from Dr. Faustus, The End of Faustus
by Christopher Marlowe

FAUSTUS: Ah, Faustus,
Now thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damned perpetually!
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come;
Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent and save his soul!
0 lente, lente currite, noctis equi!
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.
0, I'll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down?-
See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul-half a drop: ah, my Christ!-
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!
Yet will I call on him: 0, spare me, Lucifer!-
Where is it now? 'Tis gone: and see, where God
Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!
No! No!
Then will I headlong run into the earth:
Earth, gape! 0, no, it will not harbor me!
You stars that reigned at my nativity,
Whose influence hath allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist,
Into the entrails of yon laboring clouds,
That, when they vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from their smoky mouths,
So that my soul may but ascend to heaven!

[The clock strikes the half-hour.]

Ah, half the hour is past! 'twill all be past anon.
0 God, If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul,
Yet for Christ's sake, whose blood hath ransomed me,
Impose some end to my incessant pain;
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years
A hundred thousand, and at last be saved!
0, no end is limited to damned souls!
Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
Or why is this immortal that thou hast?
Ah, Pythagoras' metempsychosis! were that true,
This soul should fly from me, and I be changed
Unto some brutish beast! All beasts are happy,
For, when they die,
Their souls are soon dissolved in elements;
But mine must live still to be plagued in hell.
Cursed be the parents that engendered me!-
No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer
That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven.

[The clock strikes twelve.]

0, it strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell!
0 soul, be changed into little water-drops,
And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found!

[Enter DEVILS.]

My God! my God! look not so fierce on me!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while!
Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!
I'll burn my books!-Ah, Mephistophilis!

[Exeunt DEVILS with FAUSTUS.]
[Enter CHORUS.]

CHORUS: Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
And burned is Apollo's laurel bough,
That sometime grew within this learned man.
Faustus is gone: regard his hellish fall,
Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise,
Only to wonder at unlawful things,
Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits
To practice more than heavenly power permits.
Terminat hora diem; terminat auctor opus.

1.	PREDICT/VERIFY Faustus asks that his final hour be a longer unit of time so that he has time to save his soul. Do you think that he is really willing to repent? Why or why not?
2.	ANALYZE LANGUAGE Here, Faustus asks night to slow down, using Latin. How does the use of Latin strengthen or weaken his plea?
3.	INTERPRET IMAGERY Why does Faustus call on hills and mountains to protect him from the wrath of God?
4.	INTEPRET IMAGERY How do Marlowe's word choices of "vomit forth" and "entrails" affect his description of ending up in heaven?
5.	INFER What kind of man is Faustus, when even at the end he is blaming the devil for his fate?
6.	CAUSE-AND-EFFECT What does Faustus do in this piece to make you think he believes his fate is not sealed? How open to negotiation is the devil?
7.	AUTHOR'S PURPOSE After reading the speech of the Chorus, what do you think is the author's purpose?