Faustus

by David Mamet

  FAUSTUS: They are a newspaper. How may continued praise be news? It may not. Read on, though I could have writ it.

  FRIEND: (Reads)“… as an uncontracted burden, upon our intellectual establishment; the tax of continued praise for this juvenilia, of long-deferred hope for completion of a notional magnum opus. The repeated postponement of which must call to doubt its very existence … Our praise of Faustus …”

  FAUSTUS: I have completed my work.

  FRIEND: Say again.

  FAUSTUS: I have completed it.

  FRIEND: When?

  FAUSTUS: (Passing him the paper) Smudge the fresh ink with your finger, and add your mark to the colophon.

  FRIEND: Would it were so …

  FAUSTUS: You’d wish it?

  FRIEND: You speak from Parnassus, to him the gods delight to ignore. Will you license me, Faustus, to express my deep honor, and my profound sense of occasion?

  FAUSTUS: Equally my friend, who have supported me. For in my doubt I treasured your belief.

  FRIEND: You doubted, Faustus … ?

  FAUSTUS: How could I but doubt? Who played with this or that prideful manipulation. Til I found not the piece I sought, but an inversion of the paradigm. I have been a fool occupied with toys. I have misused the gifts vouchsafed to me.

  FRIEND: How possibly?

  FAUSTUS: Through the very conjectural disclaimers of worth, each calculated or to increase my fame, or to propitiate nemesis. You wish to ruin a man, praise him for his self-known hypocrisies. For gold’s ever fresh-minted in delight, but its worth is untied to the form, but part of the earth’s primal store. (Pause) In fine, praise God, and let them say this of me: He was rewarded for his brute persistence. Not for an act but for a submission.

  FRIEND: A submission?

  FAUSTUS: For is not the answer constantly before us …

  FRIEND: And your work treats of the Answer?

  FAUSTUS: … as you say.

  FRIEND: And may you capsulate it?

  FAUSTUS: Read … Read. Here: it is a mathematic formula. That is all. It is a numeric reduction.

  FRIEND: (Takes the paper) Surely its study requires diligence.

  FAUSTUS: Indeed.

  FRIEND: The computation is abstruse, the equation beyond my mathematic skills.

  FAUSTUS: Here is the coda …

  FRIEND: How shall I grasp it absent the foundation?

  FAUSTUS: Attend:

  (The WIFE enters)

  WIFE: Fabian.

  FRIEND: My dear, I understand that I am doubly to felicitate you.

  WIFE: Fabian, welcome. Faustus …

  FAUSTUS: In the one moment… will it hold?

  WIFE: For the one moment, of course …

  FRIEND: (TO WIFE) Will you hear my speech? I shall extemporize th’ addition …

  WIFE: With thanks, but presently, I must see to the boy. (She exits.)

  FRIEND: Is he unwell?

  FAUSTUS: Children, like the Mass, act in the responsive state, they quaver to the air, the moon, a drop in the glass, the helictic motion of the spheres. How could he otherwise than resonate at my discovery? See, now the very humors in the sway of periodic power.

  FRIEND: Of periodic Power.

  FAUSTUS: (Of his manuscript page) See, see here. Read:

  FRIEND: It is beyond me.

  FAUSTUS: Read the preamble. See. That Number. That all is reducible to periodicity To cipher, to a formula, expressed in number; and that number signifies not quantity … not quantity. But a progression. (Pause)

  FRIEND: … I am at a loss, my friend.

  FAUSTUS: No—stay—I shall parcel it slowly.

  FRIEND: Fit your description to my limits.

  FAUSTUS: Consider the boy.

  FRIEND: For which my felicitations.

  FAUSTUS: Many thanks. Now see him age.

  FRIEND: Which, may God in his beneficence permit.

  FAUSTUS: Amen, with all my heart. Now we admit him as a youth, surprised, by first love, later by betrothal, marriage, and conception. Each, to his eye, a personal, nay idiosyncratic ebullition. Yet, from our remove, inevitable, universal.

  FRIEND: Thus?

  FAUSTUS: And thus predictable. There is a generalized periodicity … Which, once revealed’s encountered everywhere. I instance: the recurrence of drought, famine, fire, and, by extension, those eruptions we, untutored, understand, as acts of will: war, civic growth, invention, and decay … Had one sufficient remove, one could plot the concordance.

  FRIEND: Of?

  FAUSTUS: Of acts of nature, and supposed acts of will. In short, of human movement. (Pause) There is a consonance. It is a code. It is called periodicity. It is the secret engine of the world.

  FRIEND: You here profess to comprehend it?

  FAUSTUS: Read. (Pause)

  FRIEND: Is it not blasphemy?

  FAUSTUS: Blasphemy and prayer are one. Both assert the existence of a superior power. The first, however, with conviction.

  FRIEND: But should one stray too far … ?

  FAUSTUS: How might one stray too far?

  FRIEND: Permit me, if I may, to counsel respect for the jocular proclivities we know to be the gods. Were it not better to refrain? Do not tempt fate.

  FAUSTUS: What is my charge but to tempt fate? Each time I commence and each conclude?

  FRIEND: Until?

  FAUSTUS: Until God recoil at the impertinence? (Pause) He bids the farmer find delight in the pristine, the entrepreneur in the ruined, the philosopher in the occluded. As sentries on the battlement, shall we not be drawn to the edge?

  FRIEND: And cautioned to refrain.

  FAUSTUS: Yet incited to leap.

  FRIEND: By?

  FAUSTUS: An echo of forgotten power, as in the life of birds.

  FRIEND: Do we descend from birds? Say angels.

  FAUSTUS: Both, you remark, can fly.

  FRIEND: You frighten me.

  FAUSTUS: Is it not my duty? Hand me the journal—I will respond to them.

  FRIEND: Would I were more intelligent, or to dispute or second your conclusions.

  FAUSTUS: Each trade must bear its occupation mark. The ploughman’s gnarled hands, the blacksmith’s seared forearm.

  FRIEND: And the philosopher?

  FAUSTUS: A certain melancholy—the dual conviction of futility and prescience. A cook with but two spices, ever attempting to amend with one, his error with the other. (Pause) Enough. I have transgressed, not the prerogatives of the gods, but the more comprehensible strictures of good manners. Today’s the boy’s.

  FRIEND: Indeed.

  FAUSTUS: He wrote to me.

  FRIEND: He did?

  FAUSTUS: A poem. (FAUSTUS hands the poem to his FRIEND.)

  (The FRIEND reads the poem)

  FRIEND:“What mystic light illumes the night. A father’s care …” This is a sign of grace.

  FAUSTUS: Is that a scientific term?

  FRIEND: Never a cynic but concealed acolyte in potentia.

  FAUSTUS: And what brave man divulged the theory?

  FRIEND: You did.

  FAUSTUS: Your learning does you credit. “A father’s care.” Perhaps it is grace.

  FRIEND: What a concession.

  FAUSTUS: Yes, why should I be chosen?

  FRIEND: All are chosen.

  FAUSTUS: All are chosen? Then what possible meaning has the term?

  FRIEND: We are all subject to God’s grace.

  FAUSTUS: Bless me, he treads damn near the theological.

  FRIEND: You say you seek a greater power.

  FAUSTUS: A greater power than that, certainly.

  FRIEND: Than what?

  FAUSTUS: Than religion.

  FRIEND: There is no greater power.

  FAUSTUS: Then why does one find, under its aegis, nay, in its name, more progressed misery, murder, and starvation than exists in an unbeneficed state of nature? Answer me that and go free.

  FRIEND: Many find it a source of strength.

  FAUSTUS: The leaf of the
camomile, parboiled in water, conduces to calm. And yet I do not worship it.

  FRIEND: You spoke of a greater power—

  FAUSTUS: I spoke of number.

  FRIEND: Number.

  FAUSTUS: Yes. Not religion, which to the scientific mind cannot be quantified.

  FRIEND: Is it, then, worthless?

  FAUSTUS: To the scientist.

  FRIEND: Then how comes religion to cleanse?

  FAUSTUS: A candle gains in power as we still warring illumination. Were we to flood the room with light, the object of our interest, of our longing, of our worship is forgot. For it is nothing. (Pause)

  FRIEND: It is salvation.

  FAUSTUS: Then seek it. As each man seeks himself, in all things. This is the law of life.

  FRIEND: I understand, of course, your enthusiasm.

  FAUSTUS: … your mitigating clause?

  FRIEND: I simply suggest reserve of speech.

  FAUSTUS: Speech cannot alter the unfolding of the natural order.

  FRIEND: And what of miracle?

  FAUSTUS: Instance it—

  FRIEND: Many invoke Salvation.

  FAUSTUS: And many believe in war, yet remark that they do not fight.

  FRIEND: But:

  FAUSTUS: Say on.

  FRIEND: To impugn. The power of the Church to save …

  FAUSTUS: Proclaimed by whom but man?

  FRIEND: Christ’s word is divine.

  FAUSTUS: Proclaimed … ?

  FRIEND: By the Council of Nicaea.

  FAUSTUS: Who, if I do not err, were men.

  FRIEND: But this is heresy.

  FAUSTUS: Greater than theirs? (Pause) Greater than theirs?

  FRIEND: I do believe it.

  FAUSTUS: This too is an equation. There are but two paths by which men may thrive: the direct pursuit of power, and the propitiation of its possessors.

  FRIEND: But some do good.

  FAUSTUS: Yes?

  FRIEND: Do you grant it?

  FAUSTUS: If it amuses you.

  (FAUSTUS’s WIFE enters.)

  WIFE: Faustus.

  FAUSTUS: One moment. (Pause) Do I vex you? Do I confound? All of your adjurations, to recant, are but reminders to speak hypocritically, as all men speak. (Pause) You fear the impending limit of the circumscribed. You cling to: tradition, reason, custom, common sense, an intelligent submission. And I ask: to what?

  FRIEND: Then what is not to be despised?

  WIFE: Our love for a child, which seeks nothing for itself.

  FAUSTUS: Save immortality.

  WIFE: I was bid announce your arrival. We take you at your word—he waits for you. I do not mean to vex you in your happy completion …

  FAUSTUS: No, no. The fault is mine. (She exits) Well, then, you see, the poor philosopher, jerked from his native element of disputation, struggles on the bank. I must go.

  FRIEND: But is there no excellence?

  FAUSTUS: Yes. I have troubled you.

  FRIEND: Is all but number? I understand you to speak hyperbolically…

  FAUSTUS: I do not.

  FRIEND: But does naught exist, absent your formula?

  FAUSTUS: Else, of what worth the equation?

  FRIEND: But, the ineffable: hope, courage …

  FAUSTUS: Show it to me.

  FRIEND: In the military.

  FAUSTUS: They hone the scabbard while the saber rusts. Bravo the generals.

  FRIEND: Say in the private soldier?

  FAUSTUS: He fights from rage, fear, or shame—who does not?

  FRIEND: In the devotion of the pedagogue.

  FAUSTUS: To drill the young to say five things about seven books.

  FRIEND: Say, in the law, in jurisprudence.

  FAUSTUS: Many remark justice is blind; pity those in her sway, shocked to discover she is also deaf.

  FRIEND: Then in the service of the State.

  FAUSTUS: In what consists the State? A salubrity of climate or geography, o’erlaid by the posturings of the suborned; unwashed cupidity, license for murder… Oh, if I were king.

  FRIEND: Be still, they might elect you.

  FAUSTUS: Heaven forfend.

  FRIEND: And, e’en a king’s power is circumscribed.

  FAUSTUS: As whose is not.

  FRIEND: God’s, people say.

  FAUSTUS: Then how explain human suffering?

  FRIEND: His power is limitless to do. Ours is curtailed to understand.

  FAUSTUS: A good, traditional response.

  (The MAGUS appears, with a flourish of drums. He carries a valise marked with a devil’s head.)

  FAUSTUS: Selah. Who have we here? Is it the Devil… Sir, are you the Devil?

  MAGUS: His counterfeit, my lord, upon the earth.

  WIFE: (Drawn by the sound) Faustus, who has engaged the entertainer?

  FAUSTUS: Right welcome. Are we not told, of periodic riots of inversion, where we find license to resolve our various superfluities? Heathen societies knew it as orgy, we, their ailing, decadent descendants call it holiday. Here is the last pagan survival welcome, sir—what do you bring?

  MAGUS: Signor, we bring a carnival.

  FAUSTUS: Bravo.

  WIFE: I fear the boy unequal to the entertainment.

  FAUSTUS: Then I shall bear the shock. (The WIFE retires.) Dare we hope that you come to subvert the natural order?

  MAGUS: As you may judge. Vouchsafe the moment for our preparation, and we shall reveal the occult, and set at defiance: time, space, and logic, law, and decorum.

  FAUSTUS: Proceed—proceed, sir, are we not yours?

  (The MAGUS performs a magical flourish, and then intones:)

  MAGUS:

  Ecco

  The carnival

  Wherein, all rights reversed,

  We abjure hypocrisy

  O blessed traveler,

  Who quits his burden as if ne’er to

  Reassume it

  Cast from you care, disport as before th’ invention

  of remorse

  The timid call themselves philosophers

  The bolder libertines

  Each, however, once subsumed, becomes the acolyte.

  The disparate revealed as one, the whole as mosaic

  As we shatter the oppressive unities til space,

  matter, thought and life itself are called by the one

  name

  Jubio!

  (The MAGUS does a magical trick)

  FAUSTUS: Oh, sir. Need we fear?

  MAGUS: Naught but the mysteries …

  (FAUSTUS applauds.)

  FAUSTUS: All reverence to the lord of misrule. Honor, of course, to the Creator, but to the inverter, ten thousand times more. Poor ignorant folk, here below, we’ve glimpsed the world the wrong way, round, now may we stare, delighted at the back of the tapestry. Or have we gazed, all our lives, at its inversion? (To MAGUS) What do you say?

  MAGUS: I have prayed for a man to understand me.

  FAUSTUS: Am I that man?

  MAGUS: From your speech, sir, I’d have took you for one of the confraternity

  FAUSTUS: No, I am but a poor projector. Yours is the core of accomplishment.

  MAGUS: The core, sir?

  FAUSTUS: Are we not told, the jesters of a wiser day, made all whole in shaking a skull at their masters? Have you heard that tale?

  MAGUS: I have, but cannot credit it.

  FAUSTUS: Nor I, for where, among the great, do we find self-depreciation? (FAUSTUS takes up the gazette) Nor should one feel the need, when these exist, detractors by profession—eunuch compilers, swine … (Reads)“Our petted savant… fat on the leavings of a prior fame.” … Another trick, sir, loose me a diverting marvel.

  FRIEND: Shall we not await the child?

  FAUSTUS: Do not subvert the flow of the performance. Charm me, from the world.

  MAGUS: I can but conjure, sir, as I am skilled, which extends but to the distraction of the uninformed …

  FRIEND: Behold another of your confraternity: (Of the paper) Continue.


  MAGUS: Bid me.

  FAUSTUS: (Of the newspaper) Make this foul indictment disappear.

  MAGUS: (Takes the newspaper, and, with a flourish, disappears it) Ecco. It vanishes.

  FAUSTUS: No!

  MAGUS: Sir, to the contrary.

  FAUSTUS: Oh, bravo.

  MAGUS: I did not o’erextend my brief… ?

  FAUSTUS: Indeed you did. Well done and excellently improvised. My hand.

  MAGUS: Most honored.

  FAUSTUS: To have fooled the philosopher.

  MAGUS: One finds, in my profession, sir, the greater the intellect, the more ease in its misdirection.

  FAUSTUS: One finds the same in mine. Oh, well done. To have shrunk that canker. It lacks but the one dimension, your trick.

  MAGUS: … servant, sir.

  FAUSTUS: Cleanse it from memory.

  (Pause)

  MAGUS: Give me but time.

  FAUSTUS: Bravo. Bravo, sir. Well said.

  (The WIFE again appears.)

  FAUSTUS: … one moment. Here’s a worthy adversary, which is to say, companion … godlike, makes matter dissipate, the savant smile with content…

  (The FRIEND comes over to FAUSTUS and whispers to him.)

  FAUSTUS: Yes, aid her. With thanks.

  (The two exit, leaving FAUSTUS and the MAGUS.)

  FAUSTUS: With the one word. You win me to your cause, I abjure philosophy and embrace prestidigitation. Where do we part? Each utters a meaningless phrase to allow the mass to ascribe to them a power not their own. In your case, thaumaturgy, in mine, wisdom. Another effect. (The MAGUS takes out a large silk) No—improvise …

  MAGUS: Direct me.

  FAUSTUS: Cure me my autumn cold.

  MAGUS: Are you unwell?

  FAUSTUS: But with the change of season.

  MAGUS: Take to your bed, and meditate upon a yellow light.

  FAUSTUS: Shall I be thus cured?

  MAGUS: Within the quarter hour. But you in no event must allow your mind freedom from this curative fluorescence. One tenth, one twentieth second of impertinence, the cure is null. And the disease shall worsen.

  FAUSTUS: Unto death?

  MAGUS: Unless your will be of the strongest, I would forgo the test.

  FAUSTUS: Physician-philosopher. May we suppose your powers have no end?

  MAGUS: Try me.

  FAUSTUS: What is the engine of the world?

  MAGUS: The engine of the world’s regret.

  FAUSTUS: Then, as you are a magus, proof me from it.

  MAGUS: Here is a sovereign talisman against regret: never do that which might engender it.