The second scene brings us from the fairy into the court atmosphere. The Emperor sits on his throne, surrounded by all sorts of courtiers, ministers, and other appendages of Majesty; the astrologer and the fool, significantly for those times (for we must suppose the end of the fifteenth or the beginning of the sixteenth century), occupying not the least conspicuous place. Forthwith begins a somewhat prolix discourse between the Imperial Majesty and his principal ministers—Chancellor, Treasurer, Master of the Household, etc., the burden of which is—a very common one with great people and people in office—that they have no money and are at their wit’s end how to get it. The fool, into whose shoes Mephistopheles has cunningly shuffled himself, is applied to for the aid of his sage counsels, and is not slow with the common resource of German devils and necromancers—hidden treasures. But before the spade and the mattock can be brought into play to unearth this hidden heap, as it happens to be Carnival, there must be a masquerade. The Emperor, too, has just come from Rome, whither he had gone, according to the laudable old custom of the Heinrichs and Ottos and Friedrichs, to get himself dubbed Holy Roman Emperor, and with his crown on his head, he has brought also the fool’s cap. Scene third, accordingly, exhibits a rich show of foolery and masquerading of all sorts. Flower-girls and gardeners; mothers and daughters; fishers, fowlers, and foresters; Pulcinellos, parasites, and drunkards; poets and critics; the three Graces, Aglaia, Hegemone, and Euphrosyne; the three Fates, Atropos, Clotho, and Lachesis; the three Furies, Alecto, Megæra, and Tisiphone; Fear, Hope, and Providence leading in Victory, who stands on the top parapet of a tower—all this moves in motley operatic splendour before the eyes of the spectator; and the various personages, as they pass, festoon themselves, so to speak, with short speeches and moral reflections in the style of the masques of our old English dramatists—points prettily enough curled and frizzled, and agreeable enough, doubtless, to hear with music in an opera, but rather wearisome to read in a long sequence as part of a written play. Then, that Doctor Faust may have something to do in his own peculiar province of magic, for the command of which, as we know, he has sold his soul to the Devil, we have a grand chariot brought upon the stage by four horses; and in this chariot are two allegorical personages, the charioteer boy (Knabenlenker), that is to say, Poetry or intellectual wealth, and Plutus, the god of material wealth, a character fitly sustained by Doctor Faust himself. These two scatter their riches profusely among the mob of masquers—Poetry pearls and spangles, which turn into moths and beetles as soon as snatched; Plutus golden guineas and silver pennies; but they are red hot, and burn the fingers of the appropriators. A general row takes place, which, however, is only the overture to a greater one, with which the masquerade concludes. Preceded and surrounded by dancing groups of fauns and satyrs, giants, nymphs, and gnomes, the Emperor appears in the character of the great Pan, the All of the world (πᾶν). Plutus, i.e. Faustus, is now ready to close the scene with a fire trick, like to that which, on the first start of his magical career, he played off upon Brander, Siebel, Frosch, and the other worthies of Auerbach’s cellar. The little dwarfish gnomes take the mighty Pan by the hand and lead him to a hole in the rock, whence a fountain of fire wells out with many a freakish spurt of subterranean flame. This the universal δαίμων, or mighty Pan, beholds with infinite satisfaction; but lo! as he bends forward to contemplate such miracle more near, his beard unglues itself and catches fire; and the flame begins to play about at a furious rate, cracking like a whip right and left, and with long snaky tongues licking the roof of the welkin. The stage is now one web of confusion and consternation; all hands are at work to clap extinguishment on the earth-born flame; but the more they plash and potter in the wild element, the more it blazes, and the cry is raised—Oh treason!—that the Emperor is burning; whereupon the herald very appropriately lifts up the moral complaint:—
“O Youth, O Youth! and wilt thou never
Learn to rein thy fancies flighty?
O Highness, Highness! wilt thou never
Be as wise as thou art mighty?”
and herewith, and with a conjuration of soft dews and mists convocated by Plutus to lay the flaming devils whom he had raised, ends the spectacle and the scene.
What next? The fourth scene discovers the Emperor on his holy Roman throne, as in the second. Faust hopes that his Majesty has readily pardoned the frolic of flame-jugglery with which the preceding day’s sport had ended; and the Emperor expresses his high delight with the exhibition of such tricks; for nothing could give him greater pleasure than to imagine himself for a season a king of salamanders. Mephistopheles then comes forward with the finished draught of his new scheme for the replenishing of the Imperial exchequer; and, that his Majesty may not have long to wait for the drudgery of the mattock and spade in bringing to light the hidden treasures before promised, the affair is to be managed in the meantime by paper money; and straightway, upon the faith of the to-be-unearthed gold, the Minister of Finance is relieved from his perplexities, and the whole country rises and swells and billows up in a flux of prosperity. This as a prelude; but the serious work is yet to come. The Emperor requests the great conjuror to produce for his amusement something better than salamanders, and more wonderful even than paper money. He wishes to see the famous beauty, the Spartan Helen who set Troy on fire, and Paris the princely shepherd, whose well-trimmed locks and gold-embroidered mantle had prevailed to seduce her from her fidelity to her royal husband. Faust engages to gratify the Imperial wishes; and Mephistopheles, after a little demurring—the shades of the classical world being not within his proper domain—consents. Whereupon the hero, holding in his hand a magic key which he has received from his comrade, descends through the earth into the empty and bodiless realm of the Mothers; and, having abstracted from their presence a mystical tripod, ascends into the upper air, and appears before the Imperial Court, where, habited as a priest, he instantly invokes the shade of the famous pair, to whom Aphrodite has been so lavish of her gifts. They forthwith appear, and, environed by music and mist, exhibit their classical charms, and repeat their storied loves to the modern eye. The exhibition, of course, after the first surprise is over, produces different effects on the spectators, according to their different tastes; the Court critics, like other brethren of the same carping fraternity, must have something to object, even to the queen of beauties; but Faust is fascinated, and, at the first glance, falls violently in love with the phantom which himself had raised. As before the vanishing form which he had seen in the magic mirror, when in the witches’ kitchen, so here again he stands transfixed with wonder, gazes in ecstasy, glows with passion, and, losing all sense of propriety, raves in jealous indignation at Paris, for venturing to handle too familiarly the object of his adoration. He then rushes insanely to seize the bodiless form; but no sooner has fleshly touch troubled the spiritual essence than an explosion follows. The Doctor falls down in a swoon; the fair apparitions vanish; and Mephistopheles, taking the hero on his back, leaves the scene of the luckless conjuration amid darkness and confusion. Thus ends the first act.
The second act displays the old Gothic, high-vaulted, narrow chamber which we remember to have seen in the first scene of the first act of this strange drama. This chamber formerly belonged to Doctor Faust; it now belongs to his hopeful disciple in the art of alchemy, the learned Doctor Wagner, whom we at once recognise as an old friend. To refresh old memories further, the same young student is introduced, to whom Mephistopheles, masqued in academical cap and gown, had given such admirable instructions on his first entrance to college life. He is now no longer a freshman, but a Bachelor of Arts, well crammed with the customary amount of book lore, notable, also, for a certain heroic dash of scepticism, which has taught him to believe that a large amount of what passes for learning in the world is humbug, and that the professors of learning, generally, are only a more respectable sort of quacks. He stands in no need now of a Faust or a Mephistopheles to instruct him; for he knows more than all the most learned doctors can teach him by the simple omnipotence of his own conceit. He has studied theology under some neologic doctor of the age, is a decided disbeliever in the personality of the Devil, and boasts with the most confident faith in the infallibility of his own Ego—“Unless I will, no devil may exist!” But the principal character in this scene is the learned Doctor Wagner himself, who is exhibited in his laboratory, bending and blowing over the hot coals of his furnace in the act of making a man. And anon, not so much by the chymick wit of Wagner, of course, as by the magic of Mephistopheles, Homunculus does actually come forth, all glowing and eager, enclosed within a glass phial, a brisk little fellow, brimful of elastic energy, and fired with the heroic resolve to be developed into the fulness of the freedom of the perfect man, bursting his vitreous hull with all possible expedition. To his chymick “fatherkin” Wagner he pays little or no respect, but recognises Mephistopheles on the spot as first cousin; in Faust, and the dreams of Spartan Helen that occupy his fancy, being, like the Doctor, of a hot and amorous temperament, he takes a wonderful interest; and, spurred on by that lust of intellectual adventure which is characteristic of his nature, after a few preliminary remarks, proposes to Mephistopheles that they should all three set themselves afloat on the magic mantle, and balloon over to Thessaly, where, amid the haunts of Erichtho and other famous witches, an assembly of old classical ghosts and goblins, heroes and heroines, is that night to be held. On this phantasmal expedition the worthy triad accordingly set out without delay; Homunculus to enlarge his mind and achieve development; Faust to search out Helen; and Mephistopheles from mere curiosity; for, in fact, he is quite a stranger in the classical Hades, and is not, from anything that has come to his ear, inclined to imagine that there is anything in Olympus which will suit his humour half so well as the witches on the Brocken.
We are now prepared for what the poet has evidently dressed up with special care, as the imposing spectacle of the second act, intending to overpower the senses of the spectator with a profusion of imaginative wealth, in the same fashion as he managed the Carnival in the first act; with this slight difference, that, whereas there we had a show of masqued realities, here we have a show of real phantoms. To this phantasmal exhibition the poet gives the name of the Classical Walpurgis-Night, or May-Day Night, the counterpart of the Gothic Walpurgis-Night set forth with such power and variety in the first part of the drama. Like the short intermezzo of Oberon and Titania’s golden wedding on the Brocken, the strange motley dance of figures that are here made to pop up before us with significant saws in their mouths, have little or nothing to do with the main action of the piece. Faust and Homunculus and Mephistopheles appear at intervals merely flitting through its luxuriant variety like fire-flies in a forest full of lions and tigers, and camelopards, and every curious wild beast. The scene is in the Pharsalian Plains—Thessaly being the native ground of classical witchcraft and enchantment—the time of course midnight. The prologue is spoken by Erichtho, Lucan’s famous witch, in Iambic trimeters which the poet handles with the fine rhythmical tact so prominent in all his productions. Immediately after her monologue the three magical aeronauts appear; then colossal ants gathering gold grains; with them gigantic griffins, keepers of the gold, and Arimaspi fighting with the griffins for its possession; then Sphynxes, and Sirens, and Stymphalides, and various, to the classical ear familiar, monsters of the bird genus, who hold much talk, but not of much significance, with Faust and his conductor. Suddenly the scene changes to the banks of the Peneus, where the god of the classical flood sits crowned with reeds, surrounded by gracefully sportive groups of Nymphs, and majestically sailing swans. Thereafter a hollow tramp of horses’ hoofs announces the arrival of the Centaur Chiron, wise pedagogue of Achilles and other renowned classical heroes. Him Faust accosts, and requests a clue to the haunt of the fair Helen, the possession of whom still burns in his inordinate desire as the only thing capable of making him happy. To this request the wise bi-form demi-god is not able, from his own resources, to accede; but he takes the Doctor on his back; and off they tramp together to the temple-cave of Manto—the famous prophet-daughter of Æsculapius. With her Faust enters the subterranean regions, the realm of Persephone; and the possession of Helen, as we shall see in the third act, is the reward of his intrepidity. But, though Faust seems now amply provided for, the phantasmal hubbub goes on. The Sirens and the Sphynxes again come to the front, singing and soliloquising as before; likewise the ants and the griffins; and to them presently are associated, Seismos (earthquake), the Pygmies or Lilliputians, and the Idæan Dactyles or Tom Thumbs of antiquity; with them—in honour of Schiller, we may suppose—the cranes of Ibycus; then Empusa the foul ass-footed blood-sucking hag, and troops of hideous Lamias to captivate the Gothic taste of Mephistopheles; but even these are not ugly enough for him; so he wanders on through the Fair, till he encounters the three daughters of Phorcys, who had only one eye and one tooth among them; and from one of these he borrows her hideous mask, that he may perform juggleries behind it in a future part of the play. Meanwhile Homunculus, in prosecution of his eager desire to be developed, has hunted out two philosophers, Anaxagoras and Thales; and under the guidance of the latter, he proceeds through the peopled air to the adjacent bays of the Ægean Sea, where the marine gods and demi-gods are holding their revels. To this water-festival the scene finally changes; and forthwith a new swarm of vocal apparitions begins to buzz around us; among whom (besides the Sirens, whom we had before) Nereus and Proteus, the Telchins of Rhodes, the Cabiri of Samothrace, with troops of shell-blowing Tritons, and Nereids riding on dolphins and hippocampes, are the most remarkable. With these fair apparitions, and the pleasant aquatic sports in which they are engaged, Homunculus, under the appropriate teaching of Thales, the water-philosopher, seems vastly delighted; and mounting on the dolphin-back of Proteus, careers about from creek to creek, seeking anxiously for a just occasion of being fully developed. This desired consummation, accordingly, happens sooner perhaps than the little man had fancied, and in an unexpected fashion; for, as he bounds along from wave to wave gallantly, on the back of the multiform sea-god, the lovely Galatea, the fairest of the daughters of Doris, suddenly presents herself to his view, all radiant with marine beauty, like a sea-Venus, drawn in a shell-car. To stand unmoved at such a spectacle was not possible, as we may remember, even to ponderous Polypheme in the Ovidian ballad, much less to a nimble and highly excitable Homunculus. A commotion is immediately observed in the waters close to Galatea’s car; the silver foam becomes red and glowing; the spark of Homunculus dilates itself into a blaze; a breaking of glass and a plashing of water is heard; and a bright illumination spreads itself widely over the festal waves. Hereupon breaks in full and symphonious the song of the Sirens.
“Hail to Ocean, silver plashing,
Hail to Fire around it flashing,
Hail to pure Air’s breezy pinions,
Hail to deep Earth’s dark dominions;
Blithely to the elements four,
Festal notes symphonious pour.”
And with this erotic explosion the Classical Walpurgis-Night ends, and the third act of the drama commences. This third act is entirely made up of another fanciful piece, exhibiting the phantasmal loves of Faust and Helen. The famous Lacedæmonian beauty appears surrounded by a chorus of Trojan captive maids in the palace of Menelaus, at Sparta. Her husband, on the way back from the weary capture of Troy, is still on the broad seas, Helen having been sent before to prepare a sacrifice in honour of his expected arrival. For this sacrifice everything had been prescribed by Menelaus, only not the victim; and, while Helen is wondering with herself what might be the cause of this omission, Mephistopheles suddenly appears in the mask of one of the Phorcyades, and, giving himself out for the old housekeeper of the palace, succeeds in filling the mind of Helen with no unreasonable fears, that she is, in fact, herself the victim destined by her death to atone for the decennial toils and troubles of the Greeks before Ilium. From the imminent danger thus impending there is no safety for the fair but to throw herself under the guidance of Mephistopheles, into the arms of Faust, who, by his accustomed magical machinery, has established himself in a grand Gothic castle, hard by, among the ridges of Taygetus. No sooner is this resolution taken, than the scene suddenly changes from a classical palace a thousand years before Christ, to a Gothic castle a thousand years after Christ, where, in the midst of knights and squires, courtiers, cavaliers, and other appropriate supernumeraries, marshalled plentifully around, the thaumaturgic Doctor appears as a German prince of the Middle Ages, with dignity and loyal regard, coming forward to pay his homage to the paragon of classical beauty. After a few gallant speeches gracefully made and gracefully responded to, Helen, of course, surrenders at discretion; and the scene changes to a lovely Arcadian district, with wood and water, mountain and mead, richly variegating the pastoral solitude, the abode of love. What is there enacted you may guess partly, but not altogether; you may well imagine that Faust and Helen are there depicted as enjoying all the raptures that, to transcendental lovers, in such a place, naturally belong; but you will not guess that from their phantasmal embrace a son is born, and that this son, under the name of Euphorion, is neither more nor less than impersonated Poetry, the same, or a similar allegorial character, that we were already introduced to in the first act, under the name of the Boy-charioteer. Here, in this third act, he appears brisk and nimble, tricksy as a Mercury, lovely as a Cupid, precocious, impetuous, and elastic as a Chatterton. And, like a Chatterton, he will not run and leap only in the fashion of common boys, but he bounds and skips, right and left, above and below, without reason or measure. Light and agile in every motion, more like a bird than a boy, he is tempted to believe that the air, not the earth, is his proper element, and, notwithstanding the importunate warnings of his parents, assays, like Icarus, to bestride the air, and, like Icarus, falls and perishes. This mournful catastrophe the poet gladly makes use of to dissolve the spell of Helen’s phantasmal existence, and to put a finale on the unsubstantial classical courtship of Doctor Faust. The mother precipitates herself after the son, a second time to find her home in the dim halls of Proserpine; and the hero, by the direction of Mephistopheles, seizes the dropped mantle of Helen, and, wrapping himself in it, is straightway enveloped in clouds and borne aloft through far space, even back to honest Deutschland, in quest of new adventures.
The fourth act is very short, merely a stepping-stone to the fifth, it would appear. In the first scene Faust is exhibited in a new character. Pleasures both real and fantastical having been exhausted, he now girds his loins to work, and that neither in the Moon nor in any extra-terrene sphere, but even on this sorry planet, which his high-soaring spirit had so long despised:—
“No talk of moons! this earth for mighty deeds
Hath scope enough: the man who dares succeeds;
I’ve hatched a plan of manful stout adventure,
And with brave heart on bold career I enter!”
This is a great improvement, no doubt; but, as Faust never does anything to the end of his career without magic and the fellowship of the Devil, the activity into which he immediately dashes has no effect in exciting the admiration of the spectator. The Emperor, it seems—the same with whom we made acquaintance in the first act—notwithstanding the unexpected aid of hidden treasures and paper money, being a lover of pleasure rather than of governing, has fallen into discredit with his subjects; and a counter-Kaiser—according to the not uncommon practice of Popes and Kaisers in the Middle Ages—is set up. Faust, though he professes himself no great admirer of the special sphere of activity which is opened up by war, nevertheless, for the love he bears to the Emperor, who is a good fellow with a thousand foibles, allows himself to be persuaded by Mephistopheles to take part in the war against the counter-Kaiser. This war, as was to be expected with Mephistopheles behind scenes, is brought speedily to a glorious conclusion, and that specially by the intervention of the three mighty men of David (2 Sam. xxiii. 8), and a host of Undenes with water juggleries, whom Mephistopheles calls to the rescue: and the Doctor, like Bellerophon in Homer, is rewarded for his heroic soldiership by an extensive grant of land along the sea-coast, great part of which, however, has yet to be redeemed from the waves. So ends act the fourth.
Act fifth exhibits our hero, now in extreme old age—exactly one hundred years, we learn from Eckermann—after some seven or eight decades of mortal life spent first in all sorts of vain speculation, and then in all sorts of idle dissipation and lawless indulgence, at length settled down as a landed proprietor, a great agricultural improver, a redeemer of waste lands from the sea, a builder of harbours, and a promoter of trade. But in the midst of engrossing business and continued occupation, as much, at least, as axe and spade, ditch and dyke can furnish him withal, he is the old man still, discontented and unhappy. The lord of a vast tract of sea-coast, and of uncounted acres, he is miserable, because an old peasant and his old wife—Baucis and Philemon—are the owners of a little cottage near his house, and a few lime trees, which deform his lawn and obstruct his view. ’Tis the old story of Ahab, King of Israel, and Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings xxi.), as Mephistopheles, who is well versed in Scripture, takes occasion to inform us. Well, what is to be done? The attendant fiend of course undertakes (like certain Highland proprietors whom we hear of) to expel the good old people from their old dwelling; and Faust, like the same Caledonian aristocracy, solaces his conscience with the salve that he will provide the good people a far more valuable and more convenient lodging in some remote corner of his estate. Meanwhile Mephistopheles, not over scrupulous about means, and not being able to persuade the stiff-necked and timid old snails to creep out of their shell, settles the matter—as has been practised also in the Scottish Highlands—by applying fire to habitation and habitant at once; the pious old pair fall a sacrifice to the greed of the master and the violence of the man; and with this blood on his hands, Faustus now prepares, with all possible heroic confidence, to meet death and to mount up to Heaven.
We are now arrived at the closing scene of this eventful history. ’Tis midnight: the scene is Faust’s castle; before the door of his chamber four grey old hags appear. “I,” says the one, “am called Want.” “I,” says the second, “Guilt.” “I,” says the third, “Care.” “I,” quoth the fourth, “am called Need.” Of these four, however, only one can do, or attempt to do, any harm to the magical Doctor, for he is now a rich man; and rich men can know nothing of Want or Need, nor of Guilt, either, we are told; but Care leaps in through the keyhole, and annoys him a little before his dismissal. The Doctor, however, is heroically determined not to yield to this demon; and he finds his sure remedy for all unpleasant cogitations in unremitted work. The great pioneers of land improvement, canals and ditches, must be proceeded with; and the indefatigable Doctor, even after pestilential Care had blown a blinding blast into his eyes, marches into the grave with the spade and the pick-axe in his hand. Then commences a scene of a most singular character. The terrible jaws of Hell yawn wide on the left side of the stage, and a contest commences between Mephistopheles on the one hand, and the descending angels on the other, for the possession of the soul of Faust. At first the Evil Spirit seems confident of success, strengthened as he is by a numerous host of multiform imps and devils, who come up in swarms from the steaming mouth of the abyss; but the fury of this malignant host is soon disarmed in a very simple way, by a band of young blooming boy-angels scattering a shower of celestial blossoms over the heads of the infernals. Beneath the fire of these apparently innocent weapons, the legion of horned, and dumpy, and wizened devils fall head foremost into the pit whence they had issued; while their mighty master, Mephistopheles, stands so captivated by the bright bloom and the pretty looks of the rosy cherubs, that in the very moment when heroism is most necessary, he loses all his manhood, and a few beardless boys, with psalms and flosculosities, cheat him of the immortal soul which was his by the signature of blood, and by the seal of a lifetime spent in giving free rein to all sorts of foolish fancies and unprincipled iniquities.
After this catastrophe there remains nothing but the formal introduction of Faust to Heaven, for which the closing scene is appropriated. The Virgin Mary, surrounded by pious Anchorites and fair Penitents, with Fathers seraphic and ecstatic, is revealed in the heavenly glory, awaiting the arrival of redeemed souls from earth; and immediately the band of angels that had worsted Mephistopheles appear aloft in triumph, bearing the immortal part of Faust, and singing a hymn, the words of which are intended to convey the moral of the piece:—
“A rescued spirit to the goal
We bring of Earth’s probation;
The ever-active striving soul
Works out its own salvation.
And when, in love and mercy strong,
His God and Saviour meets him,
The angel-choir, to join their throng,
With hearty welcome greets him.”
Among the throng of redeemed Penitents one appears conspicuous, whose name, while she lived on earth, was Margaret; she is close by the Virgin, interceding for Faust, and ever as she mounts with the Queen of Heaven to higher stages of glory, draws the newcomer after her to share in her sempiternal blessedness. The curtain then falls; the redeemed throngs ascend; and the scene resounds with the mystical chorus:—
“Earth and earthly things
Type the celestial,
Shadow and shorn
Is all glory terrestrial;
Beauty immortal
The rapt spirit hails,
