But there is no hope for men who do not boast
that their wives bully them.

The first idea, the idea about the man at the bottom coming out on top,
is expressed in this puppet-play in the person of Dr. Faustus' servant,
Caspar. Sentimental old Tones, regretting the feudal times, sometimes
complain that in these days Jack is as good as his master. But most of
the actual tales of the feudal times turn on the idea that Jack is much
better than his master, and certainly it is so in the case of Caspar and
Faust. The play ends with the damnation of the learned and illustrious
doctor, followed by a cheerful and animated dance by Caspar, who has
been made watchman of the city.

But there was a much keener stroke of mediaeval irony earlier in the
play. The learned doctor has been ransacking all the libraries of the
earth to find a certain rare formula, now almost unknown, by which he
can control the infernal deities. At last he procures the one precious
volume, opens it at the proper page, and leaves it on the table while
he seeks some other part of his magic equipment. The servant comes
in, reads off the formula, and immediately becomes an emperor of
the elemental spirits. He gives them a horrible time. He summons and
dismisses them alternately with the rapidity of a piston-rod working at
high speed; he keeps them flying between the doctor's house and their
own more unmentionable residences till they faint with rage and fatigue.
There is all the best of the Middle Ages in that; the idea of the great
levellers, luck and laughter; the idea of a sense of humour defying and
dominating hell.

One of the best points in the play as performed in this Yorkshire town
was that the servant Caspar was made to talk Yorkshire, instead of the
German rustic dialect which he talked in the original. That also smacks
of the good air of that epoch. In those old pictures and poems they
always made things living by making them local. Thus, queerly enough,
the one touch that was not in the old mediaeval version was the most
mediaeval touch of all.

That other ancient and Christian jest, that a wife is a holy terror,
occurs in the last scene, where the doctor (who wears a fur coat
throughout, to make him seem more offensively rich and refined) is
attempting to escape from the avenging demons, and meets his old servant
in the street. The servant obligingly points out a house with a blue
door, and strongly recommends Dr. Faustus to take refuge in it.