Part III of the Faust-book relates his 'feats of nigromancy at the courts of Potentates' and elsewhere, and his 'terrible end and departure.' At Innsbruck, in the presence of Charles V. and his court he summons up the shades of Alexander the Great and his consort, I suppose Roxana, the beautiful Bactrian princess. You may be interested to learn that Alexander the Great was a 'well-built stout little man with a thick yellow-red beard, red cheeks, and eyes like a basilisk,' and that the old chronicler, quite after the fashion of the modern purveyor for ladies' journals, informs us that Roxana wore a dress entirely of blue velvet trimmed with gold pieces and pearls.
The following chapters strike one as hardly in the same key with the rest of the book. They relate feats which remind one rather of Baron Münchhausen. Faust swallows up a wagon of hay and a team of horses that get in his way. He makes stag-antlers grow on the head of a nobleman—saws off his own foot to give it as security for a loan borrowed from a Jew (reminding one of Shylock and his 'pound of flesh')—treats students to wine magically procured (as in the scene in Auerbach's cellar in Goethe's poem)—cuts off people's heads and sends them to the barber to be shaved, and then replaces them (a most useful invention)—makes flowers appear in vases (like modern spiritualists or Indian jugglers)—and lets flowers and grapes flourish in his garden at Christmas-time. His most important feat is summoning up (as he does in Goethe's poem) the shade of Helen of Troy. You will wish for a description of Helen—at least of her dress. She appeared in a splendid robe of black-purple ... her hair, of a glorious golden hue, hung down to her knees—she had coal-black eyes, a lovely face, and a round head, her lips red as cherries, with a little mouth and a neck like a white swan, cheeks red as a rosebud, and a tall straight figure.
A fit of remorse now seizes our magician. He is visited by a pious old man who nearly persuades him to repent and break his bond with the devil. But Mephisto is too cunning for him, and induces him to sign a new compact with his blood, promising to procure him Helen. For (as is also the case in Goethe's poem) Faust himself has fallen violently in love with the phantom that he had raised. By the help of Mephistopheles Helen herself—or one of her 'doubles' which play a part in Greek mythology—is summoned up, and lives with Faust as his wife. (At his death she, and their son, Justus Faust, disappear.)
In the last year he is overwhelmed with terrible despair, which is deepened by the mockeries of the demon. On the last evening he invites his friends to supper at the village Rimlich, near Wittenberg. After the supper, he addresses his companions in a speech of intense and pathetic remorse, praying that God will save his soul though his body is forfeit to the devil. He tells them that at the stroke of twelve the demon will come to fetch him. He begs them to go quietly to bed, and not to be alarmed if they hear a great uproar. At midnight a mighty wind sweeps over the house, and a terrible hissing is heard as of innumerable serpents. Faust's cries for help gradually die away. They rush into the supper room and find him torn to pieces—eyes, brains, and teeth scattered in all directions. 'After this,' says our chronicler, 'it was so uncanny in the house that no man dared live in it. Doctor Faust also appeared in person to his Famulus (assistant) Wagner by night, and related to him many still more weird and mysterious things.... And thus endeth the whole and truthful Historia and Magic of Dr. Faust, from which every Christian man should take warning, and specially those who are of a presumptuous, proud, curious and obstinate mind and head, that they may flee from all Magic, Incantation, and other works of the devil. Amen! This I wish for each and every one from the ground of my heart. Amen! Amen!'
The great popularity of this original Faust-book led to the publication of many other versions of the story. In the very next year a Faust-book in rime appeared. In some of these versions Mephisto has a very bad time of it, Faust setting him all kinds of impossible tasks—such as writing the name of Christ or painting a crucifix, or taking him on Good Friday to Jerusalem—until the demon begs for his release, offering to give back the written compact. In Strassburg at a shooting competition Faust's magic bullet strikes Mephisto, who 'yells out again and again' in pain. In a Dutch version, where the demon has the name 'Jost,' Faust amuses himself by throwing a bushel of corn into a thorn hedge late at night, when poor 'Jost' is tired to death, and bids him pick up every grain in the same way as in the old story Venus vents her malice on Psyche. The most important German version was that by Widmann—an amplification of the old Faust-book. There also appeared a life of Faust's Famulus (assistant), Christopher Wagner, whom the devil attends in the form of an ape. Of one of these versions (I think Widmann's) there appeared about 1590 an English translation, which was supplemented by various English ballads on the same subject, and it was an Englishman—Shakespeare's great contemporary, the poet Christopher Marlowe—who was himself, as you know, a man of Faust-like temperament, and not unlike him in his fate—being killed in a drunken brawl—who first dramatized the story. His brilliant and lurid play, 'The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus' follows very closely most of the details given in the German Faust-books. Its poetical beauties (and they are many) are unfortunately, as Hallam rightly remarks, intermingled with a great deal of coarse buffoonery. Possibly he had to consult the taste of his public in introducing such a large ingredient of this buffoon element—taken from what I called the Münchhausen portion of the old legend. Patriotic German commentators sometimes deny that Goethe knew Marlowe's play (though he knew Shakespeare well), but I think there is no doubt that the opening monologue of Marlowe's play inspired the more famous, though scarcely finer, opening scene of Goethe's drama. 'Theology, adieu!' Faustus exclaims, taking up a book of magic—
These metaphysics of magicians,
And necromantic books are heavenly ...
All things that move between the quiet poles
Shall be at my command—Emperors and kings
Are but obey'd in their several provinces,...
But his dominion that excels in this
Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man.
A sound magician is a mighty god.
Here, Faustus, tire thy brains to gain a deity.
His agony of despair at the last moment is very finely depicted, and there are not a few passages in the play which, for beauty of expression and thought, are truly Shakespearean. Some of you possibly know the magnificent lines addressed to Helen of Troy, which begin thus:
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium—
and the lines which seem to allude to the identification of Helen with Selene, the Moon-goddess—
O thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appeared to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky,
In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms.