Summary: Scene 2
Two scholars come to see Faustus. Wagner makes jokes at
their expense and then tells them that Faustus is meeting with Valdes
and Cornelius. Aware that Valdes and Cornelius are infamous for
their involvement in the black arts, the scholars leave with heavy
hearts, fearing that Faustus may also be falling into “that damned
art” as well (2.29).
Summary: Scene 3
Think’st thou that I, who saw the face
of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
(See Important Quotations Explained)
That night, Faustus stands in a magical circle marked
with various signs and words, and he chants in Latin. Four devils
and Lucifer, the ruler of hell, watch him from the shadows. Faustus
renounces heaven and God, swears allegiance to hell, and demands
that Mephastophilis rise to serve him. The devil Mephastophilis
then appears before Faustus, who commands him to depart and return dressed
as a Franciscan friar, since “[t]hat holy shape becomes a devil
best” (3.26). Mephastophilis
vanishes, and Faustus remarks on his obedience. Mephastophilis then
reappears, dressed as a monk, and asks Faustus what he desires.
Faustus demands his obedience, but Mephastophilis says that he is
Lucifer’s servant and can obey only Lucifer. He adds that he came
because he heard Faustus deny obedience to God and hoped to capture
his soul.
Faustus quizzes Mephastophilis about Lucifer and hell
and learns that Lucifer and all his devils were once angels who
rebelled against God and have been damned to hell forever. Faustus
points out that Mephastophilis is not in hell now but on earth;
Mephastophilis insists, however, that he and his fellow demons are
always in hell, even when they are on earth, because being deprived
of the presence of God, which they once enjoyed, is hell enough.
Faustus dismisses this sentiment as a lack of fortitude
on Mephastophilis’s part and then declares that he will offer his
soul to Lucifer in return for twenty-four years of Mephastophilis’s
service. Mephastophilis agrees to take this offer to his master
and departs. Left alone, Faustus remarks that if he had “as many souls
as there be stars,” he would offer them all to hell in return for
the kind of power that Mephastophilis offers him (3.102).
He eagerly awaits Mephastophilis’s return.
Summary: Scene 4
Wagner converses with a clown and tries to persuade him
to become his servant for seven years. The clown is poor, and Wagner
jokes that he would probably sell his soul to the devil for a shoulder
of mutton; the clown answers that it would have to be well-seasoned mutton.
After first agreeing to be Wagner’s servant, however, the clown
abruptly changes his mind. Wagner threatens to cast a spell on him,
and he then conjures up two devils, who he says will carry the clown
away to hell unless he becomes Wagner’s servant. Seeing the devils,
the clown becomes terrified and agrees to Wagner’s demands. After
Wagner dismisses the devils, the clown asks his new master if he
can learn to conjure as well, and Wagner promises to teach him how
to turn himself into any kind of animal—but he insists on being
called “Master Wagner.”
Analysis: Scenes 2–4
Having learned the necessary arts from Cornelius and Valdes,
Faustus now takes the first step toward selling his soul when he
conjures up a devil. One of the central questions in the play is
whether Faustus damns himself entirely on his own or
whether the princes of hell somehow entrap him. In scene 3,
as Faustus makes the magical marks and chants the magical words
that summon Mephastophilis, he is watched by Lucifer and four lesser
devils, suggesting that hell is waiting for him to make the first
move before pouncing on him. Mephastophilis echoes this idea when he
insists that he came to Faustus of his own accord when he heard
Faustus curse God and forswear heaven, hoping that Faustus’s soul
was available for the taking. But while the demons may be active
agents eagerly seeking to seize Faustus’s soul, Faustus himself
makes the first move. Neither Mephastophilis nor Lucifer forces
him to do anything against his will.
Indeed, if anything, Mephastophilis seems far less eager
to make the bargain than Faustus himself. He willingly tells Faustus
that his master, Lucifer, is less powerful than God, having been
thrown “by aspiring pride and insolence, / … from the face of heaven”
(3.67–68).
Furthermore, Mephastophilis offers a powerful portrait of hell that
seems to warn against any pact with Lucifer. When Faustus asks him
how it is that he is allowed to leave hell in order to come to earth,
Mephastophilis famously says:
