Margaret is to be seen full length; the little German soubrette does her
best to be the Helen Faust takes her for; and we are meant to be
profoundly interested in the love-story. "Most of all," the programme
assures us, Wills "strove to tell the love-story in a manner that might
appeal to an English-speaking audience."
Now if you take the philosophy and the poetry out of Goethe's "Faust,"
and leave the rest, it does not seem to me that you leave the part which
is best worth having. In writing the First Part of "Faust" Goethe made
free use of the legend of Dr. Faustus, not always improving that legend
where he departed from it. If we turn to Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus" we
shall see, embedded among chaotic fragments of mere rubbish and refuse,
the outlines of a far finer, a far more poetic, conception of the
legend. Marlowe's imagination was more essentially a poetic imagination
than Goethe's, and he was capable, at moments, of more satisfying
dramatic effects. When his Faustus says to Mephistopheles:
One thing, good servant, let me crave of thee,
To glut the longing of my heart's desire:
That I may have unto my paramour
That heavenly Helen which I saw of late;
and when, his prayer being granted, he cries:
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burned the topless towers of Ilium?
he is a much more splendid and significant person than the Faust of
Goethe, who needs the help of the devil and of an old woman to seduce a
young girl who has fallen in love with him at first sight.
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