Psychologically, an audience can only take so much tragedy before it needs a little relief from all of the hand-wringing and wrist-slitting. That's why it's called "comic relief." Shakespeare didn't know what we'd call it later on and he didn't know what "psychology" was but he knew from being an actor what worked and what didn't. He employs comic relief in many of his plays, like the gravediggers in Hamlet and the doorkeeper in Macbeth.
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