which begin thus:
and the lines which seem to allude to the identification of Helen with Selene, the Moon-goddess—
Marlowe's play was written about 1590. Now it is asserted that about this time
English travelling players visited Germany, and perhaps introduced there Marlowe's drama; and possibly
this
was the beginning of the German 'puppet-plays' on the subject of Faust. I do not feel quite sure about it. Faust puppet-plays seem to have existed almost simultaneously with the old Faust-books, and there is even the trace of one
before
the oldest Faust-book; at least in the archives of the University of Tübingen an entry has been unearthed in which in 1587 two students were condemned to the 'Karzer,' or 'Black hole,' for composing a 'Puppenspiel' on the subject of Dr. Faust.
In these Puppenspiele (puppet-shows) the comic element largely prevails and is kept up by the comic figure Kasperle, a buffoon or 'Hanswurst' of the same character as the Italian Pulcinella, the progenitor of our English 'Punch.' As might be expected, these puppet-shows introduced a great many variations of the story, most of them a mixture of tragedy and comedy. In one a raven brings the contract from the devil for Faust to sign. One of the conditions is that for twenty-four years Faust is not to
wash
, or comb his hair or cut his nails—like Struwwelpeter. When Faust attempts to embrace
Helen she turns into a snake—and when he is finally carried off by the demon, Kasperle gives (what Euripides is accused of sometimes giving) a comic turn to the tragic catastrophe by cracking jokes.
For about 150 years after Marlowe no attempt was made by any German writer to use the subject artistically. Indeed during this period Germany, devastated by the Thirty Years War and afterwards by French literary influence, produced no literature worthy of mention, and what writers it possessed were not such as would be likely to perceive the poetic material contained in a popular puppet-show.
But the legend
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