Faust: A Tragedy
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