Go, horse these traitors on your fiery backs,
And mount aloft with them as high as Heaven;
Thence pitch them headlong to the lowest hell.
And mount aloft with them as high as Heaven;
Thence pitch them headlong to the lowest hell.
World's Greatest Books - Volume 17 - Poetry and Drama
His body thus must fall.
[BENVOLIO _stabs_ FAUSTUS, _who falls_; BENVOLIO _cuts
off his head_.
FREDERICK: Was this that stern aspect, that awful frown
Made the grim monarchs of infernal spirits
Tremble and quake at his commanding charms?
MARTINO: Was this that damned head, whose art conspired
Benvolio's shame before the emperor?
BENVOLIO: Aye, that's the head, and there the body lies.
Justly rewarded for his villainies. [Faustus _rises_.
Zounds, the devil's alive again!
FREDERICK: Give him his head, for God's sake!
FAUSTUS: Nay, keep it; Faustus will have heads and hands,
Aye, all your hearts, to recompense this deed.
Then, wherefore do I dally my revenge?
Asteroth! Belimoth! Mephistophilis!
[_Enter_ MEPHISTOPHILIS, _and other_ DEVILS.
Go, horse these traitors on your fiery backs,
And mount aloft with them as high as Heaven;
Thence pitch them headlong to the lowest hell.
Yet stay, the world shall see their misery,
And hell shall after plague their treachery.
Go, Belimoth, and take this caitiff hence,
And hurl him in some lake of mud and dirt;
Take thou this other, drag him through the woods,
Amongst the pricking thorns and sharpest briars;
Whilst with my gentle Mephistophilis
This traitor flies unto some steepy rock
That rolling down may break the villain's bones.
Fly hence! Dispatch my charge immediately!
FREDERICK: He must needs go, that the devil drives.
[_Exeunt_ DEVILS _with their victims_.
FOOTNOTES:
[X]: Christopher Marlowe was born at Canterbury in February,
1564, the year of Shakespeare's birth. From the King's School he went
to Cambridge, at Corpus, and took his degree in 1583. For the next ten
years, he lived in London; a tavern brawl ended his career on June 1,
1593. During those ten years, when Greene and Nashe and Peele were
beginning to shape the nascent drama, and Shakespeare was serving his
apprenticeship, most of the young authors were living wild enough
lives, and none, according to tradition, wilder than Kit Marlowe;
who, nevertheless, was doing mightier work, work more pregnant with
promise than any of them, and infinitely greater in achievement; for
Shakespeare's tragedies were still to come. That "Tamburlaine the
Great," the first play of a lad of twenty-three, should have been crude
and bombastic is not surprising; that "The Tragical History of Dr.
Faustus" should have been produced by an author aged probably less than
twenty-five is amazing. The story is traditional; two hundred years
after Marlowe, Goethe gave it its most familiar setting (see Vol. XVI,
p. 362).
[BENVOLIO _stabs_ FAUSTUS, _who falls_; BENVOLIO _cuts
off his head_.
FREDERICK: Was this that stern aspect, that awful frown
Made the grim monarchs of infernal spirits
Tremble and quake at his commanding charms?
MARTINO: Was this that damned head, whose art conspired
Benvolio's shame before the emperor?
BENVOLIO: Aye, that's the head, and there the body lies.
Justly rewarded for his villainies. [Faustus _rises_.
Zounds, the devil's alive again!
FREDERICK: Give him his head, for God's sake!
FAUSTUS: Nay, keep it; Faustus will have heads and hands,
Aye, all your hearts, to recompense this deed.
Then, wherefore do I dally my revenge?
Asteroth! Belimoth! Mephistophilis!
[_Enter_ MEPHISTOPHILIS, _and other_ DEVILS.
Go, horse these traitors on your fiery backs,
And mount aloft with them as high as Heaven;
Thence pitch them headlong to the lowest hell.
Yet stay, the world shall see their misery,
And hell shall after plague their treachery.
Go, Belimoth, and take this caitiff hence,
And hurl him in some lake of mud and dirt;
Take thou this other, drag him through the woods,
Amongst the pricking thorns and sharpest briars;
Whilst with my gentle Mephistophilis
This traitor flies unto some steepy rock
That rolling down may break the villain's bones.
Fly hence! Dispatch my charge immediately!
FREDERICK: He must needs go, that the devil drives.
[_Exeunt_ DEVILS _with their victims_.
FOOTNOTES:
[X]: Christopher Marlowe was born at Canterbury in February,
1564, the year of Shakespeare's birth. From the King's School he went
to Cambridge, at Corpus, and took his degree in 1583. For the next ten
years, he lived in London; a tavern brawl ended his career on June 1,
1593. During those ten years, when Greene and Nashe and Peele were
beginning to shape the nascent drama, and Shakespeare was serving his
apprenticeship, most of the young authors were living wild enough
lives, and none, according to tradition, wilder than Kit Marlowe;
who, nevertheless, was doing mightier work, work more pregnant with
promise than any of them, and infinitely greater in achievement; for
Shakespeare's tragedies were still to come. That "Tamburlaine the
Great," the first play of a lad of twenty-three, should have been crude
and bombastic is not surprising; that "The Tragical History of Dr.
Faustus" should have been produced by an author aged probably less than
twenty-five is amazing. The story is traditional; two hundred years
after Marlowe, Goethe gave it its most familiar setting (see Vol. XVI,
p. 362).
