Page-2
<Previous Page
The new knowledge of Faustus proves
unsatisfactory in other ways also. For instance, when Mephistophilis has given
Faustus a book containing all the information about the stars and planets,
plants and herbs, and so on, Faustus says: "When I behold the heavens,
then I repent... Because thou hast deprived me of those joys." Mephistophilis
manages to divert Faustus from ideas of repentance, but soon Faustus is once
more making inquiries about the stars and planets; and again Faustus asks a
more ultimate question: "Tell me who made the world."
Thus technical questions about how
Nature works have a tendency to raise the larger questions of the Creator and
the purpose of the Creation. Faustus cannot be content with the mere workings
of the machinery of the universe; he must push on to ask about ultimate
purposes. Knowledge of means cannot be isolated from knowledge of ends. And
Faustus's newly a acquired knowledge cannot give him answers different from those
he already knew before signing the contract with devil. Indeed, his plight is
that he cannot find anything to do really worthy of the supernatural powers
that he has acquired. He evidently does not want to wall all Germany with
brass, or make the swift Rhine circle the fair city of Wittenberg* (Act I,
Scene I, Lines 86-87). Nor does he chase the Prince of Parma from Germany.**
(Act I, Scene I, Line 91) Instead, he plays tricks on the Pope, or stages
magical shows for the Emperor. When he summons, at the Emperor's request,
Alexander the Great and his paramour (Thais), Faustus is careful to explain
that the Emperor will not be seeing "the true substantial bodies of those
two deceased princes which long since are consumed to dust." The illusion
is certainly life-like, but even so Alexander and his paramour are no more than
apparitions. This magical world lacks substance.