by David Mamet
FAUSTUS: No, the gods, would damn me, can it be, for the ignorance of a formula?
MAGUS: Upon what then, should they rely?
FAUSTUS: Upon … upon the evidence, say of my contrition.
MAGUS: What leads you to believe they prefer it to the entertainment of your pain?
FAUSTUS: I cannot credit it.
MAGUS: Are they, then, in contradistinction to your avowed thesis, omniscient and benign?
FAUSTUS: My works are empty I abjure them. They are the toy of an overfed mind.
MAGUS: Truly?
FAUSTUS: I have been wrong. In which I am but human. God spare me. My life was not without merit.
MAGUS: What merit might that be?
FAUSTUS: My family … My wife loved me, my child.
MAGUS: He loved you?
FAUSTUS: He penned me a poem.
MAGUS: Did you not derogate it?
FAUSTUS: Did I? Then may God forgive me.
MAGUS: Read it to me …
FAUSTUS: … Why?
MAGUS: To conflate the two.
FAUSTUS: I confess, the two productions are one, my manuscript, and the child’s poem. Yes. I am taught. His is superior.
MAGUS: Why?
FAUSTUS: His … His was writ in love. I…
MAGUS: Confess—
FAUSTUS: I… shall confess … to my petted self-adoration. To coward miching, to entertainment of the establishment which I was licensed to decry. I was a whore, corrupt for all time, and unfit for any purpose greater than debauchery.
MAGUS: You divert, but fail to convince of your sincerity. Confess.
FAUSTUS: To what end?
MAGUS: To the end that you cease to enquire, for my entertainment, for no end at all.
FAUSTUS: God help me.
MAGUS: God spare me, the frightened call, and confect endless, elaborate self-castigation. Spared, they employ reprieve in sin. Thus coupling cowardice to comedy.
FAUSTUS: Until…?
MAGUS: Shall we turn to the coda? Shall we exhibit those upon whom you practiced your charade? Shall we show you your family?
FAUSTUS: You have said they are dead.
MAGUS: As if they never lived, or dwelt, solely in your imagination. (Pause) Or the imagination of another.
FAUSTUS: Of what other?
MAGUS: Shall I tell you? (Pause)
FAUSTUS: Show me my family.
MAGUS: Your son’s in heaven, and beyond my sway.
FAUSTUS: My wife?
MAGUS: She is damned as a suicide—with her you may be reunited.
FAUSTUS: Yes, I see.
MAGUS: So you perceive the tariff. (Pause)
FAUSTUS: Sir, you have seduced me, you have played upon my weakness. You indict me of hypocrisy, of greed, of self-blind egoism; your victory makes good your claim. You now taunt me with cowardice. Where I confront you. I wish to see my wife.
MAGUS: Nothing may be had for nothing.
FAUSTUS: Yes, merchant—yes, I see that for which you have come. I close the bargain. And am shed of you. Give me the dagger.
MAGUS: In truth, sir, then you do impress.
FAUSTUS: Indeed I care not. Give me the knife.
(The MAGUS hands FAUSTUS the dirk. The MAGUS retires upstage, leaving FAUSTUS alone, as the doors close.)
FAUSTUS: Omnipotent winter which alone reveals the underlying structure of the land—he who has sought beauty in the ruined, how otherwise than reap this empty sad, perpetual requital. Who sickens to the point where wisdom lies with the ironmonger. Here is damnation, then. And there’s an end to hypocrisy…
(He puts the knife to his throat. Upstage the doors blow open to reveal Hell, from which we see appear FAUSTUS ’s WIFE, in torn, soot-blackened garments. Pause. As FAUSTUS looks at his WIFE:)
FAUSTUS: My wife, my angel wife.
(FAUSTUS hesitates. The MAGUS appears at his side.)
MAGUS: You may continue.
FAUSTUS: How may I frame my contrition? … For what may I beg …?
MAGUS: For pardon …?
FAUSTUS: May I beg for pardon?
MAGUS: You hesitate.
FAUSTUS: I would not waste the least of her attention. I beg the one moment to compose the speech.
MAGUS: It makes no odds, as she cannot hear. We to her are less than phantoms. (Pause)
WIFE: It is an adamantine monument. To sin for surely it must be the fruit of crime though what I know not to have elected that course which concludes in such calamity Or were it better never to have lived? Or spent a life barren and envious. For could not envy be borne? You were envious. Your theme was covetousness—and self-worship.
FAUSTUS: Whom does she address?
MAGUS: As you suspect.
WIFE: You envied all fame but your own, and basked in the self-awarded mantle of simplicity And we who loved, indulged you. To your cost. As the petted dog, pierces our assumed severity. He understands innocuous chastisement as praise. And seeks it. By soiling his home. You strove for fame. For the delusion of popular love. My son my son, sacrifice to a profligate, absconding father … And I chose you. Fool, wicked fool. Perpetually damned mother—for what sin was I coupled to you in penance? Unnatural vicious father. How odd. When devotion engulfed you.
FAUSTUS: My wife.
WIFE: This is a mother’s plaint. Formed as a fugue: of pride and fear, regret and uncertainty. It is the most ancient song of conquest. For women conquer but the once, and then are self-schooled. Poor story. To live supine. First to conceive, and then to bear. At long last only licensed to revolve, our face to the ground. But to weep. (We hear the pealing of the bell) … Yes, I attend …
MAGUS: See how the circularity augments the grief.
WIFE: Fool woman who was content with little. With so little … (The WIFE exits.)
MAGUS: Indeed, dashing all barriers to its intensification. The dropped stone stops at earth; gluttony brings repletion, the libertine copulates but to debility, in each the cure grows apace with the malady. It is a law. In all things but grief.
FAUSTUS: Grief must find a rest.
MAGUS: Behold the exception. She is a suicide, and lives forever. A self-perpetuating energy, increased in moment through sheer force of contemplation. Must we not stand unabashed, to receive whate’er of insight, awe, or entertainment our various natures may propose.
FAUSTUS: God Damn You.
MAGUS: Blasphemy and prayer are one. An appeal, thus an assertion of a superior power. Do you acknowledge it? I ask. Do you, at length, sense the true meaning of confession?
FAUSTUS: I wish to see my son.
MAGUS: You have bartered and been paid.
FAUSTUS: I call upon God …
MAGUS: And I invite you to denounce God.
FAUSTUS: I denounce the Devil, in all of his undertakings. I convict myself, of a life of heresy. My every thought idolatrous, all my devotions sham, and homage to a false god. I disclaim them, I renounce every thought, exhortation, observance, devotion, and deed as sin and prostrate myself, helpless, before the One True God. It cannot lack precedent. Grant me the power to frame my contrition. Dear God, hear my prayer.
MAGUS: Why should a god prefer your prayers to your agony?
FAUSTUS: Let that stand as my offering: the anguish of a contrite heart. I beg for recision of my child’s death, of my wife’s suffering. God, who can read my heart, mighty judge, with no deeds to plead for him, here stands your servant, shriven, at last, to your will. Hear me.
MAGUS: The voices of the Damned may not be heard above.
FAUSTUS: I then plead for an intercessor. To one consecrated to Heaven. To speak for me. I call upon my son. My son, an angel.
MAGUS: Do not name him.
FAUSTUS: Then there exists that intuited mercy. Yes. To which your speech testifies. My son, untouched by sin, unimplicated, blameless. Is there not that bond? Stronger than death—a sweet, unending child’s love, oh son. Say that you hear my prayer.
(The drop parts behind FAUSTUS to now reveal Heaven,
where we find FAUSTUS’ s SON.)
CHILD: I hear you …
(FAUSTUS turns to see his SON, and advances to him.)
FAUSTUS: O blessed Child, how the sweet moment stuns me to chastisement. Dear Child. Oh, son, of my heart, exult the power which vouchsafed this interview. Oh, son. Intercede for me.
CHILD: Intercede …
FAUSTUS: For a poor penitent. Who implores your forgiveness. Plead for me, not for my worth, I have none. For yours. Forward your merit in my case. Bear my petition.
CHILD: Ah, that is why you have appeared today.
FAUSTUS: … today.
CHILD: Today is the day of atonement.
FAUSTUS: Of atonement …
CHILD: You bear a petition.
FAUSTUS: I do.
CHILD: Say it to me.
FAUSTUS: Yes, I shall—my angel—that my wife, that my child, and myself may return, to the earth, whole, and restored, as before.
CHILD: Whole and restored.
FAUSTUS: Bear my plea. Best of the two worlds. Through all my criminal confusion one truth endured, undoubted, and pure. That of your love—pity me, and preach your benignity in my cause on high.
CHILD: I shall.
FAUSTUS: Praise God—Oh, praise God.
CHILD: But to plead in the cause of whom? (Pause)
FAUSTUS: Can you not know me?
CHILD: How should I know you? (Pause) Am I not endless blessed?
FAUSTUS: You are.
CHILD: In what could eternal blessing consist save in oblivion? (Pause)
FAUSTUS: … my son.
CHILD: Am I your son?
FAUSTUS: Surely there’s a residuary memory. An ineradicable memory.
CHILD: Of?
FAUSTUS: Of love. Between a father and son. Which transcends death. I know it. In my soul. It is an attribute of God. Our love.
CHILD: And did I love you?
FAUSTUS: Oh, my son.
CHILD: Tell me of love.
FAUSTUS: … no, can you doubt me?
CHILD: I am unfitted to perceive duplicity I ask as for a gift.
FAUSTUS: Yes, I shall tell you of love.
CHILD: In this particular: the better to fit me to plead your case. It is the hour of audience.
FAUSTUS: Yes.
CHILD: When the bell toll, and until the bell cease. And the gates have closed.
FAUSTUS: A man, a family begs to be reunited. In love … you wrote of it.
CHILD: Tell me.
FAUSTUS: You wrote a poem. You composed me a poem. Bear it on high. Attend:
“Heavy Heavy the Hired man
Weary, how weary the willing hand…”
CHILD: But this is a sad recital.
FAUSTUS:’Tis but the preamble.
CHILD: It awakens memory.
FAUSTUS: Yes.
CHILD: But, ’tis memory of pain.
FAUSTUS: Of pain …
CHILD: Yes …
FAUSTUS: No, but let me continue.
CHILD:’Tis a sad song.
FAUSTUS: It turns. Wait… see: at the end …
CHILD: You say it speaks of love.
FAUSTUS: It does.
CHILD: Complete it for me. (Pause) Why do you hesitate? (Pause. We hear a bell tolling) I must go. It is the hour of intercession. Until the bell cease. Give me the poem, and it shall plead for you.
FAUSTUS: Wait… (The CHILD begins to disappear. The MAGUS appears.)
FAUSTUS: Return me my book.
MAGUS: You have renounced it.
FAUSTUS: Give me the poem.
MAGUS: You remark I bid you peruse it.
FAUSTUS: I am summoned to approach the Throne.
MAGUS: And you are debarred. (Pause) The biddable ape, whose antics delight in their travesty of understanding. His fist closed tight around the nut in the glass jar. He rallies heaven for an explanation. He invokes his merit and his ancestry. See now his simian face contort in travesty of philosophic consternation. You wonder why you are pursued? For entertainment.
FAUSTUS: I am to you but a diversion.
MAGUS: In fine.
FAUSTUS: Then pay me.
MAGUS: Pay you?
FAUSTUS: For the one thing’s true, in heaven or hell, and by your own admission, one must pay for entertainment. Pay me, then, who has entertained you. Give me my poem. Give me my poem.
MAGUS: Who has vexed me since you first besought me.
(FAUSTUS is handed the poem—starts to leave.)
FAUSTUS: I ne’er besought you, sir, my friend besought you.
MAGUS: I was summoned by your o’erweening pride.
FAUSTUS: My pride …
MAGUS: And your impertinence.
FAUSTUS: And have I not prevailed?
MAGUS: Then go boast of your victory. I tire of you.
FAUSTUS: Or do you fear me.
MAGUS: … fear you …
FAUSTUS: Or do I see, in your capitulation, a man taken at his word. His word ratified by the respect, which attends his approach.
(A bell rings.)
MAGUS: The gates are closing.
FAUSTUS: And that you, with your trumpery scorn, seek to dismiss him who had bested you. Who wrenched from you license to see heav’n and hell and walk free. Who has Probed the Center.
(A bell rings.)
MAGUS: … to have found …?
FAUSTUS: … the Secret Engine of the World. O sacred light, the signs congeal, you are come to induct me …
(A bell rings.)
MAGUS: The gates are closing.
FAUSTUS: I am become as God.
MAGUS: And now the gates are closed.
FAUSTUS: I am completed.
MAGUS: As, My Lord, am I.
A VINTAGE ORIGINAL, JULY 2004
Copyright © 2004 by David Mamet
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
CAUTION: This play is protected in whole, in part, or in any form under the Copyright Laws of the United States of America, the British Empire, including the Dominion of Canada, and all other countries of the Copyright Union, and is subject to royalty. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, radio, television, and public reading, are strictly reserved. All inquiries concerning performance rights should be addressed to the author’s agent: Howard Rosenstone, 38 East 29th Street, New York, NY 10016.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mamet, David.
Faustus: a play / David Mamet.
p.cm.
“A Vintage original”—T.p. verso.
eISBN: 978-0-307-48471-0
1. Faust, d. ca. 1540—Drama. I. Title: Faustus.
II. Title.
PS3563.A4345D7 2004
812′.54—dc22 2003064506
www.vintagebooks.com
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