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Doctor Faustus is based on an older tale; it is believed to be the first dramatization of the Faust legend.^{[citation needed]}

Some scholars^[6] believe that Marlowe developed the story from a popular 1592 translation, commonly called The English Faust Book,^[7]. There is an official 1528 Ingolstadt municipal reference to a "suspicious" Doctor Faustus.^{[citation needed]} There is thought to have been an earlier, lost, German edition of 1587, which itself may have been influenced by even earlier, equally unpreserved pamphlets in Latin, such as those that likely inspired Jacob Bidermanns treatment of the damnation of the doctor of Paris, Cenodoxus (1602). Whatever the inspiration, the development of Marlowe's play is very faithful to the Faust Book especially in the way it mixes comedy with tragedy.^{[citation needed]}