Faustus

by David Mamet

  (FAUSTUS turns from looking at the scene, to confront the MAGUS who, we find, has vanished.)

  ACT TWO

  The portals which led to FAUSTUS’s home are opened, to reveal an expanse, upstage, of gray ruin.

  FAUSTUS comes onto the stage, and looks around him. We hear a far-off bell ringing, and see an old man walking in the ruins. FAUSTUS turns to encounter him. We see it is his FRIEND, Fabian, now greatly aged.

  FAUSTUS: Where do we find ourselves?

  FRIEND: I’ve often thought that it is Hell.

  FAUSTUS: In truth?

  FRIEND: I am grown so old it nor diverts nor profits me to lie.

  FAUSTUS: Have you grown old?

  FRIEND: As you observe.

  FAUSTUS: But we are of an age.

  FRIEND: If you assert it.

  FAUSTUS: Do you not know me?

  FRIEND: Your voice is not unfamiliar, but perhaps it merely pleases.

  FAUSTUS: Turn to me, look on me.

  FRIEND: It would not profit, no, for I am blind.

  FAUSTUS: Blind.

  FRIEND: Yes.

  FAUSTUS: What has befallen you? How came you to age?

  FRIEND: Sir, I assure you, it was the passage of time.

  FAUSTUS: (Pause) Are you mad? (Pause) Can you not answer me? Can you not aid me?

  FRIEND: Not the first, sir, but, perhaps, the second.

  FAUSTUS: I do not understand.

  FRIEND: A sundial may offer information, but you remark, it withholds comment. (Pause)

  FAUSTUS: Do you not know me?

  FRIEND: I beg pardon.

  FAUSTUS: I am Faustus.

  FRIEND: Ask again if I am mad, I shall return the favor.

  FAUSTUS: You suggest the debility is mine?

  FRIEND: You have said that you are Faustus.

  FAUSTUS: I am he.

  FRIEND: What sane being would assert it?

  FAUSTUS: I do not understand.

  FRIEND: Then you are mad. (HE STARTS OFF.) Or perverse, merely. I mean no offense. Whom could I dare offend?

  FAUSTUS: Do not desert me.

  FRIEND: Aid me then. Would you oblige, in description of the scene?

  FAUSTUS: Near the conjunction of two roads.

  FRIEND: I shall no further trouble you. (The man walks off.)

  FAUSTUS: Stay, for I am unmoored; the pawl has clicked, the wheel come round, but I am baffled by the revolution. I beg you. Fabian. What is this charade? I do not understand its nature.

  FRIEND: Nor I. Could I have creditably done so, would I not have resigned, long ago. But we understand, that is a crime, for which the criminals, self-punished, are additionally, damned. And their bones to an unmarked grave, at a crossroads.

  FAUSTUS: Do I dream?

  FRIEND: Should you, then I felicitate you.

  FAUSTUS: Where is the family of Faustus?

  FRIEND: Do I in fact remark your voice, sir? Or is it but th’ association, summon’d by your questionings? But it is the same whate’er, and as the world draws in, as sight, sound, and action erode, what remains, but self-absorption? Where all is made fast to decay.

  FAUSTUS: How came this to be so?

  FRIEND: Through time and effort, as most things.

  FAUSTUS: But how? The house is vanished, you are aged, yet time has not passed.

  FRIEND: Then how am I grown old?

  FAUSTUS: Indeed, who are but one day older than we found you yesterday.

  FRIEND: Bless you, I must accept it, but, yesterday, I was old. I was old and blind.

  FAUSTUS: You have gone blind from drink.

  FRIEND: Thanks, good physician. But the cause was ne’er in doubt. (Pause) I wondered at the cure, though, those years. Til it grew plain, you see, like a far-off disturbing shape, which, upon approach, resolves itself, until we say, ’tis but a fault in the treeline.

  FAUSTUS: And it resolved, to you, the cure for your disease …?

  FRIEND:’Twas, of course, death. Which occupied decades of schooling. But I was blessed in my exemplars.

  FAUSTUS: To wit?

  FRIEND: I watched a family sicken and die, first the young lad, and then the woman, from grief. As she cried, over the years, for wisdom, then for fortitude, and, as any invalid, for this or that drug, in the hope it offered hope, ’til it was burned out of her.

  FAUSTUS: Say on.

  FRIEND: Her beauty, her desire, even for understanding, ebbed, ’til she was like the hollow tree, which at length falls, of which we say, how not to’ve remarked, it died long ago. On the one hand, she had a long life. On the other, poor angel, she lived it anguished.

  FAUSTUS: Where is the family lives here?

  FRIEND: They have preceded us.

  FAUSTUS: A prosperous family once controlled the land.

  FRIEND: They own it still, though somewhat less of it. Perhaps you’d aid me, sir, to seek that freehold.

  FAUSTUS: Whose grave do you seek?

  FRIEND: It were a crime, they say, to name it.

  FAUSTUS: The boy.

  FRIEND: The boy?

  FAUSTUS: Faust’s son.

  FRIEND: Bless you, no, sir.

  FAUSTUS: Then tell me he lives.

  FRIEND: To please you, sir, I will. But in effect his crypt lies yonder.

  FAUSTUS: His crypt.

  FRIEND: Untended these long years.

  FAUSTUS: Not by his mother …? (Pause)

  FRIEND: One may not speak of her.

  FAUSTUS: Why?

  FRIEND: Have I not told you? (Pause)

  FAUSTUS: Do you say she is dead?

  FRIEND: You will forgive me, sir, my thoughts, absent direction, take their own lead.

  FAUSTUS: Where is the woman’s grave?

  FRIEND: One may not know, sir, the grave of a suicide, who are damned to Hell. Do you feign ignorance of that gentle law? It extends e’en to those fair angels, on the earth, e’en those whose being cleansed and chastened. Whose each movement spoke of patience and grace, who were the anodyne to a life of dull disappointment, in whose very existence one found comfort for the, will I say, cruel impossibility of her possession. Fair, wasted angel. Self-slain, ne’er consummated love. O distance and O blessed death. Shall I requite your queries, sir? Those who impertinently usurp the divine, rest in an unmarked grave. What matter. When eternity wastes all.

  FAUSTUS: Some say God is immortal.

  FRIEND: Some say the sinful dead writhe in perpetual torment.

  FAUSTUS: How did the boy die?

  FRIEND: In an ague. Taken in a cold night. In a vain and protracted search, for another. In despair, at his abandonment.

  FAUSTUS: Abandonment, you say.

  FRIEND: By the man.

  FAUSTUS: You will not say his name?

  FRIEND: He died in grief, at his father’s disappearance. It is a difficulty, as you may come to know, in age, to guard an undiminished hatred. After a time. That which once burned as molten iron. Becomes a mere fixed habit of the mind. Til one wakes one day, to find its very exercise an enervation.

  FAUSTUS: Hatred.

  FRIEND: Yes. But some does not die.

  FAUSTUS: Must not all feeling change with time?

  FRIEND: The truly wronged know otherwise. FAUSTUS: Who has wronged you?

  (We hear the sound of a bell, and the man starts off.)

  FRIEND: I must go, for he hunts for me. Do you not find, we feel most beholden, sir, to those supplying an unnecessary service …?

  FAUSTUS: Who wronged you?

  FRIEND: Who, indeed. He whom we indulged. To our cost. Our petted philosopher—who burned with the thirst for truth. Who betrayed those who trusted him, parsing their love to tribute and then to oblivion. Our sick creation. False friend, inconstant husband, engorged obscene digest of self-reference. We nurtured, for the entertainment, for the reflected glory—for which we shall not be forgiven. Who abided him, who, in his diffidence, subjected those he loved first to danger, then, to destruction, as I watched. I might have acted. I feared reproof, and clas
sed it as respect for the proprieties. ’Twas not he, then, but I, sir, as you see, who was the criminal—to have subjected them to him. I must go. (He starts off.)

  FAUSTUS: Stay: may I beg a service?

  FRIEND: From one unfit as myself?

  FAUSTUS: Where does she lie?

  FRIEND: Act as I: Elect a spot, devote your obsequies, pray that it is her grave.

  (The FRIEND starts off.)

  FAUSTUS: (TO THE DEPARTING FRIEND) No, it offends sense. Say the man vanished, would not his family first misdoubt, accident, or illness, a man so beloved.

  FRIEND: He fled in cowardice. Who would not brave public ridicule.

  FAUSTUS: Ridicule?

  FRIEND: Of his mis-envisioned, uncompleted work.

  FAUSTUS: … uncompleted …?

  (We hear the bell. The FRIEND goes off.)

  FAUSTUS: Am I unmanned to’ve lost the basic rudiments of reason?

  (The MAGUS appears onstage, carrying a large book.)

  FAUSTUS: Where is my family? (Pause) I have addressed you sir.

  MAGUS: I’ve noted it.

  FAUSTUS: Where is my family?

  MAGUS: As is the destiny of all seed, they have been dispersed.

  FAUSTUS: By what authority?

  MAGUS: The less evolved would enquire by what mechanism. Good.

  FAUSTUS: It is an illusion.

  MAGUS: What is not? As have you not thrilled to teach us?

  FAUSTUS: It is delusion, it is mesmeric projection, I lack the term to name the method, the motive is plain.

  MAGUS: To wit?

  FAUSTUS: A vicious act of envy. I have detractors, as must any prominent man. Indeed, I must have enemies. Have they employed you to drive me mad? To play upon my doubts? Have they told you of my shortcomings? Of my pride, of my unchecked imagination? Are you a tool of enmity? Of spite? Are you that inevitable assassin the elevated must fear, whose lack they themselves supply in counterpoise to their election …? Are you madness …? What are you? I conjure you …

  MAGUS: By what? I shall not press you.

  FAUSTUS: Damn your impertinence, sir, and damn your illusion. I demand that you cease, restore, and revert all various aspects of the pantomime. The joke pales shockingly. And farewell, now farewell. Name and receive your payment, sir, for this diversion.

  MAGUS: I have both named and received it.

  FAUSTUS: It is a trick.

  MAGUS: Pray accept this in compensation. (He hands FAUSTUS the volume he has been holding in his hands. FAUSTUS takes it.)

  FAUSTUS: What pretends this to be?

  MAGUS: It is your manuscript.

  FAUSTUS: But it is aged …

  MAGUS: … indeed …

  (FAUSTUS takes the book and reads.)

  FAUSTUS:“A discovery of the philosophic principles of Periodicity…”

  (FAUSTUS continues to leaf through the book.)

  FAUSTUS: The book is aged.

  MAGUS: It is.

  FAUSTUS: My friend, also, and decayed. (Pause) That which appears to be the remnant of my home bespeaks a passage of years.

  MAGUS: From which you conclude? (Pause)

  FAUSTUS: Where is my family?

  MAGUS: Yes? Are you frightened?

  FAUSTUS: Show them to me.

  MAGUS: They are dead, you have murdered them.

  FAUSTUS: Strong, striking verbiage, yet hardly discourse. You recur to causality. Then I have you, sir. For, name me the system of philosophy, or physics wherein effect may be without cause. For what freak do you suppose to punish me? Respond. I charge you.

  MAGUS: You made a wager.

  FAUSTUS: A wager? That is your plea? You rest the destruction of my happiness upon a bet? O, the wronged, are ever disadvantaged in debate. For the aggressor, may assert now this, now that, unfettered by fact, truth, or history. While the betrayed …

  MAGUS: No more betrayed, but called to account. You contracted a wager.

  FAUSTUS: I repudiate it.

  MAGUS: One may repudiate the payment but of that which one holds in possession. Else it is called “chagrin.”

  FAUSTUS: Then I defy you, parse me the wager, sir, in justice.

  MAGUS: But we delighted. To revile the advocates of justice; how we decried as puerile those who served; reason, and tradition, custom, law … Your work, your discourse, and, in fact your life were dedicated to the abrogation of commonalities.

  FAUSTUS: Is it for this I am punished?

  MAGUS: You are not punished, but foreclosed.

  FAUSTUS: Then save me the gloss, and assert the forfeit. By your terms, sir, by your terms.

  MAGUS: I will not foul the laws of fair debate.

  FAUSTUS: So you have said. Then show me the default, sir, or restore all.

  MAGUS: I name your magnum opus.

  FAUSTUS: (As he holds up the book) It survives.

  MAGUS: You still seek fame?

  FAUSTUS: Yes, I am arrogant. Nay, arrogance itself, spare me the lesson. My work survives. You asserted it contained a flaw.

  MAGUS: I did.

  FAUSTUS: Indeed, a theft, which would disqualify it from renown save as a jest. A fool, a vicious, and unwarranted asseveration.

  MAGUS: Which, were it to be established …

  FAUSTUS: … I complete, which, were it proved supportable, would, would, would. (Pause) You taunted me. You dared me, as I understood, to take an oath. I took it as a jest.

  MAGUS: You swore to the false, that which you staked was forfeit.

  FAUSTUS: That my work was purloined? I defy you, sir, to suggest my work the subject of… yes, say, yes, incomprehension, yes, but impossibly of scorn. Let us grant you the passage of time. I cede you the truth of your illusion. Does my work not survive? (He holds up the book.)

  MAGUS: But as a curio.

  FAUSTUS: A curio? I call you to render justice.

  MAGUS: Justice is blind, you have said she is also deaf.

  FAUSTUS: But you are neither. You structure your chicanery in the mechanic mode: if this then that. Then habeas deleatur: show me the fault.

  MAGUS: (Of the book) Read.

  FAUSTUS: I am acquainted with it—I composed it. ’Tis mine entire. You charge me as a plagiarist. Show me the fault. I defy you.

  MAGUS: Turn to the end.

  FAUSTUS: (FAUSTUS turns to the end) Indeed I shall.

  MAGUS: Turn the last leaf and read.

  FAUSTUS: Yes, yes, it is the final formula, and the apotheosis of the argument, where number is revealed but as progression.

  MAGUS: Yes.

  FAUSTUS: You feign I am undone in the conclusion? That it is debarred as purloined? It cannot be purloined, for it is pure imagination.

  MAGUS: Turn the leaf:

  (FAUSTUS DOES SO.)

  FAUSTUS: What viciousness is this? (Reads)“Three swift swallows in the summer sky, gone in the twinkling of an eye. One for the heart, one for the head, one for the lad who tarries abed.” (Pause) It is the child’s poem.

  MAGUS: The manuscript appears under your name. Yet, you deny the conclusion’s authorship.

  FAUSTUS: The poem. How found it its way into my composition?

  MAGUS: Take the page from your tunic. And read.

  (FAUSTUS does so and reads:)

  FAUSTUS:“… that number signifies not a quantity, but a progression …” This is not forfeit, sir, but mere prestidigitation.

  MAGUS: Ah, sir, do you now conceive the world as a balance? Must one not then suppose one to read the scale? Which supposition you have dedicated your life, nay, in fact, this work, to disprove?

  FAUSTUS: What power sends you as a plague, or are you an excrudescence of the general theme? Of envy. (Pause) What of my family?

  MAGUS: They ran the extended limit of their course. They died. They perhaps continue, in a parallel world. As before. As e’er we ever met. Say it is true. Take comfort, and believe it.

  FAUSTUS: Is it true?

  MAGUS: Is it true? And you transfigured, from our brave savant, into a missish postulate
who wished to know: the weight of the world, the run of time, the final construction of matter … as the poor fool who wished to understand grief. Your wish has been granted.

  FAUSTUS: I could not have foreseen.

  MAGUS: … truly …? Then you should not have spoke. Or have your vaunted experiments in science taught you to pray that cause has no effect?

  FAUSTUS: I understand. That I’ve offended, in some wise, or you, or, say if I go amiss, or, say, a tradition, or a power you represent. I pray to you to accept my regrets, and teach me how to particularize my homage. How shall I address you?

  MAGUS: Well begun. Call me a merchant.

  FAUSTUS: What do you seek?

  MAGUS: As any merchant. That which in my realm is scarce.

  FAUSTUS: What have you brought?

  MAGUS: Say I have brought you fire.

  FAUSTUS: Will not the gods be angry?

  MAGUS: Suppose it their constant state. (Pause)

  FAUSTUS: From whence do you come?

  MAGUS: Shall you know more when I have told you?

  FAUSTUS: Fit the response to my understanding.

  MAGUS: Say from the future. Or the past. Say from another realm.

  FAUSTUS: I am afraid.

  MAGUS: You balked at the transmutation of a card. As the rock-dwelling savages recoiled at fire. You conflate: number, speech, thought, the mental and physical, and call your work complete. You are unfit e’en to frame the problem as a dog to speak; it lacks the mechanism. (Pause)

  FAUSTUS: Sir … (Pause) Sir… Ah, sir. Ah, good sir. Ah worthy preceptor, to school in atonement. To strip from me, the prop of self-regard. To offer that omnipotent admixture of grief and self-humiliation …

  MAGUS: Whom do you think confronts you? (Pause) You hesitate.

  FAUSTUS: Yes.

  MAGUS: From confusion?

  FAUSTUS: No. No, from … (Pause)

  MAGUS: You must supply the word.

  FAUSTUS: From awe. (Pause)

  MAGUS: I attend … (Pause)

  FAUSTUS: We have heard voices. In the dark. In childhood, in extremity Perhaps at death … we have construed them as … (Pause) those promptings religion derogates as survival of savagery. Of ancient, superceded nature …

  MAGUS: The power of which you speak. Does it possess a name?

  FAUSTUS: What do you want of me?

  MAGUS: I await your suggestion.