After the production of Marlowe’s play the name of Faustus appears to have become a household word, and there are various allusions to the character in contemporary writings, including a reference in Shakespeare’s _Merry Wives_. William Prynne relates in his _Histrio-Mastix, The Players’ Scourge_, 1663, a curious incident which occurred during a performance. He is quoting the tragic end of many who have been slain in playhouses in London, “Nor yet to recite the sudden fearful burning even to the ground, both of the Globe and Fortune Playhouses, no man perceiving how these fires came: together with the visible apparition of the Devil on the Stage at the Belsavage Playhouse, in Queen Elizabeth’s days (to the great amazement both of the Actors and Spectators) whiles they were there profanely playing the History of Faustus, ... there being some distracted with that fearful sight.” There was no further development of the theme in this country, for it degenerated into a subject for farce and pantomime. There were further editions of the English Faust book, and in the year 1664 there was published in London _The History of Doctor John Faustus; Compiled in Verse, very pleasant and Delightfull_, with a doggerel dedication to the reader:— “Reader, I would not have you think, That I intend to waste my ink, While Faustus Story I reherse, And here do write his life in verse. For seeing Fryer Bacons Story, (In whom Oxford still may glory) For want of better pen comes forth, Compos’d in Rymes of no great worth: I call’d my Muse to task, and pend Faustus life, and death, and end. And when it cometh forth in print, If you like it not, the Devil’s in’t.” A farce by the actor W. Mountford, _Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, with the Humours of Harlequin and Scaramuch_, was acted at the Queen’s Theatre in Dorset Gardens between 1684 and 1688, and revived later at the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. It was borrowed for the most part, with the exception, of course, of the harlequinade, from Marlowe.