And yet it is always to the pleasures of the intellect that he returns. It is when the good and evil spirits come to him for the second time that wealth is offered as a bait, and after Faustus has signed away his soul to Lucifer, he is tempted even by more sensual allurements. I may be reading into the book what is not there, but I cannot help thinking that Marlowe intended in this to typify the inevitably continuous degradation of a soul that has renounced its ideal, and the drawing on of one vice by another, for they go hand in hand like the Hours. But even in his degradation the pleasures of Faustus are mainly of the mind, or at worst of a sensuous and not sensual kind. No doubt in this Marlowe is unwittingly betraying his own tastes. Faustus is made to say:—
“And long ere this I should have slain myself
Had not sweet pleasure conquered deep despair.
Have I not made blind Homer sing to me
Of Alexander’s love and Œnon’s death?
And hath not he that built the walls of Thebes
With ravishing sound of his melodious harp
Made music with my Mephistophilis?
Why should I die, then? basely why despair?”
This employment of the devil in a duet seems odd. I remember no other instance of his appearing as a musician except in Burns’s “Tam o’ Shanter.” The last wish of Faustus was Helen of Troy. Mephistophilis fetches her, and Faustus exclaims: