In what ways and to what ends have at least two of the play you have studied made use of either compressed or expanded time frames?

Compressed and expanded time frames can be used to highlight a wide range of themes within plays. Christopher Marlowe, for example, makes particular use of both the compression and expansion of time in 'Doctor Faustus', moving from the traditional Aristotlean twenty-four hour format that was vital to the play being labelled as a tragedy, and extends this to twenty four years. This elongation of time then inverts to compression in the final scences, with Marlowe's protagonist, Faustus, having revelled in this warrented expansion of time, finally being forced to feel the constraints of mortal time as the hour of his eternal damnation draws closer. 

Alternatively, Arthur Miller, a 20th century playwright, uses expanding time frames as a point of contrast regarding his protagonist, the 'common man'. Within 'Death of a Salesman', he moves between the elongated and seemingly endless temporal progression of the past, to the rushed and fervid march of the present. Through this, Miller highlights the lost actions of the past, as well as the already failing hope of his protagonist. The hurried present demonstrates the vicious and unforgiving nature of the capitalist movement, which demands continual success and progress from its browbeaten upholders.