The Player of Comic Roles, along with the Manager and the Dramatic Poet, is staging a production of Faust for a German theater in the “Prelude on the Stage” scene. Like the Dramatic Poet, he too is something of an artist, though he knows that posterity cannot enjoy his performances because they occur only in the present. He is also like the Manager in advocating for entertainment value, in giving people what they want, though with less of an emphasis on action and stage effects and more of an emphasis on representing the gamut of human experience.
Get the entire Faust LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Player of Comic Roles Character Timeline in Faust
The timeline below shows where the character The Player of Comic Roles appears in Faust. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Prelude in the Theater
In a German theater, the Manager, the Dramatic Poet, and the Player of Comic Roles are preparing a production of Faust. The Manager uneasily asks the other two how they...
(full context)
...to make a poem that is glittering and ephemeral, but instead something worthy of posterity. The Player, in contrast, can only please his contemporaries, and therefore values amusing people here and now....
(full context)
The Player of Comic Roles tells the Dramatic Poet to manage his literary business like a poet, then. He compares...
(full context)
...and was full of untamed passions, the power to hate and the strength to love. The Player of Comic Roles suggests that the Dramatic Poet would need youth back only when embattled by enemies, tempted...
(full context)
