They hail Faust as he passes them because Faust's father, an alchemist himself, cured the plague. However he is halted by the sound of church bells announcing Easter, which remind him not of Christian duty but of his happier childhood days.įaust and Wagner take a walk into the town, where people are celebrating Easter. His approach to learning is a bright, cold quest, in contrast to Faust, who is led by emotional longing to seek divine knowledge.ĭejected, Faust spies a phial of poison and contemplates suicide. Wagner symbolizes the vain scientific type who understands only book-learning, and represents the educated bourgeoisie. Science having failed him, Faust seeks knowledge in Nostradamus, in the "sign of the Macrocosmos", and from an Earth-spirit, still without achieving satisfaction.Īs Faust reflects on the lessons of the Earth-spirit, he is interrupted by his famulus, Wagner.
Despite his wide studies, he is dissatisfied with his understanding of the workings of the world, and has determined only that he knows "nothing" after all. The play proper opens with a monologue by Faust, sitting in his study, contemplating all that he has studied throughout his life. It is shown that the outcome of the bet is certain, for "a good man, in his darkest impulses, remains aware of the right path", and Mephistopheles is permitted to lead Faust astray only so that he may learn from his misdeeds. God declares that "man still must err, while he doth strive". God has decided to "soon lead Faust to clarity", who previously only "served confusedly." However, to test Faust, he allows Mephistopheles to attempt to lead him astray. In an allusion to the story of Job, Mephistopheles wagers with God for the soul of Faust. The play begins with the Prologue in Heaven. Many productions use the same actors later in the play to draw connections between characters: the director reappears as God, the actor as Mephistopheles, and the poet as Faust. The director approaches the theatre from a financial perspective, and is looking to make an income by pleasing the crowd the actor seeks his own glory through fame as an actor and the poet aspires to create a work of art with meaningful content. In the first prologue, three people (the theatre director, the poet and an actor) discuss the purpose of the theatre. At the end of the drama, as Faust and Mephistopheles flee the dungeon, a voice from heaven announces Gretchen's salvation. In the dungeon, Faust vainly tries to persuade Gretchen to follow him to freedom. Mephistopheles seeks to distract Faust by taking him to a witches' sabbath on Walpurgis Night, but Faust insists on rescuing Gretchen from the execution to which she was sentenced after drowning her newborn child while in a state of madness. Gretchen discovers that she is pregnant, and her torment is further increased when Faust and Mephistopheles kill her enraged brother in a sword fight. After a period of separation, Faust seduces Gretchen, who accidentally kills her mother with a sleeping potion given to her by Faust. Through a scheme involving jewellery and Gretchen's neighbour Marthe, Mephistopheles brings about Faust's and Gretchen's liaison. Having then been transformed into a young man by a witch, Faust encounters Margaret (Gretchen) and she excites his desires. Faust signs in blood, and Mephistopheles first takes him to Auerbach's tavern in Leipzig, where the devil plays tricks on some drunken revelers.
Back in the study, the poodle transforms itself into Mephistopheles, who offers Faust a contract: he will do Faust's bidding on earth, and Faust will do the same for him in Hell (if, as Faust adds in an important side clause, Mephistopheles can get him to be satisfied and to want a moment to last forever). He joins his assistant Wagner for an Easter walk in the countryside, among the celebrating people, and is followed home by a poodle. Dejected in this failure, Faust contemplates suicide, but is held back by the sounds of the beginning Easter celebrations. We then see Faust in his study, who, disappointed by the knowledge and results obtainable by science's natural means, attempts and fails to gain knowledge of nature and the universe by magical means. After a dedicatory poem and a prelude in the theater, the actual plot begins with a prologue in Heaven, where the Lord bets Mephistopheles, an agent of the Devil, that Mephistopheles cannot lead astray the Lord's favorite striving scholar, Dr. The first part of Faust is not divided into acts, but is structured as a sequence of scenes in a variety of settings.
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