INTERLUDE IIFIRST ACTION:GERMANICCOMMUNITY ACTORS[150]Comprise
INTERLUDE II
FIRST ACTION:GERMANIC
COMMUNITY ACTORS[150]
Comprise
THEME
On a street of Nüremberg, in their Shrovetide festival, a band of Apprentices enact, on a wheeled stage, a pantomime scene from an early version of “Doctor Faustus.” Time: Sixteenth century.
ACTION
At Prospero’s final words in Act I, the playing of pipes is heard at the right Interlude Gates, where enter a band of Apprentices, accompanying a wheeled street-stage, drawn by donkeys with bells and set with a three-fold scene of Earth, Heaven, and Hell. Some of the Apprentices are masked, some disguised as fools. They enter, singing an old German folk song, and march to the centre of the ground-circle (between the altar and the south entrance), where the stage pauses. Before them has hastened a forerunner (Einschreier), blowing a horn and shouting: “Schauspieler! Doctor Faustus!”
Along with them, Pipers accompany their singing. Behind them follow folk of Nüremberg, gaping peasants and merry-making young people.
From the left gate, meanwhile [in obscurer light], enters a graver group, clad symbolically as Doctors of Learning, Priests, and Artists, accompanying another wheeled vehicle, the stage of which is wholly curtained from view.
These stop at some distance from the former group, and look on from a place of shadow.
And now, where the first stage has paused in a place of brighter glow, the Actors appear and begin their pantomime.
Doctor Faustus appears on the Middle Stage, Earth. There, amid his astronomical instruments, he greets the gaping crowd and points a telescope toward the place of Heaven. Suddenly a comet flashes above the stage. An Apprentice inquires the reason. Doctor Faustus explains it by revealing its two fathers—the Sun and the Moon, which now appear shining simultaneously in Heaven.
At this sorcery, Lucifer comes from Hell, signifies to Faustus that his hour has come, and that he must follow him. Faustus begs a last wish, which Lucifer reluctantly grants. He begs to see once more his beloved Helena of Troy.
Then in Heaven appears Helena, who comes to Faustus on Earth and embraces him. But now Lucifer—summoning two tailed devils with pitch-forks—bids them drag Faustus from the arms of Helena, who flees back to Heaven, disappearing there, as Faustus is prodded and haled to the up-bursting flames of Hell, amid the exultant laughter of Lucifer.
At thisfinale, the stage and its audience moves off through the left gate, while the graver Symbolic Group—crossing right in deep shadow—pauses at the centre.
There, for a moment, the curtains of their pageant stage are drawn, revealing—in mystic light—a dim-glowing tableau of Albrecht Dürer’sMelancholia.
As this pales into darkness, the Group with its curtained stage moves vaguely off, and vanishes through the right gate of the Interlude.