Discuss the appropriateness of otherwise of the comic and farcical scene in Doctor Faustus. or Write a note on the comic and farcical scene in Doctor Faustus. Do you think the introduction of these scene in the play to be justified? Give reasons for your answer.

Before we discuss the appropriateness or otherwise of the comic and farcical scene in Doctor Faustus, a brief examination of these scenes is necessary. The first comic scene (Act I, Scene II) takes place between Wagner and two Scholars. Wagner here parodies the process of reasoning adopted by Scholars whose discussions he has often heard at his master’s house. While the Scholars have asked an innocent question as to the whereabouts of Faustus, Wagner tries to puzzle them by his answer. It is quite amusing to hear him refer to his master’s being corpus naturale and he possibility of his having moved away from the place where he was

a little while ago. He refers to the dining-hall as the “place of execution”, and playing upon the word “execution” he expects to see the two Scholars “hanged at the next session” of the court. He then inform the Scholars that his master is at dinner with Valdes and Cornelius, “as this wine, if it could speak, would inform your worships”. There can be no doubt Wagner’s ready wit which has undoubtedly been sharpened by his having been in the service of a great scholar at whose house he must have been overhearing learned discussion of various subjects.
offer of a few coins, because he would not like to become Wagner’s slave. Wagner, however, summons two devils and frightens the clown into total submission, through only a moment ago the clown was boastfully threatening to kill one of the devils in order to make a reputation as a “kill-devil”.it is amusing to witness the clown’s fear at the appearance of the two devils, and his uttering a curse on them after they are gone. It is amusing also to hear him wishing to be changed into a flea in order that he may be able to tickle the pretty women. This scene, it must be admitted, offers good fun.
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, herring, beef, claret and beer as his ancestors. The parade of the Seven Deadly Sins “feeds” Faustus’s soul and it would certainly evoke laughter from the audience.
Pope will now excommunicate him, Faustus contemptuously laughs away the ritual of excommunication. The next scenes (Act IV, Scene I and II) show us Robin and Ralph, the two ostlers. Robin is performing magic on the basis of what he has learnt from Faustus’s books, and he offers not only free spiced wine to his friend Ralph, but also the kitchen-maid in case Ralph is interested in making love to her. The two of them then befool an innkeeper whose silver wine-cup they have stolen. After they have been searched by the innkeeper, Robin summons Mephistophilis in order to teach the innkeeper a lesson. Mephistophilis feels annoyed with the two “slaves” who have brought him all the way from Constantinople, whereupon Robin offers him six-pence as compensation. Mephistophilis, in his irritation, changes Robin into an ape and Ralph into a dog.
towards him. Faustus removes the horns at the request of the Emperor, but warns the Knight to be more respectful to scholars in future.
The horse-courser’s pulling off Faustus’s leg and his having to pay another sum of forty dollars as compensation to “Doctor Faustus”. This is the least satisfactory of all the scenes, in so far as it is sheer foolery, buffoonery and house-play.
The fun here is the crudest and we revolt against this sort of thing.

It may be pointed out that, according to a general belief, most of these comic and farcical scene were written not by Marlowe himself, but by a collaborator. The collaborator has even been identified as Samuel Rowley. The responsibility for the dull coarseness of these scenes does not therefore rest upon Marlowe. They seem to have been written to order by a literary hack in order to satisfy the taste of the “groundlings”. Such scenes were very popular with Elizabethan audiences and were part of the regular stock-in-trade of the
theatrical companies. The sophisticated audiences of today will not find these scene entertaining, but the Elizabethan audiences derived much entertainment from comedy of this kind.
Even Shakespeare introduced some comic elements into his tragic plays. The reason for his doing so was not only to please the audiences of the time but also to relive the tension built up by the tragic scene. In order words, even from the dramatic point of view, comic elements do serve a useful psychological purpose in a tragic play. The tension in Doctor Faustus is built up by the acute and sometimes agonizing, metal conflict that the hero undergoes. To relieve that tension, a comic scene here and there would, fro the psychological point of view, be permissible. But in this play we have too many comic scenes which not only relieve the dramatic tension but have the effect of considerably diminishing and diluting the tragic effect. In other words, the abundance of the comic
scenes here weakens the dramatic quality. Apart from this, these comic scenes, as has already been indicated above, are not upto the mark. Here and there we do come across a good joke as, far instance, when Wagner tries to embarrass the scholars and as when Mephistophilis is offered six-pence as compensation for the long journey that he has undertaken in order to come in response to the summons of Robin and Ralph. The parade of the Seven Deadly Sins may also be justified as a survival of a feature that was common in the Morality type of play. But the rest of the fun, such as the harassment of the Pope and the practical jokes played on the horse-courser, is sheer clownage and unworthy of a great and somber play such as Doctor Faustus.
“fair Wittenberg”, to chase away the Prince of Parma from his “land’, to make a bridge “through the moving air” and so on. But now Faustus revels in childish pranks such as snatching away dishes from the Pope’s hands and cheating a horse-courser of money. These comic scenes (Act III, Scene I and Act IV, Scene I, II, IV), then, are useful in giving us an insight into the intellectual declines of Faustus. We get the feeling that, under the effect of unholy practices, an individual tends to lose his dignity and to find pleasure in crude forms of recreation of pastime.
the various comic scenes serve to fill the interval between Faustus’s attainment of magic powers and the damnation which overtakes him after a period of twenty-four years. However as has aptly been said, it was not necessary to fill interval with scene which might bore and irk the audience.

The next comic scene (Act I, Scene IV) pertains to Wagner and the clown. Wagner wishes to engage the clown his servant and referring to the poverty and the need of the clown, says that the clown is so hungry that “he would give his soul to the devil for a shoulder of mutton, through it were blood-raw”. The clown is not utterly stupid and so he refuses to accept such a proposition. If he must give his soul to the devil for the sake of food, he will insist on the mutton being “well roasted” and being served “with good sauce”. The clown, we gleefully tell ourselves, knows the value of his soul and would not part with it at a low price! Likewise, the clown declines Wagner’s

The next comic scene is th interrogation of the Seven Deadly Sins by Faustus (in Act II, Scene II). The various Sins do certainly amuse us by the manner in which they describe their respective characteristics. Pride “disdains”

The comic scene that follow are most unsatisfactory. There the comedy degenerates into farce. The humor there is crude and almost vulgar. We revolt against these scenes and can only console ourselves by the thought that Marlowe himself did not write them. Among these scenes, the first is Faustus’s harassment of the Pope (in Act III, Scene I), when, having been rendered invisible by Mephistophilis, he snatches the dishes and drinks from the Pope’s hands and eventually hits him on the ear. When told by Mephistophilis that the

In Act IV, Scene III, we have a touch of comedy when Faustus makes a pair of horns grow on the head of a Knight who has been insolent

Lastly, there is scene (Act IV, Scene IV) of Faustus’s dealings with a horse-courser. The humour here arises from

(a) The manner in which a horse is sold of the Horse-courser for forty dollars

(b) Faustus’s dismissal of the horse-courser with the words: “Away, you villain! What, dost think I am a horse-doctor?”

(c) The hourse-courser’s account of how he rode upon the horse into a pond of water, how the horse just vanished and how he found himself sitting on a bundle of hay.

It is possible to argue that the comic scene in which Faustus himself figures were meant to emphasize the deterioration in the character of the hero. This Faustus is different from the Faustus of the earlier scenes. When Faustus was yet considering how he would use his magic powers, he spoke of grandiose schemes: he wanted to wall all Germany with brass, to make the Rhine “circle”

One other purpose served by these comic scenes may also be pointed out. Wagner and Robin, who make use of Faustus’s books of magic, burlesque Faustus’s own conjuring and his magical performances. The scenes pertaining to these two men are, therefore, a kind of an under-plot parodying the main plot which deals with the hero, Faustus. In addition to all this, one may also argue that

It is also noteworthy that, in the Prologue to Tamburlaine, Marlowe had declared his rejection of buffoonery and clowning as being unfit for the kind of drama that he proposed to write. What he said in that Prologue merely confirms the general view that Marlowe could not have written these scenes himself.

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Discuss the appropriateness of otherwise of the comic and farcical scene in Doctor Faustus. or Write a note on the comic and farcical scene in Doctor Faustus. Do you think the introduction of these scene in the play to be justified? Give reasons for your answer.