As we have it, the
_Urfaust_ consists of twenty-two scenes--those that relate the
Gretchen tragedy alone having any necessary connection with each
other. All the successive parts, including the Gretchen tragedy,
suggest improvisation under a compelling immediate impulse with no
reference to what had gone before or what might come after. Apart from
its poetic value, therefore, the _Urfaust_ is the concentrated
expression of what had most intensely engaged Goethe's mind and heart
previous to the period when it was produced.
In the _Urfaust_ we have neither the Prologue in the Theatre nor the
Prologue in Heaven, but, with the exception of some verbal changes,
the opening scene which introduces us to Faust is identical with that
of the poem in its final form. Seated at his desk in a dusty Gothic
chamber, furnished with all the apparatus for scientific experiment,
Faust reviews his past life, and finds that he has been mocked from
the beginning. In every department of boasted knowledge he has made
himself a master, but it has brought satisfaction neither to his
intellect nor his heart, and he has turned to magic in the hope that
it would reveal to him the secrets that would make life worth living.
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