Minor Characters
The Lord
God, the creator of earth and heaven who permits Mephistopheles to attempt to tempt Faust to his damnation, confident that a good man’s intuitions will not permit him to stray from the path of righteousness.
Raphael
One of the three archangels in the “Prologue in Heaven” who behold and celebrate the mysterious splendor of the Lord’s creation. Raphael sings of the sun.
Gabriel
One of the three archangels in the “Prologue in Heaven” who behold and celebrate the mysterious splendor of the Lord’s creation. Gabriel sings of the revolutions of the earth, night, day, and the surging of the sea.
Michael
One of the three archangels in the “Prologue in Heaven” who behold and celebrate the mysterious splendor of the Lord’s creation. Michael sings of the storms that sweep from land to sea and back again.
Frosch
One of the four revelers whom Mephistopheles tricks in Auerbach’s wine-cellar. Frosch enjoys singing and Rhine wine. He tries to fluster the devil, but the devil gets the better of him.
Brander
One of the four revelers whom Mephistopheles tricks in Auerbach’s wine-cellar. Brander is a simple-minded, merry man who sings a song about a rat that is fatally poisoned, which makes it feel like it is falling in love.
Siebel
One of the four revelers whom Mephistopheles tricks in Auerbach’s wine-cellar. Siebel was recently made a fool of by his promiscuous lover and pities the poisoned rat in Brander’s song.
Altmayer
One of the four revelers whom Mephistopheles tricks in Auerbach’s wine-cellar. Altmayer is the most skeptical of the devil’s promise of wine.
The witch
In her kitchen, the witch brews elixirs with the assistance of a group of apes. Mephistopheles and Faust come to her to acquire an elixir that will make Faust thirty years younger, which she provides.
Dame Martha Schwerdtlein
A wealthy gentlewoman and neighbor of Margarete. Mephistopheles deceives Martha, telling her that her perhaps philandering husband is dead and buried in Padua. While Faust seduces Margarete in the garden, Martha makes a pass at the devil, but without encouragement or success.
Lieschen
A village girl who gossips with Margarete while the two draw water from the well together. Lieschen sharply criticizes a girl named Barbara for getting impregnated out of wedlock. She represents how mercilessly harsh and judgmental society can be when its members violate social conventions.
Oberon
The king of fairies, taken from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, featured in the play Faust and Mephistopheles watch together on Walpurgis Night in Part I.
Titania
The queen of fairies, taken from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, featured in the play Faust and Mephistopheles watch together on Walpurgis Night in Part I.
Plutus
The stately, confident Greek god of wealth who flies in during the Emperor’s Masquerade in the “Great Hall” scene of Part II, Plutus is really Faust in magical disguise. He brings with him gold that turns to fire, a trick for which the Emperor forgives him readily.
Pan
The horned and goat-legged Greek god of flocks and herds, Pan is really the Emperor in disguise, led by gnomes to a fountain of fire during the Masquerade in the “Great Hall” scene of Part II. He represents secular authority tempted by earthly pleasures, like wine and revelry.
The Mothers
Mythical beings who dwell in the realm of eternal Nothingness, the Mothers protect the immortal images from ages past. Faust bravely descends to their realm, armed with a key that he uses to liberate the phantoms of Helen of Troy and her lover Paris.
Nicodemus the Famulus
Wagner’s loyal assistant in scholarship, just as Wagner himself was earlier in the play Faust’s assistant. Nicodemus shows Mephistopheles to Wagner’s laboratory, where the scientist is attempting to produce Homunculus.
The Phorcides
Three witch-sisters who share one eye and one tooth between them, born in darkness and related to all that is nocturnal, the Phorcides transform Mephistopheles into Phorkyas after he flatters and entreats them. They are the embodiment of absolute ugliness.
Phorkyas
A monstrously ugly and hermaphroditic hag, Phorkyas is really Mephistopheles in disguise. Phorkyas-Mephistopheles convinces Helen that her husband Menelaus intends to kill her and the Trojan women in her company, and offers to transport Helen and her companions to Faust’s fortress.
Nereus
A prophetic sea-god, Nereus advises Homunculus to speak to Proteus in his quest to achieve a proper existence. Nereus complains, justifiably, that people never take his advice, because they’re too eager to become gods themselves.
The Anti-Emperor
After the Emperor neglects his duties and his realm falls into anarchy, the Anti-Emperor emerges as the figurehead of the rebellion launched to overthrow him. However, the Anti-Emperor’s forces are defeated by the Emperor with the aid of Mephistopheles’s black magic.
Doctor Marianus
An aged hermit and theologian dedicated to the cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Doctor Marianus is present during Faust’s ascent into heaven.
Magna Peccatrix, Mulier Samaritana, and Maria Aegyptica
Derived by Goethe from the Biblical tradition, these three women lived in sin but achieved salvation through penitence. In the final scene of Faust, they successfully appeal to the Blessed Virgin Mary on behalf of Margarete’s soul.