Act 4

The two scenes in this act show what Faustus can achieve with Mephistophilis, and to be honest, it isn't all that much, at least compared to his ambitions. He has summoned the spirits of Alexander the Great and his paramour at the request of the Emperor of Germany and made a knight who insulted him wear a pair of horns. So much for "The Emperor shall not live but by my leave"; he seems more of a 'court jester' type entertaining the emperor he wanted to be superior to for a "bounteous reward". The Knight is unconvinced by Faustus' magic, suggesting his power is "nothing at all", and is punished by horns being placed on his head. Even then, it is when the Emperor asks for the horns to be removed that Faustus does so, saying it is "to delight you with some mirth". The impression I got from this scene is that Faustus has not achieved anything like what he desired, and has reduced to demonstrating his power as thought he was a casual magician. Perhaps this is another example of Mephistophilis deceiving Faustus, that rather than being able to help him in becoming a kind of God on Earth he has kept the influence Faustus would make to a minimum, deception being a typical thing to expect from a devil, particularly for the Elizabethan audience.

It seems that by the second scene of this Act that Faustus is ageing, and so wants to "Make haste to Wittenberg". He is perhaps becoming more afraid of what will happen to him after his contract with the Devil ends and begins to be concerned about his "fatal end". Meanwhile, he has sold his horse to a horse-courser for forty dollars, despite wanting fifty. He warns the horse-courser not to ride the horse into water, which he does anyway and ends up "sat upon a bottle of hay". Maybe Faustus was irritated at selling his horse for a lower price so he put a spell on it, or maybe it was sent from Hell by the Devil so would be deceptive. So after the horse-courser nearly drowns he returns to Faustus demanding his money back, but is informed by Mephistophilis that Faustus is asleep. The horse-courser tries to wake him up and succeeds after he pulls his leg off. He then swears to give Faustus an extra forty dollars to "let me go", but the leg grows back anyway after he leaves. No doubt this is an ability given to him by magic, I think it was a trick to get more money from the horse-courser and shows that Faustus is having to resort to tricks like these to get money. So basically this scene represents the fact that he has still achieved none of his big ambitions, despite his contract with the Devil coming to a close.