Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/389



HE Faust legend is a conglomerate of anonymous popular traditions, largely of mediæval origin, which in the latter part of the sixteenth century came to be associated with an actual individual of the name of Faustus whose notorious career during the first four decades of the century, as a pseudoscientific mountebank, juggler, and magician, can be traced through various parts of Germany. The "Faust Book" of 1587, the earliest collection of these tales, is of prevailingly theological character. It represents Faust as a sinner and reprobate, and it holds up his compact with Mephistopheles and his subsequent damnation as an example of human recklessness and as a warning to the faithful to cling to the orthodox means of Christian salvation.

THE ELIZABETHAN "DOCTOR FAUSTUS"

From this "Faust Book," that is, from its English translation, which appeared in 1588, Marlowe took his tragedy of "Dr. Faustus" (1589; published 1604). In Marlowe's drama Faust appears as a typical man of the Renaissance, as an explorer and adventurer, as a superman craving for extraordinary power, wealth, enjoyment, and worldly eminence. The finer emotions are hardly touched upon. Mephistopheles is the mediæval devil, harsh and grim and fierce, bent on seduction, without any comprehension of human aspirations. Helen of Troy is a she-devil, and becomes the final means of Faust's destruction. Faust's career has hardly an element of true greatness. None of the many tricks, conjurings, and miracles, which Faust performs with Mephistopheles's help, has any relation to the deeper meaning of life. They are mostly mere pastimes and vanity. From the compact on to the end hardly anything happens which brings Faust inwardly nearer either to heaven or hell. But there is a