Unlike the previous partial publication of the play as Faust: A Fragment (1790), the first edition of Faust: A Tragedy was published without a frontispiece – in keeping with Goethe’s wishes. “Usually copper and poetry parody each other. I think the sorcerer must make do on his own,” Goethe wrote to his publisher, Johann Friedrich Cotta, on 25 November 1805. By around 1800, Goethe had decided to divide the extensive material into two parts. The 1808 edition contains the opening frame-story and “Part One of the Tragedy”. This ends with Faust and Mephistopheles’ escape from the dungeon where Margarete is awaiting execution for infanticide.