SELLING THE SOUL. 



519 



unwillingly, to make this announcement. The 

 Demon then darts downward under the earth ; 

 but the pagan governor, standing firm for the 

 state-religion, assures the people that what they 

 have just seen and heard are the enchantments 

 effected as the last despairing act of the wicked 

 Cyprian : 



" Gov. Todos estos son encantos, 



Que aqueste magico ha hecho 

 En su muerte." 



In the preternatural workmanship — the dia- 

 blerie of Goethe — the close and vivid familiarity 

 with thaumaturgic scenes of picturesque glamour, 

 as well as fast and frantic revels — not to speak 

 of the apparently Intimate knowledge of the se- 

 cret movements of the devil's mind, prodigally 

 displayed in his " Faust " — with all the dialogues, 

 characters, scenery, songs, and choruses, in the 

 " Walpurgisnacht " — the great German poet may 

 fairly be said to surpass every other ; and, indeed, 

 to put all others, except Shakespeare, far into the 

 shade. The comical devilries interpolated in 

 Marlowe's " Faustus" are mere clownish pretenses i 

 in comparison ; and even the mountain-moving 

 and other encantaciones in Calderon's " Magico 

 Prodigioso " are poor enough beside what is seen, 

 said, sung, and done, after the Ignis Fatuus has 

 led Faust and Mephistopheles into the " true 

 witch-element " of the Hartz Mountains on May- 

 day-night. This is the very perfection of re- 

 alized unreality in high fantastic incantations. 

 But what are we to make of the last scene of this 

 tragedy, whether we take it from the First Part 

 (as is usually done) or from the Second Part ? As 

 to the last scene in Marlowe's tragedy, it is worthy 

 of special note that with regard to the three he- 

 roes of these three extraordinary tragedies, in 

 which each hero has, by a bond sealed with his 

 blood, sold his soul to the devil — not through a 

 juggle, but by direct intention — Marlowe's man is 

 the only one who is really damned. The other 

 two, by one means or other, are " saved ; " but an 

 Elizabethan dramatist was not likely to play at 

 fast and loose, and he therefore " gives the devil 

 his due," and allows him to take full possession 

 of his horror-stricken bondman. This is pre- 

 ceded by agonizing mental struggles and writhings 

 to avoid what he knows to be inevitable; and 

 few things can be more touching than the amia- 

 bility and unselfishness — now brought out for the 

 first time, as by the uprooting of his inmost 

 depths of feeling — with which Faustus reverts to 

 his early love of study among his dear fellow- 

 students ; while he now wishes from his heart, 

 with scalding tears, that he had "never seen 



Wittenberg — never read book." And then, a few 

 hours before midnight, he begs his friends not to 

 imperil their own lives by coming in to his as- 

 sistance, whatever cries and screams they may 

 hear, " for nothing can save him." They take a 

 last farewell, and Faustus calls upon the " hours " 

 to stand still. " lente, lenie, citrrite Noetic equi I " 

 The whole of this final scene is worked up with a 

 dreadful power of ideal realization that perhaps 

 surpasses every other scene in the entire range 

 of tragic composition. " See where Christ's blood 

 streams in the firmament ! " He calls upon 

 Christ, and madly endeavors to "leap up" — but 

 something "pulls him down!" If tragic terror 

 and the profoundest pathos of pity ever attained 

 their utmost limits, they certainly do so in this 

 closing scene, wherein he cries : 



" O Soul be changed into small water-dropa, 

 And foil into the ocean 1— ne'er be found ! " 



We have seen how the hero of " El Magico 

 Prodigioso " escapes from his bondholder. Let 

 us now see how it fares with the Faust of the 

 great German poet. We shall have a word or 

 two to say as to the close of the Second Part ; 

 but, by common literary consent, the tragedy is 

 not unfairly considered, as a clearly intelligible 

 matter, to end with the First Part. Margaret cries 

 out with horror that Mephistopheles is coming to 

 bear her away. The fiend calls to Faust to come 

 to his side, or he will leave him in the same pre- 

 dicament as Margaret, who, he says, has been 

 " judged." But a " Voice from Above says she is 

 saved!" That is, Eternal Justice recognizes the 

 fact that, whatever may have been her wrong- 

 doings, they were really attributable to her brain- 

 seething, seductive lover — the theological roue, 

 Faust. And what becomes of him? Why, the 

 fiend now becomes his guardian genius, having 

 previously warued him not to stay and share the 

 expected doom of Margaret — and, calling him to 

 his side, vanishes with him ! That the great au- 

 thor did not intend him to mpke good his damna- 

 tory bond at this time seems evident, by this close 

 of the drama, and next by his writing a Second 

 Part. 



If any great author of a former date could 

 uplift his head from the tomb, and note with as- 

 tonishment what was said about him and his 

 works at the present day, it may safely be as- 

 sumed that no astonishment could surpass that 

 of Master William Shakespeare. And this feel- 

 ing would probably rise to its height on finding 

 that Dr. Hermann Ulrici has proved that Shake- 

 speare had, though unconsciously, a special ethi- 



