down into the grave with no other attendance than that of Knowledge and Good Deeds.  The pathos and sincerity of the little drama were shown finely and adequately by the simple cloths and bare boards of a Shakespearean stage, and by the solemn chanting of the actors and their serious, unspoilt simplicity in acting.  Miss Wynne-Matthison in the part of Everyman acted with remarkable power and subtlety; she had the complete command of her voice, as so few actors or actresses have, and she was able to give vocal expression to every shade of meaning which she had apprehended.

III.  “FAUST” AT THE LYCEUM

In the version of “Faust” given by Irving at the Lyceum, Wills did his best to follow the main lines of Goethe’s construction.  Unfortunately he was less satisfied with Goethe’s verse, though it happens that the verse is distinctly better than the construction.  He kept the shell and threw away the kernel.  Faust becomes insignificant in this play to which he gives his name.  In Goethe he was a thinker, even more than a poet.  Here he speaks bad verse full of emptiness.  Even where Goethe’s words are followed, in a literal translation, the meaning seems to have gone out of them; they are displaced, they no longer count for anything.  The Walpurgis Night is stripped of all its poetry, and Faust’s study is emptied of all its wisdom.  The Witches’ Kitchen brews messes without magic, lest the gallery should be bewildered.  The part of Martha is extended, in order that his red livery may have its full “comic relief.”  Mephistopheles throws away a good part of his cunning wit, in order that he may shock no prejudices by seeming to be cynical with seriousness, and in order to get in some more than indifferent spectral effect.  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;