Mephistopheles only drops his role as prompter when a dramatic crisis develops, as Faust forgets his own part and passionately confuses semblance with reality (6487-500, 6544-63). Even Mephistopheles’ spokesman the Astrologer finally intervenes in dismay (6560-3); it is curious that he here (perhaps because it is really Mephistopheles speaking) addresses Faust by name, the only time anyone ever does so in the first three Acts. The crisis itself is reminiscent of an incident in an 18th-century version of the Faust story: in Anthony Hamilton’s L’Enchanteur Faustus (translated into German in 1778) Faust causes Helen, Cleopatra, and other notable beauties to appear before Elizabeth I of England, but when the Queen tries to embrace one of them there is an explosion, the scene disappears, and Faust is knocked unconscious. Whether or not Goethe used this source, the passionately rash behaviour of his Faust at this point remains problematical if we are trying to think of him as a seriously developed and developing dramatic ‘character’.
