When Goethe created Mephistopheles, his version of the devil, he was well aware that he had to get rid of most of the attributes traditionally ascribed to this opponent of God. There is plenty of evidence that this character no longer stands for one principle of evil, for instance the schemer or the Machiavellian ruler, but is deliberately constructed to bring together a large number of different qualities. Mephistopheles, one might say, is excessively overdetermined. Goethe lets him enter the stage in many masks. He plays the role of ‘Kuppler’ (matchmaker) and the tempter of Faust (following the story of Job), as well as the seducer, the schemer, the gambler, the magician, the art expert, ‘Souffleur’ (prompter), entertainer, the envoy of hell, the satanic Don Juan etc. The phenomenology of evil in Faust is almost inexhaustible. If we compare Mephistopheles with the traditional picture of the devil, it is quite clear that he has become more complex – and more ambivalent. His art of metamorphosis turns him into a legitimate successor to Proteus. (Faust, by the way, also excels in this role.) So he can well be called a ‘man without qualities’, and in this respect Mephistopheles is more modern than the epitomes of evil on the Elizabethan stage – such as Richard III – and elsewhere.