"
The farcical element is not wanting in the Inferno, a fact proving that
our poet, in furnishing the episodes, not superior to his age which
demanded especially in the religious plays presented in the public
square the sight of the discomfiture of the devil in scenes provoking
the audience to laughter. The best example of such farcicality occurs in
the eighth circle, fifth bolgia, where officials, traffickers in public
offices, or unjust stewards are immersed in boiling pitch. From time to
time when the fiends are not alert the reprobate here come to the
surface for a breathing or cooling spell, like dolphins on the approach
of a storm darting in the air and diving back again or like frogs with
their muzzles alone exposed and their bodies covered by the water,
resting on the banks of a stream into which they drop at the first
approach of danger.
Getting in this way momentary relief from suffering a grafter named
Ciampolo, a former retainer of King Thibaut II of Navarre, lingered too
long and was deftly hooked by Graffiacane amid the savage exultations of
the other fiends, who proceed to maltreat the unfortunate wretch. The
hideous confusion of attacks by the demons is stopped long enough for
the poet to learn his history, and also what is more interesting to
Dante, the names of two Italians, Friar Gomita and Michel Zanche who are
likewise suffering in the boiling pitch.
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