Walpurgis night.
That times have changed I realise myself;
No longer through the chimney I descend;
I enter like a super from the side.
Widowers' Houses dramas have become;
Morals and sentiment and Clement Scott
No more seem adjuncts of the English stage.

FAUST. Oh, Mephistopheles, you come in time
To save the English drama from a deadlock!
Like Mahmud's coffin hung 'twixt Heaven and Earth,
It falters up to verse and down to prose.
Tell us, then, how to act, how consummate
The aspirations of our Stephen Phillips!

MEPHISTO. Ah, Alexander Faustus! young as ever,
Still unabashed by Paolo and Francesca,
You long for plays with literary motives,
Plots oft attempted both in prose and rhyme.

FAUST. As ever, you are timid and old-fashioned.

MEPHISTO. Hark you! One thing I know above all others,
The English drama of the century past.
Though English critics have consigned to me
The plays of Ibsen, Maeterlinck, and Shaw,
And Wilde's _Salome_, none has ever reached me.
Back to their native land they must have gone,
Or else you have them here in Germany.
Only to me come down real British plays,
The mid-Victorian twaddle, the false gems
Which on the stretched forefinger of oblivion
Glitter a moment, and then perish paste.

FAUST (_drily_). Well, if I learn of any critic's death
Leaving a vacant place upon the Press,
You'll hear from me; meanwhile, Mephisto mine,
As we must needs play out our little play,
Whom would you cast for Margaret, _alias_ Gretchen?
Kindly sketch out an inexpensive _Faust_,
Modelled on the Vedrenne and Barker style
Once much in favour at the English Court.

MEPHISTO. The stage is now an auditorium,
And all the audiences are amateurs,
First-nighters at the bottom of their heart.
What do they care for drama in the least?
All that they need are complimentary stalls,
To know the leading actor, to be round
At dress rehearsals, or behind the scenes,
To hear the row the actor-manager
Had with the author or the leading lady,
Then to recount the story at the Garrick,
Where, lingering lovingly on kippered lies,
They babble over chestnuts and their punch
And stale round-table jests of years ago.

FAUST. So Mephistopheles is growing old!
Kindly omit your stage philosophy,
And tell me all your plans about the play.

MEPHISTO. First we must make you young and fresh as paint,
Philters and elixirs are out of date.
A week in London--that is what you want;
London Society is our objective.