Goethe's Faust

Notes on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Intro: The European Romanticism of Goethe and His Contemporaries

Neoclassical and Enlightenment thinkers tended to emphasize the orderly collective, the reason-based and structured community, with "the passions" yoked as instruments in the service of reason.  (See Plato's Phaedrus for its depiction of the fiery steeds of good and bad passion, both of which need to be controlled by Reason, which alone guides us towards the Good and the True.)

Romantics emphasize the potential of the individual – some of their favorite notions are imagination, genius, particularity, passion – that is, the individual in all his or her eccentricity and emotional intensity is often set forth as the universal.  William Blake is the strongest advocate for that kind of striving towards the universal not as a neoclassical abstraction but instead as something inextricable from what embodies it.  "One thought fills immensity," he says, and how about his opening to "Auguries of Innocence"? 

To see a world in a grain of sand, 

And a heaven in a wild flower, 

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, 

And eternity in an hour. 

Walt Whitman sings a "Song of Myself" that turns out to be a song about everybody else at the same time.  But all this is common to Romantic thought.  It is intuition, emotion, imagination, and in some versions (Wordsworth and Rousseau, for example) love of natural beauty and process, that grounds our hopes for progress, transformation, and a more beneficial and free social order.

Neoclassical and Enlightened art sometimes amounts to a Horatian uplift or affirmation campaign based on "imitation" (mimesis), with the aim being to give you what you have already been led to think, only in a more elegant, memorable form: "whatever is, is right," as Alexander Pope says in his "Essay on Man."  The neoclassical artist chooses to represent and ornament a good, rational order as the ideal, and then tries to make us fall in love with it.  This need not involve lying about the way things really are at present, but in any case it is optimistic.

Romantic art can be isolated, brooding and withdrawn (examples would be Byron's Manfred, or Shelley's poet-nightingale singing to soothe itself), but often it is confrontational, expressive, ambitious.  Both expressive theory and mimetic theory tend to advocate an ethics and an agenda, but the ethics and agenda are very different.  Romantic art wants to change you, shake you up; Romantic lyric and music want to turn your head, refocus your attention, start the social and perceptual revolution with you.  Neoclassical satire, by contrast, may be wonderfully confrontational, but in a piece like Candide, Voltaire wants to tear down your delusions and propose rational, particular "fixes" or offer limited, sage advice; that is because Enlightened thinkers deal with society and man as a kind of machine or edifice, while the Romantics conceptualize society as a living, changing organism, one moving pretty quickly towards liberation and self-expression.  Who knows where the changing times and forms will take us, or even whether such transformation will end?

In a broader context beyond art, this organic/emotional versus mechanical/rational contrast profoundly affects European politics from the C18 onward.  The American Founders, men of the Enlightenment, drew up contracts of sorts, documents enumerating grievances and setting forth rational, discrete fixes and constraints.  That's where we get the notion that there ought to be limits on what government can do to us or make us do to others.  The French Revolution might have begun that way, but it turned into something much more organic, expressive, dynamic, violent, and transformational.  France was never the same after the Revolution of 1789: it led to a near-total alteration of society and politics.  I think our Romantic moment or baptism of fire came with the Civil War – Lincoln's Gettysburg Address reads like it was written by an expressive poet; he speaks of the birth and death of nations, and of souls struggling to break free.  But it's fair to say that America didn't come into its own until the First World War, when our power became manifest as we helped to settle a great European struggle.

Romantic art is not only ambitious, it is at the same time intensively self-reflective, self-questioning and philosophical – it turns on its own central concepts and submits them to the fires of introspection and critique.  It's true that the Enlightenment fostered the spirit of critique, most notably in the formulation of Kant's injunction sapere aude, dare to know.  But Romanticism does this with unparalleled feeling and intensity.  So ideas such as intuition, imagination, revolution, social and poetic/linguistic organicism, etc. are by no means left unquestioned.  Emotion or passion is construed as the ground of human universality, yet who has more closely looked into the risks of such deep passion, the possibility that it may take a tailspin towards mere fantasy, irrationalism, self-delusion, and despair?  Who noticed and reflected most darkly on the potential that imagination has not only to renew the world but also to trap us with its own productions and isolate us from humane engagement with things and people as they are?  Who more strongly emphasized that glorifying "the individual" at the expense of the community might well lead nowhere but to narcissism, solipsism, and incomprehensibility?  Or that it might in fact worsen the primal eldest curse, alienation, which, after all, Romantic poets and other artists tend to take as the absolute precondition of authentic humanity?  Count Manfred on the Alps is grand, but not a happy man.  Besides, the Romantics themselves weren't generally so superior and removed: Lord Byron died of a fever in 1824 helping the Greeks organize the fight for their independence from the Ottoman Empire (1821-30).  Not exactly an alienated recluse, was Byron – he was more like a rock star with a scandalous personal life and a principled politics.

With this mention of "passionate self-critique," we should move to Goethe, who was both an early proponent of emotionalist art or "Sturm [stormy passion] und Drang [impulse or stress]" (Werther) and a critic of that impulse when, along with Friedrich von Schiller and others, he moved towards what came to be known as "Weimar Classicism" (Weimarer Klassik) from the 1770's through the first decades of the C19.  To be sought were balance and perspective in and through art and artistic education.  The aim was to promote human integrity, wholeness, clarity well-roundedness – to synthesize the best of the Romantic and the Enlightened outlooks.  Read Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man -- I recommend this book as a meditation on the difficult but ultimately promising relationship between aesthetics, society and political change.  Anyhow, in Goethe we see not only the propensity for self-criticism but also a strong dose of wit and humor in doing so – he's quite the intellectual's poet.  In truth, Goethe's own erudition probably rivaled that of Doctor Faust, since there's just about no branch of learning in which Johann Wolfgang von Goethe didn't dabble in a long life that stretched from 1749-1832.  He was a true polymath – artist, scientist, philosopher, you name it.

What's the Point?

A good question to ask is, "what is Goethe apparently trying to accomplish with this respinning of the old story in which a learned doctor is condemned for seeking forbidden knowledge at the expense of his humanity?"

Well, Goethe turns the usual moral fable neatly on its head: our incompleteness is our greatness; that's the new Romantic paradigm.  But the lesson and path are more complicated than that.  Goethe is mature enough to act as historian and philosopher to the movement with which he is associated, European Romanticism.  Faust's pursuit of extreme experience is by no means purely admirable: in fact, it begins with a species of utter boredom and a self-pitying kind of irony: "Was it for this empty, high knowledge that I've spent so much of my life?"  In the end, Faust isn't condemned in Part 2 as we expected he would be.  His movement away from narcissism and towards compassionate intersubjectivity is enough to earn God's favor.  But the narcissism is there, and it's acknowledged rather than papered over.

Text Notes

The Argument (103-05)

103-05.  The Wager or Argument between Mephistopheles and God concerns the prospects and potential of mankind.  Mephistopheles is sardonic about both, professing to feel pity for human beings.  God's trust in Faust is rather like his trust in Job -- except that he sees Faust not so much as "an upright and a perfect man" but instead in terms of the romantic striver: "While still man strives, still he must err" (104; "Es irrt der Mensch so lang er strebt").  Men tend to slacken their efforts, ponders God, so the Devil is actually useful as a spur.

Part I, Night (105-15)

105-15.  Fearless Faust is sick of traditional learning and its branches from the beginning of our tale -- the learned doctor has read it all, and counts it for nothing: "nobody knows, / Or ever shall know, the tiniest crumb!"  Away with science, law, philosophy, even theology.  Bring on the magic, and the goal of that is to "penetrate the power / That holds the universe together, / Behold the source whence all proceeds" (106).  So in a sense, what Faust wants now is the fruit, not the laborious sowing: he wants what we might call "the unity of all knowledge," some kind of godlike singularity.  What he gets is the Spirit of the Earth, with whom he argues and considers himself the equal, which seems to annoy the Spirit since she promptly vanishes on Faust (109).

At this point, Wagner enters with some comic relief, and the talk turns to matters such as history, which Faust very modernistically says is about anything but simple truth" "What you call an age's spirit / Is nothing more than your own spirit / With the age reflected as you see it" (110-111).  And here Faust paints a lamentable picture of those who have sought to "know the real truth" (111) -- they end up badly, to say the least.  He admits that though he was able to summon the Earth Spirit, he couldn't hold on to here, and the attempt has made him feel "at once both small and great" (111).

So what keeps us all down?  We are, Faust explains, burdened with pedestrian cares and obligations, bound by filial love, subject to fears that we may cease to be.  Is truth and grandness to be discovered in Mother Nature?  Well, no -- she is "Mysterious even in broad daylight" and keeps ever her veil (112). 

Faust seems almost ready to swallow a dram of poison and be done with his long quest, to die with some dignity intact (113).  Just then, however, the Chorus of Angels who recount Christ's sacrifice and resurrection turn Faust away from his date with death.  The sorrowful man responds to this Easter appeal to a new life, and is reconciled to his mortal status for now: "O sound away, sound away, sweet songs of Heaven, / Earth claims me again, my tears well up, fall" (115).

Outside the City Gate (116-24)

We hear the sounds of the ordinary people, peasants, students, burghers, soldiers and the like, a microcosm of human society who converse and sing, seeming to take pleasure in their everyday lives, both the struggles and the high points.  As for the renewed Faust, he takes joy in the springtime renewal of the natural world as well as in the "music of humanity" (a Wordsworth line) he has heard: "Here I am human, here I can be free" (118 top).  Everything seems to be calling him to new life.

It doesn't last, however, as an old peasant's praise for Faust's doctor father leads the son to melancholy, self-critical reflection: the upshot is his own realization "How little worthy father and son were really" of such praise (121).  Wagner praises book learning again, claiming they're better and more permanent sources of joy than nature (122), and even as Faust's soul seems still to be yearning for nature, he speaks of "Two souls" within him: "One, lusting for the world with all its might, / Grapples it close, greedy of all its pleasures, / The other rises up, up from the dirt, / Up to the blest fields …" (122).  In other words, the part of us that's reconciled to our mortality, and the part of us that strives to transcend our earthly limitations.  It seems that man, true to romantic notions, is riven by an ineradicable doubleness, a kind of self-alienation, an inability ever really to delight in who we are at present.

This admission leads Faust to invoke "beings of air" who might "translate me to a new, a vivid life!"  Just after that, a strange black dog shows up, and that, we sense, can be nothing but trouble (123).

Faust's Study I (124-32)

Faust's restlessness is on full display here.  At first, he's filled with "the love of my fellows" and of God (124), and begins to peruse the Greek New Testament, but a moment later, the Gospel According to John 1.1, which begins, en arche en ho logos, "In the beginning was the Word …" leads him to confess his fatigue with words:  What was in the beginning, anyway?  Mind? Power?  No, says Faust, "In the beginning was the deed!"  (125).  He forgets to add that with God alone, word and deed are one -- not for human beings, not even for Adam and Eve before the Fall in Eden.  At any rate, he must act, not just talk.

At this point, that black dog begins to transform, and spells to get rid of him only lead to the sudden appearance of none other than Mephistopheles (126-28), who promptly begins mocking mankind's pretensions and giving us basically the same philosophy as Milton's Satan: the goal is to frustrate God's light-saturated plans for goodness, until all returns to the Darkness from which it issued forth.  This plan to frustrate God's designs, however, doesn't save Mephistopheles from considerable frustration of his own; he describes himself as "making … little progress" (128), thanks to the "something" (128 bottom) of this world that resists his every attempt to bring it back to nothing.  Mephistopheles is trapped for the moment, but his way to freedom from the Doctor's study is to get some spirits to make confuse Faust and "Drown him in a deep sea of delusion" (131) -- time enough to get that rat's tooth he needs to make his exit at will (131).  Faust awakens to realize that once again he has been tricked by spirits.

Faust's Study II (132-44)

Mephistopheles soon revisits Faust's study and calls him to "Be free and easy, man, throw off your yoke / And find out what real life is like" (132).  Faust quickly denounces the world and its ever-present bleating about the need for "renunciation": "You can't have what you want, you can't!"  It's always, pleasure's bad for you, what you want to know is forbidden, out of reach, etc.  Faust claims to crave death and he curses his own past, with all its "false and flattering persuasion" (133), anything that gave him hope that his sojourn on earth could be a satisfying one.  And above all, to hell with patience (134 top).

Then comes the Devil's Bargain we knew had to be in the offing: Faust apparently wants, as the spirits urge him, to go "Into the wide world" (134) that lies before him, thereby partly repeating the pattern that Milton delineates for all participants in human history at the very end of Paradise Lost:

The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitarie way.

Mephistopheles is more than willing to help Faust achieve his goal, with the proviso that "If we meet each other -- there, / Why, you must do the same for me" (135).  Faust is, of course, offering his soul to perdition by means of this bargain.  A further bet is that Faust will never be satiated by all that he sees on earth or above it: "If ever you see my loll at ease, / Then it's all yours, you can have it, my life!" (135 bottom)

Faust soon admits to his new companion that he is sick to death of mere erudition -- what he wants is to enter into "the dance / Of sensual extravagance!" (136)  What's needed now, he says, is to be always active, to be open to all the experiences of common humanity, both the highs and the lows, everything from which his rigorous life of study for so long shut him out (137 top-middle). 

Of course, we still see the old pining in Faust -- what else to make of his lament to Mephistopheles, "What am I, then, if it can never be: / The realization of all human possibility, / That crown my soul so avidly reaches for?" (138)  Mephistopheles dismisses this as mere pensive thoughtfulness, when what Faust has already said is that he wants to get out into the world and see what it's really like.  After Faust exits, we are treated to a startlingly honest moment from the bad angel: "Despise learning, heap contempt on reason, / The human race's best possession" (139), and the devil's got you.  He will lead Faust into all sorts of vain, trivial adventures, the better to distract him and keep him from reclaiming his dedication to reason, science, and his soul.

But soon Mephistopheles is back to playing the deceiver, this time with a prospective student of Faust.  Dressed as a learned doctor, he tells the young fellow to study logic, metaphysics, law, to take excellent notes and show up to lectures, and, above all, to "put your trust in words" (142).  His final bit of practical advice?  Become a doctor, and specifically, a women's doctor.  Then comes the sticking point: he inscribes in the young man's book the Satanic verse, "Eritis sicut Deus, scientes bonum et malum" from the Vulgate edition of Genesis.  In the Bible, this possibility was presented as God's reason for setting up the Trees of Life and Knowledge of Good and Evil in the first place: the concern that Adam and Eve might "be as Gods, knowing good and evil" as God and the angels alone should know.  Specifically, the words are part of the Temptation:

4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.  (Genesis 3.4-5 KJV)

The scene ends with Mephistopheles asking Faust, "where to?"  Faust isn't quite sure.  What is this "new life" upon which he has staked his very soul?

Auerbach's Cellar in Leipzig (144-51)

The first leg of Faust's much wished-for tour takes place in a wine cellar where some comical characters are drinking and telling foolish jokes.  Mephistopheles jests to Faust that these silly men can't even recognize the devil when he's among them, and then sings a little song about a king who was troubled with a flea and gave him the royal treatment.  But he also treats the men to magically appearing free drinks, only to turn the stuff into fire as it spills onto the floor.  The ridiculous spectacle ends with the drinkers nearly stabbing one another in a conjured vineyard setting.  But well before that happens and Mephistopheles and his mortal companion make their exit, Faust has already become tired of such company: "I'd like to go now -- nincompoops!" (150)

Witch's Kitchen (151-57)

Now the pair make their way to a witch's kitchen, where a couple of apes are tending an unholy broth and singing jingles.  While in this place, Faust becomes fascinated with the image of a beautiful woman that he sees in a mirror: "Woman unrivaled, beauty absolute!" (153)  We recall that among the conjurations of Marlowe's Mephistopheles was none other than Helen of Sparta and Troy.  Here in Goethe's play, the woman seems to retreat into mist when Faust tries to get a more precise look at her, but he is entranced all the same.

There follows a comic recognition scene that has the witch finally realizing who her august visitor is.  Mephistopheles makes a joke about his changed appearance: "the world's grown so cultured today, / Even the Devil's been swept up in it" (155).  No more horns or tail, and what can't be got rid of -- his cloven hoofs -- can at least be padded by way of concealment.  The preferred title these days isn't Satan, it's "Baron."

Finally, Mephistopheles has the witch dole out some of her potion, which Faust duly drinks.  Mephisto's private comment on this act is, "With that stuff in him, old Jack will / Soon see a Helen in every Jill" (157).  Well, that will save him the trouble of whipping up such a vision.  The point is, as ever, to make Faust follow his passions into confusion and distraction.

"A Street" (158-59)

Faust sees Margarete passing by him, and he boldly offers her his arm.  She is somewhat alarmed by this gesture, and quickly extricates herself from this unwanted attention.  But Faust is smitten, impatient to have her: "If I don't hold that darling creature / Tight in my arms this very night, / We're through, we two" (158) he tells Mephistopheles.

"Evening" (159-62)

We find Margarete musing in her quarters about who her obviously aristocratic gentleman admirer might be, and when she exits, Faust and Mephistopheles enter.  The latter gives Faust a box of jewels he has stolen, and tells him to put it in Margarete's closet for her to discover and marvel at.  The young lady comes home, sings a tune about a dying carouser, finds the jewels and puts them on.  She's excited, but at the same time melancholy that the precious goods really aren't hers: "What good's your pretty face, your youth? / Nice to have but little worth" (162).  It's money that makes a person desirable; that's just the way the world works, she suggests, so the poor haven't a chance.

"Out Walking" (163-64)

Unfortunately, since Margarete's mother is very pious, a priest ends up with the jewels.  Mephistopheles has more work to do now -- he must do Faust's bidding and come up with some new stones.

"The Neighbor's House" (164-68)

Marthe Schwerdtlein plays something like the role of Emilia the older confidante of Desdemona (and wife of the villain Iago) in Othello.  Marthe is worldly-wise, with a sailor rascal of a husband who has supposedly -- so Mephistopheles says -- died in Padua.  Marthe asks for some proof of this lamentable fact, so Mephistopheles plans to offer up Faust as his witness. (167)

"A Street" (168-69)

Mephistopheles' plan of course calls for Faust to peddle a lie to his sweetheart's best friend, and he quibbles but finally gives in to the need: "I must do what I must, can't help myself" (169).  Well, Milton reminds us that tyrants always plead necessity as a justification for their bad deeds, and we can add lovestruck fools to the list, too.

"A Garden" (169-73)

While Marthe and Mephistopheles pay court to each other, with the latter of course having to be a bit coy about why he's a bachelor, Faust woos Margarete, finding out more about her family situation and learning her true thoughts about his initial attempt to win her heart on the sidewalk: she says, "It seemed to me at once you thought / There's a girl who can be bought / On the spot" (171).  Margarete seems charmed, but bashful -- she squeezes Faust's hand but then runs off.

                      

"A Summerhouse" (172-73)

Margarete plays hide-and-seek with Faust, and once alone in the summerhouse, she wonders what a man like Faust could possibly see in "an ignorant child" like her (173).

"A Cavern in the Forest" (173-76)

It seems that Faust now thanks the Earth-Spirit as his benefactor; his love for Margarete spurs him on to communion with the natural world.  At the same time, this communion with nature amounts to hiding from Margarete.  His companion remains Mephistopheles, whose effect Faust registers with some ambivalence: "The longing that I feel for that enchanting / Figure of a girl, he busily blows up / Into a leaping flame.  And so desire / Whips me, stumbling on …" (174).  In other words, this devil of his has chained him to the ups and downs of his own fierce desires. 

Mephistopheles and Faust wrangle about the latter's course: "Aren't you fed up with it by now, / This mooning about?" (174) he asks.  The bad angel shows considerable acumen in diagnosing the progress of his prey: all that elation in the presence of nature as if he had been translated into a divinity, and the upshot of it all is sexual desire: "And your conclusion from such exalted insight?" We may presume from the bracketed stage direction here that Mephistopheles makes an obscene gesture indicating copulation. (175)  He points out that Margarete is all by herself, "heart-sick" (175) for the man she must be starting to think has forgotten her by now.  Faust comes round to make his request of Mephistopheles: "Help me, Devil, please, to shorten / The anxious time I must go through!" (176)

"Gretchen's Room" (176-78)

Margarete ("Gretchen" is the diminutive form of the name) is now heart-sick, driven to distraction by the attentions Faust so lately gave her.  But where is he now?

"Marthe's Garden" (178-81)

Margarete questions Faust regarding his religion, and is treated to a brief, poetical lecture that sounds a bit like pantheism: "The All-embracing, / All-sustaining / Sustains and embraces / Himself and you and me" (178).  This seems disingenuous coming from a man who pals around with the Devil himself.  Margarete's judgment is, "you are not a Chistian" (179).  Later, Faust and Mephistopheles argue about the true nature of innocent Margarete, with the latter insisting that her morals are perfectly ordinary and mainly a matter of who will have supremacy in the budding relationship.  Faust, of course, sees the young woman as impossibly pure and concerned only for his soul.  Some of Margarete's own admission suggest that she is more of a normal human being than the saintly figure Faust wants her to be -- she says to him, "if I only slept alone / I'd draw the bolt for you tonight, yes, gladly" (180) and agrees to drug her mother with a potion so that the wished-for union can take place.

"At the Well" (181-82)

Margarete has by now slept with Faust and she is pregnant.  Her friend Lieschen's gossip about another girl made pregnant by a lover who then abandoned her inspires not moralistic malice but instead empathy.

"The City Wall" (182-83)

Margarete offers flowers and prays to Mother Mary at the city wall: "Save me from shame and death!" (183)

"Night" (183-87)

Valentine the soldier, who is Margarete's brother, is ashamed of her actions, talk of which is apparently all around town.  Faust himself is in a gloomy mood, while Mephistopheles can hardly wait for the hijinks of Walpurgisnacht. (184) That would be on April 30^th, the eve of the feast day for eighth-century English Abbess Walpurga, upon which night witches are said to have gathered on the Brocken mountain, which is part of the Harz mountain range.

                                                                                                                                  

Mephistopheles taunts Valentine with a bawdy song that, as the notes point out, seems adapted from Ophelia in Hamlet 4.5: "What brings you out before / Your sweet William's door . . . / The maid that enters there, / Out she shall come ne'er / A maiden still" (184-85).  That leads to a lethal brawl between Faust, Mephistopheles and Valentine, who dies denouncing his sister Margarete's shameful conduct: "What's done can't ever be undone" (186).

"The Cathedral" (187-88)

Margarete is haunted by an Evil Spirit who reminds her that she used to attend mass as an innocent, but that can no longer be: her mother died from the sleeping potion that Faust offered her to ensure their undisturbed union: "Do you pray for the soul of your mother, / Who by your contriving slept on …?" (187)  The Requiem Mass being held seems to be for Margarete's mother.  There appears no way out of sin and shame, and the hymn accords with Gretchen's mood: Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?  "What shall I say in my wretchedness?" (188)  The Spirit's purpose is no doubt to keep her in damnable despair.

"Walpurgis Night" (188-98)

A wandering, zig-zagging will-o'-the-wisp is invoked by Mephistopheles as a guide towards the festivities on Brocken Mountain, which should clue us in to the function of this entire episode: it shows Faust indulging in a diversion while his Margarete suffers the consequences of events he set in motion.  Structurally, the Walpurgisnacht scene heightens the tension as we await the resolution of Margarete's dilemma.  

Mephistopheles himself seems somewhat disoriented by all the magic and the noise.  He exclaims, "I must show this mob who's master," but promptly takes shelter by jumping into some shrubbery (193).  Faust is incredulous at this quick change, whereupon Mephistopheles dignifies his attitude by saying, "Let the great world rush on crazily, / We'll pass the time her cozily … / Inside that great world contrive us a little one …" (193).  In other words, he's counseling escapism, stasis in the midst of unholy hubbub.  This doesn't keep him from playing the all-embracing modern with a junk-dealer witch: "What's past is done! Done and gone! / The new, the latest, that's what you should deal in …" (195).  Faust sees Lilith, Adam's supposed first spouse, a temptress, and retails a Garden-of-Eden dream to a beautiful young witch as the two dance: "I saw a green-leaved apple tree, / Two apples swayed upon a stem, / So tempting!  I climbed up for them" (195).

Everyone espies the presence of Mephistopheles, and while the old witch welcomes him, the young one and a proctophantasmist aren't so hospitable; the latter says, "Vanish, our is the Enlightened Age" (196).

Faust beholds Medusa, and as so many have done before him, he mistakes her for his love, Margarete.  Just then, a play is announced, and Mephistopheles wants to attend this amateur production.

"Walpurgis Night's Dream; or Oberon and Titania's Golden Wedding" (198-202)

The play seems initially patterned after the reconcilement of Oberon and Titania from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, but it soon descends into the silly advice that if couples want true unity, the thing to do is see little of each other. (198)  From there, a chaos of sounds and observations reigns, with characters such as "full orchestra," "a budding imagination," "a young couple," and so forth.  The "realist's" observation seems worth noting: "This is the first time I have stood / On ground on nothing founded" (201). 

Perhaps Goethe's riff on Shakespeare is intended to suggest that unlike A Midsummer Night's Dream, we may be left with something other than a state of events in which all the bad things that happen are no more than "the fierce vexation of a dream."  The ending of Faust, Part I is more ambivalent than that, partaking as it does in the tragic frame of reference as well as the Christian triumphalism wherein the soul of the seemingly doomed Margarete is declared saved.

"An Overcast Day: a Field" and "Night, Open Country" (202-03)

Faust bitterly reproaches Mephistopheles for failing to inform him of Margarete's sufferings and condemnation by the law.  The bad angel all but snickers at Faust's predicament, and sees his ranting as pure hypocrisy: "Why did you ever throw in with us if you can't see the thing through?" (203)  Still, he offers to "muddle the turnkey's senses" so that Faust can help Margarete escape from prison.

"A Prison" (203-08)

When Faust approaches Margarete in her prison lodgings, she is as mad as Ophelia goes in Hamlet.  He tries to get her to go with him and escape, but it's no use, even after she partly comes to her senses and realizes that it is indeed Faust who stands before her.  Margarete is too guilt-stricken, too frightened, to leave the prison, condemned as she is for the death by sleeping potion of her mother and the drowning of her infant child.  Mephistopheles declares her "condemned," but a voice from above corrects him: she is "saved" instead (208).  Just as the executioners close in, Mephistopheles and Faust escape into the pre-dawn, and that ends the play.  So what is the significance of Faust's attempt to save his "Gretchen" from the terrible fate for which he is mainly responsible?  Does it redeem his past transgressions either as a seeker of knowledge or as a lover?  The ending of the play seems too ambivalent for us to give an unqualified "yes" by way of answer.  There is, after all, an entire second part of Faust to reckon with, and that is beyond the scope of this course.  But in short, in the classics-heavy second part, Faust undergoes many adventures, even at one point marrying the famous Helen of Sparta, with whom he has an ill-fated son named Euphorion.  In the end, Faust, by now a powerful old man and confidant to an Emperor, dies and is whisked away to heaven, frustrating Mephistopheles, who really thought he had won his bet with the doctor.