Abstract
Discussions of the final scene in the first act of Faust II, Rittersaal, have stressed its mythological elements, and Faust, conjuring Helen with Mephistopheles' key and the tripod won from the Mothers, has been rightly interpreted as a Renaissance Magus.1 But upon seeing the woman he has called, Faust suddenly abandons the role of Magus and assumes the role of an entirely different kind of Renaissance character, namely the Petrarchan lover. The clue to this change is his speech, a sonnet, although a flawed one as I shall show, in which he describes his reaction to Helen:
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