The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The Devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.
O, I'll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down?
See, see where Christ's blood streams in the firmament !
One drop would save my soul --half a drop: ah, my Christ!
Ah, 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 where God
Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!
Mountain and hills come, come and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!
No! no!

Then will I headlong run into the earth;
Earth gape! O no, it will not harbour me!
You stars that reigned at my nativity,
Whose influence hath allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist
Into the entrails of yon labouring clouds,
That when they vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from their smoky mouths,
So that my soul may but ascend to Heaven.

[The clock strikes the half hour. Ah, half the hour is past! 'twill all be past anon!

O God!

If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul,

Yet for Christ's sake whose blood hath ransomed me, Impose some end to my incessant pain;

Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years—

A hundred thousand, and—at last-be saved!

O, no end is limited to damnèd souls!
Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
Or why is this immortal that thou hast ?

Ah, Pythagoras' metempsychosis! were that true,
This soul should fly from me, and I be changed

Unto 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.
Curst 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.

O, it strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.

[Thunder and lightning.

O soul, be changed into little water-drops,

And fall into the ocean-ne'er be found. [Enter Devils.
My God! my God! 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! -Ah Mephistophilis !

[Exeunt Devils with FAUSTUS.

Enter CHORUS.

HO. Cut is the branch that might have

grown full straight,

And burnèd 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.

E it.

LTHOUGH The Jew of Malta was written between 1588 and 1592, there is no earlier edition of the play than the quarto of 1633. This was furnished with a brace of Prologues and Epilogues by Thomas Heywood, the dramatist, who tells the

"by the best of poets in that age"

"writ many years agone, And in that age thought second unto none."

The source of the story is unknown; Mr. Symonds, arguing chiefly from its unrelieved cruelty, thinks it may be taken from some Spanish novel.

THE PROLOGUE.

Enter MACHIAVEL.

Machiavel. Albeit the world thinks Machiavel is dead,
Yet was his soul but flown beyond the Alps,

And now the Guise1 is dead, is come from France,
To view this land, and frolic with his friends.

To some perhaps my name is odious,

But such as love me guard me from their tongues ;

And let them know that I am Machiavel,

And weigh not men, and therefore not men's words.
Admired I am of those that hate me most.
Though some speak openly against my books,
Yet they will read me, and thereby attain
To Peter's chair: and when they cast me off,
Are poisoned by my climbing followers.

I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance.

Birds of the air will tell of murders past!
I am ashamed to hear such fooleries.

Many will talk of title to a crown :

What right had Cæsar to the empery?

Might first made kings, and laws were then most sure
When like the Draco's they were writ in blood.

Hence comes it that a strong-built citadel
Commands much more than letters can import ;
Which maxim had but Phalaris observed,
He had never bellowed, in a brazen bull,
Of great ones' envy. Of the poor petty wights

Let me be envied and not pitièd !

But whither am I bound? I come not, I,

To read a lecture here in Britain,

But to present the tragedy of a Jew,

Who smiles to see how full his bags are crammed,

Which money was not got without my means.

I crave but this—grace him as he deserves,

And let him not be entertained the worse

Because he favours me.

[Exit.

The Duc de Guise, who had organised the Massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572, and was assassinated in 1588.

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