COMIC SYNTHESIS IN DR.

FAUSTUS

We find more than one level of comedy in Dr. Faustus.

Faustus is playing with his life on a larger scale. It is comedy at a large scale. Slap stick scenes
unite with the fragmented main action to form a subtle ironic design. Apparently Faustus has
mastered magic and omnipotence but the irony is that he is reduced to nothing but a water drop
or toad.

Faustus is different. In other Elizabethan plays, the buffoonery comes first and the courtly
elements of king come later. In Faustus we see a lot many comic foils. (foil of character in
literature are the ones which enhance a character’s positive and negative points.) Wagner’s
pranks highlight Faustus’ follies.

Faustus’ pattern of understanding is consistently wrong. In scene one he shows his intellectual
supremacy and in the second scene only, Wagner copies or apes him by chopping logic off with
the two scholars. In the same scene Faustus agrees to sell his soul for twenty-four years. In the
next scene clown imitates him and barters his soul for a shoulder of mutton. In fact Faustus has
done so petty a deal.

After Faustus signs the pact, he asks questions about astronomy and he has given seven deadly
sins. He launches his carrier by snatching food of Pope whereas clown Robin, with others
burlesque characters, imitates Faustus’s conjuration and tries to steal a goblet of Vintner. The
ironic comedy is both didactic as well as reassuring because it is highlighting the futility of his
deed. The amusement that he shows of seven deadly sins is the sign of moral decay of Faustus.
This moral decay is serious. In medieval literature the seven deadly sins and Satan exist but
Satan is a comic villain who is beaten off the stage with divine and human laughter. In medieval
plays goodness prevails in the end. In renaissance literature we have seen that he has taken those
evils as ally. (Dr Faustus, a renaissance man paying a medieval price for his sins)

Faustus diverts his creative energies to quote and do practical jokes. Mephistopheles plays his
practical jokes on the subject of lechery. Lucifer toys with him at a grander scale, assures him
hell, all manners of delight and gives his book. Lucifer is actually helping him to transform from
an aspiring hero into a desperate licentious (Lacking moral discipline; especially sexually
unrestrained) person. Faustus’ plans are changed from constructive in the beginning to
destructive in the middle and end. He intends for all the pleasures, riches and power but also
intends to make all learning his province. He wants to make things better, improve geography
and defeat tyranny. The measure of his tragic fall is the increasing disparity between his
aspirations and his actual achievements. His accomplishments grow increasingly petty. He
discomforts Pope, horns a knight, entertains an emperor, cheats a horse coarser and delights a
duchess to bring out of season grapes.

Beneath the exalted appearance of a fearless rebel, we find in Dr. Faustus the figure of a fool. He
abjures Christianity, changes one God for many devils and becomes submissive to them.

When Faustus steals the Pope’s cup and Robin steals the Vintner’s goblet, the tragic and the
comic elements are nearly merged. The difference between the two thefts is that of the degree
but not of the kind. Faustus, a learned man, comes down to the level of Robin.

We find irony in the fate of a hero aspiring to be God and ends less than a human being. A seeker
of knowledge is reduced to the utmost wantonness. There is comedy in his vain rebellion and his
fall from grace is tragedy. This balance of comical and tragical elements is comparable to
Paradise Lost. The brightest leader turns to toad in the Paradise Lost. He was a fool of God but
Faustus’s destiny is more pathetic because he is Lucifer’s fool.

(Marlow adds a new dimension to the morality framework. He doesn’t use it as a literary
mythical apparatus. Hell is a reality in Dr. Faustus which is experienced in an earthly nihilistic
despair or that hell can be seen in the horror of an eternal void.)