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That time may cease, and midnight never come.
Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day or let this hour be put

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 damned!
Oh, I will leap to heaven !—who pulls me down?
See where Christ's blood streams in the firmament:
One drop of blood will save me; O my Christ,
Rend not my heart for naming of my Christ.
Yet will I call on Him: oh, 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! Oh, no, it will not harbour 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 labouring cloud;
That when you vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths;
But let my soul mount, and ascend to heaven.

[The watch strikes. Oh, half the hour is past: 'twill all be past anon. Oh, if my soul must suffer for my sin, Impose some 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 souls.

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

O Pythagoras, Metempsychosis, were that true,
This soul should fly from me, and I be changed
Into some brutish beast.

All beasts are happy, for when they die,
Their souls are soon dissolved in elements;
But mine must live still, to be plagued in hell.
Cursed be the parents that engendered me!-
No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer,
That hath deprived 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 changed 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: O Mephistophilis !

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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 served, 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 seemed all on fire
With dreadful horror of these damnèd 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, clothed in mourning black,
Shall wait upon his heavy funeral.

Chorus. Cut is the branch that might have grown full

straight,

And burned is Apollo's laurel bough

That sometime grew within this learnèd 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.

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The King, being deposed, surrenders his crown into the hands of the
Bishop of Winchester and the Earl of Leicester, at Killingworth
Castle.*

Lei. Be patient, good my lord, cease to lament;
Imagine Killingworth castle were your court,
And that you lay for pleasure here a space,
Not of compulsion or necessity.

Edw. Leister, if gentle words might comfort me,
Thy speeches long ago had eased my sorrows;
For kind and loving hast thou always been.
The griefs of private men are soon allayed,
But not of kings. The forest deer being struck,
Runs to an herb that closeth up the wounds;
But when the imperial lion's flesh is gored,
He rends and tears it with his wrathful paw,
And highly scorning that the lowly earth
Should drink his blood, mounts up to th' air.
And so it fares with me, whose dauntless mind
Th' ambitious Mortimer would seek to curb,
And that unnatural queen, false Isabel,
That thus hath pent and mewed me in a prison:
For such outrageous passions claw my soul,
As with the wings of rancour and disdain
Full oft am I soaring up to high heaven,
To 'plain me to the gods against them both.
But when I call to mind I am a king,
Methinks I should revenge me of the wrongs
That Mortimer and Isabel have done.

* A pincipal manor belonging to the Mortimers.

But what are kings, when regiment is gone,
But perfect shadows in a sunshine day?
My nobles rule, I bear the name of king;
I wear the crown, but am controlled by them,
By Mortimer, and my unconstant queen,
Who spots my nuptial bed with infamy;
Whilst I am lodged within this cave of care,
Where Sorrow at my elbow still attends,
To company my heart with sad laments,
That bleeds within me for this strange exchange.
But tell me, must I now resign my crown,
To make usurping Mortimer a king?

Bish. Your grace mistakes; it is for England's good,
And princely Edward's right, we crave the crown.
Edw. No, 'tis for Mortimer, not Edward's head;
For he's a lamb, encompassed by wolves,
Which in a moment will abridge his life.

But if proud Mortimer do wear this crown,
Heavens turn it to a blaze of quenchless fire,
Or like the snaky wreath of Tisiphon,
Engirt the temples of his hateful head;
So shall not England's vines be perishèd,
But Edward's name survive, though Edward dies.

Lei. My lord, why waste you thus the time away
They stay your answer: will you yield your crown?
Edw. Ah, Leister, weigh how hardly I can brook
To lose my crown and kingdom without cause;
To give ambitious Mortimer my right,
That like a mountain overwhelms my bliss,
In which extreme my mind here murthered is.
But what the Heavens appoint, I must obey:
Here, take my crown; the life of Edward too;

?

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