Comedy In Faustus

In our last English lesson we looked at Act 1 Scene 4 of Dr Faustus. This scene is a comic scene slap-bang in the middle of the rather more serious business of Faustus selling his soul to the devil Mephistopheles. We looked at what we ourselves defined as comedy and then read the scene. In the scene, which comes directly after Faustus has first met Mephistopheles, the character Wagner is trying to convince a new character called Robin, who is a clown, to commit to his service. So the situation between Wagner and Robin is similar with that of Faustus gaining Mephistopheles' service in return for giving his soul to him. However this scene is supposed to be funny, indeed the fact that straight away Robin is called a clown shows the audience that he is meant to be seen as comical. The two have a bit of a comical debate which includes many a play on words and to be honest my sides were splitting by the end of it. OK sarcasm is sweet. =P

Anyway so we tried to think of ideas as to why this scene has been included where it has, or at all. As I have mentioned it takes place between two very serious scenes which are crucial to the play, and it doesn't fit in. Faustus has just met Mephistopheles when this scene takes place and in the scene that succeeds it he actually  confirms the deal to sell his soul to the devil.
One reason why this scene could be here is simply to relieve tension in the audience, although I believe this to be a relatively weak interpretation. However when talking about comedy we said it can often relieve tension and make us feel relaxed, so Marlowe could have put this scene in to make the audience re-engage with the performance after a scene that would have created tension over it's controversial religious context.
However I think a stronger interpretation of this scene is that it is supposed to act as a parallel to the situation Faustus is in, and therefore help to almost mock Faustus. For example, the clown Robin, a comical and seemingly uneducated character makes the sensible decision to refuse Wagner's offer and not commit to being his servant. This sets the way for a comparison with Faustus as in the next scene he makes his fateful decision. So by presenting Robin in this way Marlowe makes Faustus out to be even more of a fool, as despite all his arrogance and intelligence he isn't as sensible as a mere clown who is of no where near the same academic standing that Faustus is.

So yeah there's just a few thoughts about Act 1 Scene 4, I can't go into too much detail about why the scene is there because to be honest I'm not sure. For example the strongest I could think of was to expose how a clown is seemingly more sensible than Faustus, however this doesn't really fit with the points I thought Marlowe was trying to get across in previous scenes. Though I suppose he could be showing a different side and exploiting how those who are academic are listened to straight away when in reality they sometimes lack common sense. This could relate to how the common people of the time would accept everything the clergy etc told them as they were considered intellectuals.