This is by far the most extensive section of the first act, describing the Florentine carnival from the perspective of Goethe, above all based on Antonio Francesco Grazzini's Tutti i trionfi (1559) – a collection of contemporary "songs and hard lifts".
The Emperor appears and blesses the newly introduced paper money from Mephisto, which is adorned with pictures of Simon Magus.
Goethe here satirizes the introduction of paper money during the French Revolution, with various advisors possibly representing Danton, Sieyès and other figures.
Faust enters the "realm of the mothers" – variously described as the depths of the psyche or the womb – in order to bring back the "ideal form" of beauty for the Emperor's delight.
In a fit of jealously toward Paris, who is now abducting Helen, Faust destroys the illusion and the act ends in darkness and tumult.
Mephistopheles, meanwhile, meets the Phorkyads or Phorcydes (another name for the Graeae), three hideous hags who share one tooth and one eye between them, and he disguises himself as one of them.
The third act begins with Helen's arrival at the palace of Menelaus in Sparta, accompanied by women, who, as in Classical drama, constitute the chorus.
Mephistopheles introduces the three mighty men (German: Die drey Gewaltigen) consisting of Bullyboy, Grab-quick and Hold-tight ("Raufebold", "Habebald", "Haltefest"), that should help to oppress the revolt and implement Faust's ambitious project.
An indefinite interval of time has passed since the end of the previous act, and Faust is now an old but powerful man favored by the king.
Upon seeing the hut of an old peasant couple (Baucis and Philemon) and a nearby chapel, Faust becomes irritated that these two structures do not belong to him, and orders to have them removed.
Upon disclosing his plans to better the lives of his subjects, motivated perhaps out of guilt, he recognizes the moment of sheer bliss which he would seek to prolong and drops dead.
Three biblical holy women, Magna Peccatrix (the Great Sinneress, Luke 7:36), Mulier Samaritana (the Samaritan woman, John 4), and Maria Aegyptiaca (Acta Sanctorum), plead for Faust's soul, while Una Poenitentium (previously Gretchen), also pleading for grace, offers to lead the reborn Faust into the higher spheres of heaven.
[4] The last words of Goethe's Faust Part II call to mind the "epopteia", which is a nonverbal and indescribable process, associated with the sense of sight.
Similarly, a few lines earlier, Faust petitions the angels for a vision of the Queen of heaven: Mightiest empress of the world, Let me, in the blue Pavilion of the sky unfurl'd, Thy mystery view!
(11997–12000) Likewise in his final words, Faust prays to the Mater Gloriosa using the titles "Virgin, Mother, Queen" (11995) and also "Goddess" (12100).
[6] Apuleius also calls Isis "mother of all Nature ... whose sole divinity is worshipped in differing forms, with varying rites, under many names, by all the world.
For it is certainly a broader and purer insight into and around Greek and Roman literature to which we owe our liberation from the monkish barbarism of the period between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
– Goethe's letter to K. J. L. Iken September 27, 1827 (translation of Rüdiger Bubner)Rather in the context of Act III: "Yet, ... it all appeals to the senses, and on the stage would satisfy the eye: more I did not intend.
– Conversations with Goethe by Johann Peter Eckermann January 25, 1827 (translated by John Oxenford)In the context of Act IV "The Mothers!
– Conversations with Goethe by Johann Peter Eckermann January 10, 1830 (translated by John Oxenford) "But, in the second part, there is scarcely anything of the subjective; here is seen a higher, broader, clearer, more passionless world, and he who has not looked about him and had some experience, will not know what to make of it."