Scene:  Faust’s Studio.

SERVANT.  Well, if you have no further use for me,
I will go make our preparation.

FAUST. If anybody calls, say I am out;
I must have time to see how I will act. 
As to the form in which I shall be written,
I must decide whether in prose or verse. 
My thoughts I’ll bend.  Give me at once the Times: 
Walkley I always find inspiriting—­
And really I learn much about the drama
(Even the German drama) from his pen,
More curious than that of Paracelsus.
(Reads) ’Sic vos non vobis, Bernard Shaw might say,
Dieu et mon droit.  Ich dien.  Et taceat
Femina in ecclesia.  Ellen Terry,
La plus belle femme de toutes les femmes
Du monde.’  Archer, I have observed,
Writes no more for the World, but for himself. 
Then I forgot; he’s writing for the Leader,
That highly independent Liberal paper.

[FAUST muses. Bell heard.

The Elixir of Life, is it a play
Which runs a thousand nights?  Is it a dream
Precipitated into some alembic
Or glass retort by Ex-ray Lankester?

Enter SERVANT.

SERVANT.  A gentleman has called.

FAUST. Say I am out.

SERVANT.  He will take no denial.

FAUST. Show him in. 
Most probably ’tis Herbert Beerbohm Tree,
Who long has planned a play of Doctor Faustus.

Enter MEPHISTOPHELES.

MEPHISTOPHELES.  Ah! my dear Doctor, here we are again! 
Micawber-like, I never will desert you. 
How do you feel?  Your house I see myself
In perfect order.  Ah! how much has past
Since those Lyceum days when you and I
Climbed up the Brocken on Walpurgis night. 
That times have changed I realise myself;
No longer through the chimney I descend;
I enter like a super from the side. 
Widowers’ Houses dramas have become;
Morals and sentiment and Clement Scott
No more seem adjuncts of the English stage.

FAUST. Oh, Mephistopheles, you come in time
To save the English drama from a deadlock! 
Like Mahmud’s coffin hung ’twixt Heaven and Earth,
It falters up to verse and down to prose. 
Tell us, then, how to act, how consummate
The aspirations of our Stephen Phillips!

MEPHISTO.  Ah, Alexander Faustus! young as ever,
Still unabashed by Paolo and Francesca,
You long for plays with literary motives,
Plots oft attempted both in prose and rhyme.

FAUST. As ever, you are timid and old-fashioned.

MEPHISTO.  Hark you!  One thing I know above all others,
The English drama of the century past. 
Though English critics have consigned to me
The plays of Ibsen, Maeterlinck, and Shaw,
And Wilde’s Salome, none has ever reached me. 
Back to their native land they must have gone,
Or else you have them here in Germany. 
Only to me come down real British plays,
The mid-Victorian twaddle, the false gems
Which on the stretched forefinger of oblivion
Glitter a moment, and then perish paste.