SOURCE: "The Seventeenth-Century Dutch Faust Play," in Husbanding the Golden Grain: Studies in Honor of Henry W. Nordmeyer, edited by Luanne T. Frank and Emery E. George, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan, 1973, pp. 238-54.

Holland's contribution to the Faust literature is a modest one. But with much of sixteenth-century Europe it shared an early interest and knowledge regarding the notorious doctor. For in the course of his wanderings Faust came also to the Low Countries. He even gained a kind of prominence there: he was imprisoned most probably in the castle Batenburg in the province of Gelderland as punishment for one of his typical escapades the nature of which is unknown.¹

The Spies Faustbuch of 1587 elicited an almost immediate response in Holland. In 1592 appeared DE WARACHTIGHE HISTORIE VAN DOCTOR JOHANNES FAUSTUS, published in Dordrecht. This work is, excepting minor deviations and omissions, a faithful translation of Spies. Its author, not finally identified until 1863, was the Stadtmedicus of Dordrecht, Karel Baten. It is a little difficult to understand why his nom de plume, Carol B. Medic, should have mystified anyone for long but this seems to have been the case. A most detailed authoritative treatment of this Dutch Faust book was published in 1926 by B. H. Van 'T Hooft, who offers a thorough summary of a great many hitherto scattered facts and points to possibly rewarding further investigation in those localities in Holland which the historical Faust is known to have visited.²

I

Apparently quite independently of the Dutch Faust book, there appeared during the second half of the seventeenth century a Dutch version of a Faust play. For a long time little or no factual information concerning it was available. Even [Wilhelm] Creizenach, writing in 1878, despite painstaking research on the Volksschauspiel, is apparently unaware of the unusual significance of this Dutch play for he fails to single it out for special comment.³ But almost two decades later when Johannes Bolte publishes the results of his own research on the history of the early German theater, specifically the stage at Danzig during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a note under the date 1703 (Bolte, pp. 154-55, footnote) mentions a visit to Danzig by one Jacob van Rijndorp, the leader of a very prominent company of hollandische Komodianten, and also the long-time director of the established theaters in Leiden and The Hague.⁴ Bolte reports that Rijndorp published "eine ganze Reihe von Lust- und Trauerspielen …, (darunter De hellevaart van Doktor Joan Faustus [Amsterdam, 1731], ein Stuck, das vielleicht eine nahere Untersuchung lohnte)". At the time that Bolte uttered this conjecture it is more than likely that neither he nor his predecessor Creizenach had seen a copy of this Dutch play, since it was exceedingly rare. In 1910, however, E.F. Kossmann issued the play itself and summarized in the Einleitung and six Beilagen everything he had been able to uncover concerning authorship of the play, personages connected with its origin, stage performances, and related matters.⁵ The result of Kossmann's work is that we are now able to see something of the probable position which the Dutch Faust play occupies in the long and fragmentary history of the Faust Volksschauspiel.

De Hellevaart van Dr. Joan Faustus appeared in printed form in 1731 in Amsterdam, issued by Jan van Hoven, onetime actor in The Hague and a former member of the aforementioned company of holldndiscihe Komodianten whose leader was Jacob van Rijndorp. The latter had died eleven years before, and van Hoven ostensibly published the Faust play from the Nachlass of his revered Prinzipal. In van Hoven's dedicatory poem the first line reads:

Dit Spel door Ryndorps pen voor 't grootste deel gedicht,
(This play for the greater part composed by Rijndorp's pen)

This suggests at the very least that a talent other than Rijndorp's had also been involved in the composition of the play. Kossmann has succeeded, conclusively it seems, in showing that this other author was one Floris Groen (d. 1689, see Kossmann, pp. 169-75), concerning whom little is known save that he was a poor wandering actor with a facility for adapting the works of others to the demands of the traveling companies. How much of the Faust play was Groen's and how much was Rijndorp's is very difficult to determine.⁶ Be that as it may, it is demonstrable that the Rijndorp-Groen Faust play was well known and popular in Holland. Further, it is not impossible that Rijndorp had it in his repertoire on his extensive foreign visits (Denmark 1703, and north German cities). Quite aside from the interesting role that the Dutch piece may have played in the theatrical history of Faust, the play is in itself worthy of the "nahere Untersuchung" invited by Bolte.

Despite certain differences of opinion it is generally accepted today that Faust as a drama came to the continent essentially in the form of Marlowe's Tragicall History of D. Faustus. That is to say, a garbled version of Marlowe, equipped with ornaments, modifications, and additions calculated to catch the eye and ear, was constructed and performed by a troop of Englische Komodianten. Kossmann (p. 11) is of the opinion that this play represented an amalgam of Marlowe, plus scenes and motifs from Dekker's If It Be Not Good, the Devil Is in It(1612), plus certain changes intended to exhibit the special talents present in the performing company. This composite play, if it existed, is lost, but Creizenach was able to reconstruct it fairly completely from a report of a performance in Danzig in 1668.⁷ Marlowe is thus, more or less, the model for the continental play performed in Dutch and German cities from about the middle of the seventeenth century on. It is not possible to form exact opinions regarding the poetical and structural virtues and limitations of this first Faust play. But if we examine other seventeenth-century Komödiantenstücke we may conclude that the quality of these pieces was not high.⁸ They were, for our taste at least, disfigured by low-comedy additions extraneous to the plot, by bombast and coarseness, by extensive recourse to pantomime (no doubt necessitated by the initial language difficulty), and the like. The generally low estimate of these productions need therefore not be seriously questioned. But to dismiss uncritically the contemporary Dutch Faust play, most probably also a descendant of Marlowe, is not warranted.⁹

The total impression of R is one of unity. The various scenes are tied together logically; that is, they are related not merely in a mechanical chronology but to the theme indicated in the title. This is true even of the low-comedy scenes, which are usually thrown into ordinary seventeenth-century plays in a highly inorganic fashion. In R they are connected with the main action. For example, Pekel (the Pickelharing of contemporaneous German plays) becomes in R more than the servant of Faustus and more than a mere buffoon wandering on and off the stage. His role is related to the heart of the play, as will be noted later.

Poetically, too, the play is not without its merits. Especially in Faustus' monologues (there are nine throughout) the author, although never escaping entirely from the stylized rhetoric of the period, nevertheless achieves at times a genuine feeling and pathos, even a level of tragic statement, which remove this play far indeed from the mediocrity of the usual seventeenth-century Komnidiantenstuck. True, these passages occur only occasionally, but they constitute some grounds for believing that the author of this piece had some awareness of the profoundly tragic implications of his theme."¹⁰

The opening scene "verbeeldende de Hel" (representing hell) consists of a "Rei van helsche vrouwengeesten" (chorus of hellish women-spirits). This chorus deserves more than passing attention since it is peculiar to R and not found in early German Faust plays. Kossmann is no doubt correct in surmising that it represents an addition by Rijndorp. We know that such Reien were his specialty as were other embellishments such as frequent ballets, singing, elaborate stage settings, and the like. But this scene serves a purpose other than that of omament. By placing it in hell the author plainly tells the audience that the matter here involves the ultimate destiny of the human soul and by emphasizing the stately character of the Rei he elevates his subject high above the mere hocus-pocus level it inhabits, for example, in the Volksbuclh. The Rei, which incidentally was a dramatic device frequently employed by the greatest of Dutch seventeenth-century dramatists, Vondel, serves thus as a kind of Greek chorus; it sets the tone and level of the matter to be treated and, so to speak, indicates to the audience the dignified perspective into which the parts, characters, and scenes are to fit. The serious mood is sustained by means of a "Balet van Helsche Furien" (ballet of hellish furies) at the end of the first act.

The long second scene presents a conversation between Pluto, the prince of Hell, and Charon, who complains of the indolence of those hellish lieutenants whose responsibility it is to corrupt souls. After an initial savage rebuke directed at Charon for his presumption, Pluto agrees to stir up his underlings. R has four such devils, each assigned a most specific area of operation. The first, Ramuzes, is to go to the lawyers, who are to cease upholding only justice; the second, Stokebrand, is to attack the physicians for their notorious greed and their ignorance. Both these devils joyously accept their assignments and describe with relish how they plan to go about this business. They utter savage criticisms of the two professions, criticisms which must have been current in the seventeenth century. A third devil, Heintje Pik, receives orders to instigate gross immorality among the populace, and like the other devils, issues a most detailed description of the method he plans to employ and even of the exact locale of operation. Finally Mifastofeles, as the most sophisticated devil, is assigned the task of corrupting the clergy and the students. In lines of stately dignity Mifastofeles reveals his pride in being assigned so important and difficult an area of work.

This whole second scene, which concludes the first act, consists of some 260 lines and constitutes roughly one-eighth of the entire play. When we compare its emphasis and magnitude with that of the corresponding scene in, for example, the Ulmer Puppenspiel,¹¹ which devotes only twenty-four lines of its "Vorspiel" to the subject, the importance of this scene to the author of R is clear. And the probable reasons have already been indicated: the solemn, even somber, tone of the play is here set, and the author thus affords himself the opportunity for a savage criticism of the contemporary social scene. Of course the shrewd and facile author, whether Groen or Rijndorp, was well aware that this criticism would have mass appeal.

The second act opens with a scene of Faustus in his study and in despair, profoundly disillusioned with the pursuit of academic learning. Here the solemn theme as it was announced in Act I becomes visible and the poetry takes on a deeper quality. A real anguish is evident in Faustus' monologue, in which he describes a conflict between the zwei Seelen in his breast—a leitmotif that, unlike the Puppenspiel, the Dutch play never relinquishes from this point on.¹² The Wissensdrang, present in the Puppenspiel, but certainly unexploited as to its implications, is here presented most convincingly and movingly:

o Hemel, wil my toch bewaaren, en laat my niet van
het regte pad der waare wysheid dwaalen,
…
(O Heaven, preserve me, and do not let me stray from
the right path of true wisdom)

The rival urgings of Mifastofeles on the left and the guardian angel on the right increase the learned man's torment. They leave and with a fine sense of dramatic structure the author has Faustus express in a monologue the effect that the two spirits have had on him. The balance seems to be favoring his return to righteousness when Wagenaar announces the arrival of "twee Heeren van de Studie" (two gentlemen-scholars), Fabritius and Alfonzus. With them an ironic turn is introduced, for it is these two well-meaning, cordial fellow scholars (they return in Act IV and again in Act V to plead with Faustus to abandon his downward path; see also note 12) who innocently bring Faustus the book which is to lead to his damnation. To be sure the visiting students in U perform the same function, but there they are completely devoid of any specific character traits and even of names (they are designated merely as erster and zweiter Student). In the Dutch play Fabritius and Alfonzus serve a thematic function: being fellow scholars they are able to understand not only the compelling power of Faustus' desire to know, but also the disillusionment which pushed Faustus into his desperate choice. By placing the visiting scholars on the higher human plane of pleaders the author enables the audience to recognize the real validity of Faustus' tragic problem.

With the possession of the magic book, the die is cast. Faustus resolves to banish all thoughts of heaven and to address his prayers henceforth (scene 9) not to heaven "maar aan't Onderaardsche Ryk" (but to the realm below). He calls on Wagenaar to accompany him out of doors. At this juncture, to allow for the time lag, comic relief in the person of Pekel enters the play for the first time. In a monologue spiced with earthy language and revealing his cynical, insolent attitude toward the contemporary scene, he runs through various possibilities for employment and decides in favor of a dishonest employer. It is plain that this man is destined to join Faustus' household. As sustained comic relief the Pekel scenes were doubtlessly effective.

Following this scene 9, in which also all the grisly details of conjuring are catalogued (not omitted here as in the Spies-Baten Faust book), Faustus succeeds in bringing the devils to him; Mifastofeles is chosen to be Faustus' servant since he responds to the question regarding qualifications with the assurance that he is as swift as the thoughts of man. Before any formal pact can be concluded, however, Mifastofeles has to secure Pluto's agreement.

Almost all of this is contained also in U but there the poetry and the genuine problem simply do not exist, and we have instead a mere chronology of events. The difference in treatment becomes especially apparent in the role accorded Pekel throughout Acts III, IV, and V of R. He becomes an integral part of the plot, quite aside from the immediate appeal he must have had for the less sophisticated part of the audience. In the negotiations for employment between Pekel, Wagenaar, and Faustus, for example, Pekel, after revealing his own low origins, insinuates that Faustus' origins are similar when he makes lewd and insolent conjectures regarding the doctor's parents, whereupon the latter indignantly informs Pekel that he is a man of consequence:

Weet dat ik Faustus ben, een Dokter, hoog verheven,
(Know that I am Faustus, a doctor of high estate)

and Pekel becomes immediately contrite. The net effect is, however, that Faustus' self-esteem has received a jolt: he is indirectly reminded that his projected alliance with the devil will reduce his exalted state; the thrust of Pekel's insult is that evil is evil and degrades man, that however genuinely motivated Faustus may have been originally, his embracing evil will lower him to little above the level of a Pekel. No doubt this point was intended even more for the audience than for Faustus. A similar effect is obtained later when Pekel, having gotten hold of the magic book, stages an elaborate parody (Act IV). The significant aspect is that when Faustus, his dignity outraged, comes rushing up he is promply subjected to Pekel's own version of magic charms. He is forced to play the fool and thus finds himself degraded to the same level as the so-called low-comedy characters. He feels keenly the humiliation of "having to jump here like a fool." Again the effect on him and on the audience cannot have been lost.

Certainly among the most important and provocative scenes in R are those dealing with Faustus' exploits at the court of the emperor Karel and his wife Izabelle. Kossmann designates scene 11 as the most difficult, that is, from the point of view of trying to derive it from Marlowe; it is "die schwierigste Scene des Stiickes, die am ersten die alte Vermutung von einem vormarlowischen deutschen Faustdrama stiitzen konnte" (p. 23). In addition to the appearance of Alexander at Faustus' bidding, a scene which could have come directly from Marlowe, R has just previous to it a Kampfballett between Hector and Achilles. There is no trace of this in Marlowe, but we do encounter it in other pre-Marlowe Faust literature: an actual battle pantomime between the two heroes occurs in Johann Wier's De Praestigiis Daemonum of 1586 (cf the excerpt in Das Kloster, 2:188). Other such apparently "original" passages in R have counterparts in certain of the Faust Puppenspiele. To quote Kossmann again: "Denn mannigfache Spuren besonders in der Schutz-Dreherschen Gruppe und den bohmischen Stucken beweisen, dass das hollandische Stück alte Züge, wenn auch verstümmelt, bewahrt" (p. 25).

The whole complex of scenes depicting Faustus at court is used by the author of R to highlight his serious theme. That such a serious and organic purpose was intended by the author is evident first of all from the extensive treatment he allots to the court episode (scenes 8 through 13). But even more of the author's probable intention is discernible in the scenes themselves. A heavy, grave note of warning pervades; the emperor expresses a wish to see the great Alexander. At once both the courtier, Ferdinant, and the emperor's wife, Izabella, express great anxiety and try to dissuade him. Izabella particularly is apprehensive. She recognizes such contacts with the spirit world as Duivels konsten—the dread black magic—and argues that since Alexander has died long ago only a devil could assume his shape. The wish to see Alexander can therefore only mean a recourse to "grave sins." This fear on Izabella's part continues to remind Karel (and the audience) of the fateful step involved. But Karel, inexplicably stubborn, insists on pursuing his whim. All this happens before Faustus has appeared at the court. But the emperor issues the order to find a man skilled in the arts of calling up the departed and of course the courtier, Octaaf, succeeds immediately in finding Faustus. The emperor's wish is gratified but because he disobeys Faustus' injunction not to address or approach the spirit, he is struck in the face. This insult enrages him: it convinces him that Izabella's warnings were well founded. He begs for divine forgiveness, banishes Faust, and the episode is closed. He knows now that he has narrowly escaped the disaster to which Faustus has committed himself. The moral effect of this demonstration of the ever-close danger from the side of evil must have been powerful. Also the author's addition of a low-comedy burlesque counterpart to the various Faustus-Mifastofeles scenes only stressed the ludicrous and degrading aspects of such association.

It has been noted that in R there is a continued possibility of Faustus' salvation. This is stressed so much more in the Dutch play than in other early Faust pieces that this feature can hardly be coincidence. The usual pattern is that when Faust has definitely decided in favor of Mephistopheles (and this always occurs early), his further career is steadily downward until finally he is dragged off to hell. Obviously this early decision and its predictable conclusion robs the material of most of the potential for dramatic tension inherent in it. The Puppenispiel versions, for example, are little more than recitals of Faust's wicked acts. In R, on the contrary, there is a conscious attempt to keep alive a real conflict between two opposing forces in Faustus' breast—a genuine dramatic struggle. Thus in Act IV, scenes 12-14, there is a formidable attempt to reclaim Faustus and it comes again from the side of the two scholar friends, Fabritius and Alfonzus. That the author wished to tie this scene (12), in the consciousness of the audience, to the earlier visit by the two friends is skillfully shown by the similarity of the device employed in both scenes. For again they bring Faustus a book, this time The Book. Even the words of address in the two scenes correspond: Act II, scene 5: "Zo wil dit Boek eens zien" (Do look at this book),…; Act IV, scene 11: "… wil dit Boek eens regt beoogen" (look closely at this book). It is The Book plus genuine remorse that will, so they assure Faustus, still save him. And Faustus believes and acts on this plea; his relief from anguish is immediate. Mifastofeles, recognizing at once that the prize is about to slip from his grasp, takes desperate measures: he introduces Helena. R, in short, offers a really organic motivation for the Helena scene: only by means of this temptation, the devil's trump card, is he able to recapture Faustus.

With this attempt the real drama is finished and the dramatist hastens to the end. A short fifth act recounting Faustus' last moments concludes the play: the act focuses but briefly on a final plea by the two friends which meets only with Faustus' te laat, and on Wagenaar's genuine grief, before it is taken over by the devils who drag Faustus off.

This short fifth act and its contents contrast markedly with the final act of Marlowe's Faustus, an act that includes the high mark of the entire drama, a fifty-line monologue by Faust, beginning with the anguished line:

O Faustus, now hast thou but one bare houre to liue

But precisely at this point the Dutch author apparently had certain misgivings of a practical sort. It must be remembered that the stage tradition to which Rijndorp belonged was oriented completely toward the audience, its powers of imaginative participation but also its quite thorough literal-mindedness. Would it not seem awkward to a Rijndorp that a speech somewhat over fifty lines in length should require an entire hour as is implied in Marlowe? Since this is the final dramatic moment, any flaw at this point is structurally and psychologically disastrous. However valid or false Rijndorp's stage instincts may have been, he solved his difficulty most ingeniously. In R he concentrates the climactic end of Faustus entirely on the hour of twelve. With each stroke of the clock Faustus utters a single line and after the final stroke of twelve the devils appear. The whole device has an impact of the greatest solemnity and precisely at the moment when the author most wants it. Dramatically and theatrically, this is highly effective.¹³

To reiterate, many of the features of R singled out in the foregoing are present in the Puppenspiele but only in skeletal form and of no poetic and at most very limited dramatic value. By way of a much tighter organic structure plus the infusion of flashes of genuine poetic insight and form, the author of the Dutch play has shown himself to be worthy of more serious attention than he has hitherto received.

II

The very fragmentary knowledge of the plays of the seventeenth-century traveling comedians is to be ascribed largely to the almost secret manner in which these play manuscripts were guarded by the companies who possessed them. The repertoire, ornamented to suit the taste and histrionic capabilities of the individual companies, was simply the stock-in-trade with which audiences could be attracted and rival companies outdone. Even the Puppenspiele which derived from them, inferior though they were, were jealously guarded. It is almost an accident that the Dutch play, R, was preserved.

Thus De Hellevaart van Dokter Joan Faustus has, in addition to its own appeal, a unique importance in the history of the seventeenth-century Faust folk play. For, since almost no firsthand knowledge of German Marlowe adaptations is possible, the historian of literature is limited to evidence of two kinds: reports and descriptions of actual performances such as that of a Danzig official, Georg Schröder, and, of far more direct value, actually existing Faust plays which are demonstrably parallel productions. Such a play is the Dutch Faust drama.

It is because of the dearth of authentic material that Creizenach was forced to rely so heavily on Schröder's report of the Danzig Faust performance of 1668. His ingenious, painstaking reconstruction is of extraordinary interest to us. For since the Danzig play was almost certainly a Marlowe adaptation, a pedigree which Kossmann claims also for the contemporaneous R, a comparison of the two is illuminating.

In addition to the facts supplied by Schröder, Creizenach draws also on the Ulmer Puppenspiel (U) for "in mehreren wesentlichen Punkten können wir dies Bild [that is, the Danzig Faust play] jedoch durch das Uliner Puppenspiel erganzen" (Creizenach, Versuch einer Geschichite …, p. 58). He uses this particular puppet play for reasons already mentioned, namely, that it is probably most directly derived from the traveling folk play.

Schröder's account of the various scenes of the play he saw is most sketchy.¹⁴ He states simply that "Faustus mit gemeiner Wissenschaft nicht befriediget, sich umb magische Bucher bewirbet." Creizenach speculates without conclusion about a possible monologue in which Faust may have expressed this dissatisfaction; also he finds it impossible to determine how Faust came into the possession of magic books. As we have seen, R furnishes answers to both questions: it offers indeed a monologue in which Faust reveals his frustration, and the two friends, Fabritius and Alfonzus, who bring Faust the magic book. R contains also a correspondence in detail, that is, with reference to the behavior of "der kluge Teufel" (Mifastofeles in R): when Faust, in Schröder's account, states the conditions of the agreement (24 years servitude, etc.), the devil must first gain the approval of his master, Pluto. Even this minor point is recorded in R exactly as sketchily described by Schröder.

Creizenach has great difficulty with Schröder's omission of any details regarding Faust's career after the original pact and before his end, that is, with the body of the text. Whereas Marlowe records many adventures, Schröder reports only: "den Fausto gerathen alle Beschwerunge wol; er lest ihm Carolum magnum [sic], die Schöne Helenam, zeügen" (Flemming, loc. cit.). From this Creizenach concludes that the Beschwörungsszene was even in this early play the center of interest. More significant for our purposes than this, however, is an apparent confusion resulting possibly from Schröder's carelessness or, as Creizenach surmises, from an imperfect recollection of what actually happened in the Danzig play which he saw. For neither in Marlowe nor in later Faust comedies is there any mention of a conjuration of Charlemagne by Faust.

Whence, then, this unexpected innovation? It is possible that the Dutch text throws some light on the problem. In Act III, scene 7, the agreement between Mifastofeles and Faustus just having been concluded, the latter gives his first order:

Kom, voer my nu op 't Hof des Keizers, daar de Grooten,
Op 't Jaarelyksche Feest te zaamen zyn verheugd,
(Come, lead me now to the court of the emperor, where the great
Are reveling on the occasion of the annual festival)

Since it is quite evident that Schröder is relying entirely on his aural recollection, it is quite possible to misunderstand this in such a way that the reference here seems indeed to be to Charlemagne (Karel de Groote). In this case Faustus seems to be demanding of Mifastofeles that he, by the use of magic, be transported to the court of Charlemagne. However, the lines mean simply that Faustus is requesting that Mifastofeles conduct him to the imperial court "where the great of the realm are reveling on the occasion of the annual festival"; that is, the expression "daar de Grooten" is not a demonstrative attaching to "Keizer," but simply the beginning of a relative clause. Thus there is no Beschwörung of Charlemagne at all. But we are left with the interesting question: How, then, did Schröder arrive at this misunderstanding? The hypothesis that the drama which Schröder saw was practically identical with the Dutch play, R, seems greatly strengthened. What is significant, further, is that in those scenes in which the emperor appears, R corresponds completely to Marlowe, to the Danzig play (Schröder's account of it), and to the Volksbuch.¹⁵ Kossmann thinks this remarkable and comments: "Als Fürst der Hofscenen nennt die Historia bekanntlich Karl V, den Marlowe übernahm. R ist der einzige Text der diesen Namen bewahrt, und der sogar, vermutlich selbstandig, die in Holland augenscheinlich noch nicht vergessene Gemahlin desselben Isabella von Portugal namentlich einfuhrt" (p. 23, italics mine).

At the court it is Faust himself who conjures up the figure of Alexander the Great. This is so in Marlowe, in the Danzig play, and in R. Creizenach adds that there must have been in the seventeenth-century popular drama an additional episode not mentioned by Schröder nor found in any of the available puppet play texts.¹⁶ And again R validates Creizenach's surmise. In Marlowe there is a scene following the appearance of Alexander in which a knight who had fallen asleep at a window suddenly finds it impossible to draw his head in because Faustus has magically equipped him with a set of antlers. Marlowe found this in the English Faust book and it derives of course from the original German Volksbuch. However, in both the English and German Volksbücher the event stands isolated and is thus an act of gratuitous cruelty on Faust's part. Not content with such a loose end, Marlowe furnishes a proper motivation: the knight has behaved in an insulting manner toward the visting doctor and the antlers are punishment for this disrespect. R follows Marlowe completely in this instance and Creizenach, had he known R, would not have had to rely on secondary evidence for his belief that there was such a scene in the Danzig play.

R solves a similar problem regarding the origin of a scene found in U. Faust, having returned to Wittenberg, inquires of Wagner how he fared with Pickelharing during the master's absence. Wagner gives a negative report from which Creizenach concludes that the German play must have contained a comical scene in which Pickelharing incurred Wagner's displeasure. Creizenach could not have surmised more shrewdly if he had actually seen a performance of R. For, as we have noted, the Dutch drama treats this comic interlude most elaborately. Of course Creizenach could hardly have had an idea of the lengths to which the klucht loving Dutch would go in exploiting this material.

Other details of scenes and motifs which Creizenach posits for the Danzig play find almost complete verification in R. For example, his deductions from Schröder's report concerning such matters as the individualized characterizations of the devils, the scene in which these devils are questioned as to their swiftness, the genuine struggle in Faust, his Wissbegier—Creizenach's conclusions on all these could be read almost unchanged as descriptions of R.

Tempting though it is, it is not possible to claim a complete identity between the Danzig drama which Schröder saw and R. There are scenes in one which were evidently not present in the other. The correspondences cited do, however, allow for the at least tentative conclusion that the play which Schröder saw in 1668 and De Hellevaart van Dokter Joan Faustus of about the same date are closely parallel, sister adaptations of Marlowe's Tragicall History …, or otherwise, that R is an exceedingly faithful replica of an early German Komodiantenstuick, now lost, seized upon by the facile Floris Groen and embellished with additional spectacular effects by Jacob van Rijndorp. As Kossmann all too tersely puts it: "… mir scheint, dass … also der Realinhalt von Rijndorps Stuck das alte Stuck, welches Creizenach schon grossenteils rekonstruiert hat, darstellt" (p. 12). And since the German Faust folk plays of the seventeenth century are themselves lost and accessible only indirectly by way of the derivative Puppenspiele, the importance of R is obvious.

III

It is not clear to what extent and in what various forms Goethe knew the traditional Faust material. The Volksbücher (Widmann, Pfitzer; probably also the book of the Christlich Meynenden, though curiously not Spies) he evidently knew and used, though not until late in his Faust composition. Erich Schmidt even doubts that Goethe ever worked seriously with the Faust chapbooks.¹⁷ He did not, it is claimed, read Marlowe until 1818, that is, not until he had been occupied off and on with the subject for almost a half-century. There can hardly have been a direct "influence" from Marlowe therefore. Goethe's own remarks concerning initial impulses are confined to the Puppenspiel,¹⁸ references to which Julius Zeitler adds affirmingly: "Auch zeigt der Beginn von Faustens erstem Monolog unverkennbare Anklange an das Puppenspiel" (Goethe Handbuch, 1:559). But the Puppenspiele were not the only source of the alleged Anklänge.

For although Goethe did not know Marlowe until late, it is virtually certain that he did know the continental adaptations of Marlowe, such as Schröder described, long before 1818. This despite the fact that Goethe fails to mention them. The popularity of these pieces with the seventeenth and eighteenth-century public is amply documented. Already in 1878 Creizenach stated: "Goethe hat das Volksschauspiel … in einer Fassung gekannt und benutzt, die in manchen Punkten von den jetzt noch vorhandenen Texten abgewichen sein muss" (Creizenach, Versuch einer Geschichte…, p. x). Curiously Creizenach later contradicted this opinion when, speaking of the folk plays, he remarked: "Goethe kannte sie sicher bloss vom Puppentheater her; zu der Zeit, als die Kurz'sche Truppe in Frankfurt ihre Vorstellungen gab, befand er sich in Leipzig. Er scheint gar nicht gewusst oder doch in spateren Jahren vergessen zu haben, dass die Faustcomodie nicht bloss für das Puppentheater bestimmt war" (p. 183). This contradiction, and especially Creizenach's conclusion that Goethe was probably not acquainted with a Faust drama for the stage, attracted the attention of Erich Schmidt in 1879. In a note to his article "Deutsche Litteratur im Elsass" Schmidt points out one probable cause of Creizenach's mistake.¹⁹ In 1770 a prominent company of actors, the combined Lepper-Ilgnerische Gesellschaft, was active in Strassburg for "langere Zeit." The two principals parted company; the Ilgner half of the group left for Hamburg and in the same year put on a Faust performance there. Creizenach mentions this, and Goethe, who was in Strassburg, could not of course have witnessed this performance. What Creizenach apparently did not know was that the Lepper contingent remained in Strassburg and also put on a Faust. Schmidt concludes: "Es ist mir danach—im Gegensatz zu Creizenachs Worten …—kaum zweifelhaft, dass Goethe, mit dem Stoffe vom Volksbuch und Marionettentheater her wohl vertraut, den Faust hier in Strassburg auf der lebendigen Biihne geschaut hat, zu einer Zeit, wo nach den dumpferen Frankfurter Tagen mit ihrer engen Haft und ihren alchymistischen Spielereien der jugendliche Titanismus in ihm zu treiben und zu stürmen begann. Welchen Ruck konnte ihm da nicht eine solche. Auffuhrung, auch von einer unbedeutenden Truppe, geben?" Almost a half-century later, Robert Petsch in his edition of Goethe's Faust (1925) also accepts the factthat Goethe certainly saw the play performed in Frankfurt and Strassburg "von lebenden Schauspielern oder von Marionetten …" ("Einleitung," p. 21, my italics).²⁰

But even aside from this type of evidence there are other compelling reasons for believing that Goethe had known a popular Faust play. The long history of Faust germination in Goethe shows that a mass of scenes and motifs were present in his consciousness from the beginning. Erich Schmidt has summarized the most important of these in briefest form (JA 13:vii f.). Were all these the products of Goethe's own creative imagination? They either do not appear at all in the puppet plays or chapbooks, or if they do exist there, then in an extremely skeletonized form. For example, the opening monologue in Goethe's Faust, mentioned by Zeitler as stemming from the Puppenspiel (see above) and singled out also by Erich Schmidt as one of the important Goethean amplifications, is far removed indeed from the corresponding monologue in the puppet plays. There the monologue contains merely statements of an unconvincing weariness resulting from much fruitless study, and is but a prosaic recital of sentiments which do not rise above the level of platitude. This is just one example. It is really difficult to believe that a genius should have wished to retain for his own monumental work even so much as the schemes and outlines from such patchwork "drama." The same can be said for other great and important Goethean scenes; they have only the most slender and insignificant beginnings in Goethe's alleged source, the puppet play: such matters as Faust's repudiation of the various learned faculties, the turn to magic, the conversations with Wagner, the visits by evil spirits of high and low degree, the pact with Mephistopheles. What could have moved Goethe to incorporate into his own drama scenes and episodes as wooden and as inorganically related as in the puppet play?

Considerable light is thrown on these problems if one accepts the evidence cited by the scholars just mentioned, evidence that suggests Goethe almost certainly knew more than the puppet plays. True, we do not possess the play he knew, nor any complete, finished, popular German drama on the Faust theme; but we do have recourse to what we have attempted to show was a sister drama, the Dutch Hellevaart van Doketen Joan Faustus. Here we discover those motifs, hints, beginnings, but now in immeasurably more finished form, whose potentialities could have moved Goethe to expand, refine, and deepen them in his own vast work.

But there are of course monumental differences between R and Goethe's work. When we compare the beginning of R with that of Goethe's Faust, we are struck at once by the radical difference in Goethe's treatment: the prologue in hell has been changed into a Prolog im Himmel. This change was necessitated of course by Goethe's ultimate purpose to save Faust. The Dutch author, much closer to the traditional sixteenth-century complex of ideas which by and large treat Faust as Schreckensbeispiel, probably did not dare or want to do this although, as has been shown, the effort to persuade Faust to leave his career of wickedness and thus save him is a recurring element in R.

Even more significant is a comparison of the actual opening monologues of the two works. The Faustus of the Dutch play is torn by exactly the same paradoxical conflict that we find in Goethe: Wissensdrang—yes, but also despair of Wissen. Both Faustus and Faust have ventured into all realms of knowledge; the former is aware that there may be more to know but he does not see in what direction he can proceed, for, as he says,

'k heb alle ding geleezen.
(I have read all things.)

This frustration causes him to wish that he knew nothing at all, much as Goethe's Faust too comes to wish to be free of all Wissensqualm. It is striking, moreover, that one of Faustus' expressions of despondency,

't Schynt dat myn hart hier door als staat in ligte brand
(It seems that because of this my heart is aflame)
(Act 11, sc. 1)

occurs in almost identical langauge in Goethe's work:

Das will mir schier das Herz verbrennen.
(365)

Goethe's satiric treatment, in the monologue, of the various learned disciplines is much fuller than in the corresponding scene in the Dutch drama. But as we have seen, a similar cataloguing of these branches of learning is found in R, though in another place. In one of the speeches of Ramuzes, one of the evil spirits appearing in the prologue in hell, the life of the student is represented cynically and in an astounding mixture of languages:

Je suis & etudient d'honneur,
Mais bosta! nam sum Advocatus
Et par la grace, aussi Docteur
(Act 1, sc. 2)

These lines, reminding obviously of Goethe's words, come from a long passage in R (sixty-seven lines) which is a sustained diatribe against the fraudulent pretensions of the intellectuals of the day.

After Faustus has received the initial temptation from the lower world but before he has succumbed (Act II, sc. 7), he summons Wagenaar to follow him out of his dull study into the free outdoors to see, as Faustus explains, whether the youthful green of spring is already beginning to appear. Coming at this moment, that is, after the most acute awareness of failure and consequent despondency, this act reminds strongly of the Osterspaziergang especially in its symbolic and psychological significance. A little later (sc. 11), Faustus, having succeeded in conjuring up the helsche Geesten, participates in a macabre scene, singing and dancing quite in the ribald spirit of the Hexenküche.

There are other such parallels where the Dutch play seems to anticipate a number of the motifs and scenes later worked out by Goethe in detail. The point is not that Goethe, artist that he was, needed such supports from previous Faust pieces. We do know, however, from Goethe himself of his preoccupation with them. That being so, the Puppenspiele, exciting as they were to the impressionable boy, could nevertheless hardly have left a permanent mark on Goethe. But when we examine such a work as R line by line and scene by scene, we can begin to see that a piece of this poetic potentiality, if not always of poetic quality, certainly had something to recommend it to the turbulent young genius. Robert Petsch, speculating upon the possibility of the existence of a German (or Latin) Faust drama, based on the Historia of 1587 but not independent of Marlowe, concludes: "… wahrscheinlicher ist es, dass ein deutscher, uns unbekannter, aber keineswegs unbedeutender Dichter in ganz freier Benutzung und mit kühner Umgestaltung von Marlowes Text eine Tragodie von hoher Eigenart und starker Wirkung verfasst hat" ("Einleitung" to his Faust edition, p. 20). But, it will be recalled, R, the Dutch Faust play published in 1731, is itself a product quite independent in essential respects either of Spies or of Marlowe, and in poetical and dramatic stature to be considered a worthy rival of both. It seems almost certain that the conjecture by Petsch is correct and if so, then indirectly and quite unaware of the possibility of such illustrious progeny, the obscure author of De Hellevaart van Dokter Joan Faustus may have contributed his mite to the Entstehungsgeschichte of Goethe's work.

Notes

¹ This incident and others are recounted in Johann Wier's De Praestigiis Daemonum (4th ed., 1568). Cf. J. Scheible, Das Kloster, 2:187-205 ("Von Schwarzkünstlern"). Cf. also Van 'T Hooft (note 2), pp. 9-11.

² B. H. Van 'T Hooft, Das holländische Volksbuch vom Doktor Faust (Haag, 1926).

³ Wilhelm Creizenach, Versuch einer Geschichte des Volksschauspiels vom Doctor Faust (Halle/Saale: Niemeyer, 1878).

⁴ Johannes Bolte, Das Danziger Theater, Theatergeschichtliche Forschungen, no. 12 (1895).

⁵ E. F. Kossmann, Das niederländische Faustspiel des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts (Haag, 1910). Kossmann disputes Bolte's statement that Rijndorp himself published the Faust play.

⁶ For a full account of the adapting practices of these early companies, cf Kossmann, "Einleitung," pp. 6-12. The assertion that Rijndorp composed the play only "for the greater part" may even be doubted. Except where the name is quoted from original sources, the modern spelling Rijndorp is used.

⁷ Kossmann has the date 1669; concerning Creizenach's reconstruction, more later.

⁸ Wilhelm Creizenach (ed.), Die Schauspiele der englischen Komödianten, Deutsche National-Litteratur, vol. 23.

⁹ Following Kossmann's practice the Dutch play will hereafter be referred to as R.

¹⁰ It is a curious fact that the author of R shares this unevenness of poetic quality with his model, Marlowe. Creizenach (Versuch einer Geschichte …, p. 42) cites a comment by Alexander Dyce, who published an edition of Marlowe's works, to the effect that the English dramatist showed his poetic genius more in individual scenes than in the overall structure of his dramas. This comparison is not of course to be regarded as an unqualified attempt to place the author of R somewhere near in quality to the great Elizabethan.

¹¹ The Puppenspiele are of course an important source of information for any investigation of early stage drama in Germany, since they had their origin in the performances of the traveling theatrical companies. The reason for choosing the Ulmer Puppenspiel (U) specifically is that this puppet play seems to show the least corruption by way of later additions and changes; the form in which we have it is presumably essentially the same as that of the original, which probably goes back to the end of the seventeenth century (cf Creizenach, Versuch einer Geschichte …, pp. 58 ff.; for U, cf Scheible, Das Kloster, 5:783-805).

¹² It is noteworthy that in R the possibility of Faustus' final salvation is never abandoned. The two friends, Fabritius and Alfonzus, still hold out hope of forgiveness as late as Act V, as the period of Mifastofeles' servitude is ending.

¹³ That Rijndorp's solution suffers from a defect of its own is undeniable. To modern sensibilities the stately, rhetorical, declamatory style demanded of the seventeenth-century author and actor for a speech such as this is, of course, artificial. But Rijndorp was playing to an audience trained to expect the lofty style, certainly in a piece of such grave import.

¹⁴ The original of Schröder's report is preserved in manuscript at the Danziger Stadtbibliothek; Creizenach repeated it in his work (Versuch einer Geschichte … pp. 5-6); so too Willi Flemming (ed.), Das Schauspiel der Wanderbühne, Deutsche Literatur in Entwicklungsreihen, Reihe Barock (3:202). I here quote Flemming's version of the orthography; Creizenach rendered it in modernized spelling.

¹⁵ Among others Widmann substitutes Maximilian I; U has the King of Prague.

¹⁶ In support of this supposition Creizenach cites a Latin source of 1666 in which are contained instructions dealing with the production of the bit of magic with which we are here concerned; there is a similar reference in an epigram by Gottlieb Siegmund Corvinus of 1710 (cf Creizenach, Versuch einer Geschichte…, pp. 85-86).

¹⁷ JA [Goethes Werke, Jubilaumsausgabe] 13:vii ("Einleitung").

¹⁸ WA [Goethes Werke, Weimarer Ausqabe] 1:27:321; ibid., 1:15²:213. Cf also the letters to Wilhelm von Humboldt and Sulpiz Boisserèe of Oct. 22, 1826.

¹⁹Schnorrs Archiv für Litteraturgeschichte 8:359 f.

²⁰ A more recent Faust edition likewise surmises that Goethe could well have seen a performance of a popular Faust play. Cf Goethe's Faust, ed. R.-M. S. Heffner, H. Rehder, W. F. Twaddell (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1954), Introduction, pp. 23 f.