The Death of Doctor Faust

You expect the extraordinary in Ghelderode's work, and in his version of the Faust legend you get it. The scene is set "in the sixteenth and twentieth centuries simultaneously." Faust one day leaves his laboratory and his assistant to go among the crowds. He enters a tavern where he meets not only the devil and Marguerite, but also actors who are there performing the story of Faust. In the play-within-a-play there are, of course, two of each of the three principal characters. The result is startling, and the performance ends in dismay for the audience. It is in the next scene that we learn how Faust has violated Marguerite, and that he makes a pact with the devil. Then the characters revert to the 16th century, when the mob and constabulary come for Faust, and he kills himself.