For the first half of the play, the structure of Doctor Faustus pairs scenes of Faustus’s weighty decisions with moments of comic levity carried out by his servant Wagner and other lower-class characters. In fact, Scenes 1 through 6 flip neatly back and forth between the serious and the comedic. As the play goes on, though, Faustus’s ambitions regarding his magic shift from the achievement of glory to smaller and more petty-minded matters, and in this way, the line between Faustus and his comedic counterparts slowly begins to disappear. In Scenes 7 and 8, Marlowe uses parody to clearly outline this shift in Faustus’s mindset.
First, in Scene 7, Faustus and Mephastophilis amuse themselves by playing jokes on the pope and his cardinals. Faustus has just stolen the pope’s dish; now he proceeds to steal his wine:
Pope: What, again? My lord, I’ll drink to your grace.
Faustus: [snatching the cup] I’ll pledge your grace.
While it is true that the antics of Faustus and Mephastophilis wreak havoc and mayhem in the Pope’s court, they do not cause any real or lasting harm.
Immediately following this scene, Robe and Rafe engage in practically an exact reenactment of what has just occurred:
Vintner [to Robin]: Soft, sir, a word with you. I must yet have a goblet paid from you ere you go.
Robin: I, a goblet? Rafe, I, a goblet? I scorn you [...] Search me.
The two comedic characters then proceed to hilariously toss the goblet back and forth between each other to escape getting caught. Robin and Rafe’s theft of the Vintner’s goblet thus explicitly parodies Faustus and Mephastophilis’s pranks on the Pope and his clergymen.
Marlow further makes a mockery of Faustus’s efforts when Robin and Rafe are able to summon Mephastophilis to aid in their trickery, thereby proving that the magic Faustus damns himself to attain is in fact incredibly easy to achieve. Mephastophilis’s anger at their achievement only adds to the humor of the situation:
Monarch of hell, under whose black survey
Great potentates do kneel with awful fear,
Upon whose altars thousand souls do lie,
How am I vexèd with these villains’ charms!
From Constantinople am I hither come
Only for pleasure of these damnèd slaves.
By writing these parallel scenes, Marlowe lampoons Faustus’s lofty self-image by revealing the paltry limitations of his imagination and magical capacity— if Robin and Rafe can do the exact same thing, what, then, did Faustus sell his soul for?
For the first half of the play, the structure of Doctor Faustus pairs scenes of Faustus’s weighty decisions with moments of comic levity carried out by his servant Wagner and other lower-class characters. In fact, Scenes 1 through 6 flip neatly back and forth between the serious and the comedic. As the play goes on, though, Faustus’s ambitions regarding his magic shift from the achievement of glory to smaller and more petty-minded matters, and in this way, the line between Faustus and his comedic counterparts slowly begins to disappear. In Scenes 7 and 8, Marlowe uses parody to clearly outline this shift in Faustus’s mindset.
First, in Scene 7, Faustus and Mephastophilis amuse themselves by playing jokes on the pope and his cardinals. Faustus has just stolen the pope’s dish; now he proceeds to steal his wine:
Pope: What, again? My lord, I’ll drink to your grace.
Faustus: [snatching the cup] I’ll pledge your grace.
While it is true that the antics of Faustus and Mephastophilis wreak havoc and mayhem in the Pope’s court, they do not cause any real or lasting harm.
Immediately following this scene, Robe and Rafe engage in practically an exact reenactment of what has just occurred:
Vintner [to Robin]: Soft, sir, a word with you. I must yet have a goblet paid from you ere you go.
Robin: I, a goblet? Rafe, I, a goblet? I scorn you [...] Search me.
The two comedic characters then proceed to hilariously toss the goblet back and forth between each other to escape getting caught. Robin and Rafe’s theft of the Vintner’s goblet thus explicitly parodies Faustus and Mephastophilis’s pranks on the Pope and his clergymen.
Marlow further makes a mockery of Faustus’s efforts when Robin and Rafe are able to summon Mephastophilis to aid in their trickery, thereby proving that the magic Faustus damns himself to attain is in fact incredibly easy to achieve. Mephastophilis’s anger at their achievement only adds to the humor of the situation:
Monarch of hell, under whose black survey
Great potentates do kneel with awful fear,
Upon whose altars thousand souls do lie,
How am I vexèd with these villains’ charms!
From Constantinople am I hither come
Only for pleasure of these damnèd slaves.
By writing these parallel scenes, Marlowe lampoons Faustus’s lofty self-image by revealing the paltry limitations of his imagination and magical capacity— if Robin and Rafe can do the exact same thing, what, then, did Faustus sell his soul for?
