Page images
PDF
EPUB

"Faust. Did not my conjuring raise thee? speak!
Meph. That was the cause, but yet per accidens ;
For when we hear one racke the name of God,
Abjure the Scriptures and his Saviour Christ,
We fly, in hope to get his glorious soul:
Nor will we come unless he use such means,
Whereby he is in danger to be damn'd.
Therefore the shortest cut for conjuring
Is stoutly to abjure all godliness,

And pray devoutly to the Prince of Hell.

Faust. So Faustus hath already done, and holds this principle, There is no chief but only Belzebub;

To whom Faustus doth dedicate himself.

This word damnation terrifies not me,
For I confound hell in elysium;

My ghost be with the old philosophers.

But, leaving these vain trifles of men's souls,
Tell me, what is tha: Lucifer thy lord?

Meph. Arch-regent and commander of all spirits.
Faust. Was not that Lucifer an angel once?

Meph. Yes, Faustus, and most dearly loved of God.
Faust. How comes it, then, that he is prince of devils?
Meph. Oh! by aspiring pride and insolence,

For which God threw him from the face of heaven.
Faust. And what are you that live with Lucifer?
Meph. Unhappy spirits, that live with Lucifer,
Conspired against our God with Lucifer,

And are for ever damn'd with Lucifer.

Faust. Where are you damn'd?

Meph. In hell.

Faust. How comes it, then, that thou art out of hell?

Meph. Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.

Think'st thou that I, that saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
Oh, Faustus! leave these frivolous demands,
Which strike a terror to my fainting heart.”

Is this the language of the Tempter?—is it even the language of the fallen Lucifer? It is the language of the poet, interpreting what the audience would feel in Satan's place, not what Satan feels. This want of character-painting is felt throughout the play.

But we have rather to deal with the philosophical than with the dramatic treatment of the subject. The reader who,

[merged small][ocr errors]

6

misled by critics, opens Faustus' under the impression that he is about to see a philosophical subject treated philosophically, will have mistaken both the character of Marlowe's genius and of Marlowe's epoch. Faustus' is no more philosophical in intention than the Jew of Malta,' or 'Tamburlaine the Great.' It is simply the theatrical treatment of a popu lar legend,—a legend admirably characteristic of the spirit of those ages in which men, believing in the agency of the devil, would willingly have bartered their future existence for the satisfaction of present desires. This undoubtedly contains a philosophical problem, which even in the present day is constantly presenting itself to the speculative mind. Yes, even in the present day, since human nature does not change: forms only change, the spirit remains; nothing perishes,-everything manifests itself differently. Men, it is truc, no longer believe in the devil's agency; at least they no longer believe in the power of calling up the devil and transacting business with him; otherwise there would be hundreds of such stories as that of Faust. But the spirit which created that story and rendered it credible to all Europe remains unchanged. The sacrifice of the future to the present is the spirit of that legend. The blindness to consequences caused by the imperiousness of desire; the recklessness with which inevitable and terrible results are braved in perfect consciousness of their being inevitable, provided that a temporary pleasure can be obtained, is the spirit which dictated Faust's barter of his soul, which daily dictates the barter of men's souls. We do not make compacts, but we throw away our lives; we have no Tempter face to face with us, offering illimitable power in exchange for our futurity; but we have our own desires, imperious, insidious; and for them we barter our existence,—for one moment's pleasure we risk years of anguish, and we call ourselves rational beings!

The story of Faustus suggests many modes of philosophical treatment, but Marlowe has not availed himself of any: he has taken the popular view of the legend, and given his hero the vulgarest motives. This is not meant as a criticism, but as a statement. We are not sure that Marlowe was wrong in so treating his subject; only we are sure that he treated it so. Faustus is disappointed with logic, because it teaches

[ocr errors]

him nothing but debate,—with physic, because he cannot with it bring dead men back to life, with law, because it concerns only the external trash',—and with divinity, because it teaches that the reward of sin is death, and that we are all sinners. Seeing advantage in none of these studies he takes to necromancy; there he finds content; and how?

"Faust. How am I glutted with conceit of this!

Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please?
Resolve me of all ambiguities?

Perform what desperate enterprize I will?
I'll have them fly to India for gold,
Ransack the occan for orient pearl,

And search all corners of the new-found world

For pleasant fruits and princely delicates.
I'll have them read me strange philosophy;
And tell the secrets of all foreign kings:
I'll have them wall all Germany with brass,
And make swift Rhine circle fair Wittenberg:
I'll have them fill the public schools with skill,
Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad :
I'll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,
And chase the prince of Parma from our land,
And reign sole king of all the provinces:
Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war,
Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp bridge,
I'll make my servile spirits to invent."

There seems something trivial in this to modern apprehensions, yet Marlowe's audience sympathized with nothing nigher. It was the age when witches were burned, when men were commonly supposed to hold communication with infernal spirits, when the price of damnation was present enjoyment. Therefore does Marlowe make his hero say:"Go, bear these tidings to great Lucifer;

Seeing Faustus hath incurr'd eternal death,
By desperate thoughts against Jove's deity,
Say he surrenders up to him his soul,
So he will spare him four and twenty years,
Letting him live in all voluptuousness,

Having thee ever to attend on me,
To give me whatsoever I shall ask,

To tell me whatsoever I demand,

To slay mine enemies, and to aid my friends,
And always be obedient to my will.

Go, and return to mighty Lucifer;

And meet me in my study at midnight,

And then resolve me of thy master's mind.

Meph. I will, Faustus.

Faust. Had I as many souls as there be stars,
I'd give them all for Mephostophilis.

By him I'll be great emperor of the world,
And make a bridge through the moving air,
To pass the ocean with a band of men ;
I'll join the hills that bind the Afric shore,
And make that country continent to Spain,
And both contributary to my crown.

The emperor shall not live but by my leave,
Nor any potentate of Germany,

Now that I have obtain'd what I desired.”

[Exit.

The compact signed, Faustus makes use of his power by scampering over the world and performing practical jokes and vulgar incantations,-knocking down the Pope, making horns sprout on the heads of noblemen, cheating a jockey by selling him a horse of straw, and other equally vulgar tricks, which were just the things the audience would have done had they possessed the power. Tired of his buffooneries he calls up the vision of Helen; his rapture at the sight is worth quoting, as a specimen of how Marlowe can write on a fitting occasion.

Enter HELEN again, passing between two Cupids.

"Faust. Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, And burnt the topmost towers of Ilium?

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!

Her lips suck forth my soul! see where it flies!
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.

I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy shall Wittenberg be sack'd;
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest:
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
Oh! thou art fairer than the evening air,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter,
When he appear'd to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky,
In wanton Arethusa's azure arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour!"

His last hour now arrives: he is smitten with remorse, like many of his modern imitators, when it is too late; sated with his power he now shudders at the price. After some tragical raving, and powerfully depicted despair, he is carried off by devils. The close is in keeping with the commencement: Faustus is damned because he made the compact. Each part of the bargain is fulfilled; it is a tale of sorcery, and Faustus mects the fate of a sorcerer.

The vulgar conception of this play is equally the fault of Marlowe and of his age. It might have been treated quite in conformity with the general belief; it might have been a tale of sorcery, yet have been made ten times as impressive. What would not Shakspeare have made of it? Nevertheless, we must in justice to Marlowe look also to the state of opinion in his time; and we shall then admit that another and higher mode of treatment would perhaps have been less acceptable to the audience. Had it been metaphysical, they would not have understood it; had the motives of Faustus been more elevated, the audience would not have believed them. To have saved him at last, would have been to violate the legend, and to outrage their moral sense. For, why should the black arts be unpunished? why should not the sorcerer be damned? The legend was understood in its literal sense, in perfect accordance with the credulity of the audience: the symbolical significance of the legend is entirely a modern creation.

Let us now turn to Calderon's 'EL MAGICO PRodigioso, so often said to have furnished Göthe with the leading idea of his 'Faust. Calderon furnish Göthe with a leading idea! We shall hear next that 'Don Quixote' is the original of 'Pickwick.' Of all charges made in the literary world, no charge is made more carelessly than that of plagiarism. Rival editors of classical works did not more readily accuse each other of being ignorant of Greek or Latin, than critics accuse pocts of plagiarism. Every Dennis shouts "That 's my thunder!" at each resemblance, however faint; nay, does not content himself with claiming his own property, but is as ready to exclaim "That's my friend's thunder!" As an example of resolute, reckless assertion, unabashed by ignorance of the subject, take the following statement of a recent writer:-"This drama (El "Magico) is the one upon which Gothe [sic] founded his 'Faust.'

« PreviousContinue »