the three devils

The first and most theologically sophisticated tradition is the fallen angel motif. Sayers isolates the “dark angelic melancholy” as the primary quality in this tradition which gives Mephistopheles in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost their nearly tragic splendor that arises from their recognizing the loss of proximity to the Creator.

The second tradition is rooted in a kind of Manichean vision of a dark force pervading the cosmos, a vision of evil in which the Devil appears more as a spirit of negative energy set counterpoised with the positive energy of God. The cosmos is dualistic in this vision, with God and the Devil balanced. Instead of being a fallen angel who simultaneously longs for the splendor of what was and who also hates the splendor of God and heaven, seeking to destroy it by corrupting human beings, devils—or the Devil—are but instantiations of this negative energy. Devils or demons are thus interchangeable, merely variable images of one pervasive and apparently necessary part of reality, thereby rendering distinctions between Lucifer and his minions, like Mephistopheles, unnecessary.

The third manifestation of the Devil, according to Sayers, ia where the devil is the prankster, a trickster figure who engages in nefarious horseplay and whom the audience of Medieval theater expected to see at some point for comedic effects. Sayers argues that by the end of Part II of Goethe’s Faust, Mephistopheles has transformed into this kind of buffoonish figure. The puppet plays that grew out of Marlowe’s Faustus perpetuated this comedic aspect of the Devil through the Reformation, and it tenaciously hangs on in film today.

Sayers was also keenly interested in the artistic problem of making the Devil an attractive character.

http://metaphilm.com/index.php/detail/sympathy-for-the-devil/