In Katherine Walker’s article “Clowns and Demonic Learning in Doctor Faustus”, she argues that Marlowe’s play shows theatrical humor in the devil’s epistemology because it’s always illusory. Because the devil’s knowledge is able to be accessed by clowns, doctors, and audiences alike, it lacks substance; the clowns’ ability to gain demonic knowledge in Doctor Faustus, Walker writes, reflects Marlowe’s skepticism about the possibility of gaining divine understanding or divine communion. Doctor Faustus establishes a relationship between the devil and a human that resembles the relationship between master and apprentice. However, no matter who the human is, the knowledge they gain from the devil will only be an illusion because it is bound by material law and lacks a knowledge of the immaterial. By engaging in this type of education, the clowns in Doctor Faustus do acquire knowledge, but it is a “specialized, disappointingly earth-bound, form of understanding” (Walker 426).
