Faustus Read Online Free PDF Page B

the scene?
    FAUSTUS: Near the conjunction of two roads.
    FRIEND: I shall no further trouble you. (
The man walks off
.)
    FAUSTUS: Stay, for I am unmoored; the pawl has clicked, the wheel come round, but I am baffled by the revolution. I beg you. Fabian. What is this charade? I do not understand its nature.
    FRIEND: Nor I. Could I have creditably done so, would I not have resigned, long ago. But we understand, that is a crime, for which the criminals, self-punished, are additionally, damned. And their bones to an unmarked grave, at a crossroads.
    FAUSTUS: Do I dream?
    FRIEND: Should you, then I felicitate you.
    FAUSTUS: Where is the family of Faustus?
    FRIEND: Do I in fact remark your voice, sir? Or is it but th’ association, summon’d by your questionings? But it is the same whate’er, and as the world draws in, as sight, sound, and action erode, what remains, but self-absorption? Where all is made fast to decay.
    FAUSTUS: How came this to be so?
    FRIEND: Through time and effort, as most things.
    FAUSTUS: But how? The house is vanished, you are aged, yet time has not passed.
    FRIEND: Then how am I grown old?
    FAUSTUS: Indeed, who are but one day older than we found you yesterday.
    FRIEND: Bless you, I must accept it, but, yesterday, I was old. I was old and blind.
    FAUSTUS: You have gone blind from drink.
    FRIEND: Thanks, good physician. But the cause was ne’er in doubt. (
Pause
) I wondered at the cure, though, those years. Til it grew plain, you see, like a far-off disturbing shape, which, upon approach, resolves itself, until we say, ’tis but a fault in the treeline.
    FAUSTUS: And it resolved, to you, the cure for your disease …?
    FRIEND: ’Twas, of course, death. Which occupied decades of schooling. But I was blessed in my exemplars.
    FAUSTUS: To wit?
    FRIEND: I watched a family sicken and die, first the young lad, and then the woman, from grief. As she cried, over the years, for wisdom, then for fortitude, and, as any invalid, for this or that drug, in the hope it offered hope, ’til it was burned out of her.
    FAUSTUS: Say on.
    FRIEND: Her beauty, her desire, even for understanding, ebbed, ’til she was like the hollow tree, which atlength falls, of which we say, how not to’ve remarked, it died long ago. On the one hand, she had a long life. On the other, poor angel, she lived it anguished.
    FAUSTUS: Where is the family lives here?
    FRIEND: They have preceded us.
    FAUSTUS: A prosperous family once controlled the land.
    FRIEND: They own it still, though somewhat less of it. Perhaps you’d aid me, sir, to seek that freehold.
    FAUSTUS: Whose grave do you seek?
    FRIEND: It were a crime, they say, to name it.
    FAUSTUS: The boy.
    FRIEND: The boy?
    FAUSTUS: Faust’s son.
    FRIEND: Bless you, no, sir.
    FAUSTUS: Then tell me he lives.
    FRIEND: To please you, sir, I will. But in effect his crypt lies yonder.
    FAUSTUS: His crypt.
    FRIEND: Untended these long years.
    FAUSTUS: Not by his mother …? (
Pause
)
    FRIEND: One may not speak of her.
    FAUSTUS: Why?
    FRIEND: Have I not told you? (
Pause
)
    FAUSTUS: Do you say she is dead?
    FRIEND: You will forgive me, sir, my thoughts, absent direction, take their own lead.
    FAUSTUS: Where is the woman’s grave?
    FRIEND: One may not know, sir, the grave of a suicide, who are damned to Hell. Do you feign ignorance of that gentle law? It extends e’en to those fair angels, on the earth, e’en those whose being cleansed and chastened. Whose each movement spoke of patience and grace, who were the anodyne to a life of dull disappointment, in whose very existence one found comfort for the, will I say, cruel impossibility of her possession. Fair, wasted angel. Self-slain, ne’er consummated love. O distance and O blessed death. Shall I requite your queries, sir? Those who impertinentlyusurp the divine, rest in an unmarked grave. What matter. When eternity wastes all.
    FAUSTUS: Some say God is immortal.
    FRIEND: Some say the sinful dead writhe in perpetual torment.
    FAUSTUS: How