English 30: Introduction to Renaissance Studies

Fall 1995
Professor Rebecca Bushnell


Section VIII: The New Church

Dr. Faustus Comparison: Ending of "B" text


                           The Clock strikes eleven.

Faust. O Faustus
Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damn'e perpetually.
Stand still you every moving Spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come.
Faire natures eye, rise, rise again and make
Perpetual day: or let this hour be but 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 damn'd.
O I'll leap up to heaven: who pulls me down?
One drop of bloud will save me; oh my Christ,
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 a threatening Arm, an angry Brow.
Mountains and Hills, come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of heaven.
No? Then will I headlong run into the earth:
Gape earth; O no, it will not harbor 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 laboring 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

O half the hour is past: 'twill all be past anon:
O, 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 last be sav'd.
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.
Curst be the parents that engendered me;
No Faustus, curse thy self, curse Lucifer,
That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven.

                           The clocke 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're 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; oh Mephistopheles. Exeunt.

                           Enter the Scholars.

1 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 shreaks, and cries, were never heard,
Pray heaven the Doctor have escaped the danger.

2 O help us heaven, see, here are Faustus' limbs,
All torn asunder by the hand of death.

3 The devils whom Faustus serv'd have torn him thus.
For 'twixt the hours of twelve and one, me thought
I heard him shreak and call aloud for help:
At which self time the house seemed all on fire,
With dreadful horror of these damned fiends.

2 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 Students clothed in mourning black,
Shall wait upon his heavy funeral. Exeunt.

               Enter Chorus.

Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
And burned is Apollo's laurel boughs,
That sometime grew within this learned man:
Faustus is gone, regard his hellish fall,
Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise,
Onely to wonder at unlawful things,
Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits,
To practise more than heavenly power permits.

Teminat hora diem, Terminat Author opus.

Original Text Comparison
"A" Text Transcription | "B" Text Transcription


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