¹ Goethe undoubtedly considered the “Prelude” an integral part of his Faust. When, with the active help of the poet, the actor Pius Alexander Wolff drew up plans to perform the tragedy's First Part on the stage of Weimar, the “Prelude” was actually considered for stage-presentation. These plans, taken up by Wolff again and again between 1810 and 1816, did not materialize. For over a century it has been a generally accepted custom to omit the “Prelude” when Faust is being performed. Cf. Julius Petersen, Goethes Faust auf der deutschen Bühne (Leipzig, 1929), p. 9.

² The only dissenting opinion I find is Karl Heinemann's in his notes to Faust—Goethes Werke (Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1900), v, 519. He gives without any indication as to his source August 9, 1799, as the exact date of the completion of the Prelude.

³ Goethe uber seine Dichtungen (Frankfurt, 1904), ii, 2. Teil, 63.

⁴ Goethes poetisclie und prosaische Werke (Stuttgart 1836), II, 2. Teil, 660. The entry for 1797 reads: “Das Schema zum Faust vervollständigt, sowie ‘Oberons und Titanias goldene Hochzeit,’ die ‘Zueignung’ und den ‘Prolog’ geschrieben.” Gräf, in his disappointment at the total lack of any supporting evidence for the origin of the Prelude, suggests (op. cit., p. 66) that the word “Prolog” could be construed to mean both the “Prolog im Himmel” and the Prelude. This suggestion is psychologically understandable, but factually untenable and unconvincing. “Prolog” means “Prolog im Himmel” and nothing else.

⁵ Among many others Georg von Loeper, Faust (Berlin, 1879), p. 11, and Erich Schmidt, Goethes Werke (Jub. Ausg.), xiii, 265.

⁶ Goethes Faust (Tubingen, 1932), p. 54. How difficult it is to arrive at a clear interpretation of the concluding line of the Prelude, becomes evident if one follows the long drawn-out dispute between Kuno Fischer and Friedrich Theodor Vischer about the meaning of these last words. (Cf. Friedrich Th. Vischer, Altes und Neues, Stuttgart 1881, Heft ii, 42 ff). Friedrich Th. Vischer who was not given to drop a fight before his opponent was defeated ends the argument on a note of helpless resignation: “Lassen wir den Knoten ungelöst liegen, wie er liegt” (p. 44).

⁷ The Faust-commentators do their utmost to prove it, although in some cases, as in the instance of the “Vögeln”, they have to anticipate the Klassische Walpurgisnacht in the Second Part. Cf. for instance Erich Schmidt, op. cit., p. 269, who assures us “wirklich kommt ailes im Faust vor.”

⁸ Oswald Marbach, Goethes Faust (Stuttgart, 1881), p. 31; Heinrich Diintzer, Goethes Faust (Leipzig, 1882), p. 73; K. J. Schröer, Faust von Goethe (Heilbronn 1886), i, 20; G.v. Loeper, op. cit., p. 12; Georg Witkowski, Goethes Faust (Leipzig, 1906), n, 195; et al.

⁹ There is, of course, a possibility that Goethe may have added verses which the Prelude did not contain originally, after he had once decided to use the little one-act play for Faust. However, if asked, I could not point out a single verse in the Prelude which would fulfill the function to establish a posteriori such a connection between Prelude and Faust.

¹⁰ Cf. for this and the following my article, “Goethes Zauberflöte”, Monatshefte fur deutscken Unterricht, xxxv (1943), 49 ff.

¹¹ I point only parenthetically to the very interesting fact that the cryptic words of the theatre manager, “vom Himmel durch die Welt zur Hölle”, epitomize exactly the action which Goethe has unfolded in his Zauberflote-fragment: from the seat of the Queen of the Night over clouds and stars through Tamino's palace and Papageno's hut into the underworld where Tamino's and Pamina's child is kept in captivity by the somber queen.

¹² After I had read this paper before the German III group at the 63rd annual meeting of the Modern Language Association in New York, Professor Richard Alewyn was kind enough to draw my attention to the fact that only the Papageno-scenes contain genuine commeiia dell' arte elements. The Zauberoper itself has a different family-tree: it represents a late popularized stage of the great mythologic-heroic Baroque opera. (Details about its history in Moriz Enziger, Die Entwicklung des Wiener Theaters vom 16. sum 19. Jahrhundert, xxviii. Bd. der Schriften der Gesellschaft für Theatergeschichte, 1918/19).—Since the days of Heine, all Faust-commentators have repeated his contention that the Prelude in the Theatre was suggested to Goethe by the Sakuntala. There is no need to discuss this theory here. Since the Sakuntala-translation was published in 1791, it could very well have served as a model even if one accepts my dating of the Prelude. I personally believe with Alewyn that the Prelude springs from the spirit of the ex tempore comedy and the Opera Buffo, for which preludes of this sort are almost obligatory.

It may be worth pointing in this connection to a letter written by Goethe to Eduard Jerrmann, dated July 22, 1825 (Weimarer Ausgabe, Abtl. iv, xxxix, 257 f.). Jerrmann had asked Goethe's permission to use the Prelude as a curtain-raiser for a performance of Iphigenie (of all things !). Goethe gently refused, pointing out that the Prelude in its present form (“trotzig und unfreundlich”) was not fit for performance and would have to be changed for such a purpose to become “höflich und artig und einnehmend.” Then it might be a suitable lever de rideau, yet only for a “recht heiteres und lustiges, personen- und abwechslungsreiches Stück.” I do not want to press the point, inasmuch as this letter was written almost thirty years after the Prelude. Yet it is interesting that, at least in his old age, Goethe associated the Prelude with something “merry and gay”, with a good-natured entertainment which would indeed be a far cry from the tragedy's First Part.

¹³ Previous Faust-research has, of course, pointed to parallel passages, partly even literal correspondences, in the speeches of the theatre manager and Serlo—above all Erich Schmidt, op. cit., p. 265 ff. and Witkowski, op. cit., p. 190. Yet no consequences have been drawn from this astounding fact.

¹⁴ It would be possible to earmark 1798 as the year of origin, in which year Goethe, very much to Schiller's annoyance, returned to the Zauberflöte-plan. However, the interrelationship with Wilhelm Meisler and the Xenien speaks most definitely for the years 1795/96.

¹⁵ W. V. Biedermann, Goethes Gespräche (Berlin, 1890), v, 38.