Wag. Sir, so wondrous well,

As in all humble duty I do yield

My life and lasting service for your love.

Three Scholars enter.

Faust. Gramercy, Wagner.

Welcome Gentlemen

[Exit.

First Sch. Now worthy Faustus, methinks your looks are chang'd.

Faust. Oh, Gentlemen.

Sec. Sch. What ails Faustus?

Faust. Ah my sweet chamber-fellow, had I lived with thee, then had I lived still, but now must die eternally. Look, Sirs, comes he not? comes he not?

First Sch. O my dear Faustus, what imports this fear?
Sec. Sch. Is all our pleasure turn'd to melancholy?
Third Sch. He is not well with being over solitary.
Sec. Sch. If it be so, we will have physicians, and
Faustus shall be cured.

Third Sch. 'Tis but a surfeit, Sir; fear nothing.
Faust. A surfeit of a deadly sin that hath damn'd both
body and soul.

Sec. Sch. Yet, Faustus, look up to heaven, and remember mercy is infinite.

Faust. But Faustus' offence can ne'er be pardoned. The serpent that tempted Eve may be saved, but not Faustus. O Gentlemen, hear me with patience, and tremble not at my speeches. Though my heart pant and quiver to remember that I have been a student here these thirty years. O would I had ne'er seen Wirtemberg, never read book! and what wonders I have done, all Germany can witness, yea all the world: for which, Faustus hath lost both Germany and the world, yea heaven itself, heaven the seat of God, the throne of the blessed, the kingdom of joy, and must remain in hell for ever. Hell, O hell, for ever. Sweet friends, what shall become of Faustus being in hell for ever?

Sec. Sch. Yet Faustus call on God.

Faust. On God whom Faustus hath abjured? on God whom Faustus hath blasphemed? O my God, I would

weep

weep but the devil draws in my tears.

Gush forth blood

instead of tears, yea life and soul. Oh, he stays my tongue: I would lift up my hands, but see, they hold'em, they hold 'em.

Scholars. Who, Faustus?

Faust. Why, Lucifer and Mephostophilis. O gentlemen, I gave them my soul for my cunning.

Scholars. O God forbid.

Faust. God forbid it indeed, but Faustus hath done it : for the vain pleasure of four and twenty years hath Faustus lost eternal joy and felicity. I writ them a bill with mine own blood, the date is expired: this is the time, and he will fetch me.

First Sch. Why did not Faustus tell us of this before, that Divines might have prayed for thee?

Faust. Oft have I thought to have done so; but the devil threatened to tear me in pieces if 1 named God; to fetch me body and soul if I once gave ear to divinity: and now it is too late. Gentlemen, away, lest you perish with me.

Sec. Sch. O what may we do to save Faustus?

Faust. Talk not of me but save yourselves and depart. Third Sch. God will strengthen me, I will stay with Faustus.

First Sch. Tempt not God, sweet friend, but let us into the next room and pray for him.

Faust. Aye, pray for me, pray for me; and what noise soever you hear, come not unto me, for nothing can res

cue me.

Sec. Sch. Pray thou, and we will pray, that God may

have mercy upon

thee.

Faust. Gentlemen, farewell; if I live till morning, I'll visit you: if not, Faustus is gone to hell.

Scholars. Faustus farewell.

FAUSTUS alone. The Clock strikes Eleven.

Faust. O Faustus,

Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damn'd perpetually.
Stand still you ever moving spheres of heaven,

That

That time may cease and midnight never come.
Fair nature's Eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent and save his soul.
O lente lente currite noctis equi.

The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd.
OI will leap to heaven: who pulls me down?
See where Christ's blood streams in the firmament:
One drop of blood will save me: Oh, my Christ,
Rend not my heart for naming of my Christ.
Yet will I call on him: O spare me, Lucifer.
Where is it now? 'tis gone;

And see, a threatning arm, and angry brow.
Mountains and hills
Is come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of heaven.
No? then will I headlong run into the earth:
Gape earth. O no, it will not harbour me.
You stars that reign'd at my nativity,
Whose influence have allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist
Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud;
That when you vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from your smoaky mouths,
But let my soul mount and ascend to heaven.
The watch strikės.

O half the hour is past: 'twill all be past anon.
O if my soul must suffer for my sin,
Impose some end to my incessant pain.

Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,

A hundred thousand, and at the last be saved:
No end is limited to damned souls.

Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
Or why is this immortal that thou hast

Oh Pythagoras', Metempsycosis, were that true,
This soul should fly from me, and I be chang'd
Into some brutish beast.

All beasts are happy, for when they die,

Their

Their souls are soon dissolv'd in elements:
But mine must live still to be plagued in hell.
Curst be the parents that engender'd me:
No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer,
That hath depriv'd thee of the joys of heaven.
The clock strikes twelve.

It strikes, it strikes; now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.
O soul, be chang'd into small water drops,
And fall into the ocean; ne'er be found.

Thunder, and enter the devils.
O mercy heaven, look not so fierce on me.
Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile:
Ugly hell gape not; come not Lucifer:
I'll burn my books: Oh Mephostophilis.

First Sch. Come Gentlemen, let us go visit Faustus, For such a dreadful night was never seen

Since first the world's creation did begin;

Such fearful shrieks and cries were never heard.
Pray heaven the Doctor have escaped the danger.

Sec. Sch. O help us heavens, see here are Faustus' limbs All torn asunder by the hand of death.

Third Sch. The devil whom Faustus serv'd hath torn

him thus:

For twixt the hours of twelve and one, methought,

I heard him shriek and call aloud for help;

At which same time the house seem'd all on fire

With dreadful horror of these damned fiends.

As

Sec. Sch. Well Gentlemen, though Faustus' end be such every Christian heart laments to think on:

Yet, for he was a Scholar once admired

For wondrous knowledge in our German schools,
We'll give his mangled limbs due burial:
And all the scholars, cloth'd in mourning black,
Shall wait upon his heavy funeral.

Chorus. Cut is the branch that might have

strait,

grown full And

And burned is Apollo's laurel bough

That sometime grew within this learned man:
Faustus is gone. Regard his hellish fall,
Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise
Only to wonder at unlawful things:

Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits
To practice more than heavenly power permits.*

The growing horrors of Faustus are awfully marked by the hours and half hours as they expire and bring him nearer and nearer to the exactment of his dire compact. It indeed an agony and bloody

sweat.

Marlowe is said to have been tainted with atheistical positions, to have denied God and the Trinity. To such a genius the History of Faustus must have been delectable food: to wander in fields where curiosity is forbidden to go, to approach the dark gulf near enough to look in, to be busied in speculations which are the rottenest part of the core of the fruit that fell from the Tree of Knowledge. Barabas the Jew, and Faustus the Conjurer, are offsprings of a mind which at least delighted to dally with interdicted subjects. They both talk a language which a believer would have been tender of putting into the mouth of a character though but in fiction. But the holiest minds have sometimes not thought it blameable to connterfeit impiety in the person of another, to bring Vice in upon the stage speaking her own dialect, and, themselves being armed with an, Unction of self-confident impunity, have not scrupled to handle and touch that familiarly, which would be death to others. Milton in the person of Satan has started speculations hardier than any which the feeble armoury of the atheist ever furnished: and the precise strait-laced Richardson has strengthened Vice, from the mouth of Lovelace, with entangling sophistries and abstruse pleas against her adversary Virtue which Sedley, Villiers, and Rochester, wanted depth of libertinism sufficient to have invented.