Dicuss the View That Dracula Promotes More Laughter Than Terror

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Discuss the view that the play provokes more laughter than terror. Comedy and laughter is not so much a typical convention of a Gothic text, antithesis for example would be more commonly used to create a sense of good vs. Evil which is clearly portrayed through the likes of the ‘Good Angel’ who urges Faustus to repent for his pact with Lucifer and return to God, and the ‘Bad Angel’, who serves as the counterpart to the good angel and provides Faustus with reasons not to repent for sins against God. These characters could represent Faustus’s conscience between good and evil. From this, the question could be asked as to how Christopher Marlow incorporated comic scenes into a gothic play. Christopher Marlow’s 17th century play may have come to a surprise to the audience who watched it, in both the sense of terror and comedy which was included. There are numerous moments where laughable occasions occur. Where humour is included, it could be said that Marlow included this to perhaps cut the tension in the play, this being called bathos. He could have arguably used this technique to heighten the terror for the events that happen later on. One of these moments where laughter could potentially be promoted is on line 17 where the clown invents his own word, this being “knavesacre”. This could be considered to be a comical moment as the ‘clown’ has deliberately misheard the word “stavesacre” whilst talking to Wagner. In the 17th century somebody who’s role in society was to be clown would have looked down on and considered to have been towards the bottom of the social hierarchy, so to see the clown mocking Wagner would have caused laughter throughout the audience. Referring back to the use of bathos, the structure of the play may also suggest that Christopher Marlow used comic scenes in the way that he did to ensure that the terror was dramatically
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