Low Comedy Scenes

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The main purpose of a low comedy scene is to give the audience a slight break from the build up of tension that took part in the main scenes. This is seen in Dr. Faustus as at the time of the play, black magic and conjuring devils would have been absolutely petrifying. These low comedy scenes would put the audience at rest for a short while, whilst also adding valuable stock characters of a morality play. The comedy scene in Act I scene IV, where a deal takes place between Wagner and a clown Robin is used by Marlowe to undermine Faustus’s intelligence as Robin is depicted as a character of low status who stands up to Wagner by identifying all the pitfall in their deal. Wagner offers Robin a raw shoulder of mutton in exchange for his soul, a deal reflecting the primary deal exchanged between Faustus and Mephistopheles however, unlike Faustus, Robin identifies the possible problem with the shoulder of mutton being “blood raw” and states that if he were to exchange his soul, he would rather have the mutton “roasted” with “good sauce”. Thus, Marlowe immediately emphasises Faustus’s incapability of seeing any falsehood in his deal with the devil for “four and twenty years” to “live in all voluptuousness” where the word “voluptuousness” refers to all the senses such as food and women, things which may seem trivial to religious members in the audience when compared to the value of one’s own soul. The fact that Robin is also of lower status then Faustus and still manages to approach the deal with more caution then Faustus is another way that Faustus is undermined. Having a closer look at Marlowes work, overall there is 14 scenes in Dr Faustus, the low comedy scenes make up 5 or 6 of these, the idea behind this break meant the audience wouldn’t become “emotionally unstable”, as these comedy scenes are described as vulgar and full of crude buffoonery the Elizabethans would
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