stead of telling us in so many words that Faust makes trial of all the
pomps and vanities of fashionable society and finds them utterly empty
and ridiculous, fatal to all true life and disgusting to all true
manliness, Goethe gives us a picture of this tiresome foolish scene,
with all its absurdities and falsities and trumpery grandeurs, amidst
which our friend Mephistopheles is so entirely in his element, and where
Faust, with evident self-contempt and disgust, forces himself for a
moment to play a part. The various elements of fashionable society--and,
as a contrast, certain very unfashionable elements--are introduced under
the disguise of these masked figures. Marketable belles and heiresses
in the guise of flower-girls offer their charms and their fortunes in
the form of flowers and fruits to the highest bidder. The anxious mother
is there with her daughters, hoping that among so many fools _one_ may
be at last secured. Idlers, parasites, toadies, club-frequenters and
diners-out are there in the masks of court-fools, and buffoons. The
working man, the trade-unionist and the striker, comes marching amidst
this scene of revelry, forcing his way through the ranks of consternated
society, roughly asserting the sole nobility of labour and demanding the
overthrow of the aristocrat and the capitalist--no new cry, as you see!
Indeed it is as old as Rome and Athens and Babylon--as old, almost, as
humanity itself. Then appear the Graces, symbols of the refinements and
elegancies of life, and the Fates, symbolizing the powers of Order and
Law, and the Furies, the types of revolution and war, and a huge
elephant, the incorporation of the unwieldy State or Public, reminding
one of the 'Leviathan' of the philosopher Hobbes, and Thersites (that
evil-tongued mischief-maker described by Homer) representing
society-scandal and calumny. Then comes a chariot whose charioteer is a
beautiful boy, representing art or poetry. He is the same Euphorion whom
we shall meet later as the son of Faust and Helen, and identical with
Byron. On the chariot is enthroned Faust as Plutus the God of Money, and
behind him as groom or armour-bearer sits Mephisto, an emaciated
hollow-eyed apparition denoting Avarice. Nymphs, Fauns, Satyrs and
Gnomes--types of the powers of Nature--attend the car and do homage to
the God of Money. The gnomes offer to show their master Plutus a
subterranean treasure-horde of molten gold. He approaches too close and
his beard ca