OTTO958

Summary

As he resumes work on Faust after putting it aside for many years, the writer of the drama, Goethe, addresses the misty figures and ideas that appear to him, those he has not yet managed to incorporate into his drama. He feels eager and invigorated to give them poetic form, because they remind him of delightful days past, legends, first loves, and friendship. But he also grieves to think of those he used to know who have passed away, those who heard the early cantos of Faust but died before hearing the later ones. The poet is seized by nostalgia. The present is insubstantial to him, and the past becomes his existence.

Analysis

Goethe is invigorated by the thought of completing the whole of his drama, but he recognizes also that, for those who have passed away, it will remain forever partial and incomplete. His nostalgia for his personal past also mirrors his nostalgia for the historical past, namely for the period of Greek Classicism. He finds this past culture more admirable than either the rational Age of Enlightenment or the impassioned Romantic period during which he lives.

Summary

In a German theater, the Manager, the Dramatic Poet, and the Player of Comic Roles are preparing a production of Faust. The Manager uneasily asks the other two how they think the German public will react to the drama. He is nervous because, although he thinks the Germans won’t expect anything first-rate, he knows they are nonetheless well-read.

Analysis

The “Prelude” reminds us that dramatic art does not exist in a vacuum, but must always exist within some kind of larger context. Theaters, actors, and audience members all make up the whole of which the script is only part—so it is a part that must be responsive to the whole.

Summary

The Dramatic Poet wants nothing to do with the public, however, which he fears will vulgarize his art. He doesn’t want to make a poem that is glittering and ephemeral, but instead something worthy of posterity. The Player, in contrast, can only please his contemporaries, and therefore values amusing people here and now. He asks that the Dramatic Poet not hide his excellence, but stage the full extent of human experience, from Reason to Passion to Folly.

Analysis

The Poet represents the aesthetic and visionary perspective on art, in contrast to the practical, people-pleasing Manager. The Player, a third contrast, is essentially an entertainer. Goethe suggests that an artist must be all three of these things to create a work of art that is of general cultural value.

Summary

The Manager reminds the Dramatic Poet that their audience will be expecting lots of action and variety. Only by including in a drama something for everyone will it be a success, he says. The Dramatic Poet retorts that to follow the Manager’s advice would be to produce lowly work unworthy of a genuine artist, and he accuses the Manager of deriving his dramatic principles from incompetent playwrights.

Analysis

Goethe includes a great deal of action in Faust, as well as an infamous variety of settings and characters. Nonetheless, he is always a genuine artist, and so synthesizes the perspectives of the Manager and Poet, fusing low culture and high culture.

Summary

The Manager assures the Dramatic Poet that his feelings aren’t hurt by such accusations. Somebody who wants to be effective, he says, must work with the proper tools. He further reminds the Dramatic Poet that theatergoers tend to be people who are bored, or full after a heavy meal, or more used to reading magazines than listening to plays. In short, they are either indifferent to a poet’s dreams or else they are boors. Pleasing them is no easy task.

Analysis

While the Poet has his eye on eternity, the Manager has his eye on people paying for tickets. Such people, he sensibly argues, are usually too numbed by bodily pleasures to be pleased by a poet’s dreams. The artist must remember, then, that he needs to communicate with people who are limited in their ability to appreciate his work.

Summary

The Dramatic Poet becomes indignant. He tells the Manager to hire someone else if he expects him to forfeit his fundamental human right to dream and create for the sake of mere entertainment. He explains that the poet’s power lies in his ability to harmonize what his heart sends out into the world with the world that returns to him by way of his senses. It is by this power that he breathes life and rhythm into nature, and also coordinates the different parts of the world into one general choir.

Analysis

As sensible as the Manager is, the Poet himself gives an inspired vision of what he thinks of as the artist’s role: to harmonize the internal world of the spirit with the external world of nature. In his drama, Goethe plays this synthesizing role, while also aiming to please and entertain his readers.

Summary

The Player of Comic Roles tells the Dramatic Poet to manage his literary business like a poet, then. He compares what would happen in such a case to the way that a love affair is conducted. The poet would meet his admirer by chance, the two would get involved and feel boundless joy, only for misery to ensue: good material for a novel. The Manager even instructs the Dramatic Poet to make his play just like this, out of common life, because life is strange and therefore interesting to most people anyway. If he does this the Dramatic Poet will have a play full of lively scenes, confusion, and just a dash of truth, so that it attracts the common people and the elite alike. Those who are young and young at heart won’t fail to appreciate it.

Analysis

The Player suggests that writing good poetry and having a good literary career don’t go hand in hand at all. Note that the metaphor of the Poet wooing his reader like a lover foreshadows Faust’s own love affairs with Gretchen and Helen, which likewise end in misery. Faust and the Poet are in fact very alike in their dreams and ambitions. Although Goethe entertains us in Faust, as the Manager says the Poet should, he does not add a dash of truth just for effect. For Goethe, rather, the complete work of art necessarily creates truth.

Summary

The Dramatic Poet wishes for the days of his youth to return to him so that he, also, can be young at heart, when he was constantly inspired to song and was full of untamed passions, the power to hate and the strength to love. The Player of Comic Roles suggests that the Dramatic Poet would need youth back only when embattled by enemies, tempted by charming girls, in sight of victory, or when partying the night away—the Dramatic Poet, however, will presumably not be in such situations again. The Player goes on to say that it’s up to old gentleman like the Dramatic Poet and the Manager to set their own goals and approach them at their own pace, and suggests that we never really outgrow childhood.

Analysis

Though the Poet wishes, like Goethe in his “Dedication,” to go back in time, the Player assures him that the strength of youth is not required to create a lasting work of art. With age comes experience, and this experience will enable the Poet to achieve his creative goals. Besides, the Player says, we are always like children in a way, perhaps in the sense that we’re always curious, always learning and growing.

Summary

The Manager is growing restless: it’s time to get to work. He says that the company needs a good strong drink to serve to the public, that is, a good piece of entertainment, something satisfying and refreshing, and that they should get to brewing it. He observes that German theaters let people work on whatever projects they want to. Since this is the case, there’s no reason to stint on scenery or stage effects: suns, moons, fire, water, cliffs, birds, and beasts. He orders the company to act out on their modest stage all of creation, from heaven, through the world, to hell.

Analysis

The metaphor of a good play as a good beverage emphasizes the idea that a play must satisfy not only the mind but also the body. It must create a visceral experience for its audience. The scenery and stage effects may seem merely spectacular, but in Goethe’s hands they become symbols for the human condition and, more broadly, for eternity itself, the worlds of heaven and hell.

Summary

Three archangels, Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael, are beholding and celebrating the mysterious splendor of the Lord’s creation, nature, which is comforting to the angels but also too great for their comprehension. Raphael sings of the sun, Gabriel of the revolutions of the earth, night, day, and the surging of the sea, and Michael sings of the storms that sweep from land to sea and back again, powerful and devastating. Together the angels sing that none can understand the Lord’s Being, though His grand creation is still as splendid as it was upon first being created.

Analysis

The angels rightly claim that no single mind but God’s can understand creation as a whole. Faust attempts to attain exactly this kind of understanding, and it leads to his tragedy. The sun represents the eternal life-giving presence of God, the storms represent the destructive powers inherent in creation, and day and night, ebb and flow, represent the natural cycles human beings live and die in.

Summary

Mephistopheles (the devil) enters heaven uninvited, though he has been welcomed here often before. He addresses the Lord, claiming to be sorry that he can’t offer Him high-flown praise like the angels can. Any attempt at strong emotion on his part, the devil speculates, would only make God laugh anyway. He says he has no remarks to make about the sun or planets, only how mankind toils and suffers, the unchanging little gods of earth who are as odd today as they were upon first being created. The devil tells God that life would be easier for humans if He did not permit them to glimpse the light of heaven, because they only employ their reason in bestial and cruel ways.

Analysis

Goethe wildly reimagines the relationship between God and the devil. In the play the devil, while sarcastic and negative, is not strictly God’s enemy, but is welcome in heaven. The devil also pities human beings, or at least pretends to, which we might find surprising—in fact, he gives advice to God on how to improve our lives: by taking reason from us, which we misuse in being cruel to one another. God, instead of taking away our reason, would ask that we learn our place in the cosmos.

Summary

The Lord speaks. He asks Mephistopheles if he ever has anything to say other than criticisms. Isn’t there anything right on the earth? He asks. No, Mephistopheles says, mankind suffers endlessly, so that even he, the devil himself, is reluctant to antagonize them. The Lord asks if Mephistopheles is familiar with Faust, a doctor and the Lord’s faithful servant. Mephistopheles knows him to be a man who is discontent with earthly life and eager to attain to the brightest stars and highest joys. The Lord says that though Faust serves Him now blindly and ineptly, soon God will lead the doctor into clarity.

Analysis

Mephistopheles later calls himself the Spirit that always negates—he never has anything positive or affirming to say or do. Although he claims to pity us, he also pulls many vicious pranks and stirs up truly atrocious violence later in the play. It is ironic that God should call Faust blind and inept, for he is vastly more intelligent and learned than anyone else in the play. God apparently doesn’t put much stock in book learning.

Summary

Mephistopheles proposes a bet: that the Lord will lose Faust to temptation and sin if He permits the devil to gently guide the man. The Lord says only that He won’t prohibit Mephistopheles from doing what he will, and He will even let the devil tempt Faust to damnation if he can. God announces that a good man won’t lose himself on the devil’s path. Mephistopheles considers the bet agreed upon. The Lord tells the devil to return uninvited if he succeeds in damning Faust, for God has no hatred for creatures of the devil’s kind, those who prod human beings into activity both bad and good as the devils do.

Analysis

The proposed bet between Mephistopheles and God (who, notably, never seals the deal, which would be beneath Him) anticipates the bet successfully struck later between Mephistopheles and Faust. A good man, in Goethe’s world, is one who, not willing evil, strives tirelessly to better himself. It is ironic, then, that the devils should spur human beings into activity, when activity is what seems to help them avoid damnation.

Summary

When the Lord finishes speaking to Mephistopheles, He invites the angels to delight in beauty’s living richness, nature, and urges them to turn their vague revelations into solid thoughts. Heaven closes and the devil is left alone. He states that he likes to keep on speaking terms with God, and thinks it very decent of Him to chat and be so polite with even the devil himself.

Analysis

The Lord has created the universe to please both angels and people, and indeed Faust feels most at home and most spiritually full in nature. With characteristic and perhaps resentful sarcasm, the devil talks about God, the perfect being, as though He were just a nice neighbor.

Summary

The scholar Faust sits restlessly at his desk in his narrow, high-ceilinged Gothic study. He regrets having studied Philosophy, Law, Medicine, and worst of all Theology, for he feels that he is no wiser than before. For ten years he has led his students on a chase for knowledge, only to realize that human beings can’t ever find certainty in the world. This conclusion makes Faust despair. Indeed, he says nothing gives him joy, as his knowledge can’t better mankind or make it godly, and he has no worldly riches or honors. For these reasons, then, he has turned to magic, which promises to solve many mysteries, and to explain the foundation and forces of the universe.

Analysis

God’s creation, infinite and beautiful, is immediately contrasted with the cramped, imprisoning atmosphere of Faust’s study. Faust is hemmed in by the books that have so far distracted him from searching for real meaning. He knows everything the scholarly, rational mind is capable of knowing, and yet he remains unsatisfied and powerless. Magic, an irrational and powerful art (although a demonic one) is his last resort in transcending the littleness of his own mind. This sets up the theme of reason and passion in the play, as Faust is dissatisfied with his reason and turns to magic.

Summary

As much as Faust wants to roam in the moonlight and rejuvenate himself by doing so, he is still imprisoned by his worm-eaten, dusty books. He feels anxious and constricted to find himself surrounded not by the living world of nature but instead by so much smoke and mustiness, and he thinks of the books as if they were the bones of the dead. He vows to escape, aided by Nostradamus’ book of mysterious and magical symbols which the spirits use to communicate.

Analysis

Part of Faust’s problem is that the scholar’s life is physically cramping and prevents one from experiencing nature. It is ironic, then, that, instead of going for a moonlit walk at this point, Faust instead opens another book, suggesting that he is not yet prepared for the transcendence he claims to seek.

Summary

Faust opens Nostradamus’ book to the sign of the Macrocosm: the whole universe in its harmonious unity. When he sees it, rapture and a youthful happiness flows through him. He feels like a god, with total clarity about the being and workings of creative nature, how all things interweave as one and work and live in each other harmoniously. Grand as all this is, Faust concedes that it is nonetheless a mere show, and that he can’t yet touch Infinite Nature (which he personifies as a woman) and her breasts.

Analysis

The Macrocosm reveals how everything in nature forms a harmonious whole. Though Faust contemplates this fact, he also yearns to go beyond mere contemplation, and to act on his wisdom. The personification of nature as a woman anticipates Faust’s affairs with Gretchen and Helen, through whom he also seeks transcendence.

Summary

Angrily Faust turns the pages of the book until he comes to the sign of the Earth Spirit, a spirit which Faust thinks is closer to him than the Macrocosm was. He feels brave and ready to experience life and deal with the hurricane of mortal difficulties.

Analysis

Unlike the sign of he Macrocosm, the Earth Spirit can act in and on the world. Faust is therefore more enthusiastic about its appearance.

Summary

Suddenly the sky outside becomes overcast, the moon hides, and the lamp’s flame vanishes. Mists arise and beams of red flash about. Faust feels a dreadful chill, and senses that the Spirit he was praying to has come. Faust demands that it reveal itself. He orders it to obey, even if the price for the Spirit revealing itself should be Faust’s own life. In a flash of reddish flame, the Earth Spirit appears.

Analysis

Faust has underestimated the Earth Spirit’s power. Far from being in any way akin to the scholar, the spirit is powerful and even menacing. The forces operative in nature can, after all, be hostile to the human will. With the Earth Spirit’s appearance the theme of parts and wholes becomes more apparent, as Faust will soon be forced to face his own limitations in the face of all creation as a harmonious whole.

Summary

Faust turns away in fear. The Earth Spirit wonders whether the frightful worm now in his presence could possibly be the demigod whose ringing voice summoned him. Faust rallies and announces himself as the Spirit’s peer. The Spirit then sings out that like a storm he oversees the constant change of the physical world, working at the loom of time to fashion the living garment of God. Faust says that he feels close to the industrious Earth Spirit, but the Spirit disowns him, disappearing, which distresses Faust.

Analysis

The Earth Spirit symbolizes the active forces of nature as well as the natural cycles. While easy to contemplate from afar, in person these forces are terrifying, which Faust learns firsthand. He should be careful what he wishes for. Faust at first cowers before the Spirit, then arrogantly claims to be its peer. It won’t be till the end of the play, however, that Faust really masters nature.

Summary

There is a knocking at the study door. Faust curses at being interrupted during his happiest moment of most plentiful visions. Faust opens the door, and it is the gowned and night-capped Wagner, Faust’s assistant in scholarship, who heard his master thundering out what he supposes was a Greek tragedy. Wagner says he wishes he were a better reciter and rhetorician, but how can he be, he asks, when he only observes people from afar? Faust says that affecting people with rhetoric requires passion, innate force, and heart. Wagner responds that delivery alone can make a speech a hit, and acknowledges that he has much to learn.

Analysis

It is ironic that Faust’s “happiest moment” is as terrifying and ultimately unsatisfying as his encounter with the Earth Spirit. The reference to Greek tragedy foreshadows Faust’s later love for the Greek beauty Helen, and the scene of Classical Walpurgis Night, which is set in Greece. Faust, unlike his bookish and rationalistic fellow-scholars, understands the importance of passion in affecting others. But passion, Goethe suggests, must always serve truth.

Summary

Faust disparages the pretty speeches that Wagner admires, and the two begin debating the values of learning and knowledge. Faust says that the only thing of value one can learn comes from one’s own soul, while Wagner defends book learning as enabling people to enter into the spirit of ages past. Faust in turn dismisses history as a trash bin, full of excellent maxims suitable only for puppets to speak. He doesn’t think that what the world calls knowledge is really knowledge at all.

Analysis

Faust’s claim that only our own souls produce things of value is a Romantic attitude, and one that the play as a whole challenges. Historical Greece, for example, provides not just excellent maxims for puppets to repeat, but also a valuable model for how human beings can live in the world. At the same time, mere book learning can deprive one of passion and experience.

Summary

It is getting late, and Faust proposes that the two stop their debate for now. Wagner would have liked to stay up longer discussing learned matters. He asks Faust if tomorrow, Easter Sunday, Wagner can ask Faust more questions, for he would like to know everything. With that, Wagner takes his leave.

Analysis

Wagner is energetic and bright, an endless learner—much as Faust must have been as a younger man. Easter is the day of Jesus’s resurrection from the grave, a day of rebirth and renewal for both soul and nature in the Christian worldview.

Summary

Alone, Faust thinks about how greedy for superficialities Wagner is, and resents him for knocking when he, Faust, was surrounded by inspiration. He is also grateful to Wagner in a way, however, because he feared that the Earth Spirit would destroy his mind, as it was so great and it made Faust feel so small. He regrets having been so arrogant as to claim himself the Spirit’s peer, and wonders who will teach him now. Once Faust’s Imagination soared, but now his joys are distracted by mundane cares. These cares take many forms for mankind: house and home, wife and child, fire, water, dagger, and poison.

Analysis

The play does not represent Wagner as being especially superficial, so Faust’s condemnation of him is more a condemnation of intellectualism in general. In a rare moment of humility and vulnerability, Faust confesses that the Earth Spirit made him feel small, weak, and insignificant, which suggests why he does not summon the Spirit again. None of the cares that Faust lists really have any bearing on his case. His chief care at this point is more his own ego than anything else.

Summary

Faust despairs of ever being godlike, cramped as he is by countless useless things. He addresses a skull among his possessions, whose brain he suspects went wretchedly astray. Faust feels that the secrets of Nature can never be understood, not even with the implements of learning he inherited from his father. Faust goes on to say that what is inherited but does not serve a purpose becomes burdensome. When the moment for action comes, we can only use what the moment itself provides.

Analysis

Faust implicitly contrasts his ambition to be a perfect god with the inevitable human fate of death, represented by the skull, which is proof of our imperfection. Faust’s observations about inheritance are, in part, a reference to Medieval academic culture, which relied excessively on old or ancient intellectual authority. Faust finds such authority a burden.

Summary

Suddenly, Faust’s eye is caught by a vial in his possession that contains a poisonous extract. The sight of it makes Faust feel as though he’s been transported to the open sea, as though fiery chariots are approaching him. Faust intends to kill himself by drinking the contents of this vial. He thinks this will prove his bravery in the face of heaven and hell.

Analysis

This vial of poison anticipates the poison that kills Gretchen’s mother, as well as the vial in which Homunculus is created. While Homunculus seeks to escape from his vial to achieve existence, Faust considers drinking from the vial here to escape existence.

Summary

Right as Faust prepares to drink, however, he hears church bells and a choir of angels, women, and disciples singing of Christ’s resurrection, and with Him all mankind. So Easter day is announced. Faust takes the vial of poison from his lips. Even though he lacks faith, he is nonetheless reminded of joyous tears and spring freedom, and is so moved that he resolves to keep living. The scene closes with the choir of disciples bemoaning that they are still on earth while their master Christ is in heaven, and a choir of angels comforting the living by singing of Christ’s nearness.

Analysis

As Jesus was resurrected on this day, so too does Faust choose life over death upon hearing the church bells and choir heralding Easter. Whereas the Earth Spirit distances itself from Faust, Christ, the angels assure us, is very near, and at the end of the play Faust does indeed follow Jesus’s path by ascending to heaven.

Summary

Outside the city gates, a variety of people are coming from the city, all of them on their way to various taverns. The men are looking forward to drinking good beer, chatting up women, and quarreling. A citizen complains that the new burgomaster (similar to a mayor) is high-handed and demanding, and that things cost more than ever. A beggar, cranking a hurdy-gurdy (a stringed instrument), sings of his misery and the goodness of giving. Still other citizens look forward to discussing war and military matters. A prettily dressed girl dreams about the soldier whom a witch showed her in a crystal ball, whom she hopes will be her love. Soon after a group of soldiers sweep through, singing of war.

Analysis

This scene presents all of human society in a nutshell: people anticipating physical pleasures like drinking and lovemaking, complaining about the deficiencies of their earthly government, and working to try and make a living. The image of the witch’s crystal ball anticipates Faust’s own yearning for Gretchen and, in turn, her yearning for him. These people have desires, but seem generally content with how they live, unlike the restless Faust.

Summary

Faust and Wagner enter the scene. Faust observes that the rivers and brooks are thawing as old Winter withdraws into the mountains and the Sun seeks to enliven the world of nature. From a height, he looks down at the mass of people outside the city gate celebrating Easter. He says they celebrate because they themselves are “risen” like Christ, risen from their dreary rooms, jobs, streets, and churches into the gardens and fields. This is the common man’s true heaven, he says, and he feels both human and that he can be himself here.

Analysis

After leaving his study, Faust seems like a different man. He takes a deep pleasure in the natural world, in its changes (the withdrawal of winter) and in its constancy (the enlivening sun). Although he is not a “common” man, he too seems as though he’s risen like Christ from his dead study into living nature. Common people can find paradise in this physical world, however, while Faust cannot.

Summary

Wagner tells his master that to walk with him is both an honor for him and an educational experience, though he wouldn’t come here on his own, because Wagner hates anything “vulgar.” He detests the sounds of fiddling, shouts, and clattering bowls, and says the people carry on as though possessed by the devil. Some villagers are dancing beneath a linden tree, singing about a shepherd who bumps into a girl while dancing and ends up seducing her.

Analysis

Wagner reveals himself to be a self-limiting elitist here. Instead of learning from real life and taking pleasure in being around nature and other people, he wishes he were back in his study with his books. Ironically, his master is soon to partner up with the devil, whose influence decidedly does not make one want to sing and dance.

Summary

An old peasant comes upon Faust and Wagner. He tells Faust that it is good of him to be out and about with the ordinary folk. He offers Faust a drink from his tankard, which Faust accepts with thanks. Meanwhile, more villagers come and form a circle around the two scholars. The old peasant recalls how Faust’s father cured the village of the plague, and how Faust as a boy accompanied him, coming out of every stricken house unharmed, protected by God above. The villagers wish Faust good health, and he tells them to instead thank God, who teaches us to help one another.

Analysis

Unlike Wagner, Faust enjoys the company of ordinary people, and so he is much better rounded than his assistant is. Moreover, his manic desire for transcendence seems to recede in this scene as he enjoys the company of other people and the bodily pleasure of drink. Faust tells us earlier that he does not believe in God, but he seems so moved to happiness by nature that he feels comfortable invoking God here.

Summary

Faust and Wagner resume their walk. Wagner is impressed by how much the villagers respect Faust. The two make their way to a large stone, where Faust says he has agonized in the past, praying and fasting. He tells Wagner that he hears in the people’s praise only derision, for neither he nor his father deserve such respect. His father, he explains, was an alchemist, who during the plague brewed a medicine that actually killed the patients who drank it. He suspects that with that poison in hand he and his father did more harm than the plague itself.

Analysis

An alchemist was a pseudoscientist who sought to create the philosopher’s stone, a substance said to turn base metals to gold and also to grant human beings immortality. Either for profit or to experiment with live patients, Faust’s father immorally gave those in his care a poison—just as his son will seek to profit materially and spiritually from his deal with the devil.

Summary

Wagner wonders how Faust can be disturbed at all by his father’s actions, seeing as how he was only laboring in his profession honestly and adding to human knowledge. Faust says that what we know does nothing for us, and what we need is precisely what we don’t know. He doesn’t want to let such thoughts spoil the day’s beauty, however. As night falls he surveys nature, the greenery, the cottages, the sun, the peaks and valleys, and the brooks and rivers. He says that in all human beings there is a desire to soar like the birds. Wagner says he has never felt that way, and he prefers the pages of his books.

Analysis

Wagner believes in the rational pursuit of knowledge no matter the cost, a belief shared by some supporters of the rationalistic and scientific Age of Enlightenment. But, as Mephistopheles tells God, reason can lead us into acts of bestial cruelty. Faust’s love for nature is deeply associated with his sense that all people desire meaning. One implication of this is that people should not be treated as mere science experiments.

Summary

Faust retorts that Wagner only knows one desire, whereas he himself has two souls at once: a sensual one that grips the earth, and another that wants to struggle from the dust to the heights. He wishes for a magic cloak that could take him anywhere. Wagner warns him not to invoke the devil and spirits who are eager to do harm—even though such spirits might murmur like angels to disguise their lies. It’s getting dark, and Wagner says that it is time to go home.

Analysis

Faust’s two souls—the sensual soul that loves the earth, and the other soul that desires transcendence—are in conflict with one another. The play, from one perspective, presents how this conflict resolves itself, with the desire for transcendence later being put into the service of Faust’s governance of his kingdom.

Summary

Faust sees something that holds his interest: a black dog. Wagner says he saw the dog a while ago but thought it unimportant. He identifies it as a poodle. Faust notices that the dog is spiraling closer and closer toward them, and Faust seems to see fire swirling behind it. Wagner just sees a mere black poodle. Faust says that the dog seems to be setting a magical trap for future bondage. Wagner insists it’s just an ordinary dog, timid, snarling, lying on its belly, and wagging its tail. Faust calls to the dog and it comes. At last, he agrees with Wagner that the dog is not conscious like humans, just well trained. The two exit through the city gate along with the poodle.

Analysis

The black dog is Mephistopheles in disguise. Fittingly he takes on a bestial form, and also assumes the form of an animal that serves human beings, just as Mephistopheles will come to serve Faust. Wagner sees only an ordinary dog, either because Mephistopheles is revealing the dog’s spiritual nature only to Faust, or because Wagner has no capacity for spiritual perception. As Faust says, the dog is indeed setting a trap, one that threatens Faust’s very soul.

Summary

Faust enters his study with the poodle, feeling that his better soul has been awakened by the night, and he feels a greater sense of love for man and God. The poodle is running about, and Faust offers it a cushion to lie down on by the stove. He then sings of self-knowledge, hope, and life-giving waters, only for the poodle to growl and interrupt what Faust calls the sacred harmonies. All of a sudden, he feels his contentment fading away.

Analysis

Nature and human companionship have seemingly rejuvenated Faust. Last night he was considering suicide, but now he feels a new sense of love for man, God, and himself. Just as all seems well, however, Mephistopheles in the form of the poodle growls and disturbs Faust’s sense of harmony and contentment.

Summary

Faust resolves to translate the New Testament, specifically the Gospel of John, out of its original Greek into German. He stops on the first sentence, “In the beginning was the Word.” Unwilling to concede that words have such high power, he considers substituting for “the Word” “the Mind,” “the Power,” and finally “the Act.”
“In the beginning was the Word” refers to how God created the world. Faust does not accept that words have creative power—only action does, to his mind. Through action, thought and will can realize themselves in nature.

Summary

The poodle begins barking and Faust invites it out of the study, only for the animal to transform into a large and horrible Spirit, hippopotamus-like with red eyes. Faust vows to master this creature with the Key of Solomon, a textbook of magic. In the passage outside, Spirits whisper that one of their sly fellows has been caught in the scholar’s study, and they discuss freeing it. Faust calls upon the four elements, fire, water, air, and earth, but these fail to cause the creature pain. Faust then casts another spell and gestures toward a pentagram on the doorsill of his study, which drives the creature to swell and retreat behind the stove. It begins to melt away like mist.

Analysis

Throughout this scene, Mephistopheles barks to distract Faust from ideas of harmony and creation, the better to snare his soul in negativity. Mephistopheles, being the Spirit of negation, is not vulnerable to material elements like fire and water. He is subject only to deeper laws, like the one saying that when he is trapped, as he is by the pentagram, he must submit to his entrapment.

Summary

As the mist clears, Mephistopheles enters from behind the stove dressed like a goliard, a special kind of religious cleric. He had been hiding in the poodle all along. Mephistopheles congratulates Faust on his learnedness, for the scholar had made the devil sweat indeed. Faust asks the Spirit for its name, but Mephistopheles says merely that he is a part of that force which, though always trying to do evil, always produces good. He is the Spirit of Eternal Negation, whose essence is sin and destruction, in a word, Evil. Faust asks Mephistopheles why he calls himself a part of something, when the Spirit stands before him whole. The devil retorts that mortals are insignificant fools, who like to think of themselves as complete when really they are just parts of a whole, too.

Analysis

The devil’s religious clothing is doubly ironic: first, in that the devil is the enemy to God’s creation, whereas the religious cleric worships God, and second in that the devil, as he himself says, does indeed do good despite himself, as God wills it. In this way, Mephistopheles is in fact like a religious cleric, although a begrudging one. Faust thinks that individuals are whole in themselves, but this is an error—individuals are just parts of the whole. The devil knows this from experience, for his individual negations always promote creation in the bigger scheme of things.

Summary

Faust says he understands: since the devil can’t destroy everything at once, he must settle for destroying creation piece by piece. Mephistopheles concedes that his business of destruction is not really thriving, and that if he didn’t have fire to himself he’d have nothing to call his own. Faust suggests the devil look into a different line of work. Mephistopheles says this is an interesting idea that the two should discuss at a later meeting.

Analysis

Mephistopheles’ comparison of destruction to a business is both a dark understatement and dripping with sarcasm. Businesses ideally create value, whereas Mephistopheles seeks to destroy all value. Faust seems remarkably unthreatened by the devil, who is more dangerous, even if also weaker, than the Earth Spirit.

Summary

Mephistopheles assumes he is excused to go, but points out a little problem: the pentagram on the study doorsill. He was able to come in because the magical Sign was badly drawn, and didn’t notice it as a poodle, but he is now imprisoned by it. Faust is pleased by this surprising triumph. When asked why he can’t just leave by another exit, the devil explains that he, like all demons and specters, is bound by this rule: where they enter is where they must exit. Faust likes that even Hell is bound by laws, and supposes it is possible for humans to safely make contracts with such gentleman as Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles says it takes time to work out such arrangements, and requests the freedom to leave.

Analysis

Although Faust has sought and seeks omnipotence, it is humorously enough through ignorance and error that he happens to ensnare Mephistopheles. A lack of control over his magical knowledge gives Faust control, however short-lived, over the ultimate magical being. Faust seems to think that demonic magic works instantaneously, but things take time, Mephistopheles reminds him. Devils, like human beings, are limited in their capacities for action, and bound by laws.

Summary

Faust thinks a devil in hand, however, is well worth keeping, and Mephistopheles trapped himself, after all. The devil consents to stay, but only if he can use his black arts to entertain Faust properly. Faust has no objections, and so Mephistopheles summons spirits who provide intense sensuous pleasure to the ear with song, to the eye with pictures, and to the smell, taste, and touch. The spirits sing of clear blue skies, beautiful heavenly bodies, bowers and vineyards, birds and dancers.

Analysis

Mephistopheles escapes Faust’s snares here, just as Faust’s soul will escape Mephistopheles later. The illusions the devil summons parody the natural world Faust so rejoices in. Whereas nature is beautiful and wakes one up, however, the devil’s illusions are merely pleasurable and just put one to sleep. The devil often uses what seem like good things to deceive.

Summary

At last Mephistopheles dismisses the choir of spirits he has summoned, for Faust has fallen to sleep. This scholar is not yet the man, the devil says, to hold a demon captive. He orders his minions to surround Faust with beautiful visions, to plunge him into a sea of mad illusions. Meanwhile, Mephistopheles summons a rat to gnaw away the pentagram on the doorsill that holds him prisoner. This done, he bids Faust dream on, then exits. Faust wakes, surprised to have been duped. Did he dream the devil, he wonders, and did the poodle simply run away?

Analysis

Faust often underestimates the devil’s ingenuity and cruelty. Contrast the rat that liberates Mephistopheles here—ugly, gnawing, pestilential—with the beautiful angels who save Faust from damnation at the end of the drama. The devil’s illusions give Faust a taste for the beauty he can enjoy with the aid of demonic magic—but always such beauty dissolves as in a dream, leaving only confusion and pain.

Summary

Faust is in his study when he hears a knock at the door: it is Mephistopheles dressed as a young nobleman. Faust lets him in. The devil suggests that Faust get clothes like his so that he, too, can know what life and freedom really are, but Faust despairs at this suggestion. He says he is too old to live for pleasure only, but still too young to live without desire, and each day fails to satisfy a single one of his wishes. He longs for Death to embrace him.

Analysis

The devil dresses as a cleric to calm Faust, then as a nobleman here to stir up Faust’s earthly ambition. Faust does not object to contracting himself to the devil on principle, but only in practice. He is in middle age, a difficult transition period in life, and his wishes are so grand they can’t be satisfied.

Summary

Mephistopheles asks Faust why he didn’t drink the poison on that Easter night then. Faust explains the effect the bells and song had on him. He curses the arrogance of the human mind, the delusion of appearances, empty promises of fame, possessions, greed, sweetness, love, hope, faith, and, most of all, patience. Mephistopheles’ Spirit minions lament the brokenness of the world and tell Faust to start a new life. Fun and action is their counsel, the devil says.

Analysis

That Mephistopheles knows Faust tried to poison himself suggests that the devil has been watching the scholar for a while, waiting to strike at the opportune time. Faust seems to forget that after his Easter walk he was full of love and hope, feelings dispelled only when the negative devil and the devil’s illusions entered his study.

Summary

Parts, Wholes, and Limits Theme Icon Intellectualism and the Value of Words Theme Icon
Mephistopheles starts talking business: he offers to become Faust’s companion and guide through life, his servant and his slave, at the man’s beck and call night and day. Faust knows that the devil is an egoist, however, and wonders what he has to give in exchange for these services. The devil says that he will serve Faust here and now on the condition that in the Beyond, or the afterlife, Faust must serve the devil. Faust confesses that the earth is the source of all his joys and that it doesn’t much matter what happens to him after death. The devil urges him, then, to take the risk and accept his offer.

Analysis

Faust’s deal with the devil is the central plot point of the drama, yet Faust seems awfully casual in discussing its terms. He says that he cares only for life on earth, but of course he does, for he knows no other life. He has no conception of the heavenly paradise he’d be giving up, nor of the hell he’d be damned to for eternity. He is, in short, grossly shortsighted, confined and blinded by his microcosm.

Summary

Faust suspects that Mephistopheles intends to deceive him, however, to give him food that cannot satisfy, gold that will turn to liquid, girls who cheat, or honor that vanishes. The devil says he can indeed offer such marvels, but also things to savor peacefully and quietly. Faust wants nothing to do with idleness and sloth, though. Faust says that if the devil can ever lull him with self-complacency or dupe him with pleasures—if Faust ever says the words, “Tarry, remain!—you are so fair!” about a moment he’s experienced, asking the moment to last forever—he’ll give up his life then and there. That’s his wager. The devil offers his hand, and the two shake on it. If I stagnate, says Faust, I am a slave.

Analysis

For Faust, spiritual inactivity is self-destruction: stagnation involves living in an imperfect world of time and change as though it were perfect. More fundamentally, this is to accept an illusion as the truth. Illusion is to be shattered, from Faust’s perspective, not enjoyed. Right before his death, though, Faust does give us a vision of what would lead him to ask a moment to remain forever: the creation of a Utopian society on earth. However, he does not live to see this come to pass.

Summary

For insurance, Mephistopheles also requires that the agreement be sealed in writing. Faust scoffs at this pedantic formality, and thinks his word of honor should suffice, but at last he agrees. A drop of blood on a scrap of paper will do, the devil says. Faust signs away his soul.

Analysis

Mephistopheles is legalistic. In this way, he is like the Biblical Satan, an accuser, a persecutor who creates laws to punish their having been broken. God creates laws not to punish but to liberate.

Summary

Faust looks forward to giving up his search for knowledge and welcoming instead pain and suffering into his life. Mephistopheles advises that Faust enlist the aid of a poet in dreaming up what he wants. Faust fears that he may not ever reach the Infinite, but the devil consoles him that at least he will always be himself. Mephistopheles also says that all things we have free use of belong to us fully: a man who owns six strong horses also possesses their power. How do we start? Faust asks. We simply leave, the devil says.

Analysis

Faust’s search for knowledge has numbed him to feeling. He looks forward to waking up to pain and suffering as a proof that he is alive. Note that he envisions contact with the Infinite as resulting from a quest, whereas Mephistopheles envisions it in the metaphor of mastery and power, as over the six horses. Faust’s vision is spiritual, the devil’s physical.

Summary

Faust hears one of his students in the hallway, but he feels that he cannot face him. Mephistopheles dons a cap and gown to speak to the student instead, and Faust exits the study. The devil boasts to himself that Faust will soon be his, for Faust scorns the highest gift of reason. The devil says that even without a demonic contract, the restless man would ruin himself.

Analysis

Earlier the devil tells God that people only misuse reason in acting bestially, but here he recognizes reason as our highest gift. The devil knows that when used alone, passion and reason can both hurt human beings. Only when they are harmoniously synthesized do they produce the ideal good.

Summary

The student enters the study. Mephistopheles, pretending to be Faust himself, welcomes him. The student says he is committed to learning, but doesn’t like being cramped in these walls and halls all day; he misses the trees. The devil assures him he’ll get used to conditions here, as a child gets used to being weaned off of mother’s milk. Mephistopheles also advises the student to take courses in logic so that he can both analyze things and see the spirit that unites a thing’s parts. The student says he doesn’t understand, but Mephistopheles assures him that all will be easier soon, once he’s studied logic and deductive reasoning.

Analysis

This student is warm, but not as intelligent as Faust or Wagner. He longs to be in nature merely to distract himself from disciplined study, not to expand the range of his feeling. The devil promotes reason here only to later encourage the student to pursue superficial and uncritical intellectual habits. Mephistopheles is giving himself the air of sensible authority early on, the better to lead the student astray later.

Summary

Mephistopheles goes on to advise the student to study metaphysics, a branch of philosophy, which the devil says isn’t meant for the human brain but does make high-sounding words available to us. Be methodical, he says, make sure you don’t say anything that isn’t from the book, and write everything down. The devil doesn’t blame the student for not wanting to study law, because the law shifts from place to place, generation to generation.

Analysis

The devil promotes bad intellectual habits: valuing big words over meaning, lazily accepting authority, and merely repeating information. All these lead to intellectual complacency, as the devil well knows. Not to study the law is to live ignorant of one’s society, which isolates the scholar and limits his social usefulness.

Summary

Mephistopheles then tells the student that theology is as much poison as it is medicine. He advises him to study only with one teacher and to swear allegiance to words, the better to enter a state of complete certainty and faith. The student supposes there must be ideas behind the words, but the devil says not to fret too much about ideas: you can place perfect faith in words, he says.

Analysis

Theology is the study of God and religion, which the devil opposes because it threatens to gives students a yearning for higher things. Instead, the devil preaches a faith in words, which leads, ultimately, to a faith in nonsense and meaninglessness.

Summary

The student inquires about Mephistopheles’ perspective on medicine. In an aside, the devil says he’s grown bored of playing at a sober tone, and that it’s time to be the real devil again. He tells the student not to worry about being scientific about medicine, but to let things take the course God wills. He tells the student to project self-confidence so as to make others confident, and to handle women well so as to stimulate passion in them. The student likes this practical advice. Theories are gray, says the devil, but the golden tree of life is green.

Analysis

Science can be used for good or ill, and is neither in itself. The devil advises the student not to take responsibility for his scientific inquiries, and to have false confidence in them. This is a recipe for disaster, as the earlier story of Faust’s medically irresponsible and overly confident father suggests. The devil also promotes acting without knowledge, which is to think only microcosmically.

Summary

Finally, the student asks Mephistopheles to write a favorable message in his album (a book in which contributions like signatures are inscribed for the owner), which the devil does. Eritis sicut Deus, scientes bonum et malum, the inscription reads, or “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,” a quotation from the Book of Genesis in the Bible. The student withdraws with a bow. The devil says that if the student follows this ancient advice, his likeness to God will some day perplex him indeed.

Analysis

The quotation that Mephistopheles writes in the student’s album is what the demonic serpent told Eve in the Garden of Eden, part of the temptation that led her to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and, ultimately, caused the Fall of Man into hostile nature and a world of death. Following this advice can only lead to destruction, which is just what the devil desires.

Summary

Faust enters and asks where he and Mephistopheles will go first. Wherever you please, the devil says. He suggests the two experience the ordinary life first, and then the grander world. This course promises to be both practical and entertaining. Faust worries that he won’t be able to adapt to people because he always feels insignificant around them, but the devil assures him that he will soon gain confidence. Mephistopheles then lays his cloak out flat. It will carry the pair through the air, so long as they don’t have too much luggage. The scene closes with the devil congratulating Faust on his new career.

Analysis

Part I of the drama treats what Mephistopheles calls the “ordinary life” of human pleasure and love, while Part II treats the grander world of politics, ideal beauty, and wisdom. Faust says he always feels insignificant around other people, but recall how at home he felt among the villagers only scenes ago, outside the village gate. The devil is having a bad influence on him already, it would seem.

Summary

At Auerbach’s wine-cellar, a lively drinking-party is underway. One of the revelers, Frosch, urges his companions to drink and be merry, but his fellow Brander says it’s Frosch’s fault everyone is boring like wet straw, because he hasn’t contributed anything silly or bawdy to the conversation. Frosch empties a glass of wine onto Brander’s head. Brander insults him and a third reveler, Siebel, says that anyone who quarrels should be kicked out. Siebel breaks out into song, and a fourth and final reveler, Altmayer, complains that the singing is splitting his ears.

Analysis

The scene in the wine-cellar presents ordinary people indulging in bodily pleasures. The revelers, it is implied, repeat the same conversations and jokes every time they get together to drink, which suggests their self-destructive complacency. When they are bored, as now, they antagonize one another like animals. These are people in the devil’s clutches already.

Summary

Frosch begins to sing a political song about the Roman Empire, which Brander dismisses as nasty; he is grateful not to be an emperor or chancellor. Frosch then begins singing a love song, apparently addressed to a woman Siebel loved once, for Siebel demands that Frosch stop singing. He says that the woman in question made a fool of him and will do likewise with Frosch. He concludes that for being such a slut she deserves a goblin, not a man of flesh and blood. Brander then leads a chorus in singing a song about a gluttonous rat whom a cook poisoned. The poison made the rat run about, feeling as though it had fallen in love, and then die.

Analysis

These revelers turn to idle leisure in order to distract themselves from responsibility. It is no wonder that Brander, for one, shrinks away from political life, which might require discipline and inner resources. His song about the rat can be read as a metaphor for the revelers themselves—they are the rats, poisoning themselves with drink, lustful but incapable of real human love, living undesirable and brutishly short lives.

Summary

Faust and Mephistopheles enter the wine-cellar. The devil intends to first introduce his master to partying and merriment. Frosch suspects the newcomers to be aristocrats because they look haughty and dissatisfied, and he decides to try and trick the two. Mephistopheles tells Faust that simple folk never sense the devil’s presence, not even when his hand is on their throats. Siebel welcomes the newcomers, but notices to himself that Mephistopheles limps on one foot. Frosch attempts to fluster Mephistopheles by randomly asking if he had supper with one Mr. Jack, but Mephistopheles slyly plays along, thereby getting the better of him.

Analysis

An aristocrat, because of his privilege, could acquire an education and cultivate skills that distinguished him or her as an individual. Frosch, who is not an individual but merely a part of a group—basically indistinguishable from his fellows—seems to resent the aristocrat’s privilege and so tries to make the aristocratic Faust and devil feel like outsiders. He plays at being sarcastic and negative, but Mephistopheles, the spirit of negation, is too much for him.

Summary

Mephistopheles, claiming to have just come from Spain, the land of wine and song, begins singing upon Altmayer’s request. His song is about a king who has a flea that he loves like a son, dressing it in a fine suit of clothes and making him a minister in the court. The flea bites the ladies and knights of the court, but these people dare not scratch their itches, much less kill the flea. However, the chorus of the song concludes, we who are not in the king’s court are free to kill fleas whenever we feel a twitch. The revelers all cheer.

Analysis

The devil’s song plays to the revelers’ populist prejudices. It is about the freedom common people experience as a result of not living in the sphere of political power. Of course, the revelers themselves don’t seem all that free, in reality, as they are stuck in a rut of drinking and telling the same old jokes, day in, day out. Only someone who transcends the structure of earthly power can truly be free, Goethe suggests.

Summary

Mephistopheles then says he’d drink with the revelers if only their wine were better. The revelers take offense at this notion, that is, until the devil offers to bring up some bottles from his and Faust’s private cellar, a plan all heartily approve of. Mephistopheles requests an auger, a drill-like tool, which is duly provided, and he says each man can have whatever he pleases. Frosch asks for a good Rhine wine, and Mephistopheles bores a hole in the table with the auger. He also asks for wax to serve as stoppers. It’s only a magician’s trick, Altmayer says.

Analysis

After playing to their anti-aristocratic prejudices, Mephistopheles slaps the revelers in the face, so to speak, by criticizing their wine as inferior. He is asserting his more refined taste over theirs. While they take offense at first, the prospect of drinking fine wine excites the men. The devil’s implicit point seems to be that our prejudices come about out of resentment: we hate what we can’t have.

Summary

Mephistopheles continues taking wine orders—champagne for Brander, and something good and sweet for Siebel—but Altmayer fears that the stranger is just making fools of the revelers and he won’t make a specific request. At last, Mephistopheles stops boring holes in the table and stopping them with the wax. He chants a spell makes fantastical gestures. He orders the men to draw the wax stoppers out of the holes and drink their fill. And indeed, when the men draw the stoppers, various wines flow out of the bored holes into their cups. The men are ecstatic and drink cup after cup. The devil warns them, however, not to spill a single drop.

Analysis

This passage is a demonic parody of the Biblical episode in which Moses strikes life-giving water out of a rock for the parched Israelites in the desert. The revelers here, in contrast, have probably had too much to drink already, and the devil is only inviting them to further excess. Moreover, the wine does not give life, but rather lulls the revelers into illusion and stupor. This is a false miracle, and the men behave like animals in response to it.

Summary

Faust tells Mephistopheles that he wishes to go, but the devil says they must wait to see a demonstration of marvelous animal spirits. Soon enough, Siebel spills a drop of wine, which turns to flame as it hits the floor. Siebel cries out that it is hellfire. Mephistopheles conjures the flame to be peaceful, and says that it was only a spark from purgatory. The revelers are now angry with the stranger’s trick, and his impudence. It’s time for him to make himself scarce, they say.

Analysis

Faust is not at all impressed by the devil’s sadistic trick, nor is he pleased by the bestial folly of the revelers. Rather nobly, he wants to leave, for there is nothing to learn here. The devil, however, is pettily cruel and upholds the law that no one spill wine very strictly. Rather than recognize the moral danger they’re in, though, the revelers stupidly threaten the devil.

Summary

In response, Mephistopheles calls Siebel a “wine-tun” (a barrel). The devil seems to be just asking for a beating. When Altmayer pulls a stopper from the table, fire shoots out at him, setting him on fire. Siebel identifies this as a work of black magic. He and the other men draw their knives and rush at Mephistopheles. With a seriously-intoned charm, however, the devil bewitches the men into thinking that they are transported to a new, pretty country, complete with a vineyard. The men grab at what they think are grapes, but which are really one another’s noses. Mephistopheles chants a counter-charm, removing the spell, then immediately disappears with Faust.

Analysis

The wine’s transformation into fire foreshadows the revelers’ damnation to fiery hell if they persist in their pleasure-seeking and idle ways. Far from recognizing this, the men become violent, even though their magical enemy is clearly too strong for them. The devil, in turn, transports the men to a false paradise, where their bodies make up the vegetation. This transformation reveals just how plant-like the men are in life: merely absorbing nutrients, they are inactive and uncreative, not wholly human.

Summary

The revelers are confused by Mephistopheles’ joke, especially when they realize they’re all holding one another’s noses. They wonder where Mephistopheles went, and Siebel swears that if he finds him he’ll kill him. Altmayer claims to have seen the stranger ride out of the tavern on a keg. The men wonder if any wine is left in the table, but Siebel says that it was all a deception and an illusion. Altmayer closes the scene. Some people, he exclaims, claim there are no miracles.

Analysis

The fact that the revelers wonder if any wine remains suggests that they have learned nothing from their encounter with the devil. Rather than being spurred to change their lives, they persist in their self-destructive idleness, contrasting strongly with Faust on this point. Altmayer’s identification of the trick as a miracle is sadly misguided. The devil’s cruel deception is the opposite of a miracle.

Summary

Faust and Mephistopheles enter a vaporous, grotesque witch’s kitchen where a female ape tends to a boiling cauldron on the fire. Gathered around her are a male ape and several young apes. On the walls are utensils of sorcery. The devil has brought his master here to provide him with a potion that will make him thirty years younger, but Faust does not like the lunacy and foulness of the place. The devil tells Faust that if he wants to stay young without such magic, he should just live a simple farmer’s life. Faust is unused to physical labor and too restless for it anyway, so he concedes that the witch will have to help him if he is to stay young.

Analysis

In the wine-cellar, Faust meets men who behave like animals. In the witch’s kitchen, in contrast, he meets animals that eerily behave like humans. This inversion speaks to how magic corrupts the natural order. The violation of nature presented by the humanoid apes deeply disturbs Faust. Although Faust rejects the farmer’s life now, he later cultivates, not unlike a farmer, a kingdom and society. Often our quests bring us back to where we started, but with new knowledge.

Summary

Mephistopheles asks the apes where the witch is. They say that she is dining out and she will be for a while. Charmed by the apes’ conversation, the devil then asks what they are tending in the caldron. A watery soup for the needy, they say. The male ape asks to play dice with Mephistopheles, so long as he himself, the ape, be permitted to win. This ape would think it a privilege to play the lottery, Mephistopheles says, upon which the male ape sings a song about the tumult and fragility of the world.

Analysis

The devil enjoys the language of the apes because it verges on gibberish, pure sound disconnected from any meaning. That the ape wants to play dice is a rather bitter joke on Goethe’s part. It seems that what separates humans from other animals is that we enjoy needlessly exposing ourselves to risk, and would like to profit without having to work.

Summary

While Mephistopheles inquires about various utensils on the walls, Faust is gazing into a magic mirror in which he sees the beautiful form of a woman. The devil, now seated in an armchair like a king, promises to find for him a woman just like that. The apes bring the devil a crown, but clumsily break it in two. They dance about with it, singing that they can listen and write, and, if they’re lucky enough to make a bit of sense, write profoundly at that. Meanwhile, Faust feels as though he’s going mad with desire for the woman in the mirror, and he asks to leave.

Analysis

The woman in the mirror awakens in Faust the appetite which will lead him to seduce and corrupt Gretchen, and later to pursue Helen of Troy. In the witch’s kitchen, the devil is indeed king, but he rules over confusion and impotence, symbolized by the breaking of the crown. Based on Faust’s empty books, we may well believe the apes when they say that to write with a little sense is to write profoundly.

Summary

Just then, the caldron the female ape is tending boils over and the witch appears in a great flame, screaming horribly. She berates the ape for forgetting the kettle and scorching her mistress. Then the witch sees Faust and Mephistopheles and threatens to torment their bones with fire. In response, Mephistopheles joyfully shatters the witch’s glassware and pottery before revealing himself as the devil, the lord and master of witches. The witch apologizes and claims not to have recognized him because he is lacking his usual two ravens. She refers to the devil as Squire Satan, but he prefers to be called Baron, like a cavalier and noble gentleman.

Analysis

The witch and Mephistopheles both are quick to assert their power and mastery over others. Throughout Faust, the master-servant relationship is associated with the demonic world, whereas Goethe’s ideal ruler is more a servant of his people.

Summary

Mephistopheles then asks the witch for a glass of her well-known elixir, the oldest batch she has, for every year doubles its potency. She happily obliges, but warns that Faust must prepare himself before drinking it, or else he will die within the hour. With the devil’s blessing, the witch draws a magic circle, places curious objects within it, gathers the apes together to serve as her reading-desk, and beckons to Faust, who is skeptical of all this hocus-pocus.

Analysis

That Faust is skeptical of the witch’s ritual suggests that he has not yet forfeited his reason altogether. He knows magic has power, but he also knows that much of what passes for magic is merely theatrics and self-aggrandizement.

Summary

Mephistopheles shoves Faust into the circle, and the witch bombastically reads several numerological paradoxes from her book—saying that ten equals zero, for example. The devil explains that such self-contradictions, especially that one is three and that three is one, mystify the foolish and the wise alike and propagate confusion, because people hear such silly words and assume there’s some thought behind them. The witch continues reading, and Faust feels like his head is going to split. It’s like he’s listening to a hundred thousand fools in chorus.

Analysis

The devil appreciates paradoxical nonsense because it can’t be rationally analyzed, and therefore it leads us into complacency. The paradoxical identity of the three and the one is an allusion to the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, which Goethe seems to be criticizing here. Faust is too reasonable for all this, of course, and consequently his head hurts to hear it.

Summary

Mephistopheles tells the witch that that’s enough, and to fill the goblet. She does so and gives it to Faust, who begins to drink until a slight flame rises from the cup. The devil urges Faust to down the goblet nonetheless, and Faust obeys. The devil then tells Faust to keep moving, explaining that he must sweat if the elixir is to rejuvenate him both inside and out. Mephistopheles also thanks the witch, and tells her to approach him on Walpurgis Night (a saint’s holiday, but also one honoring Satan) if she has a favor to ask. Faust begs to see the woman in the magic mirror once more, but Mephistopheles promises that he will see the very best of women in the flesh soon enough. The two exit.

Analysis

This scene parodies the Catholic ritual of Communion, where the faithful drink wine, which is a metaphor for (or an incarnation of) the blood of Christ and salvation. Faust is gaining only thirty earthly years, however, not eternal life. Ironically he achieves this through demonic means that would like to see him damned for eternity. Now that he is younger, Faust is also able to act vigorously on his bodily passion, as he will soon do with Margarete.