finally completed when his amanuensis obtained for a day or two the
original manuscript after plying one of the assistants with much beer
and wine. It was a battered book, thumb-marked and soaked with lamp oil,
but it has passed on to posterity one of the most remarkable pieces of
dramatic work which have come down to us from those times.

In all essentials the play is the same as that of Marlowe, except for
the constant interruptions of the clown Casper, who intrudes with his
absurdities even into the most sacred parts of the action, and entirely
mars the dreadful solemnity of the end by demanding his wages from Faust
while the clock is striking the diminishing intervals of the last hour.

It was through this curious intermediary that Goethe went back to
Marlowe and created what has been well called "the most mystic poetic
work ever created," and "the _Divina Commedia_ of the eighteenth
century." Goethe's _Faust_ is elemental, like _Hamlet_. Readers of
_Wilhelm Meister_ will remember how profound an impression _Hamlet_ had
made upon Goethe's mind, and this double connection between Goethe and
the English drama forms one of the strongest and most interesting of all
the links that bind Germany to England. His _Faust_ was the direct
utterance of Goethe's own inner life. He says: "The marionette folk of
_Faust_ murmured with many voices in my soul. I, too, had wandered into
every department of knowledge, and had returned early enough, satisfied
with the vanity of science. And life, too, I had tried under various
aspects, and always came back sorrowing and unsatisfied." Thus _Faust_
lay in the depths of Goethe's life as a sort of spiritual pool,
mirroring all its incidents and thoughts. The play was begun originally
in the period of his _Sturm und Drang_, and it remained unpublished
until, in old age, the ripened mind of the great poet took it over
practically unchanged, and added the calmer and more intellectual parts.