Analysis
Gretchen echoes several other Gilbert plays, particularly in the character of Faustus: The title character of Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith (1876) becomes a misanthropic miser, and Jeffrey Rollestone, the hero of The Ne'er-Do-Weel (1878), becomes a wandering tramp. Mousta in Broken Hearts (1875) is a hunchback rejected by a woman, and in The Yeomen of the Guard, Jack Point is destroyed by losing his love. A disappointment in love leads them to retreat from the world, to become misanthropes and outcasts. Faustus is a sympathetic, but deeply flawed character. Through him, Gilbert attempts to blur the moral absolutes of Victorian drama, just as he does in his comic plays.
Faustus has turned his back on the world which hurt him so deeply, but he is no happier in isolation in the monastery, as he cannot hew to the moral absolutes of the Church. He hopes to be purified by loving the pure Gretchen, but instead his influence corrupts and eventually kills her. He pleads for death, but Gretchen's dying words of advice are that he should not escape from guilt with "coward death", but instead atone through "faith, and truth, and works of charity". But Faustus has no correct course, unable to find peace by following the Church or living in the real world. There is no reason to believe that Faustus will be able to do hold to his promise of faith, truth and charity.
Gilbert scholar Andrew Crowther commented that Faustus is part of a recurring theme of "the unresolvable paradox of the outsider who seeks acceptance, the misanthrope who wants to be loved", and represents an aspect of Gilbert himself. Crowther wrote: "Faustus calls himself a cynic, as the critics often called Gilbert, but retains his belief in female purity – a sentimental aspect of Gilbert which is demonstrated clearly enough in . Also, just as Gilbert satirised the Establishment of which he became at length a part, so Faustus scorns worldly things and at the same time desires them".
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