2635–8: these lines appear to indicate an early, Urfaust conception, not elsewhere developed, of the relationship between Faust and Mephistopheles, in which the latter is a servant whom Faust still has the power to dismiss.
2675 ff.: in popular belief, the Devil has knowledge of buried treasure and the power to raise it (cf. 2821 f. and 3664–75).
2727, the great Don Juan: the German is der groβe Hans, meaning merely something like ‘the fine big fellow, the great boaster’ with no specific reference to the legendary macho hero whose name is the Spanish form of Hans. (Nor, of course, has it anything to do with the name ‘Johannes’ which became attached to the traditional Faustus.) The phrase is comparable to the common use in popular German of the name ‘Hans’ with an ironic or disparaging adjective or noun attached to it, as in 2628 where Mephistopheles tells Faust that he is now talking wie Hans Liederlich (literally ‘like Jack the lecher. Jack libertine’) and in the implied ‘Hans Arsch’ of 2190 (cf. Note 50).
2759, Thule: pronounced as two syllables. The Romans gave the name ‘ultima Thule’ (of uncertain derivation) to a semilegendary island at the northernmost limit of their known world. The ballad is, however, quintessentially Germanic in character. Goethe is thought to have written it in 1774, at the same period as the Urfaust scenes and perhaps independently of them (but cf. Introd., p. xviii).
2872, death certificate (cf. 3012 ‘weekly notice-sheet’, i.e. weekly advertiser): such things existed in the eighteenth-century though not in the sixteenth. This is one minor example of the anachronisms in Faust, which Goethe did not of course intend as a realistic reconstruction of the historical Faust’s period, and into which eighteenth-century themes and details are freely mixed (cf. Note 15).
2883 f.: the sumptuary laws of Goethe’s day forbade or strictly limited the wearing of jewellery by girls of modest social station (by a Frankfurt police regulation of 1731, for instance, a manual worker’s daughter was allowed only one gold chain and one gold ring, of a total value not exceeding 50 florins, and a maidservant no ornament at all). Gretchen is also not entitled to be addressed as Fräulein (‘young lady’, as in 2605 or 2906) but only as Jungfer or Jungfrau (young woman).
2981–4: syphilis, thought to have been brought back from Haiti in 1493 by Columbus’s first expedition, broke out seriously in Naples when the city was besieged by the French in 1495. It became widely known as le mal de Naples, the Neapolitan disease, and was a dreaded scourge of sixteenth-century Europe.
3205–16 (A Summerhouse): it is not certain that the action of Sc. 16 immediately follows that of Sc. 15, though productions generally treat these as one continuous scene. It may be argued that the stage direction after 3194 leads naturally to that before 3205, and that there is similar continuity between 3195 and 3207 f.; on the other hand, the relevance of 3213 f. to the dialogue in Sc. 15 is less obvious.
3217–373 (A Forest Cavern): cf. Introd., pp. xxiv f. and the composition-synopsis (pp. lvi f.). This scene, with the exception of one important passage (cf. Note 75), belongs entirely to the Fragment stage and was probably at least partly written when Goethe was in Italy. In the Fragment it follows Sc. 19 and 20, which means that it was originally conceived and composed as a scene occurring after the seduction of Gretchen. In the 1808 text it is inserted into the Gretchen sequence immediately after Sc. 16 and thus at a point before her fall (cf. Introd., p. xxv). Goethe’s reasons for this rearrangement have been much discussed but not clarified. As usual he made no consequential emendations to his earlier-written material, so that, for example, lines 3249 f., 3307–10, 3336f., and 3345–65 read rather oddly in their new context.
3217: the ‘sublime Spirit’ whom Faust addresses can only be the Earth Spirit, in view of the reference to his appearance in fire (3218 f.) which echoes the Urfaust scene 460–517, and of the retention (3241–6) of the Urfaust idea (cf. Introd. pp. xxiv f. and Note 124) that the Earth Spirit gave or attached Mephistopheles to Faust. Goethe thus seems, in the 1790 Fragment, to be still using his original demonological scenario, which the not yet written Prologue in Heaven was to modify significantly ten years later (cf. Introd., pp. xxxi f.). In this Fragment scene the Earth Spirit is clearly also intended, appropriately enough, as a reinforcing link between the opening Urfaust soliloquy in which Faust communed with Nature (386–459, etc.), and the present soliloquy (3217–39) which is a classicized version of the same theme.
3248: the phrase ‘that lovely woman’s image’ (literally ‘that beautiful image’, jenes schöne Bild) evidently refers to Faust’s vision in the magic mirror of the contemporaneously written Witch’s Kitchen scene, at least as much as to Gretchen (whose actual name is never mentioned in A Forest Cavern). This synthesis of the particular and the general dignifies and ‘classicizes’ Faust’s passion, in accordance with the general tendency of the Fragment material (cf. Introd., pp. xxiii f.).
3336 f.: an allusion to Song of Solomon 4: 5: ‘Thy two breasts are like two fawns that are twins of a roe, which feed among the lilies.’
3342–69: these lines were written at the Urfaust stage and originally belonged to a different dramatic context, at a much later point in the Gretchen story. At the Fragment stage, having decided not to publish yet that concluding part of the Urfaust material, Goethe nevertheless retrieved this one passage containing Faust’s outburst of remorse, and inserted it here into the new Forest Cavern scene. About ten years later, for purposes of the final version, he repositioned A Forest Cavern (and thus for the second time repositioned the remorse speech) by bringing it forward to a point well before Gretchen’s seduction (cf. Note 71). Dramatically the speech makes less good sense here, but intrinsically it remains, in its general import, perhaps the most crucial document of the young Goethe’s original tragic conception of the figure of Faust (cf. Introd., p. xxv).
3374: the rest of the Gretchen sequence (Sc. 18–23, and 26–8) is like Sc. 10–16 nearly all Urfaust material, only very slightly revised except for the important expansion of Sc. 22 (Valentine’s death, cf. Note 84), and the versification of the Prison scene (Sc. 28, cf. Note 122). These two revisions were carried out during the third composition-phase, to which the interpolated Walpurgis Night material (Sc. 24 and 25) also belongs.
3374–413. Sc. 18: this famous lyrical piece, unlike The King of Thule in Sc. 11, is strictly speaking not a song sung by Gretchen but a personal spoken soliloquy in a dramatic context. It has, of course, lent itself to many musical settings, of which Schubert’s is the best known, and in any case the distinction between drama and opera in Faust cannot be drawn absolutely (cf. Note 94).
3414: the historical Faust’s first name was Georg and that of his legendary counterpart was Johann (cf. Introd., pp. xiii f.) It is pointless to speculate on whether Goethe preferred to think of him as ‘Heinrich Faust’ or whether Faust merely uses the name ‘Heinrich’ to Gretchen as a nom d’amour. There is no evidence that she knows his real name or identity at all, a fact which makes the ending (4610 ff.) all the more poignant.
3455 (3456 in the German text), ‘The feeling’s all there is’ (Gefühl ist alles): the lapidary German words are frequently quoted as the young Goethe’s central ‘Storm and Stress’ slogan, and taken to mean that nothing in life is so important as emotion generally or sexual emotion in particular. In the context of Faust’s speech, however (which is one of Goethe’s most important and characteristic utterances on the subject of religious belief), it is clear, despite the omission of the definite article before Gefühl, that ‘feeling’ stands in antithesis to ‘name’ in the following line, and that the sense of the statement is thus less wide and primarily theological: ‘God’, and indeed all life, is a mystery that cannot be put into words or given a ‘name’ at all (cf. 3432). The young Goethe continues here the anti-verbalist polemic delivered by Faust in his opening soliloquy (354–85) and scene with Wagner (534–69), as well as ironically by Mephistopheles in his scene with the student (1948–53, etc.). In Faust’s present speech to Gretchen the eroticism t
hat colours his language is, of course, also undeniable.
3540: ‘genius’ was the cult-concept first made fashionable by the ‘Storm and Stress’ movement of the 1770s, the detractors of which also ironically referred to it as the ‘genius period’ (Geniezeit).
3563 f.: the hard labour of spinning is the realistic background to Gretchen’s ‘song’ in Sc. 18; cf. also the account of her domestic tasks which she gives to Faust, Sc. 15, 3109–48.
3575 f.: literally, ‘the boys will tear off her bridal wreath (Kränzel), and we’ll scatter chopped straw (Häckerling) outside her door’. These were two punitive social ceremonies inflicted on ‘fallen’ women. The snatching off of the wreath or garland (as the symbol of virginity, cf. 3561 ‘her little flower’) is referred to again in Gretchen’s last scene (4436, 4583). The dread of such penalties, particularly of the public ‘church penance’ (3568 f.), often drove girls to infanticide as an attempt to conceal their guilt. In the Duchy of Weimar public penance was abolished in 1786, with Goethe’s concurrence as a member of the Council of State, though he supported the retention of the death penalty for infanticide. It may be noted that church penance for fornication or adultery was also the custom in eighteenth-century Scotland, and is alluded to by Robert Burns in his ballad about an unmarried mother The Rantin’ Dog the Daddie o’t (written in about 1785), where he calls the penance-stool ‘the creepy-chair’. Goethe greatly admired Burns (though he would not necessarily have known this poem).
3587–619: the shrine is in the narrow space (called in German der Zwinger) between the town wall and the houses nearest to it. The icon recalls the thirteenth-century hymn attributed to Giacopone da Todi (Stabat Mater dolorosa) which describes the sorrow of the Virgin as she witnesses the Crucifixion.
3620–775, Night. The street outside Gretchen’s door: it is clear from certain allusions in the Urfaust text (corresponding to 4512–17, 4525 and lines of the prose scene, Sc. 26) that the killing of Gretchen’s brother by Faust was part of the young Goethe’s original plan. At that stage, however, he only wrote two disconnected fragments of the dramatic scene in which this takes place—they were indeed perhaps not even originally conceived as parts of the same scene. These were Valentine’s soliloquy (3620–45), and a passage of dialogue between Faust and Mephistopheles, part of which contained Faust’s remorse speech and was later transferred to A Forest Cavern (cf. Note 75 and the composition-synopsis; the dialogue 3650–9 originally continued as 3342–69). It was not until 1806 that Goethe completed the Valentine scene, adding lines 3646–9 and 3660–775 in which he nevertheless very successfully recaptured the style and spirit of the Urfaust.
3660–3: these lines too were inserted at the final stage to establish a link between this scene and the Walpurgis Night sequence which Goethe had now added (cf. Note 93).
3664–73: this rather mysterious passage is a further allusion (cf. Note 64) to the power of the Devil over precious metals and jewellery. The treasure was supposed to ‘bloom’ with an eery light as it rose.
3672 f.: the German merely says ‘I did see something like a kind of pearl necklace’. Pearls were thought to symbolize tears (and therefore to be unlucky for a lover to give or a bride to wear); the motif of a necklace for Gretchen also reappears with sinister effect in 4203 ff. I have added to Mephistopheles’ words a Shakespearian allusion which is not out of keeping with the scene (cf. Notes 88 and 89).
3682–97: Mephistopheles’ ironic serenade is freely adapted from one of Ophelia’s songs in Hamlet, in her ‘mad’ scene (iv.v) which was already paralleled in the Urfaust Prison scene (cf. Note 127):
Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day.
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window.
To be your Valentine:
Then up he rose, and donned his clothes,
And dupp’d the chamber door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.
By Gis and by Saint Charity,
Alack, and fie for shame!
Young men will do’t, if they come to’t;
By Cock they are to blame.
Quoth she, before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed:
So would I ha’ done, by yonder sun,
An thou hadst not come to my bed.
In his version Goethe uses the name Katrinchen (Kate) which commonly occurs in German folksongs of similar purport.
3699: Shakespeare’s Mercutio challenges Juliet’s cousin Tybalt with the words ‘Tybalt, you ratcatcher, will you walk?’ Romeo and Juliet was the only Shakespeare play Goethe himself translated, and this seems to be a conscious echo, another being probably Faust’s enforced flight from the town after killing Valentine, which is comparable to Romeo’s banishment after killing Tybalt. There is also a certain affinity between Juliet’s nurse and Gretchen’s confidante Martha, and perhaps between Mercutio generally and Mephistopheles.
3714 f.: Mephistopheles distinguishes between minor offences and those crimes which went before courts that could pass the deathsentence and were thus regarded as having divine authority.
3776–834, The Cathedral: in the Urfaust this scene preceded the original fragmentary version of that of the death of Valentine (cf. Note 84). The Urfaust stage direction specifically stated that the requiem being sung was for Gretchen’s mother (and that ‘all her relations’ were present). The implication of 3787 f. is that her mother has died from the effects of the sleeping-potion (cf. 3510–15, 4507, 4570 ff.) which has presumably been administered on a number of occasions. The Fragment ended with the cathedral scene, Goethe having at that time decided to withhold all the subsequent Urfaust material. In the final version, having completed the Valentine scene, he placed the cathedral scene after it instead of before it, so that the order of Gretchen’s concluding appearances (evidently intended at the Urfaust stage to be, more naturally, By a Shrine—The Cathedral—Valentine scene—The Prison) now becomes (21) By a Shrine—(22) Valentine scene—(23) The Cathedral—(28) The Prison. From the point of view of dramatic realism this new sequence is rather less plausible than the original one, since the completed Sc. 22 makes it clear that Gretchen’s situation has become a public scandal, and leaves her implicated in her brother’s death as a witness at least, whereas the now following cathedral scene gives the impression that her pregnancy (3790–3) is still a relatively private matter. In the repositioned Sc. 23 Goethe now inserts an allusion to Valentine’s death (3789) into the words of the ‘evil spirit’ who externalizes Gretchen’s remorseful thoughts, but deletes the reference to her mother and family from the stage-direction.
3798 f., 3815 ff., 3825 ff.: the words about the Last Judgement sung by the choir are verses from the Dies irae sequence in the Mass for the Dead (‘Day of dread, that day of ire, when the world explodes in fire … When the Judge ascends his throne, every secret shall be known, all for sin must then atone… Then, poor wretch, what shall I say? Who then shall be my strength and stay, when even just men fear that day?’). The evil spirit echoes other phrases from the sequence.
3835–4222 Walpurgis Night: St Walpurgis or Walburga, abbess of Heidenheim in Franconia, was born in England and died in 779; her name appears to be derived from ‘Wolborg’, a ‘good fortress’ (against evil, by her purity) and she was invoked in aid against witchcraft. Her day, 1 May, is also an ancient pagan spring festival, and she is thus associated by antithesis with the witches’ sabbath which was traditionally supposed to take place on the Brocken during the previous night. The Brocken or Blocksberg, known to the Romans as Mons Bructerus, is the main summit of the Harz Mountains and at 3,745 ft. the highest mountain in central Germany. Schierke and Elend are two villages a few miles from it. Goethe had climbed the Brocken in December 1777, and revisited the Harz district in 1783 and 1784. The mention of Walpurgis Night in the Witch’s Kitchen scene (2590) may mean that he already intended at the Fragment stage to use this material for Faust (cf. also 2113 f. in Auerbach’s Ta
vern, revised at this time, and Note 123). In the traditional Faustus literature there is never any mention of the Walpurgis legend, and it seems that before Goethe the only combination of the Faust and Blocksberg themes was in a comic epic called Walpurgis Night (1756) by Johann Friedrich Löwen, a very minor writer from the Harz district; the serious association of the two legends is thus essentially a Goethean contribution. His actual writing of the Walpurgis Night scenes belongs to the third composition phase, chiefly between 1799 and 1801. Sources that influenced him included the Anthropodemus Plutonicus by ‘Prätorius’ (Schultze, cf. Note 31), the same author’s Blockes-berges Verrichtung (The Blocksberg Ceremony) of 1669, and a large engraving by Michael Herr (1591–1661) which depicts the grotesque revels of witches and demons. It is of interest in this connection that the last witch-burning in Germany had not taken place until 1782.