Introduction of comic characters, speeches, or scenes in a serious or tragic work, especially in dramas.
Used in Elizabethan tragedy.
Decreases tension and adds variety.
Integrated with the plot.
Enhances the serious or tragic significance.
Examples of such complex uses of comic elements are
The gravediggers in Hamlet
The scene of the drunken porter after the murder of the king in Macbeth
The Falstaff scenes in Henry IV
The roles of Mercurio and the old nurse in Romeo and Juliet.
Thomas De Quincey's classic essay "On the Knocking at the Gate in
Macbeth" (1823).
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