9), he seems to have decided that the whole satanistic scenario was not to be taken seriously but used for the insertion of miscellaneous satirical material, most of it intelligible only to an inner circle of his contemporaries. The result is that although Sc. 24 (the Walpurgis Night itself) contains some poetically remarkable passages, notably Faust’s vision of the doomed Gretchen (4183–205) which should lead to a dramatic climax, it then simply breaks off into incongruous trivialities. To make matters worse, Goethe at this point permitted himself an extraordinary act of literary irresponsibility, by inserting the irrelevant collection of epigrams which he whimsically called A Walpurgis Night’s Dream (Sc. 25, 4223–398; cf. Note 111). In any serious production of Faust as a play, this embarrassing piece of literary paraphernalia (which was certainly first intended for another purpose, as the Prelude on the Stage may have been) can only be quietly excised, along with about a quarter of the preceding Sc. 24.

A very much better feature of the final revision of Part One was of course the completion of the Gretchen tragedy by the restoration of the final Urfaust scenes which had been omitted from the Fragment. Valentine’s Urfaust soliloquy in Sc. 22 had already been an effective and moving passage as it stood; Goethe now completed this scene in an entirely suitable style, adding Valentine’s duel with Faust and his terrible dying speech in which he curses his sister as a whore. This is now followed (cf. Note 91) by the Cathedral scene and then, after the anticlimactic Walpurgis extravaganza, by the conclusion of the Gretchen tragedy with three more hitherto unpublished scenes of great dramatic power (cf. Note 122). It is sad to reflect that Schiller, but for whom Part One would probably never have been completed, not only did not live to see its publication but was apparently never even shown the text of these last Urfaust scenes (or for that matter the Prologue in Heaven or the new Faust-Mephistopheles dialogues). On 5 May 1798 Goethe wrote to him that he had been transcribing his old manuscript (the original Urfaust autograph) and had found that ‘certain tragic scenes are written in prose, they have a naturalness and force which in comparison with the rest makes them quite unbearable’. In a revealing formulation of the classical, anti-naturalistic aesthetic which he and Schiller now shared, he continues: ‘I am therefore now trying to put them into verse, so that the idea is seen as if through a veil, but the immediate impact of the dreadful subject-matter is softened.’ One of the prose scenes to which he here refers was Sc. 26, that of Faust’s violent recriminations with Mephistopheles over Gretchen’s impending fate, the scene to which Goethe now gave the title A Gloomy Day. Open Country. In this case, however, he decided on further consideration not only to drop the idea of versifying it but also to leave the wording of this characteristic Storm and Stress passage almost exactly as it was, despite the traces of abandoned conceptions which it contains (cf. Notes 124 and 125). It therefore now stands as the only prose scene in either part of Faust, a powerful and brilliant anomaly. The brief but haunting Sc. 27 which follows it could be considered to be in verse anyway and was therefore also left unchanged. The versification of the final Prison scene (Sc. 28) was, however, carried out, and whether or not we agree with Goethe’s theory that it softens the impact of the poignant and harrowing material, this revision was probably an improvement, if any improvement was possible. One addition, not dictated by any requirements of metre, was made at the very end: in the Urfaust version Mephistopheles’ exclamation Sic ist gerichtet! (literally ‘judgement has been passed on her’) were the last words spoken of Gretchen. In the final version (4597–612) Goethe has made ‘a voice from above’ echo them with the cry 1st gerettet! (‘she is saved’). This represents no radical change, since the redemption of Gretchen was already clearly enough implied in the Urfaust version by her submission, then as now, to her earthly fate as God’s judgement and by her renunciation of Faust. But Goethe evidently now wished to underline this point by adding the mitigating divine words, the effect of which is certainly dramatic. The tragedy of Gretchen’s immediately following execution (described by anticipation in 4587–95) nevertheless remains as the implied conclusion of both versions.

‘The First Part of the Tragedy’, as published in 1808, ends at this point; and apart from a few notes, fragments, and sketches Goethe did not begin writing the ‘Second Part’ until nearly twenty years later, when he was in his late seventies.