Free Faustus by David Mamet Page A

I know.
    WIFE: Now know the extent. His poem to you. (
She gestures at her sheet of paper
.)
    FAUSTUS: (
Reads
)
    “Heavy heavy the hired man
Weary, how weary the willing hand
One for the Heart, One for the Head
One for the Lad who tarries abed…”

He stays abed …?
    WIFE: …’tis but the figure.
    FAUSTUS: (
Reads
)
    “Three swift swallows in the summer sky …
Gone in the Twinkling of an eye.
What mystic light, illumes the night
A father’s care …”
    (
Pause
) This is the Son’s love. Full-grown man cannot compass it. But in nostalgia for the infantstate … that hopeless love of the omnipotent. Sad, savage longing.
    WIFE: Sad?
    FAUSTUS: Is it not?
    WIFE: It turns joyful. Read to the end …
    FAUSTUS: I recollect, now, for the one half-instant—that brief, child mind, when all good dwelt in self-consuming worship. How might a man deserve it?
    WIFE: One may but treasure it. Come to him.
    FAUSTUS: In the one moment. My hand to my heart—
    WIFE: Then I must go.
    FAUSTUS: Again, is he unwell?
    WIFE: But overtaxed, anxious for the celebration.
    FAUSTUS: Go then, be thou my emissary. Relate my delight at his composition, and offer th’ appropriate salutations, as fitting one scribe to his brother upon this festive, so on … Bid him allow me to compose myself, after my labor, and I come to him complete.
    WIFE: Complete, and abandoned to the festivities.
    FAUSTUS: Like a newly convinced addict.
    WIFE: And our profound congratulations on the completion of your work. I lack the words … might you take them for said?
    FAUSTUS: And put so prettily.
    WIFE: Where?
    FAUSTUS: In your visage—see to the child.
    (
She exits
. FAUSTUS
looks at the paper
.)
    FAUSTUS: “One for the heart, one for the head, one for the lad who tarries abed …” Poor child. His work now complete, he, like his father, is cursed to begin again. For, as much as the work partakes of divine afflautus. To that same extreme one must again tempt, cajole, entreat, and importune the gods. The artist weathercock now ratifying north, now northwest, and we serially nod delight at each fresh revelation. Hush, he is working; hush, he is done. See: our poor petted Sisyphus, watch his labor now devolve from him. Both fame and failure apportioning but self-revulsion. The mind is a mill which can incessant turn, ’til its mere operation focus the stress inward and the stones grind themselves to dust.
    (
Enter the
FRIEND )
    FRIEND: This is a curious greeting for an anniversary.
    FAUSTUS: Fabian.
    FRIEND: How is the boy?
    FAUSTUS: I was to go to him—I have forgotten. Lord, hear my plea. My sin is great, pardon my self-absorption.
    FRIEND: So may we indict any man.
    FAUSTUS: And myself the chief malefactor.
    FRIEND: Why?
    FAUSTUS: The greater the gift the greater the shame in malfeasance, e’en here I sin in pride, how can you stomach me?
    FRIEND: Doth not contrition mitigate your pride?
    FAUSTUS: It is a counterfeit. Like the rich, I trust to the soft brush of rhetoric, to rasp from me the stench of crime.
    FRIEND: Shall nothing cleanse you?
    FAUSTUS: Mine is the Sin of the Confessional. Of one whose depth of contrition, howe’er impersonated, nay, howe’er felt, may never plumb the depth of his duplicity. I am a fraud. Whose prayer is not thanks, but anxiety: let me be played off, e’er I am discovered.
    FRIEND: Not today, not today, good Master, which is a Feast day, when we are bid to drink, to rest, to celebrate.
    FAUSTUS: What of philosophy?
    FRIEND: And let philosophy succor itself, in whate’er it may consist.
    FAUSTUS: While we?
    FRIEND: Grope blindly, as your Honor knows, in hope of that good morsel, heady liquor, or compliant wench.
    FAUSTUS: Do we then, like the beasts, live solely for repletion?
    FRIEND: On the which note might I dare importune you for refreshment?
    FAUSTUS: Do I construe you to mean, you find philosophy less than a noble task?
    FRIEND: I’ve seen, these many years, that you enjoy when, at close of day, you have matched this