Only after being told and after watching the movie did i realize that there were comic scenes. Many critics say that christopher marlowe did not even write these scenes, but instead say that they were written later by other playwrights. After realizing that there was in fact comedy in the play, i began to ponder why it was in the play. My first thought was that they were there to lighten the mood of such a dark and serious play.

Any good playwright knows that you can't hold an audience's attention with hours of serious, deep and emotional content without also having something to lighten the mood. Marlowe did not in fact write the comic sections of this play i really wanted to believe that he wrote them , maybe a later playwright found that the play was too serious. The fact that i wanted marlowe to be the author of the whole play i don't like it when someone comes along a changes a piece of art, or that people say that someone changed it because it is just too good to be true made me dig deeper to try and find something that sounded more sensible to me.

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I would have to say that it was eight lines in scene five that were spoken by mephastophilis in response to a question from faustus. First will i question thee about hell: tell me, where is the place that men call hell? mephastophilis. Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed in one self place for where we are is hell, significance of comic and farcical scenes in marlowe's dr. It is a matter of sheer conjecture whether marlowe wrote these scenes himself or allowed someone else to write them in deference to the prevailing taste of the times, because, marlowe in the prologue to tambularine had contemptuously discarded buffoonery or clownage as being inappropriate for the dignity of tragic drama. Wagner here parodies the mediaeval scholastic process of reasoning adopted by scholars whose discussions he has often heard at his master's residence. This scene no doubt produces laughter, but it is important also to indicate the degeneration of faustus. Faustus would sell his soul to mephistophilis for infinite power while the clown would sell his soul to the devil for good food.

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Both transactions are ridiculous the first even more than the second because the first is far less realistic. The seven deadly scenes namely pride, covetousness, lust, envy, gluttony, anger and sloth were very important in mediaeval and later christian theology. They played an important role in many works of mediaeval and renaissance literature. The various sins do certainly amuse us by the manner which they describe their respective characteristics.

Pride disdains to have any parents covetousness would like the house and all the people in it to be turned into gold wrath wounds himself with his daggers when there is nobody else to attack envy is begotten of a chimney sweeper and an oyster wife gluttony has bacon, beef, claret as his ancestors. It has a touch of comedy but it also indicates that faustus, who could become emperor of emperors , has now turned into a mere trickster. The scene act iv, scene iv of faustus's dealing with a horse courser is the last comical scene. The man who can have billions of dollars by his necromantic power now deceives a horse courser only for forty dollars. The abundance , according to a critic, of the comic scenes here weakens the dramatic quality.

The practical jokes played on the horse courser is sheer clownage and unworthy of a somber and great play such as doctor faustus. It may be said that the various comic scenes serve to fill the interval between faustus's attainment of magical power and the damnation, which overtakes him after the gap of twenty four years. The above preview is unformatted text the comic scenes in doctor faustus. A powerful play with a weak plot in any tragic or serious play, the dramatist tries to give relief to the audience by introducing comic scenes or episodes.

The literary term for such comic interludes is known as tragic relief. doctor faustus also from routledge: routledge · english · texts general editor · john drakakis william blake: selected poetry and prose ed. The comic scenes in doctor faustus: a powerful play with a weak plot in any tragic or serious play, the dramatist tries to give relief to the audience by introducing comic scenes or episodes. A tragedy is bound to create tension in the mind of the audience and if this tension is not relaxed from time to time, it generates some sort of emotional weakness in the mind of the audience. There was a pressing demand from the side of elizabethan audience for such interludes. Hence, play wrights had to introduce such comic scenes as the producers also demanded them for a successful run of the play. The comic interlude may have an appropriate emotional connection in the development of the tragic play.

But it is also admitted that in marlowe’s dramas, this tragic relief seems to be crude and often verges on horseplay and buffoonery. For these scenes, it is often said that dr faustus is a powerful drama with a weak plot. According to the critics, the comic elements in these scenes are low and vulgar, full of coarse buffoonery and they can not be accepted as organic parts of the tragic play. They are of the opinion that only in the first comic scene do we see worked out with some care a comic burlesque of the main plot. Faustus is that most of them are later interpolation and not from the mighty pen of marlowe. If we study marlowe’s play temburlaine , we find him in the prologue to this play, proudly declaring that: from jigging veins of rhyming mother wits, and such conceits of clownage keep in pay, we shall lead you to the stately tent of war.