Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows

Than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love.

Corn. The miracles that magic will perform,

Will make thee vow to study nothing else.

He that is grounded in astrology,

Enricht with tongues, well seen in minerals,

Hath all the principles magic doth require.

Faust. Come, show me some demonstrations magical, That I may conjure in some bushy grove,

And have these joys in full possession.

Vald. Then haste thee to some solitary grove,
And bear wise Bacon's and Albanus' works,
The Hebrew Psalter and New Testament;
And whatsoever else is requisite

We will inform thee, ere our conference ccase.

Faustus being instructed in the elements of magic by his friends Valdes and Cornelius, sells his soul to the devil, to have an Evil Spirit at his command for twenty-four years.—When the years are expired, the devils claim his soul.

FAUSTUS―the night of his death. WAGNER, his Servant. Faust. Say, Wagner, thou hast perused my Will,

How dost thou like it?

Wag. Sir, so wondrous well,

As in all humble duty I do yield

My life and lasting service for your love.

[Exit.

Three Scholars enter.

Faust. Gramercy, Wagner,

Welcome, Gentlemen.

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. Oh, my dear Faustus, what imports this fear 1

Sec. Sch. Is all our pleasure turned 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 dainn'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 have I 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 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 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, thut 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 I 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 rescue 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 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 threat'ning arm, and angry brow.
Mountains and hills come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of heaven.

No? then I will headlong run into the earth:
Gape earth. O no, it will not harbor me.
You stars that reigned at my nativity.
Whose influence have allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist
Into the entrails of yon laboring cloud;
That when you vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from your smoaky mouths,
But let my soul sunt, and ascend to heaven.
The watch strikes.

O half the hour is past: 'twill all be past anon.
O if my soul must suffer for my sin,
Impose come 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 sou's.

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

Oh, Pythagoras, Metempsychosis, 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 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!

Enter SCHOLARS.

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.

Sec. Sch. Well, gentlemen, though Faustus' end be such As 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 grown full strait,

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 practise 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 is 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