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 the last be saved:
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 engender'd me:
No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer,
That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven.

The clock strikes twelve.

It strikes, it strikes; now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.
O soul, be chang'd into small water drops,
And fall into the ocean; ne'er be found.

Thunder, and enter the Devils.

0 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: O, Mephostophilis ! 1

Enter Scholars.

[Sc. xiv.]

First Sch. 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 shrieks and cries were never heard.

Pray heaven the Doctor have escaped the danger.

Sec. Sch. O help us heavens! see here are Faustus' limbs

All torn asunder by the hand of death.

Third Sch. The devil whom Faustus served hath torn him thus:

1[Enter chorus and with eight lines the play ends.]

VOL. IV.-3

For 'twixt the hours of twelve and one, methought,
I heard him shriek and call aloud for help;

At which same time the house seem'd all on fire
With dreadful horror of these damned fiends.

Sec. Sch. 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 scholars, cloth'd in mourning black,

Shall wait upon his heavy funeral.

Chorus. Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,

And burned is Apollo's laurel bough

That sometime grew within this learned man:

Faustus is gone. Regard his hellish fall,1
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.

[Sc. xvia.1]

The growing horrors of Faustus are awfully marked by the hours and half-hours as they expire and bring him nearer and nearer to the exactment of his dire compact. It is indeed an agony and bloody sweat.

Marlowe is said to have been tainted with atheistical positions, to have denied God and the Trinity. To such a genius the History of Faustus must have been delectable food: to wander in fields where curiosity is forbidden to go, to approach the dark gulf near enough to look in, to be busied in speculations which are the rottenest part of the core of the fruit that fell from the Tree of Knowledge. Barabas the Jew, and Faustus the Conjurer, are offsprings of a mind which at least delighted to dally with interdicted subjects. They both talk a language which a believer would have been tender of putting into the mouth of a character though but in fiction. But the holiest minds have sometimes not thought it blameable to counterfeit impiety in the person of another, to bring Vice in upon the stage speaking her own dialect, and, themselves being armed with an Unction of self-confident impunity, have not scrupled to handle and touch that familiarly, which would be death to others. Milton in the person of Satan has started speculations hardier than any which the feeble armoury of the atheist ever furnished; and the precise strait-laced Richardson has strengthened Vice, from the mouth of Lovelace, with entangling sophistries and abstruse pleas against her adversary Virtue which Sedley, Villiers, and Rochester, wanted depth of libertinism sufficient to have invented.

1 [This Scene is given by Bullen in his Appendix to " Works, vol. i., p. 324.]

Faustus," see Marlowe's

THE HOG HATH LOST HIS PEARL; A COMEDY [PUBLISHED 1614], BY ROBERT TAILOR [FLOURISHED 1614]

Carracus appoints his friend Albert to meet him before the break of day at the house of the old Lord Wealthy, whose daughter Maria has consented to a stolen match with Carracus.-Albert, arriving before his friend, is mistaken by Maria for Carracus, and takes advantage of the night to wrong his friend.

Enter ALBERT, solus.

Alb. This is the green, and this the chamber-window; And see, the appointed light stands in the casement,

The ladder of ropes set orderly,

Yet he that should ascend, slow in his haste,

Is not as yet come hither.

Were it any friend that lives but Carracus,

I'd try the bliss which this fine time presents.
Appoint to carry hence so rare an heir,

And be so slack! 'sfoot, it doth move my patience.
Would any man that is not void of sense

Not have watch'd night by night for such a prize?
Her beauty's so attractive, that by Heaven
My heart half grants to do my friend a wrong.
Forego these thoughts, Albert, be not a slave
To thy affection; do not falsify

Thy faith to him whose only friendship's worth
A world of women. He is such a one,
Thou canst not live without his good,

He is and was ever as thine own heart's blood.

[Maria beckons him from the window.

'Sfoot, see, she beckons me for Carracus.

Shall my base purity cause me neglect

This present happiness? I will obtain it,

Spite of my timorous conscience. I am in person,
Habit and all, so like to Carracus,

It may be acted and ne'er call'd in question.
Mar. (calls) Hist! Carracus, ascend :
All is as clear as in our hearts we wish'd.

Mar. O love, why do you so?

[Albert ascends, and being on the top of the ladder, puts out the candle.

Alb. I heard the steps of some coming this way. Did you not hear Albert pass by as yet?

Mar. Not any creature pass this way this hour. Alb. Then he intends just at the break of day To lend his trusty help to our departure.

Mar. Come then, dear Carracus, thou now shalt rest Upon that bed where fancy oft hath thought thee; Which kindness until now I ne'er did grant thee, Nor would I now but that thy loyal faith

I have so often tried; even now,

Seeing thee come to that most honour'd end,

Through all the dangers which black night presents, For to convey me hence and marry me.

[They go in.

Enter CARRACUs, to his appointment.

Car. How pleasing are the steps we lovers make,
When in the paths of our content we pace,
To meet our longings! what happiness it is
For man to love! but, oh, what greater bliss
To love and be belov'd! O what one virtue
E'er reign'd in me, that I should be enrich'd
With all earth's good at once? I have a friend,
Selected by the heavens as a gift

To make me happy whilst I live on earth;
A man so rare of goodness, firm of faith,
That earth's content must vanish in his death.
Then for my love and mistress of my soul,
A maid of rich endowments, beautified
With all the virtues nature could bestow
Upon mortality, who this happy night
Will make me gainer of her heavenly self.
And see, how suddenly I have attain'd
To the abode of my desired wishes!

This is the green; how dark the night appears!
I cannot hear the tread of my true friend.
Albert hist, Albert !-he's not come as yet,
Nor is the appointed light set in the window.
What if I call Maria? it may be

She feared to set a light, and only heark'neth
To hear my steps; and yet I dare not call,
Lest I betray myself, and that my voice,
Thinking to enter in the ears of her,
Be of some other heard: no, I will stay

[Two lines omitted.]

Until the coming of my dear friend Albert.
But now think, Carracus, what the end will be
Of this thou dost determine: thou art come
Hither to rob a father of that wealth

That solely lengthens his now drooping years,
His virtuous daughter, and all (of that sex) left
To make him happy in his aged days.
The loss of her may cause him to despair,
Transport his near-decaying sense to frenzy,
Or to some such abhorred inconveniency
Whereto frail age is subject. I do too ill in this,
And must not think but that a father's plaint
Will move the heavens to pour forth misery
Upon the head of disobediency.

Yet reason tells us, parents are o'erseen,
When with too strict a rein they do hold in

Their child's affections, and controul that love

Which the high powers divine inspire them with;

When in their shallowest judgments they may know,
Affection crost brings misery and woe.

But whilst I run contemplating on this,
I softly pace to my desired bliss.

I'll go into the next field, where my friend
Told me the horses were in readiness.

ALBERT descending from MARIA.

[Exit.

Mar. But do not stay. What if you find not Albert?
Alb. I'll then return alone to fetch you hence.

Mar. If you should now deceive me, having gain'd

What you men seek for

Alb. Sooner I'll deceive

My soul-and so I fear I have.

Mar. At your first call I will descend.

Alb. Till when, this touch of lips be the true pledge

Of Carracus' constant true devoted love.

Mar. Be sure you stay not long; farewell.

I cannot lend an ear to hear you part.

[Aside.

[Maria goes in.

Alb. But you did lend a hand unto my entrance.

[He descends.

Alb. (solus) How I have wrong'd my friend, my faithful friend! Robb'd him of what's more precious than his blood,

His earthly heaven, the unspotted honour

Of his soul-joying mistress! the fruition of whose bed

I yet am warm of; whilst dear Carracus

Wanders this cold night through the unshelt'ring field