Faust, Part One

Summary

Faust, Part One opens with three frames: a verse Dedication, a Prelude at the Theatre in which a Manager, a Poet and a comic actor argue about what a play should be, and a Prologue in Heaven modelled on the Book of Job. There Mephistopheles mocks mankind, and the Lord permits him to tempt Doctor Faust, saying that man errs as long as he strives but that a good man keeps an instinct of the right way. On Easter eve Faust sits in his Gothic study, a scholar who has mastered philosophy, law, medicine and theology and knows nothing worth knowing. He turns to magic, summons the Earth Spirit and is crushed by its rebuff; at dawn he lifts a cup of poison to his lips, and is stopped only by the bells and choirs singing that Christ is risen. On an Easter walk with his assistant Wagner, villagers thank him for his help during a plague years before, and he privately confesses that his father's alchemical remedies killed more than the sickness. A black poodle follows him home. As Faust tries to translate the opening of John's Gospel, settling on In the beginning was the Act, the dog turns into Mephistopheles. In a second study scene Faust makes a wager signed in blood: if Mephistopheles can ever bring him to say to a passing moment, stay, thou art so fair, his soul is forfeit. Mephistopheles, in Faust's gown, gives cynical advice to a new student, then takes Faust to the drinkers of Auerbach's Cellar in Leipzig and to a Witches' Kitchen, where a potion makes him young. The rest of the play is the tragedy of Margaret, called Gretchen, a pious girl of humble family. Faust meets her in the street, wins her with stolen jewels and the help of her worldly neighbour Martha, and seduces her. When she asks him how he stands on religion, he answers that feeling is everything and names are only sound and smoke. To meet in secret, she gives her mother a sleeping draught supplied by Mephistopheles; the mother dies. Gretchen, pregnant and shamed, prays before an image of the sorrowing Mary. Her brother Valentine, a soldier, fights Faust and is killed, cursing her as he dies, and in the cathedral an Evil Spirit torments her during the Dies irae. Mephistopheles distracts Faust with the witches' revels of Walpurgis Night on the Brocken, followed by a satirical intermezzo. Learning that Gretchen is condemned to death for drowning her child, Faust forces Mephistopheles to help him free her. In the dungeon, half mad, she refuses to flee, shrinks from Faust and commits herself to God. Mephistopheles cries that she is judged; a voice from above answers that she is saved. Faust leaves with Mephistopheles while her voice calls after him. The library text is Bayard Taylor's translation in the original metres (1870), in an illustrated edition with Harry Clarke's drawings.

Plot or Argument

• Dedication, Prelude and Prologue in Heaven

  Goethe recalls the friends of his youth; a theatre manager, a poet and a clown debate drama; in heaven the archangels praise creation and the Lord permits Mephistopheles to try Faust, as Satan tried Job.

• Night and Before the City-Gate (Scenes I-II)

  Faust despairs of learning, conjures the Earth Spirit, and nearly drinks poison until the Easter chorus stops him. On an Easter walk the townsfolk honour him for plague work he privately regrets; he confesses to two souls in his breast, and a black poodle follows him.

• The Study: Exorcism and Compact (Scenes III-IV)

  Faust renders John 1:1 as In the beginning was the Act; the poodle becomes Mephistopheles, who names himself the spirit that denies. Faust signs the wager in blood, and Mephistopheles mocks the faculties of the university to a new student.

• Auerbach's Cellar and the Witches' Kitchen (Scenes V-VI)

  Mephistopheles conjures wine from a table for Leipzig drinkers, then takes Faust to a witch whose potion restores his youth; Faust is entranced by a woman's image in a magic mirror.

• The wooing of Margaret (Scenes VII-XIII)

  Faust meets Margaret leaving confession, leaves jewels in her room, uses Martha's supposed widowhood to arrange meetings, walks with her in the garden as she plucks a flower's petals, and kisses her in the arbour.

• Forest and Cavern to the Fountain (Scenes XIV-XVII)

  Faust gives thanks for nature and hesitates, but Mephistopheles drives him back; Gretchen sings at her spinning-wheel; she questions his faith and agrees to drug her mother; at the well she hears girls scorn a seduced friend and recognises her own case.

• Donjon, Valentine's Death and Cathedral (Scenes XVIII-XX)

  Gretchen prays to the Mater Dolorosa; her brother Valentine is killed by Faust and curses her; at a requiem an Evil Spirit taunts her while the choir sings the Dies irae.

• Walpurgis Night and its Dream (Scenes XXI-XXII)

  On the Brocken Faust joins the witches' sabbath, sees an image of Gretchen pale with a red line about her neck, and watches a satirical masque on the golden wedding of Oberon and Titania.

• Dreary Day, Night and Dungeon (Scenes XXIII-XXV)

  In prose Faust rages at Mephistopheles for hiding Gretchen's fate; they ride past the gallows hill; in prison Gretchen, deranged by grief, confesses the drowning of her child, refuses rescue and gives herself to God's judgment, and a voice declares her saved.

Characters

• Faust, scholar and doctor

  A learned man in despair at the limits of knowledge, who stakes his soul on never being satisfied.

• Mephistopheles, devil and tempter

  A witty, cynical spirit of negation who serves Faust under their wager while trying to win him.

• Margaret (Gretchen), young townswoman

  A devout, simple girl whose love for Faust leads to her mother's death, her child's death and her own condemnation.

• The Lord, God in the Prologue

  Grants Mephistopheles leave to tempt Faust, confident that a good man keeps a sense of the true way.

• Wagner, Faust's famulus

  A dutiful, bookish assistant content with learning from parchments.

• Martha Schwerdtlein, Margaret's neighbour

  A worldly woman eager for news of her absent husband and for a new suitor.

• Valentine, Margaret's brother

  A soldier proud of his sister's honour who dies in a duel with Faust and curses her.

• The Earth Spirit, spirit conjured by Faust

  A vast elemental presence that rejects Faust as unequal to it.

• The Student, newcomer to the university

  Seeks advice from Mephistopheles disguised as Faust and receives a cynical survey of the faculties.

• The Witch, brewer of potions

  Prepares the draught that makes Faust young again.

• Evil Spirit, tormentor in the cathedral

  Whispers Gretchen's guilt to her during the requiem.

Lessons

• Restlessness as a way of life

  Faust's wager says he will never rest content in any moment. Goethe makes this striving both his greatness and his danger: it lifts him above Wagner's dry contentment and also makes him use Gretchen as one more experience.

  • What exactly does Faust bet, and why is he so sure he will win?
  • Is Faust's refusal to be satisfied a virtue or a vice?
  • How does Wagner's contentment differ from the rest Faust refuses?

• Knowledge without wisdom

  Faust has studied all four faculties and feels he knows nothing; the villagers' gratitude for his plague remedies only reminds him that his learning killed. The play asks what knowledge is for when it does not make a man good or wise.

  • Why does the villagers' praise trouble Faust?
  • What does Mephistopheles' advice to the Student say about the university?
  • Why does Faust turn to magic rather than to faith?

• The cost borne by the innocent

  Faust's desire and Mephistopheles' means destroy Gretchen's mother, her brother, her child and finally Gretchen herself. Goethe shows the human wreckage of Faust's quest through those who had no part in the wager.

  • At what point could Faust have stopped, and why did he not?
  • How responsible is Gretchen for what happens to her mother and child?
  • Why does Valentine curse his sister rather than Faust?

• Judgment and mercy

  In the dungeon Gretchen refuses to escape with Faust and places herself under God's judgment. Mephistopheles declares her condemned, but a voice from above declares her saved, so the play ends with her mercy and leaves Faust's fate unsettled.

  • Why does Gretchen refuse to leave the prison?
  • What is the difference between being judged and being saved in the final lines?
  • Why might Goethe leave Faust's own fate open at the end of Part One?

Context

The legend rests on a historical Johann Georg Faust, a wandering conjurer and astrologer of the early sixteenth century, whose story was printed as the Historia von D. Johann Fausten (Frankfurt, 1587) and dramatised by Christopher Marlowe soon after; puppet plays kept it alive in Germany. Goethe turned the damned magician into an image of modern restless striving and added the Gretchen tragedy, which draws on the case of Susanna Margaretha Brandt, executed in Frankfurt in 1772 for killing her newborn child while Goethe was a young lawyer in the city.

Composition

Goethe drafted early scenes in the 1770s (the so-called Urfaust, rediscovered in 1887), published Faust: A Fragment in 1790, and, encouraged by Schiller, completed Faust: The Tragedy, Part One, published in 1808. Part Two was finished in 1831 and published after his death in 1832. Bayard Taylor (1825-1878), an American poet, travel writer and later United States minister to Germany, published his translation in the original metres in 1870 (Part One) and 1871 (Part Two); the library text gives Part One with his preface.

Reception

Faust became the central work of German literature and a European myth of the restless modern mind. It inspired Schubert's song Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel (1814), Berlioz's Damnation of Faust (1846), Gounod's opera Faust (1859) and many later adaptations, and the epigraph of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita comes from Mephistopheles' self-description. Taylor's version was long the standard verse translation in the English-speaking world.

Comparisons

• Doctor Faustus (Christopher Marlowe)

  Marlowe's Faustus sells his soul for a fixed term and is dragged to hell; Goethe replaces the contract with a wager on restlessness and ends Part One with Gretchen saved and Faust's fate undecided.

• the-bible

  The Prologue in Heaven follows the opening of the Book of Job, where the Accuser receives leave to test a righteous man, and Faust's struggle with John 1:1 brings the Gospel into the study scene.

• paradise-lost

  Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephistopheles are both tempters given brilliant speeches, but Milton's is grand and wounded while Goethe's is ironic and comic.

• the-master-and-margarita

  Bulgakov takes his epigraph from Mephistopheles' claim to be part of the power that wills evil and works good, and builds a devil's visit to Moscow on that idea.

• frankenstein

  Victor Frankenstein, like Faust, is a scholar who reaches past the limits of natural knowledge, and those he loves pay for his ambition.

• the-divine-comedy

  Gretchen's prayer and the closing promise of her salvation anticipate the role Dante gives Beatrice, a beloved woman through whom grace reaches the wandering hero, which Goethe completes at the end of Part Two.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• How the Prologue in Heaven echoes the first two chapters of Job, and what the Lord expects of Faust.
• The four words Faust tries for the Greek logos in John 1:1, and what interrupts him.
• The exact terms of the wager in the second study scene, and whether any later moment meets them.
• Gretchen's question about Faust's religion in Martha's Garden and how he evades it.
• The contrast between the Walpurgis Night revels and Gretchen's prison in the final scenes.

Key terms and names

Mephistopheles

The devil of the Faust legend, who in Goethe's play calls himself the spirit that denies and serves Faust under a wager.

The wager

Faust's bet that Mephistopheles can never make him content enough to ask a moment to stay; if he does, his soul is forfeit.

Earth Spirit

The vast spirit of nature's life that Faust summons in the first scene and that crushes him by saying he is not its equal.

Gretchen

A German pet form of Margarete; the name by which Margaret is called in the love scenes and in the tradition of the play.

Walpurgis Night

The night before 1 May, when witches were said to gather on the Brocken in the Harz Mountains.

Mater Dolorosa

Mary as the sorrowing mother at the cross, to whose shrine Gretchen brings flowers and her prayer.

Dies irae

The medieval Latin hymn on the Day of Judgment sung at requiem Masses, heard in the cathedral scene.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What stops Faust from drinking the poison on Easter morning?
2. Comprehension What are the terms of Faust's wager with Mephistopheles, and how is it sealed?
3. Comprehension How do Gretchen's mother and Valentine die, and what is Gretchen condemned for?
4. Interpretation Why does Faust render John 1:1 as In the beginning was the Act, and what does that choice say about him?
5. Interpretation Is Faust's answer to Gretchen about religion honest, evasive, or both?
6. Interpretation Mephistopheles claims to will evil and work good. Where in Part One, if anywhere, does good come from his work?
7. Big Question Is the desire to know and experience everything a noble aspiration or a form of pride?
8. Big Question Can a person be saved who places herself under judgment, as Gretchen does, and what does the voice from above suggest?

Faith Connections

• Job 1:6-12 (Scripture)

  The sons of God present themselves before the Lord and the Accuser is permitted to test Job. Goethe's Prologue in Heaven follows this scene closely, but his Faust is a restless scholar rather than a patient righteous man.

• John 1:1-14 (Scripture)

  Faust's struggle to translate the Word as Thought, Power and finally Act sets his own creed of deed against the Gospel's Word made flesh.

• Matthew 16:26 (Scripture)

  What profit is there in gaining the whole world and losing one's soul? The question frames Faust's wager, in which he stakes his soul on the pursuit of all experience.

• Thomas of Celano (attributed), Dies irae (Great Conversation)

  The thirteenth-century sequence on the Last Judgment, sung in the cathedral scene, turns Gretchen's private guilt into the language of the Church's liturgy for the dead.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Faust holds that no learning, pleasure or love can satisfy the human spirit, and he stakes his soul that nothing ever will. Mephistopheles holds that a man fed with pleasure will sink to contentment. The Lord holds that striving man errs but keeps an instinct for the right way. Part One tests these claims through Gretchen's ruin and suggests that restless striving without love destroys others, while her surrender to God's judgment ends in mercy.

Rhetorical device: paradox. Mephistopheles defines himself in Scene III as part of the power that always wills the bad and always works the good, a self-contradiction the whole drama unfolds.

Debate: Resolved: that Faust is more to blame than Gretchen for the deaths of her mother and child.

Memory Work

Two souls, alas! reside within my breast, And each withdraws from, and repels, its brother.

A good man, through obscurest aspiration, Has still an instinct of the one true way.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Faust says he has two souls. Trace the earthly and the aspiring soul through his scenes with Wagner, Mephistopheles and Gretchen, and argue which one wins in Part One.

Comparison with Paradise Lost: Compare Milton's Satan tempting Eve with Mephistopheles guiding Faust toward Gretchen. Which tempter is more dangerous, and why?

Medical Lens

Faust is a Doctor of medicine as well as of the other faculties, and the play gives a sharp period picture of the healer's art. On the Easter walk the villagers honour him for treating plague with his father, a Paracelsian alchemist, but Faust privately says their compounded remedies killed thousands, a confession often read against the early modern mix of alchemy and physic. Mephistopheles' advice to the Student mocks medicine as a profession of easy confidence and access to women. The play's plot turns on drugs: Faust's near-suicide with a poisoned cup at dawn on Easter, the witch's rejuvenating potion, and the sleeping draught that kills Gretchen's mother. Gretchen's arc, from love-sickness at the spinning-wheel through guilt and terror in the cathedral to the disordered speech of the dungeon after the drowning of her child, was drawn partly from an eighteenth-century infanticide trial and has often been discussed as a portrait of grief-driven derangement; such readings are interpretive.

• Scene I, Night

  Faust despairs of his learning and lifts a cup of poison to drink at dawn before the Easter bells stop him.

  Suicide Melancholia Depression Pharmacology Poisons
• Scene II, Before the City-Gate

  Peasants thank Faust for his service during a plague; he tells Wagner how his father's alchemical medicine killed more than it cured.

  Physicians Doctors Plague Epidemic Quackery Charlatans
• Scene IV, The Study

  Mephistopheles, in Faust's gown, advises the Student on the faculties, including a cynical account of medical practice.

  Physicians Doctors Quackery Charlatans
• Scenes V-VI, Auerbach's Cellar and Witches' Kitchen

  Conjured wine for Leipzig drinkers, and the witch's potion that takes thirty years from Faust's body.

  Alcohol Aging Senescence Pharmacology Poisons
• Scene XVI, Martha's Garden

  Faust gives Gretchen a phial to put her mother to sleep; the later scenes reveal that the mother died of it.

  Pharmacology Poisons
• Scene XXV, Dungeon

  Gretchen, awaiting execution, speaks in broken, wandering verse of her drowned infant and dead mother and does not at first know Faust.

  Madness Psychosis Childbirth Maternal

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Stage Faust's attempts to translate John 1:1 (Word, Thought, Power, Act) and discuss what each choice reveals about him before the poodle interrupts.

• Essay

  Has Faust lost his wager by the end of Part One? Argue from the exact terms set in the second study scene.

• Dialogue

  Write the conversation Gretchen might have had with her mother's priest after the jewels were given to the church.

• Poetry

  Write a short song for Gretchen at the fountain after she hears Lieschen mock Barbara, keeping the refrain form of her spinning-wheel song.

Further Reading

• Faust, Part Two, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe

• Conversations with Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann

• Goethe: Life as a Work of Art, Rüdiger Safranski

• Doctor Faustus, Thomas Mann

  A twentieth-century novel retelling the legend through a German composer.