B FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT FAUST. II. THE LEGEND AND THE STAGE. IOGRAPHY, basing itself mainly upon tradition, and largely impregnated by fable, records the existence, in the second half of the fifteenth, and in the early years of the sixteenth century, of a Doctor Johann Faust, philosopher, scholar, magician, conjuror. This Doctor Faust was born, it is supposed, in Kundlingen, now called Knittlingen, in Würtemberg; left ordinary studies for that of the black science, which he mastered in Krakau, and there instructed in unlawful arts his Famulus (or servitor) and disciple, Wagner. Faust is said to have exercised his power of summoning to his aid the Evil One, and to have made a compact with the devil, in virtue of which the soul of the magician should become the property of the fiend in consideration of a period of twenty-four years of enjoyment of all desires, and of all the pleasures that the senses, that the lust of the eye and the pride of life, can yield. Faust was to have, for the fulfilment of his purposes, a certain devil (Mephistopheles by name) attached to his person and service, and always at his command. The Doctor travelled far and wide in Germany, with his attendant fiend; enjoyed himself to the uttermost, and set the world wondering at the feats that he could perform. At the end of the covenanted time, the inexorable Evil One claimed his bargain, and the unhappy Doctor was robbed of life, under circumstances of gross cruelty, at the village of Rimlich, between the hours (these are very precisely given) of twelve at night and one in the morning. Meantime his fame for wonder-working and for the diabolic art had become great, and widely spread throughout all Germany, and even in other countries of Europe. The priests were glad of so pregnant an example of the danger of meddling with those unholy arts which, though forbidden, were yet then generally believed in; the vulgar love of the wonderful and the horrible was deeply excited by the life, death, and adventures of this potent magician; and hence it came to pass that Doctor Faust became the property of popular credulity and awe; and that, within some few years after his terrible death, his name and fame were bruited through all the land. Narrative and drama, the book and the stage, laid hold of the dark Doctor; and such reputations speedily became the subjects of exaggeration. The life of Faust penetrated into the life of the people, and from many sides was found to be attractive, awful, and suggestive. The flames of Hell light up a huge fire upon earth. The sense of that dim unholy power which can command the services of demons, and which can, by such aid, enjoy years of the enjoyment of every earthly lust, lays hold of superstitious fancy, and the tragic end of such a man has an appalling grandeur which impresses and stirs the popular imagination. Poems, pantomimes, puppet plays, tragedies, upon the subject of the great conjuror, appeared in numbers. In 1599, Wiedemann published, in Hamburg, his Wahrhaftige Historien von denen greulichen Sünden Dr. Joh. Faustens. Printed at once in Cologne and in Nürnberg, but without date on the title-page, comes next Des durch die ganze Welt verrufenen Erzschwarz Künstler's und Zauberer's Dr. Faust mit dem Teufel aufgerichtetes Bündniss, abenteuerlicher Lebenswandel, und schreckliches Ende. Nay, the legend of Dr. Faust spread beyond Germany to other countries of Europe, and, before the end of the sixteenth century, Marlowe had produced in England his Tragicall Historie of Dr. Faustus. It would be impossible to enumerate here all the shapes which this most popular, though intensely German legend, has taken in literature and in the drama. A direct product of its time, the tradition is yet full of vital, of perennial essence, whether of wonder only, or of wonder blent with superstitious fear. We no longer believe in the gods of Greece, but we still love the beauty of the myths that they represent, and the sculpturesque glory of the forms in which they were incarnated by human imagination, and in which they still exist in the ideality of the pure marble. Goethe found a most moving and picturesque tradition, a story known, at least, to every German, and susceptible, as he soon saw, of great arttreatment as the vehicle of the very deepest meanings. It attracted him in his poet youth; unhasting, but unresting, he worked out of it gradually during the long years of manhood his own dramatic version, and the completed work crowned his sovereign age with its brightest glory. Seldom, in the history of literature, has a great poet so wisely or so happily selected a subject which would exert his powers to the very top of their bent. The idea of Faust is now inseparably and distinctively associated with the name of Goethe; and he has made the old, old story immortal by enclosing its rude outline and essence in all the higher meanings, in all the deeper beauty, that he could add to it. Goethe, himself a magician in the divine sort, found noble material for his art in the medieval legend of the black wizard, Faust. The first part of Goethe's Faust was begun, probably, in or even before 1774. The execution of the poem spread itself slowly over some thirty years. It was worked upon gradually, in the intervals of much other work, at many times and in many places-one scene was written in the Borghese Gardens in Rome-and was first printed, in its complete form, in 1806; a perilous and distracted time, in which the French victory of Jena exposed Weimar to occupation by French troops, and caused the destruction of many German manuscripts-as, for instance, Herder's posthumous manuscripts and Meyer's works. Goethe's own house was filled with soldiers, and, inspired by a dread of the possible destruction of the completed manuscript of his masterpiece, he at once sheltered it in the security of print. This first part of Faust was first produced upon the stage on 19th January, 1829. The theatre to which this honour belongs is the Hoftheater, of Brunswick; and Herr Eduard Devrient, in his Geschichte der Deutschen Schauspielkunst, tells the story of the original adaptation of Goethe's infinite, but dramatic poem, for acting; and of its first presentation on the boards of a German theatre. August Klingemann had long been the successful Director of the National-Theater in Brunswick; but when, in 1826, the young Duke Karl (he was then eighteen years of age) came to the Ducal throne, he evinced a lively interest in the drama. The æsthetic Duke's interference was not of unmixed advantage to the theatre. He paralysed the beneficial working of Klingemann, and he then appointed his Master of the Horse, Herr von Oeynhausen, to be Intendant of the theatre. Klingemann was not dismissed, but his excellent theatrical discipline was destroyed, and his efforts in the cause of true dramatic art were seriously let and hindered. The young Prince interfered personally with the management of the theatre; he attended rehearsals; he set aside Klingemann's excellent rules, and thwarted Klingemann's strenuous aims and objects. The result of princely interference was not productive of good. Many of the best actors left the theatre; and those who remained were demoralised by a system of capricious favouritism. Young princes who meddle with the management of theatres have a tendency to take an almost disproportionate interest in the representatives of female characters, and Duke Karl's theatrical activity was, in this, as in other respects, very injurious to the Brunswick Hoftheater. One caprice, however, of the young Duke led to a most important result-to the production on the Brunswick stage of Goethe's Faust. Klingemann was himself the author of a dramatic version of the old Faust legend; and this version, which seems to have had, in its day, a moderate stage success, Klingemann was fond of producing in the theatre which he so ably managed. On some occasion on which Klingemann's Faust was presented, Duke Karl, who loved to tease and to thwart the great manager, asked Klingemann why he did not produce the Faust of Goethe; and the Duke intimated that Klingemann dreaded the rivalry of Goethe. Klingemann replied that he would not venture to compare his play with that of Goethe; but that Goethe had not written his poem for the stage, and that it might be difficult to adapt it for representation. This was surely a not unnatural idea, as things then stood, or were held to stand, on the part of the Director. The Duke persisted; he had, he said, looked through Goethe's play, and found it intrinsically dramatic and very possible for acting. The Duke, naturally enough, carried his point; Klingemann himself adapted, for the first time, Goethe's poem for actual representation; and the piece was performed, with enormous success, on 19th January, 1829.* * The following is a copy of the playbill of the first performance, on any public stage, of Goethe's Faust: Faust BRAUNSCHWEIG-HOFTHEATER. Zum Erstenmal: Tragödie in sechs Abtheilungen von Goethe, für die Bühne redigirt. Warner, sein Famulus. Frosch Hr. Schütz. PERSONEN. Erster Erstes Handwerks- Schüler Dienstmäd- Hr. Feuerflacke. CHEE Brander Siebel Hr. Moller. Altmayer ein Bür Mad. Berger. Hr. Kettel. Erstes Zweites chen Erster Zweiter Bürger Dritter Eine alte Wahrsagerin Volk, Der Anfang ist um 6 Uhr, und das Ende nach halb 10 Uhr. und |