Faust, Part Two
Faust: The Second Part of the Tragedy (German: Faust. Der Tragödie zweiter Teil in fünf Akten.) is the second part of the tragic play Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It was published in 1832, the year of Goethe's death.
Author
Only part of Faust I is directly related to the legend of Johann Faust, which dates to at latest the beginning of the 16th century (thus preceding Marlowe's play). The "Gretchen" subplot, although now the most widely known episode of the Faust legend, was of Goethe's own invention. In Faust II, the legend (at least in a version of the 18th century, which came to Goethe's attention) already contained Faust's marriage with Helen and an encounter with an Emperor. But certainly Goethe deals with the legendary material very freely in both parts.
Background[edit]
Goethe had been writing Faust since 1771/1772, and he had kept working on it all the way to his death (1832), working for about 60 years on the play. Goethe, like Christopher Marlowe, used the Volksbuch (folk book) to gather inspiration for his Faust (Goethe didn't read Marlowe's Doctor Faustus until 1818, the same year he began working again on the second part of his play). Right until his death, Goethe left all of his work beside to carefully examine and work on the second part of this play. In 1831, Goethe concluded the play, adding the final scene of the fifth act. Right after ending the play, Goethe sealed the manuscript and locked it in a drawer in his office; yet, he was tempted to work again on the play, and he pulled out the manuscript for a private reading to Ottilie von Goethe and Johann Peter Eckermann, revising some minor details. After Goethe's death, on the 22nd of march, 1832, the second part of the play was published by Eckermann and Friedrich Wilhelm Riemer in the first volume of the Nachgelassene Werke (Posthumous Works).
