's damnation gave Wilde his ending — the soul-for-youth bargain that Wilde said was "old in the history of literature, but to which I have given a new form"
- Wilde, an Oxford classicist steeped in Renaissance drama, lifts Faustus's despairing "Is't not too late?" straight into Dorian's own "It is too late"
- And Lord Henry is Mephistopheles transplanted — the seductive tempter who talks a man out of his soul