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Faust, Part One

Overview

Gender
Female
Playing Age
Late Teen, Young Adult
Style
Dramatic
Act/Scene
Scene Eighteen
Time & Place
The monologue takes place at a public devotional shrine built into the old city wall of a German town during the nineteenth century.
Length
Medium
Time Period
Classical
Show Type
Play
Age Guidance
Thirteen Plus (PG-13)

Context

Text

Oh bow down,

Sorrowful one,

Your kind face, to my affliction!

A sword in your heart,

Where a thousand pains start,

You look up, at your dead Son.

You look up to the Father,

You send Him your sighs, there,

For His, and for your, affliction.

Who then can feel,

How like steel,

Is the pain inside my bones?

What my poor heart fears for,

What it quakes for, and longs for

You know, and you alone!

Wherever I go now,

How sore, sore, sore now

How sore my heart must be!

Ah, when I’m alone here,

I moan, moan, moan here:

My heart it breaks in me.

The pots before my window!

My tears bedewed them so,

In the early dawn, when

I picked the flowers below.

The sun it shone so brightly,

And early, in my room,

Where I sat already,

On my bed, in deepest gloom.

Help me! Oh, save me, from shame and destruction!

Oh, bow down,

Sorrowful one,

Your kind face, to my affliction!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part One. Trans. A. S. Kline. https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/FaustIScenesXVItoXXV.php#Scene_XVIII

Performance Tips

Emotional Beat Breakdown

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