Context: The death of the greatest of Elizabethan dramatists, next to Shakespeare, "Stab'd with a dagger" by a drinking companion, Ingram Frizer, at the age of twenty-nine, has been ascribed to a plot by the Puritans because of the playwright's atheistic and heretical religious principles. Yet how could any heretic write such a Puritanical sermon as the struggle of Dr. Faustus with his conscience, his final awful soliloquy, and the terrifying climax of this play, where amid thunder and lightning the devils carry him off to hell? The German scholar brings his punishment on himself. Reviewing the vast knowledge he possesses, Dr. John Faustus pronounces it futile. He decides to take up magic and with a spell conjures up Mephostopilis with whom he signs a pact: his soul in return for twenty-four years of service from Lucifer's chief minister. Receiving the signed document, the Minister of Hell speaks: