The story of Faustus's adventurous life and shocking death, with its impressive lessons, appears at first to have been kept extant only by oral tradition. Nearly forty years passed before it was written down and printed. But then, indeed, the book was received with so much favor, that not only several new and enlarged editions appeared in a short time, but many similar works were published soon after, which, though founded on the oldest Volksbuch (of 1588) and Widmann's "Histories," were yet abundant in new facts and inventions. And that not to the illiterate classes alone was the subject interesting is proved by the circumstance that a Latin version of the first Volksbuch was advertised, and (probably) appeared. On the title-pages of all these books it is expressly stated that they were written as a warning to, and for the edification of, Christian readers. In 1712, a book was published at Berlin, under the title, "Zauberkünste und Leben Dr. Fausti," (The Magic Arts and Life of Dr. Faust,) as the author of which Christoph Wagner was named. Wagner himself became the subject of a biographical work. Of still greater effect was Faustus's history on the stage. Through the whole of the seventeenth, as well as the first half of the eighteenth century, it remained one of the favorite subjects of puppet-shows, popular melodramas, exhibitions of _ombres chinoises_, and pantomimes. The more the awful event, with its moral lessons, receded into the background of time, the more it lost its serious and impressive character, until it became a mere burlesque, and _Hanswurst_ and _Casperle_ its principal figures. The "Historie" had scarcely appeared, when it was translated into Dutch, and the later publication of other similar works did not prevent the demand for several new editions. These Dutch books were illustrated, as were also the _newer_ German ones. Only a little later, two French versions were published, one of which was even reprinted at Paris as late as 1712.