Short answers, pulled from the story.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe began writing the Urfaust manuscript between 1772 and 1775. This early draft contained twenty-two scenes and over 1,441 lines of verse, much of which was prose. The manuscript was lost for nearly a century before being discovered in 1886.
Mephistopheles wagered that if he could provide Faust with a single moment of perfect happiness that Faust would wish to stay in forever, Faust would die and serve the Devil in Hell. If Faust did not find such a moment, he would remain free to strive for his own redemption. The pact was signed with a drop of Faust's own blood.
Gretchen is a young woman named Margarete who is simple, pious, and untouched by the cynicism of the world. She is seduced by Faust through manipulations involving a neighbor named Marthe Schwerdtlein and a box of jewels. Her life is destroyed by a chain of events that includes the death of her mother and brother, her pregnancy, and her eventual execution.
The first complete version of Part One of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust did not appear until 1808. A revised edition followed in 1828, and the second part was published in 1832, the year after Goethe's death. The play has remained the work with the largest audience numbers on German-language stages.
The English translation by Bayard Taylor, published in 1870 and 1871, is considered one of the finest and remained in print for a century. The first partial English translation appeared in 1821, attributed to the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, though this attribution remains controversial. The play has been translated into numerous languages including Japanese by Mori Oga in 1913 and Chinese by Guo Moruo in 1928 and 1947.
The first complete, unabridged performance of both parts was staged in 1938 at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. The first partial performance of the play took place on the 24th of May 1819 in Berlin, and the first complete performance of Part One was staged on the 29th of January 1829 in Braunschweig. A 2000 production at Expo 2000 in Hanover took 21 hours to perform.