Faustus by David Mamet Read Free Book Online

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 envybe 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