- Enter Chorus
- Chorus: Not marching now in fields of Trasimene,
1. Confound. But Hannibal was victorious at Lake Trasimenus, B. C. 217.
- Where Mars did mate 1 the Carthaginians;
- Nor sporting in the dalliance of love,
- In courts of kings where state is overturned'd;
- Nor in the pomp of proud audacious deeds,
- Intends our Muse to vaunt his heavenly verse:
- Only this, gentlemen,'we must perform
- The form of Faustus' fortunes, good or bad.
2. For applause.
- To patient judgments we appeal our plaud, 2
- And speak for Faustus in his infancy.
- Now is he born, his parents base of stock,
3. Roda, in the Duchy of Saxe-Altenburg, near Jena.
- In Germany, within a town call'd Rhodes; 3
- Of riper years to Wittenberg he went,
- Whereas his kinsmen chiefly brought him up.
- So soon he profits in divinity,
4. The garden of scholarship being adorned by him.
- The fruitful plot of scholarism grac'd, 4
- That shortly he was grac'd with doctor's name,
- Excelling all those sweet delight disputes
- In heavenly matters of theology;
5. Knowledge.
- Till swollen with cunning, 5 of a self-conceit,
6. An allusion to the myth of Daedalus and his son Icarus.
- His waxen wings 6 did mount above his reach,
- And, melting, Heavens conspir'd his overthrow;
- For, falling to a devilish exercise,
- And glutted [now] with learning's golden gifts,
- He surfeits upon cursed necromancy.
- Nothing so sweet as magic is to him,
- Which he prefers before his chiefest bliss.
- And this the man that in his study sits! [Hear Till Swollen] [Exit.]