Faust: Part 2: Act 1: The Great Hall Summary & Analysis

In a great hall, a Masquerade begins as part of the Lenten festival. A herald (royal messenger) says that, unlike traditional German festivals—which are full of morbidity, dancing fools, and demons—the Emperor’s will be a more cheerful entertainment, in the Italian fashion. He concludes that Mankind always has been and always will be the great embodiment of Folly.

Flower girls enter, singing, and present baskets full of fruits to the masqueraders. The olive branches, grains, flowers, and rosebuds in the baskets discuss their own virtues before the flower girls arrange them in the hall. A mother enters and advises her single daughter that fools are on the loose today and that, if she spreads her lap, surely she can catch one.

Fisherman, birdcatchers, and boorish woodcutters enter and mingle with the girls. Flatterers praise the powerful at the Masquerade, and a drunkard, insulted by the girls, drinks to produce his own high spirits. Indeed, everyone drinks and toasts. Poets enter, some of them satirizing the proceedings and others becoming involved in a poetic discussion with a Vampire, who is visibly fresh from his grave.

Characters from Greek mythology also enter, like the Graces (three beautiful sister goddesses, givers of beauty and charm) and the Fates (three goddesses who determine the course of human life), who sing amusingly, as do Fear, Hope, and Prudence. Mephistopheles enters disguised as a two-headed dwarf, but the herald strikes him with his staff. The devil turns into a horrible shapeless substance, which then transforms into an egg, from which hatch an adder and a bat. The adder and bat hurry into the night to reunite.

The herald sees in the sky a charioteer (here, the personification of Poetry) carried by winged horses, who lands in the great hall and introduces the splendid figure seated on his chariot’s throne. It is Plutus, the god of wealth, but actually it is Faust disguised as Plutus. He orders that a great chest of treasure be unloaded from the chariot, after which the charioteer flies away. With the herald’s staff, Plutus smites the lock from the chest to open it. Magically, gold and jewelry surge up from its mouth and overflow. The crowd goes wild, attempting to make off with as much treasure as possible. Again, however, Plutus takes the herald’s staff, sets it on fire, and he uses it both to drive back the crowd and also to draw an invisible magic circle.

There suddenly arrives a herd of satyrs—part human, part animal woodland gods—and their leader Pan, a horned and goat-legged Greek god of flocks and herds—but this actually the Emperor in disguise as Pan. Dance-loving fauns and materialistic, earth-mining gnomes enter also, along with hearty giants and nymphs who worship Pan as representing the cosmic All.

Plutus’s magic circle opens, revealing a fountain of fire that surges up from an abyss. The gnomes conduct Pan toward it. He stands fearlessly before the fire and enjoys the spectacle—that is, until it burns his beard off and he himself catches fire. Joy turns to agony, and people panic. The herald sees that it is really the Emperor burning. We learn later that it is here that the Emperor signs the note of paper money that Faust gives to him, probably while he’s surrounded by fire, copies of which are later circulated throughout the empire, thereby eliminating, for now, the financial crisis.

Plutus thinks that there has been sufficient panic. With the herald’s staff he summons fragrant coolness into the great hall, and water to put out the fires. When demonic forces threaten, he says, we must bring magic to our aid.