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Mififiiam STATE Ufié‘v’ERSETY
W SWEENEY SCHEJU
1957

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THESIS

This is to certify that the
thesis entitled

THE NATURE OF FARCE:
DEFINITION AND DEVICES

presented by

W. Stanley Schutz

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph. D. degree in Speech

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ABSTRACT

THE NATURE OF EARCE:
DEFINITION AND DEVICES

By
W. Stanley Schutz

The farce as a dramatic genre has been the most over-
looked and underestimated of all dramatic types in the theatre.
Some form of farce appears in every period of theatre history
and it has always been the most popular theatre to audiences.
In spite of its longevity and popularity, there exists to the
present more confusion and contradiction about the precise
nature, characteristics and techniques of farce than of any
other genre.

This study seeks to resolve this problem by examining
these diverse opinions carefully in an attempt to arrive at a
meaningful definition of farce. A significant portion of the
study is devoted to an analysis of farce devices.

Because of the dearth of farce texts, an extensive
study of theatre literature in the English language provided
the resources. The writings of theatre historians, theorists,
critics and scholars and production texts from playwriting
to acting were scrutinized and the meaningful observations and
views correlated and synthesized into definition and devices.
Nahum Tate's "preface" to A Duke and No Duke published in 1693
represents the earliest primary source used and the works of
Brander Matthews, Leo Hughes and Eric Bentley the major con-
tributions.

Chapter I provides an introduction and background to
farce and presents the inherent problems of this study.
Chapter II explores the origin, classification and the sources
of the comic theatre of farce. Chapter III inspects the
anatomy of farce in the following details: how farce and

w. Stanley Schutz
comedy differ; the hybrid: farce-comedy; the basic requirement
for farce: production; the primary elements of situation and
plot; the secondary elements of character and dialogue.
Chapter IV moves toward the definition of farce after dis-
cussing its extrinsic characteristics and purpose. Chapter V
examines the farce technique by identifying, defining and
illustrating nine basic farce devices: farce dialogue;
violent physical action; stage tricks or broad business;
exaggerated stage properties; repetition; inversion; conceal-
ment; incongruity; and exaggerated characters.

The term "farce" entered the theatrical vocabulary and
took its place in dramatic nomenclature only after the Restor-
ation (1660-1700). From the beginning it has held to its
fundamental purpose of laughter and entertainment. Slapstick
has remained the signature of farce and its aggression and
frequent vulgarity have afforded a vicarious release of audi-
ence hostilities through laughter. Farce seems to provide a
comic catharsis which helps man bear his many problems.

The study revealed that intrinsically the farce con-
centrates primarily on the elements of situation and plot and
on character and dialogue as secondary elements. Most im-
probable of all farce exaggeration is the sequence and climax
of compounding situations where characters make practical
rather than ethical or moral decisions. The farce plot,
which dominates character, provides a framework for laughable
situations, moves rapidly to avoid reflection and is similar
to the joke in construction with a late climax and little or
no falling action.

Farce characters are exaggerated but recognizable
types not fully deve10ped on stage. The dialogue, subordi-
nated to visual action, is capable of wit, humor and broad
satire though they occur less frequently than in comedy.
Farce usually lacks literary significance for its purpose can
only be achieved in production.

W. Stanley Schutz

The following definition of farce evolved from this
study: FARCE IS THE POPULAR DRAMA (OR THEATRE) OF LAUGHTER
CREATED BY SITUATIONS THAT PROGRESS FROM SIMPLE TO WILDLY
COMPLICATED, FROM.PROBABLE TO GROSSLY EXAGGERATED AND ARE
FILLED WITH LUDICROUS UNEXPECTED INCIDENTS AND RAPID VISUAL
ACTION. THE AUDIENCE OBSERVES COMMONPLACE CHARACTER TYPES
WITH.AN EMOTIONAL DETACHMENT THAT IS DEDICATED TO.A COMIC
CATHARSIS. FARCE HAS BEEN AND IS CAPABLE OF A BROAD AND

BOLD TYPE OF SATIRE.

THE NATURE OF FARCE:
DEFINITION AND DEVICES

By
‘1“? I
W? Stanley Schutz

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Speech

1967

I“, —' [If 7
1‘ Is

(3 Copyright by
WALTER STANLEY SCHUTZ
1968

Accepted by the faculty of the Department
of Speech, College of Communication Arts,Michigan
State University, in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree.

 

 

Director of Thesis

Guidance Committee: I , , Chairman

 

 

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This writer feels indebted to more people than can be
cited in this brief section. Their suggestions, contributions,
assistance and encouragement helped immeasurably in the research
and writing of this manuscript. However, they should in no way
be held accountable for what is written herein.

A very real debt of personal gratitude is due the
following:

To Dr. Winfred B. Logan, whose competence and concern
for farce was reflected in many productions at The College of
Wooster, Ohio, and stimulated the interest and imagination of
this writer.

To Dr. John E. Dietrich, who served as first chairman
of my Guidance Committee, for encouraging and helping to
initiate and structure this study.

To Dr. Kenneth G. Hance, Director of Graduate Studies
in Speech, for his kind personal assistance in many details and
his expert advice.

To Dr. Sidney Berger, Dr. James R. Brandon and Dr. David
C. Ralph of the Department of Speech, Dr. John A. Waite of the
Department of English and Dr. Colby J. Lewis of the Department
of Radio-Television, for their advice and assistance as my
Guidance Committee.

To Dr. E. C. Reynolds, Department of Speech and Committee
Chairman, for his patient and thoughtful criticism in the direc-
tion of this study and his warm and inepiring motivation.

To the J. S. Mack Foundation of Homer City, Pennsylvania,
for their generous financial assistance in support of the writing
of this thesis.

To John B. Armstrong, Head Librarian, and the entire
library staff of Muskingum College, for assistance in acquiring
research materials and courtesies beyond the call of duty. The

writer would also acknowledge the cooperation of former Head
Librarian, Walter P. Merrill.

To Mrs. Bryson Graham, my typist, for her tireless and
meticulous care in the preparation of this manuscript.

To my parents, Dr. and Mrs. Walter Schutz, and my wife,
Pam, for their constant encouragement and moral support.

And to my children--David, Holly, Jennifer and Sandra--
the question can finally be affirmed. The "book" is completed.

111

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acmw LEDGMENT S O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0

Chapter
I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

INTRODUCTION. The Study of Farce . .

FARCE AS COMIC THEATRE . . .‘. . . . .
Origin of theatrical term ”farce" .
Classifications of comedy . . . .
Sources: comic theory . . . . . .

THE ANATOMY OF FARCE . . . . . . . . .
How farce and comedy differ . . . .
The hybrid: farce-comedy . . . . .

Production: the basic requirement for

farce O I o o o o o o

The primary elements: situation; plot.

The secondary elements: character;

dialogue . . . . ...

TOWARD A DEFINITION OF FARCE . . . . . . .

The extrinsic characteristics of farce

The purpose of farce . . . . . . .
Toward a definition of farce . . .
THE FARCE TECHNIQUE: BASIC DEVICES .
l. Farce dialogue . . . . . . . . .
2. Violent physical action . . . .

3. Stage tricks or broad business:
the lazzi . . . . . .

4. Exaggerated stage properties . .
5. Repetition . . . . . . . . .

6. Inversion . . . . . . . . . . .
7. Concealment . . . . . . . . . .
8. Incongruity . . . . . . . . . .
9. Exaggerated characters . . . . .

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Pages
ii

13
13
19
29
42
42
53

58
65

81
100
102
117
129
137
140
148

155
160
162
166
168
172
175
188

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

The Study of Farce

On the evening of October 16, 1939, The Man Who Came
to Dinner opened at the Music Box in New York City to glowing
reviews. Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman labeled their hi-
larious play "a comedy in three acts." The Broadway critics
who saw it generally agreed on its merits and predicted
future but they also had their differences of opinion as ob-
served in the following excerpted passages:

. . . It is as gay, giddy, and delectable a comedy

as our stage has seen in years. . . . It includes

some of the maddest as well as some of the best

drawn of Mr. Hart's and Mr. Kaufman's eccentrics. . . .
John Mason Brown in
New York Post.

. . . All this is accomplished on the stage with

all the ingenious lunacies the Messrs. Kaufman and

Hart are capable of devising, and its farce still

remains plausible. It is gross caricature, to be

sure, but like all caricatures, it merely emphasizes

human absurdity . . . has no plot to speak of . . .
Sidney B. Whipple in

New York World Telegram.

. . . It is . . . a good comedy for any audience.
. . The situation of a flaring egomaniac . . .
is a solid foundation for natural comedy.
Burns Mantle in N23

York Dail News.

. . . I cannot begin to tell you all that happens.
. . . I would not if I could, for this farce and

2

surprise is to be cherished. . . . The humor is
. . . largely the humor of insult, and a good deal
of it is of the knock-down-and-drag-out variety.
But satire runs along with buffoonery . . . it is
all in good, rough sport.

Richard Lockridge in

New Ybrk Sun.

. . . the funniest comedy of this season . . .
a fantastic piece of nonsense. . . . The principle
intrigue concerns an attempt to forestall his sec-
retary's plan to marry. But that is no more than
a clothesline on which this vaudeville is pinned
and left hanging in the breeze.

Brooks Atkinson in

New York Times.

Burns Mantle had seen the Hartford, Connecticut, pre-
view two weeks earlier but each of these critics was comment-
ing on the same opening night performance of October 16th.
Even from such fragmentary excerpts one can sense the enthu-
siasm that greeted The Man Who Came to Dinner, which was to
run nearly two years. But that is where unanimity ends. On
closer observation these reviews reveal conflicting views
among the critics.

Not only do several critics reveal inconsistencies
within their own review but the five critics represented here
disagree as to whether the play is a comedy or a farce. In
their complete reviews most of them describe the show as
farce but only two actually call it farce. The other three
willingly accept the author's label of comedy though they
elaborate in detail on the many characteristics of the play
which are farce. Such confusion seems to be ever present in
recorded theatre criticism and it was this in part which
prompted the present study.

There are two.ways or approaches that can be made in
the study of an art. According to Brander Matthews one can
either trace the development and growth of the art or inquire

 

Ill» 1. 'I (III [III [[x[[r{lfll\.l[lnfrlll(ll.l

3
The choice of method will usually
depend on interest, preference, or background of knowledge.

into its processes.1

In the study of farce these options were not available.

There exists so much contradiction regarding the
purpose, nature, methods and form of farce that one cannot
attempt to trace its history or follow its growth as an
art until understanding replaces confusion. In other words,
a study of the historical development of farce can only come
after we have investigated the processes and practices of
farce. This study will attempt to focus our view of farce
and to gain a clearer understanding of its principles.

The problem persists not so much because of conflict-
ing theories but as a result of scholarly oversight. This
oldest of theatrical forms has not been given serious study
until recent years. Professor Hurrell observes that farce has
been continually taken for granted as ". . . something if not
actually beneath criticism, at least beneath the need for
critical discussion."2 This direct or implied low state per-
meates the bulk of writing on farce and has led knowledgeable
scholars to make statements like these: ". . . farce . . .
take(s) the cash and let(s) the credit go."3; ". . . through-
out history it seems that nobody except audiences has had a
good word to say for farce."4 A recent dissertation by
George Small alluded to the fact that the historian of drama

 

1Brander Matthews, A_§tudy of the Drama (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1910), p. 4.

2John Dennis Hurrell, "A Note on Farce", ggarterly
Journal of Speech, XLV (December, 1959), p. 426.

3Stark Young, The Theatre (New York: Hill & Wang,
1954), p. 44.

4Jose h Wood Krutch, "The Fundamentals of Farce",
Theatre Arts 0 (July, 1956), p. 92.

4

(serious plays) relates his material to the thoughts of poets
and philosophers while his counterpart in comedy, or comic
plays, converses with the butchers and bakers. It appears
that the majority of serious critics have ignored farce con-
sidering it a mere diversion for the unthinking. Nahum Tate's
early hope for more critical discussion on the nature of farce
was never realized ". . . because writers of farce did not
bother to present a case; they were content to see their plays
prosper."5 To this critical oversight playwright Samuel
Spewack caustically concluded that: "Far too many 'important'
plays have taken their places in the history of the theatre,
rather than in its life."6

The term "farce" has been used with a variety of mean-
ings. It will, therefore, be necessary, as part of this study,
to explore the origin of the word and survey its theatrical
denotations and connotations. "Farce" comes from the French,
which derived the term originally from the Latin "farcire",
meaning to stuff. Through more recent times it has meant the
comic business that an actor employs, a short play of a very
light nature, a political pamphlet written in play form, a
ludicrous scene found in any play type and one of the dramatic
genre. Equally important is the pejorative or depreciatory
connotation which is associated with the term "farce." This
condition exists today and must be considered as background
to this study.

Farce and comedy are sometimes used interchangeably or
as synonyms of each other. Occasionally, this appears in the
writings of even our most reliable scholars as if avoiding the

 

53amuel A. Golden, "An Early Defense of Farce", Studies

in Honor of:gghn Wilcox b Members of the English Department
of Wayne University, (15585, p. 68.

6Samuel Spewack, "Introduction", Great Farces, ed.
Robert Saffron (New York: MacMillan Co., 19665, p. 6.

 

 

5
responsibility of defining their terms or accepting as defin-
itive the classic divisions of tragedy and comedy. There is
no question that the relationship of farce to comedy or comedy
to farce is strong and valid. But the distinction must be
clearly made between them if this study is to be objective.
In order to achieve this goal, we will observe the major
classifications of comedy as they have come down to us in the
1960's.

A study of this type cannot be conducted solely from
a theatrical point of view. The dramatist must sense the comic
spirit as surely as he knows the craft of theatre. Since
laughter is the prime objective of the farce, we will review
historically the theories of laughter and comedy in order to
better understand the playwright's use of humor. Wolcott
Gibbs allowed that: "Humor is probably the one subject in the
world on which every man is his own bitter and unyielding
expert."7 But some few men have articulated meaningful
theories of why we laugh and it is this background that we
shall explore first.

Historically, farce has held to this risible objective
though the form and nature have changed with time. Though not
an established fact, there is strong Speculation that the
Megarean or Spartan farce, the phlyakes of Southern Italy,
and the Atellan or Oscan farces of Campania all held this
objective.8 The evidence is clear in the farce scenes of
Aristophanes and apparently those of other Old Comedy play-
wrights. The Roman farce with Plautus in the foreground seeks

 

7Wolcott Gibbs, "What's so funny? Humor on the Stage",
New Yorker (December 25, 1943), p. 30.

8Allardyce Nicoll supports this view in his brief
article, "Farce", in Chamber's Encyclopedig (London: George
Newnes Ltd., 1955), Vol. 5, and in Masks Mimes And Miracles
(New York: COOper Square Publishers, Inc., 1963). Further
support can also be found in Gilbert NOrwood, Greek Comedy
(Boston: John W. Luce & Co. Inc., 1932).

6
no other objective than laughter. Some farcical scenes appear
in the medieval mysteries of the French and the English cycle
plays of the 15th and 16th century, in a more primitive form
again. We see farce in the commedia dell'arte and throughout
most of Moliere.

Farce is sometimes considered to be a simplified form
of comedy that teaches one lesson: to enjoy life and your
part in it. While true, it can also be misleading, as this
study will attempt to show. Most of us would probably agree
that any source of laughter is precious in a world like ours.
John Mason Brown writes that farceurs belong to a race apart
where the sky is the limit and no holds are barred. To Brown,
the point of farce is to be funny. It makes us ". . . accept
the impossible as possible, the deranged as normal and silli-
ness as a happy substitute for sense."9 Enjoyment and
laughter are truly at the heart of farce which often seems,
as Bentley puts it, like ". . . joking turned theatrical."lo

From the beginning farce has always remained closely
tied with the theatrical taste and fashions of its day. Hughes
and Scouten feel that as a result of this topicality the farce
is usually dead when the run is over. Once dead to the theatre,
it is dead also to the publisher and as a result a great many
plays which have much to reveal concerning theatrical tastes
of bygone days have long since vanished. 11

An example of this can be found in the farces of Avery
Hopwood (1882-1928) which earned more money for him than any

 

9John Mason Brown, "Seeing Things", The Saturda Review
of Literature Vol. 34 (March 24,1951), p. 26.
10

Eric Bentley The Life of the Drama (New York:
Atheneum, 1964), p. 234.

11Leo Hughes and A. H. Scouten, Ten En lish Farces
(Austin, Texas: The University of Texas Press, 19455, p. vii.

7

previous playwright in the American theatre. Of Hopwood's
thirty plays, fifteen of which ran over one hundred perform-
ances on Broadway, only seven were published. Today it is
virtually impossible to find a copy of any of his plays except
The Bat, a mystery melodrama based on Mary Roberts Rinehart's
successful novel. The quality and literary significance of
Hopwood's farces may be minimal but his success on the New
York stage is unquestioned. He was the first American play-
wright to have four plays in performance on Broadway at the
same time.12 This record remained unequaled until December
1966 when Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, Sweet Charity
and The Star-Spangled Girl made: ". . . Neil Simon the first
playwright since Avery Hopwood in 1920 to have four Broadway
shows running at the same time."13

Simplicity and the dearth of farce texts partially
account for the lack of significant criticism and research and
yet there exists another basic reason for this oversight.
Farce depends upon the doing--the staged farce production is
the most important aspect of the genre--more so than any other
dramatic type. "They spring to full life only on the stage--
when the actors and director know what they are doing."14
When the run has ended the farce is over and only the laughter
continues. To observe and evaluate farce critically means to
study it while it lives on stage. Production books and other
records are never complete enough to relive accurately the
genuine farce. Only since the development of the sound motion
picture and television kinescope or video tape have we been
able to preserve a stage production for later uses. Perhaps

 

12The Gold-Di ers, Ladies' Night, S anish Love and
The Bat. The last three opene within a two-week period in Aug-
ust and of the four plays, Spanish Love had the shortest run,
307 performances.
45 13Anonymous, "Simple Simon", Time (December 30, 1966),
p. .

14Spewack, o . cit., p. 7.

8

this will mean more future study in farce as this recording
process becomes more functional and available. But the past
productions are gone and we cannot study them with precision.
The contribution of the actors and director, which are most
meaningful to farce, are lost except to memory and occasional
play reviews. We are left only with a script in either its
original or revised form. This is an incomplete basis for
research in farce.

The earliest sources used in this study were the pub-
lished works of Nahum Tate (1693), Brander Matthews (1894),

G. K. Chesterton (1901) and Vsevolod Meyerhold (1913). Within
the‘past ten years scholarly research and writing on farce have
appeared from Richard L. Arnold, Eric Bentley, Samuel Golden,
Leo Hughes, John Dennis Hurrell, Joseph Wood Krutch, and

Robert C. StephensOn.15 ' Two unpublished doctoral dissertations
contributed significantly to this study: James T. Nardin,

"A Study in Popular American Farce, 1865-1914" (University of
Chicago, 1950); LeRoy D. Haberman, "American Farce on Broad-
way, 1914 to 1950" (Stanford University, 1959).

Professor Hewitt of Indiana University said in 1959
that farce has been out of favor in the theatre for nearly
thirty years but that there were signs of its return to fashion.
He named two successful plays, The Matchgpkgp and Hotel Paradiso,
and pointed to Bentley's earlier essay on farce as support.

Chesterton at the turn of the century sounded the chal-
lenge for both the encouragement of the art and the study of
farce in these words: "Some day, perhaps, when the present

 

l5Comp1ete Titles and dates of the writings of these
men may be found in the Bibliography.

16Bernard Hewitt, "Thornton Wilder Says "Yes"", Tulane
Drama Review V0. 4 (1959), p. 111. Parts of the Bentley essay,
"The Psychology of Farce", appeared in The New Reppblic but
the complete article was published as the Introduction to
Let's Get a Divorce! and Other Plays (New York: Hill and
Wang, Inc., 1958). .

9
narrow phase of aesthetics has ceased to monopolize the name,
the glory of a farcical art may become fashionable."17 Fifty-
five years later, critic Krutch gave immediacy to the chal-
lenge by saying: "A critical discussion of the meaning and
significance of farce as a theatrical mode is urgently called
for by the present situation."18

This study of the nature and structure of farce rep-
resents an attempt to correlate the views and attitudes found
in the vast body of theatre literature in the English language.
The research, conducted over a six year period, has investigated
the major writings in the field in addition to many more obscure
works. Only a small portion of this material ultimately con-
tributed to this study. Other approaches might be used but an
extensive study of farce criticism seemed to be a logical and
necessary first step. It is this writer's hope that the other
steps will follow within the reasonable future.

We will further seek to clarify the difference between
the genre of the farce and of the comedy and to analyze the
various structural ingredients in order to arrive at a defi-
nition of farce.

Farce has surely provided moments of brilliance in the
theatre but more importantly its universal appeal has made it
and generally continues to keep it one of our most popular
forms of theatre and mass media entertainment. We have ob-
served this broad appeal in the twentieth century with farce
continuing in the theatre as well as moving into the media of
motion pictures and television. It has been said that the
playwright has two approaches from which he may choose: he
may say something in play form or he may give the public what

 

17”G. K. Chesterton, "A Defense of Farce", The Defendenp
(London: R. Brimley Johnson, 1943), p. 95.

18Krutch, o . cit., p. 30.

10

it wants after studying the playgoer's taste. More often
than not the writer of farce falls into the latter approach.

Farce has flourished during times of stress and war1
as audiences prefer to forget their dread and sorrow and enjoy
the brief escape afforded them in the theatre. A statistical
study20 of the New York stage revealed a significant decline
in serious drama and a strong increase in comedy, farce and
melodrama during the pre-war year of 1939. This may take on
added significance when we realize, as Professor Gassner has
stated, that the theatre both thrives and remains a popular
entertainment during difficult times.

Athens crowned the theatre with glory while
fighting for its existence against a host of
enemies. Germany advanced stage craft by leaps
and bounds at a time when it suffered the miseries
of inflation and national humiliation. America,
struggling through a decade of economic disaster,
likewise affirmed the strength of the human spirit
that often proves so painfully blind and bestial
under the whiplash of accumulated errors. 1

Eric Bentley, whose several critical discussions of
farce represent the most recent and meaningful contributions
to its literature, allows that both melodrama and farce are
". . . arts of escape and what they are running away from is
not only social problems but all other forms of moral
responsibility."22 The playwright, aware of his audience and
the daily pressures on them, can make a valid contribution to
their peace of mind if he has the inventive genius. It has

 

19A. R. Thompson, The Anatom of Drama (Berkeley, Calif.
University of California Press, I946I, p. 133.

20W. M. Little, "A Statistical Survey of the New York
Stage, 1930-1940" (unpublished Master's thesis, Department of
Speech, University of Illinois, 1942), p. 52.

21John Gassner (ed.), Twent Best Pla s of the Modern
American Theatre (New York: Crown PuinsEers, 1939), p. xii.
22

Bentley, op. cit., p. 255.

11
been obvious in both the past and present that the American
theatre audience prefers light plays to serious though not
necessarily because they are better or more vigorous.

The facts fail to bear out the theory that farce
caters to the poorly educated and artistically degenerate
public. The Roman farces were performed in Renaissance Eng-
land by and for the university population. Moliere's courtly
audience was certainly not uneducated and the taste for Wilde
has never been a vulgar one. There is evidence that Shake-
speare's early farce, The Comedy of Errors, was designed for
and appreciated by an audience of lawyers.24 Kaufman and
Hart's brilliant farce, You Can't Take it With You, won a
Pulitzer Prize in 1939. In fact, the very first Pulitzer
Prize awarded in 1918 went to the farce Why Marry? by Jesse
Lynch Williams. In the light of these brief illuStrations
that farce appeals to the enlightened and artistic population
we must admit its duality of appeal to both high and low.

Comedians and humorists have unanimously insisted that
man has always laughed at essentially the same things or for
the same reasons. It is best expressed by William Mathews
in 1888 when he speaks of jokes.

Perhaps if we could trace the entire history
of some of the pleasantries and conceits which
have provoked our loudest merriment, we should
find them stereotyped on the crockery tablets of
an Assyrian council, or eternized in the hiero-
glyphs of an Egyptian record. Who knows but that
the very same 'old joes' which tickle the risibles

 

23Walter P. Eaton writing an "Introduction" to A. E.
Thomas' Her Husband's Wife in 1914 said "the public prefer-
ence for comedy in the theatre is not wholly due to a dis-
taste for high seriousness; in part at least it is due to
the fact that the writers of comedy produce, on the whole,
better and more vivid plays." p. vi. Though probably true
in 1914, we might question this assertion today in the light
of Eugene O'Neill and the maturing American theatre which
followed him.

24Hurrell, loc. cit.

12

of the laborer of today may have split the sides
of the men who built the Pyramids, or of the
workmen at the Tower of Babel?25

Though the theories of laughter and comedy may differ
somewhat, men of all times may well have laughed at the same
things. If we apply this to the subject of our study, we might
generalize that the writers, as well as the actors and directors,
of farce have used a basic set of farce devices that provoke
laughter. This observation is interesting but remains inci-
dental to the present study.

The farce devices are the techniques or tools by which
the playwright manipulates his situations, action, characters
or dialogue in order to produce laughter. If man remains
relatively unchanged, then farce devices should remain con-
stant, though the form, the manner of speech and dress, the
characters, the setting and other details of production may
change with the times. Or as Spewack puts it: "Social organ-
ization has changed considerably over the centuries, but the
human animal has not."26 This study will attempt to identify
the basic devices of farce. They are essentially situational
devices and can be traced from Aristophanes and Plautus to
Hopwood and Kaufman. The nine basic farce devices listed here
will be treated in detail later in this study: Farce dialogue;
Violent physical action; Stage tricks or broad business; Exag-
gerated stage properties; Repetition; Inversion; Concealment;
Incongruity; and Exaggerated characters. The materials and
timely tOpics surrounding these devices change with the fashions
and the times but the basic farce situations or devices may
exist from one generation to the next. We can be certain that
the perpetrators of the current farce films, What's New Pussycat?
and Kiss Me, Stupid owe more to Aristophanes and Plautus than
they might imagine.

 

25Nat Schmulowitz, "A Prolegomenon", The Ancient Greeks
& Joe Miller, Albert Rapp (San Francisco 1958), pp. 7-8.

26Spewack, o . cit., p. 6.

CHAPTER II
FARCE AS COMIC THEATRE

Origin of theatricaTterm "farce"

The origin and development of the term "farce" is
interesting to us for several reasons. It appears that this
type of play existed long before the term "farce" was ever
used as its name. Through many periods of theatrical history
there have been short dramatizations of ordinary or rustic
life, based on compounded situations in which ludicrous char-
acters raced madly about, often in sheer horseplay, for the
prime purpose of arousing laughter. This description suggests
a kind of play that is literally stuffed with action, situa-
tions, comic business and the risible. The description fits
the many types of farce that appeared from antiquity to the
17th century: the Megarean and Atellan folk farces; many
scenes from Aristophanes; the Plautus plays; scenes and brief
plays of farcical nature in the Middle Ages; the commedia
dell'arte; the short farces of Hans Sachs; the interludes of
John Heywood; the robust scenes from Shakespeare; the works
of Jodelet; and ending with Moliere. The Middle French word
"farce" or "farcir" which originated from the Latin "farcire"
meaning "to stuff", described or typified this type of play
most aptly, and so perhaps the nameless thus derived a name.

We can only speculate why these dramatic performances
were not uniformly called "farce" or any other common name.
While the plays or scenes mentioned above all fit into the
description given, they did vary considerably from each other
in many details of structure, method and tradition. Some
capitalized on informality and others concentrated on impro-
visation. They also differed in the function to which each

13

14
culture would use them. But much of this can also be said
of farce in all times.

Certainly the philosophers, critics, poets and
historians of antiquity focused the bulk of their attention
or at least their extant writing on tragedy and comedy, the
more formal and profound of dramatic types. It is possible
that many of the critics of Greece were much like their more
recent descendants and considered such a frivolous and pop-
ular art beneath the need for any critical discussion. At any
rate they wrote very little about it. As a result the neo-
classic scholars, translators and interpreters of the Renais-
sance who epitomized the ancient writers appear likewise to
have ignored it. Thus we have a nameless art overlooked by
early writers who were preoccupied with the formal and logical
in life and art. It remained uniformly nameless for almost
two thousand years.

Actually ". . . the history of farce in the theatre
begins in France during the Middle Ages" though "according to
a well-established theory, it may be traced back to the litur-
gical origins of the drama itself."1 In France the brief,
boisterous, often quite vulgar plays, acted by amateur soc-
ieties of actors, sometimes bore the title "farce."

Bellinger2 believes there was little or no distinction in kind
between the Shrovetide plays, interludes, farces, puppet shows
and "feasts" that were presented during the late Middle Ages.

The Fool companies, bands of youths all over Europe,
played these gross and nonsensical comedies that were often
ribald travesties on the Mass. The best known companies in

 

1Leo Hughes, "The Early Career of Farce in the Theat-

rical Vocabulary", The Universit of Texas Studies in En lish
No. 4026 (July 8, 1940), p. 83.

2Martha Fletcher Bellinger, A Short Histor of the
Drama (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1927), p. lil.

15
France were Societe des Sottes, les confreries joyeuses, T3
Bagoche or les Basochiens (law students in universities under
Philippe 1e Bel) and les Enfants-sans-Souce (the student soc-
iety of Paris formed under Charles VI).

A later parallel to French farce were the interludes
of John Heywood (1497-1565). He invariably called his pieces
"interludes" though they bear all the essentials of farce.

The influence of French farce on Heywood must have been slight
if present at all but Heywood's influence on the English farce
that followed is fairly well established.

Though farce had gained a strong foothold somewhat
earlier "Edward Ravenscroft is generally credited with begin-
ning the vogue of farce in 1672 with The Citizen turn'd Gentle-
man."3 This play apparently won public acclaim as well as the
favor of England's Charles II, a devotee of that sort of play.
It seems interesting to note, however, that both the man and
the play of 1672 are indebted to the master of comic theatre,
Moliere. Most of the great works of Moliere appeared in the
1660's and the last of the court plays, The Would-be Gentleman
(1670), became the basis for Ravenscroft's The Citizen turn'd
Gentleman.4 Moliere's farcical The Tricks of Scapin (1671)
and The Learned Ladies (1672) had immediately preceeded
Ravenscroft's play. Early in the following year Moliere died
at age fifty-one while playing the hypochondriac, Argan, in
the fourth performance of The Imaginary Invalid (1673).

In 1685 Nahum Tate brought out a play named A Duke and
No Duke to which was attached a brief page and a half of preface
defending farce. But eight years later with the second edition
of the play, Tate enlarged this "preface" into a full-blown

 

3

4Phyllis Hartnoll (ed.), The Oxford Companion to the
Theatre (2d, ed.) (London: Oxford University Press, 1957),
p. 659.

Golden, op. cit., p. 62.

16

discourse on farce. Golden suggests that the sixteen page
"preface" may well be ". . . the most important contribu-
tion in the Restoration period to the subject of farce."5

Turning back chronologically we find that a singularly
significant event in the history of the use of the theatrical
term "farce" was the 1661 visit of Chaunouveau and his company
to London. A scene in William D'Avenant's (1606-1668) Tpg

Play-House to be Lets, supposedly played in 1662, may refer,
according to Hughes, to this visit in 1661 and tells of a new

dispensation for the English stage and the meaning of farce.
In Act I the House-Keeper, the Tire-Woman, and an English
Player are approached by a Monsieur who wishes to rent the
theatre during the vacation now in progress.

House-K. What would you do in't? we must
like your trade
Before we let our shop, lest we should ride
With John Dory to Paris to seek rent.

Mons. Mi vil make presentation of de farce.

Tire-W. Farces, what be those? New French bobs
for ladies?

Pla . Pray, peace! I understand the gentleman.
Your arces are a kind of mongrel play.
But, sir, I believe all French farces are
Prohibited commodities, and will
Not pass current in England.

Mons. Sir, pardon me! de Engelis be more
Fantastique den de Fransh. De farce
Bi also very fantastique and vil passe.

Pla ay. The Monsieur's in the right for we have
found
Our Customers of late exceeding humorous.

Mons. De vise nation bi for tings heroique
And de fantastique, vor de farce!

Tire-W. I like not that these French pardonney
moys
Should make so bold with old England.

House-g. Peace, woman! We'll let the house,
and get money. -

 

5Golden, op. cit., p. 64. Tate's "preface" (1693)
represents the earliest source used in this study to determine
the nature of farce.

17

Play. But how will your French farce be understood?
For all our travell'd customers are gone
To take the air with their own wives, beyond
Hide-Park a great way; a homely country mode
of their fore-fathers.

Tire-W. With grief we speak it;
They may be asham'd to leave their poor mistresses
And us behind 'em without customers.

Play. Pray save your tears for our next tragedy.
The Monsieur's all for merry farces, but,
As I said, sir, how shall we understand 'em?

, Mons. We have a troop of French Commediens

Dat speak a little very good Engelis.

Tire-W. Bless us! a troop?

Play. Woman, thou art no linguist; they in France
Call a company of players, a troop.

Tire-W. I thought he had ta'em our long Tennis-Court
For a stable. 6

Play. And you are shelling beans for his horses.

This brief scene makes it clear that "farce was a
newcomer to theatre language in 1661 but the term was firmly
established by the end of the 17th century.

The nearest suspicion of a theatrical use of farce in
pre-Restoration times occurs in the works of BenJonson,7 who
speaks with characteristic acerbity of his opponent's using
". . . stale apothegmes . . . to farce their Scenes withall."8
Hughes believes, however, that this connection with the theatre
is an accidental one. The New English Dictionary9 lists sev-
eral earlier illustrations as follows: Palsgrave in 1530,
"Suche as writte farcis and contrefait the vulgare speche."

 

6Hughes, op. cit., pp. 90-91.

7Introduction to Cynthia's ReveTp (1600).

:Hughes, op. cit., p. 83.

9James A. H. Murray (ed. ), A New En lish Dictionar on
Historical Principles (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, l90lI,
IV p.
The sources cited are Jehan Palsgrave, Lesclarcissement de la
langpe francoyse 1530 (1852) and Sir David Lyndesay, The

testament and complaynt of our soverane lordis papyngo 1530.

18
and Lyndesay also in 1530, "In ballatts, farses, and in
plesand playis." From such brief passages one can only guess
at the theatrical tie. Hughes does not mention either source
though he credits, in a footnote, the N.E.D. as the basis or
beginning of his study.

The Scotch borrowed the term "farce" and used it with
some frequency to describe dramatic performances though the
term was not used as the French had used it. Anna Jean Mill
in Mediaeval Plays in Scotland suggested that "farce" referred
to the machine-play rather than to rough, homely comedy. Hughes
concluded that: ". . . all this is not to insist that the
Scotch had a definite dramatic genre unknown in England of that
day, but to suggest that the Scotch were under a greater ob-
ligation to the French than the English were--for a term if not
a dramatic form."10

Krutch states that: ". . . The first recorded use of
the word in English occurs a long generation before the birth
of Shakespeare."11 This is verified and pinpointed by Hughes
to a performance in 1629 at Blackfryers in London by a French
troupe. He adds that this was: ". . . the first use of the
word in England to describe a dramatic performance."12 It
would be hard to say if this was actually a farce but there
was nothing to prevent them from playing a farce. This 1629
record seems, however, to be unique because neither the word
nor the dramatic form stuck.

The term "farce" finally entered the theatrical voc-
abulary and took its place in dramatic nomenclature only after
the Restoration, roughly 1660 to 1700. Hughes tells us that

 

10Hughes, op. cit., p. 85.

11
12

Krutch, op. cit., p. 92.

Hughes, loc. cit.

19
in none of the English-Latin lexicons of the period before
1660 is farce defined in terms of the theatre.
Toward the end of the century farce in England was not
used in a strict or circumscribed sense but often applied to
plays of only three-acts. Nicoll claims:

There was a certain degenerating movement in
comedy which started about the year 1675, and

the tastes of the audience ever more and more drew
the dramatists to introduce weaker and frailer
types of humorous drama. The fashion sprang up
for three-act plays . . . generally not so witty
or so brilliant as the fuller five-act dramas of
the more regular authors; but the word farce was
applied to them so late in contradistinction to
the richer and more extended comedies of the time
Farce, then, came to mean a short humorous play.13

The term was used with great abandon to describe a
confusing array of things both during and after the Restoration.
Throughout that period it was used to label any piece of comic
stage action, preferably involving trickery or practical jokes.
It was also applied to the type of dramatic production which
we now call burlesque or travesty. Political pamphlets filled
with satire and written in the form of a play were called
farces. By the end of the period any kind of stage performance
which did not meet the approval of devotees or supporters of
literary drama was labeled farce. These disapproving or scorn-
ful attacks used farce as a term of reproach to hurl in the
face of the living playwright.14
cribe the comic business of an actor, the "stuffing" of the
stage.

Farce was also used to des-

Classifications of comedy
The problem of defining and distinguishing the dramatic

genres has persisted since the Renaissance. Samuel Johnson's

 

13Allardyce Nicoll, The Theatre and Dramatic Theor
(New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1962), p. 88.
14Matthews, op. cit., p. 120.

20
overused observation that:". . . comedy has been particularly
."15 indicates that the greater
problem has been in defining comedy.

Since Aristotle, tragedy has born continuous examination
and scholarly discussion. His treatment of tragedy in the
Poetics remains the basis of modern dramatic theory and criti-
cism. Professor Taylor states that: "The literary world has
never recovered from Aristotle's failure to keep his promise to
discuss comedy."16 Whether he failed to keep the promise or
whether that portion of his treatise is lost, the absence of
his observation or definition has left us floundering with
divergent and inconsistent explanations.

The Aristotelian influence is present today in spite of
his brief observations made on comedy. Aristotle suggested a
didactic purpose for comedy as it showed man worse than him-
self. By seeing his faults displayed before him, man might
learn and correct his faults. From this point on, the theories
and definitions have varied. I - ,

The problem is compounded in recent times by the fact
that: "Up to the close of the nineteenth century, almost all
. . . dramatic compositions were classified by their authors
in categories."17 After 1900 the majority of these works
were simply labeled "plays" or "dramas", a trend that has con-
tinued to the present.

I unpropitious to definers . .

 

15Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 125. It continues:
". . . for though perhaps they might properly have contented
themselves, with declaring it to be" such a dramatic represent-
ation of human life as may excite mirth, "they have embarrassed
their definition with the means by which the comic writers
attain their end, without considering that the various methods
of exhilarating their audience, not being limited by nature,
cannot be comprised in precept."

16Joseph Richard Taylor, The Story of the Drama (Boston:
Expression Co., 1930), p. 25.

17Nicoll, o . cit., p. 81.

21

Hughes has argued that the labels of past plays have
been inconsistent and frequently inaccurate. While he re-
spects the principle, Hughes refutes the idea held by some and

best expressed by W. J. Lawrence in Musical gparterly:

Theatrical nomenclature . . . must be taken at
its face value. It is not the function of the
musico-dramatic historian to throw classifications
of old on the Procrustean bed and maim them in
accordance with some hard-and-fact principle.
NOthing but confusion can ensue from such a
course. No matter how unscientific many of them
now appear, the labelings given by bygone authors
to their works must remain sacrosanct.

Taking exception to this, Hughes denies the fact that
bygone authors labeled their works with care using the follow-
ing arguments. Many plays hear one label on the title page
and another in the preface, prologue or dedication. A piece
was often labeled comedy on one playbill and farce on another.
In addition authors (and their press agents and producers)
often mislabeled plays to get them produced and to attract an
audience. A New YorkgTimes reviewer makes this practice clear

in 1916.

19

To this occasionZEhe besp7 "Seven Chances" does
not pretend to rise. It is an unusually obvious
farce, described on the program, like nearly all

our farces, as a comedy. Just why our producers
shun the word "farce" is not apparent. They seem

to be ashamed of it. They will call a farce a
"flirtation in three acts" or a "mad melange in two
modes" or a "whimsicality" or even a farce-comedy,
but they will not call it a farce. Possibly they
regard the word as properly reserved for the ancient

—v

18W. J. Lawrence, "Early Irish Ballad Opera and Comic
Opera", Musical Quarterly VIII (l922_, p. 397. Also quoted
in Hughes, see footnote 34.

19Leo Hughes, A Century of English Farce (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1956), pp. 4-7.

22

humors of falling down. But in thus deprecating
the word "farce" they succeed only in deprecating
the word "comedy."

Secondly. Hughes takes exception to the idea that the
labels had a fairly definite meaning to the author's contem-
poraries. He cites examples of French and English critics,
historians, and authors often applying different labels to
the same piece.

In addition to the inconsistency of labeling plays
which continues today, the question is often raised of the
value of labels and classifications. Here again we observe
some divergent opinions. O'Hara and Bro feel that: "One could
easily spend too much time to too little profit considering the
classifications and varieties of dramatic forms."21 "The
only value in the various definitions of comedy is that they
are themselves comic."22 Professor Nicoll indicates that the
terms and categories came into being both: ". . . for general
purposes and for the specific purposes of critical study."23
It appears to this writer that the value and necessity of the
definitions become more significant than ever in this scientific
age where greater precision is a constant demand. In the inter-
est of future scholarship it seems necessary that we avoid the
mistakes of the past and define the terms we currently use.

Unfortunately, there is no wholly-satisfactory classif-
ication of comedy today. Matthews observed this in 1890 when
he said: "There are no hard and fast lines between species and

 

20Anonymous, "Second Thoughts on First Nights", Egg
York Times (August 13, 1916) Sect. 2, p. 7.

2l'Frank H. O'Hara and Margueritte H. Bro, Invitation
to the Theatre (New York: Harper, 1951), p. 58.

22
p. 503.

23

Edith Hamilton, "Comedy", Theatre Arts II (July, 1927),

Nicoll, o . cit., p. 87.

23
genre, but insensible gradations from one to the other,

with scarcely a missing link anywhere."24

This may in part
explain the tendency to discuss all of comic drama under the
term "comedy." This general category often shelters examples
from either comedy or farce and is found in the writings of
many, including Gassner and Meredith. The latter's famous
essay pulls farce under the broad cape of comedy. In a recent
Harbrace Sourcebook called Comedy: PTeys, Theogy and Criticism
(1962), editor Felheim places The Misanthrope and Th3 Import-
ance of Being Earnest, to name only two, under the heading of
eight comedies. In addition, the editor's brief introduction
to each play mingles the terms comedy, farce and satire; and

to cap the inconsistencies, he includes a significant criticism
of Earnest written by Otto Reinert in which the writer repeat-
edly calls the play a farce. One must assume in these instances
that the distinction is hardly worth making.

Shakespeare, the dramatist supreme, also appears to
defy the traditional categories. Perry, in his Masters of
Dramatic Comedy;and Their Social Themes, excludes the Bard
saying: "His work, with its infinite variety and supreme
poetry, is, for all its relations to the tradition of comedy,

a thing apart."25 One might well suspect any definition or
classification that excludes or fails to encompass the world's
greatest dramatist. It was Shakespeare himself who gave us an
enjoyable satire on the numerous subdivisions of the drama when
he had Polonius, the lord chamberlain in Hamlet, say:

The best actors in the world, either for tragedy,
comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-
pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-
historical-pastoral, scene indivisible, or poem un-
limited; Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus

 

24Brander Matthews, Studies of the Stage (New York:
Harper and Bros., 1894), p. 2T2.

25Henry Ten Eyck Perry, Masters of Dramatic Comedy and
Their Social Themes (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1939), p. xv.

24

too light. For the law of writ agd the
liberty, these are the only men.2

The classifications of antiquity are fairly common
knowledge and raise no serious problem for us. Following the
two traditional categories of tragedy and comedy, we find the
ancient critics dividing comedy into Old Comedy (486-400 B.C.),
Middle Comedy (400-338 B.C.), and New Comedy beginning in
338 B.C. Only the dates vary among the numerous scholars dis-
cussing them. This is essentially a chronological classifi-
cation although there are differences in structure as well. We
can add to this another chronological type called Roman Comedy
with Plautus, which was quite similar to the New Comedy of
Greece. There appears to be little disagreement until more
recent dramatic types are identified and categorized.

Though there are at present many differing classifi-
cations of comedy with wide categories and divergent terminology,
two basic ideas emerge quite clearly. The first is that classi-
fications vary primarily because of different points of depar-
ture or views of the writers. The second idea is that the farce
or its equivalent appears in virtually all classifications of
comic types, regardless of the many other differences that
appear.

Let us examine briefly the different viewpoints taken
and their corresponding classifications. Dobree in 1924 found
it ". . . useful to distinguish three kinds of comedy or at
least three elements in comedy:" namely, "critical comedy",
"free" comedy, and "great comedy.'.'27 Critical comedy is clas-
sical and from this much of modern comedy is derived. It set

 

26Act II, Scene II of Hamlet found in Neilson and Hill
(ed.) The Com lete Pla s and Poems of William Shakes eare
(New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1942), p. 1063.

27Bonamy Dobree, Restoration Comed 1660-1720 (Oxford:
Oxford University.Press, l , pp. -1 .

25

out to correct manners by laughter and to "cure excess."
"Free" comedy produces no superiority nor moral feeling but
provides a release. Great comedy is perilously near tragedy
and deals with disillusion of mankind and his failure to realize
his most passionate desires. This is Dobree's point of departure
in the study of Restoration comedy primarily.

In Drama: The Major Geppgp, the authors call tragedy,
tragi-comedy and comedy the major genres and melodrama and
farce the minor genres. They draw the distinction in terms of
scope. The major genres move people the most deeply and are
more important while the minor genres: ". . . do not attempt
to say or do as much."28 One might essentially agree with their
classification if they think primarily in classical terms.
But if the rustic Megarian and Atellan farces actually preceded
the Golden Age of Greek drama and later examples of Roman
comedy are accurate, it would appear that the farce was provid-
ing its rustic entertainment in one form or another even with-
out a common name. As the earliest form of comic drama and
with its worthy objective of laughter, the farce should be
considered a major genre.

Taylor provides a list of the minute subdivisions of
comedy which dramatic critics have sought to establish:

. . . pure comedy, heroic-comedy, tragi-comedy,
comedy-of-masks, high comedy, comedy of manners,
comedy of humors, romantic comedy, farce-comedy,
judicial comedy, non-judicial comedy, cemedies of
situation, romantic comedies, social comedies,
satiric comedic? comedies of character, and
natural comedy. 9

Reflected in this conglomeration of types and near types is
both repetition and a variety of viewpoints. It merely con-
fuses the issue as Taylor indicates.

 

28Robert Hogan and Sven Eric Molin, Drama: The Major
Genres (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1964), pp. xi-xii.

29Taylor, op. cit., p. 28.

26

30 recognizes the types of comedy,

Professor Heffner
ranging from farce to the comedy of manners, but introduces his
own two broad categories of comedy which arise from differences
in the playwright's vision of his characters and action. These
characters are either normal or anormal as they deviate from the
norm. A slight deviation results only in laughter as we laugh
at ourselves. But a greater deviation results in ridicule as
we laugh at others. Heffner classifies ShakeSpeare in the
former and Ben Jonson in the latter categories.

Another classification lists the names of comedy in
"descending" order as "joy, divine comedy, humour, irony,
satire, sarcasm, wit, and scorn." 1 One might disagree with
his order but Feibleman has bravely prepared another point of
view.

These grossly divergent points of view represent more
or less significant attempts to bring the classifications of
comedy into some meaningful focus for discussion. Perhaps they
succeed or fail according to the use we can make of them and
the clarification they bring to this problem. The more tradi-
tional attempts at classification which follow reveal the role
of farce more clearly.

From The:Law of the Drama (1894) Bruntiere defines the
types of drama (by considering the obstacle against which the
human will struggles) as tragedy, romantic or social drama,
comedy, and farce. Edith Hamilton affirmed this with: "The
divisions in the drama are clear cut: there is comedy, which
is either comedy of wit or of humor, and there is farce, so-
called comedy of situation, which belongs in another category
and is comedy only by courtesy."32 Hewitt, too, accepts the

 

’ 30Hubert Heffner, The Nature of Drama (Boston: The
Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1959), pp. 344-45.

31James Feibleman, In Praise of Comed A Stud of its
Theory and gractice (New York: Russell and Russell 1962), p. 205.

32Hamilton, op. cit., p. 504.

27

common divisions of comedy and farce elaborating only that
". . . these literary types are differentiated one from the
other almost entirely on the basis of the emotions they arouse
in an audience."33

A somewhat different classification is suggested by
Professor Rowe.34 It includes comedy, satire, and farce with
their subdivisions and composite forms such as romantic comedy,
high comedy, low comedy, and farce comedy. The farce is defined
as a genre apart from comedy by both Nicoll and the Oxford
Companion to the Theatre, though their classifications of
comedy differ slightly. Professor Nicoll divides comedy into
35 and the.Q§§ppg

Companion lists five divisions: character, humours, intrigue,

that of "humours", romance, and manners

(or romantic), manners (or sentimental) and morals.
Koestler agrees with what was once a basic classification,

37 Sev-

the comedy of situations, of manners and of character.
eral more recent authors revive the age old distinction of high
and low comedy. The Dramatic Experience suggests satiric

comedy, high comedy, romantic comedy and low comedy or farce38
as its comic divisions while director Sievers uses simply high

comedy or comedy of manners and low comedy or farce.

 

33Bernard Hewitt, Art and Craft of Pla Production
(New York: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1940), p. 53.

34Kenneth Thorpe Rowe, A Theatre in Your Head (New York:
Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1960), p. 14.

35
36

37Arthur Koestler, Insi ht and Outlook (New York:
MacMillan Co., 1949), p. 102.

38Judah Bierman, James Hart and Stanley Johnson, The

Dramatic Ex erience (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall,
Inc.,l 1958), p. 212.

39

W. David Sievers, Directin for the Theatre (2d ed.)
(Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown Co.,l 1565), p. 25.

 

Nicoll. op. cit., pp. 218-19.
Hartnoll, o . cit., p. 144.

28

From such a sampling of classifications of comedy one
may question any attempts to reach a general conclusion. How-
ever, there appears to be sufficient evidence and confirmation
to conclude that farce is considered a distinct entity in itself.
It has been called the comedy of situation or low comedy but
these are merely efforts to be more descriptive and definitive.
The farce is recognized by one term or another as one of the
dramatic genres or as Matthews puts it: "Farce itself is a
perfectly legitimate type."40 "Surely it deserves to be treated
with the respect paid to the other forms of the drama."41

Some argue that the farce is less genre than tone or
method. Robert Stephenson recently observed that: "Farce is
a figure of theatre as metaphor is a figure of Speech or anti-
thesis a figure of rhetoric."42 He may have been influenced by
an earlier view that the only difference between tragedy and
comedy which has survived throughout the ages:

. . . is precisely this difference in tone which
did not exist originally. . . . Both forms deal
with the same problems and situations of human
life . . . the difference in tone is often so
faint in modern drama that the terms of tragedy
and comedy are of dubious value as descriptive

of a play.
He concludes that: ". . . one can only be sure that a play is
a play."43

"Tone" is a most difficult term to deal with in def-
inition as illustrated by another meaning.

The characters and themes of comedies are
similarly distinctive, but there is another
characteristic which, linked with plot, makes

 

40Matthews, A Study of the Drama, p. 221.

AlMatthews, Studies of the Stage, p. 211.

42Robert C. Stephenson, "Farce as Method", Tulane
Drama Vol. 5, No. 2 (1961), p. 91.

43Donald Clive Stuart, The Deve10pment of Dramatic
Art (New York: Appleton, l928)jp. 101.

29

possible the immediate identifications of
a comedy. It is tone--what we feel to 22 the
attitude of the author to his audience.

The idea of tone seems to provide only another posture from
which we can view the comic. There might well be still other
vantage points which contribute to our problem. However,

our focus has centered basically on the question of the farce
as a dramatic genre. If our assumption that the farce is a
distinct dramatic type is correct, we must then conclude that
this will not exclude the mingling of dramatic genres,nor
should it. Few plays are completely pure in form. Farce can
contribute its form and substance to other dramatic genres.

More and more in modern drama one form steps
into the territory of another. Comedy has mingled
with farce and the mixture of the two has mingled
with melodrama until some of our pOpuiar plays
may be termed farce-comedy-melodrama. 5

To this point we have observed that while "farce", as
a theatrical term has existed only since 1670, the comic theatre
of farce predates the term by hundreds of years, very likely to
the dawn of the Golden Age of Greek drama. The farce has never,
in all this time and particularly since 1670, been satisfact-
orily defined and misunderstanding continues to the present.
While the classifications of comic theatre vary as widely as
the writers and their points of view, the farce consistently
appears as a legitimate genre in itself.

Sources: comic theory

As a form of comic theatre, the farce goes to the same
source for its materials as any other comic form. The writer
of farce draws from the same theories of comedy as does the
writer of comedy. The device of inversion, to be discussed
later, may find two characters exchanging identities to

 

44Bierman et a1, loc. cit.
45

O'Hara and Bro, loc. cit.

30

confuse their antagonists. A comedy writer may employ this
device to expand character or introduce a new dimension of
character personality or effect a change in character relation-
ships through the comic medium. The same interchange may be
used by the farceur to complicate the situation, compound the
confusion and stimulate laughter. They employ a common source
for their own purpose and end. The playwright, of comedy or of
farce, must be aware of the theories of comedy and be able to
effectively use them where the occasion demands. For this
reason the brief survey of historical views of laughter and
comedy which follows may supplement our understanding of this
study.

Arthur Koestler's view of man and laughter seems pert-
inent and precise:

One of the synonyms of Home Sapiens is "the
laughing animal" . . . to be called "laughing animals"
appeals to us in a flattering and evocative way. It
seems to lift us to a superior level of luxury
creatures in the terrestial zoo precisely because
laughter strikes us as an activity detached from
any utilitarian purposes, unconnected with the
struggle for survival, a kind of biological
luxury. We talk of "relieving laughter", and
imply by it liberation from the stress and strife
of purposeful activity. On the level of biological
evolution where laughter arises, an element of
frivolity seems to creep into an essentially
humourless universe. . . . But if laughter is a
luxury, it is a compulsory one, for in its psych-
ological aspect it belongs to the automatic
reflex type of action. It is this sharply outlined
psychological feature which distinguishes the mani-
gestations of humor from other "luxury" acggvities
of the species such as art and philos0phy.

Koestler seems to be implying, in this vivid passage,
that laughter is a way of looking at life which in turn makes
our existence more bearable. It appears to be the sole
property of man and no other animal.

 

46Koestler, op. cit. p. 3.

31

Nicoll tells us that comedy does not necessarily
depend upon laughter but that laughter is assuredly its most
common characteristic. Farce, the freer counterpart of comedy,
does depend primarily updn laughter and for this reason we
must explore its theories.

The term "comedy" as we use it here refers to its
broadest sense, encompassing the genre of farce, the comic
and the comedian, and the genre of comedy while also touching
on humor. Much of comedy is so closely intertwined that it
appears virtually impossible to disentangle, analyze and dis-
cuss its theories separately. In addition, the terms "comedy"
and "laughter" are frequently used interchangeably. For our
purpose here, we have no need to isolate and precisely identify
each theory, even if we could. Our concern is merely to sense
and observe the theories of comedy and laughter which the
writer of farce employs.

47

Theories of comedy and sources of laughter are many
and varied and we must agree with Hewitt48 that no one theory
seems completely satisfactory or all-inclusive. "No theory
of comedy yet developed, from Aristotle to Meredith or M.
Bergson seems to cover all the ground."49 Even the more
scientific approach of experimental studies has failed to
produce any constants.

One such study conducted by F. E. Lange50 in 1926
timed the laughs of audiences in four performances of the
light opera, Iolanthe. One hundred and thirty-seven laughter

 

47Allardyce Nicoll, The Theo of Drama (New York:

Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1931), p. .
48Hewitt, 0p. cit., p. 60.
49Dobree, op. cit., p. 9.
50Gardner Murphy, T. M. Newcomb and Lois B. Murphy,

Ex erimental Social Ps cholo (New York: Harper and Bros.,
1 , p. 88.

32
episodes occurred in each performance and the laughs came
in the same places and extended for the same duration of time.
51 in 1936,
audience reaction in four performances of the social comedy

In a similar study reported by Ruth Frank

First Lady by Kaufman and Dayton revealed only two speeches
in the play to which reaction was identical at every performance.
Thomas Andrus, in a master's study done at Louisiana

State University in 1945,52 analyzed the laugh patterns of the
melodrama Fashion on successive performances. His conclusion
stated that successive audiences do not necessarily laugh at
the same thing, or with the same intensity or duration of
laughter. The contradictory results of these three studies
offer little help in understanding the nature and motivations
of laughter.

I Historian George Kernodle laments the existing books
on comedy which are full of: I

. . . old-fashioned nonsense or half-sense about

'mind dominating emotions', 'detachment', 'objective',
'to the man who thinks rather than feels', 'the
observer insulated from sympathy', 'spectator in

an unidentifying state of mind'. To the theorists,
comedy is simple--you just keep the audience from
feeling anything and they are free to laugh.

In The Dark Comedy, J. L. Styan54 states that the
recognized theories of comedy do not help us to understand the
characteristic drama of the twentieth century. He adds that
a sufficiently all-embracing explanation has come from no
theorist and that philOSOphical and psychological approaches

 

51Ruth Frank, "Out Front", Theatre Arts Monthly XX
(May, 1936), p. 380.

52Thomas O. Andrus, "A Study of Laugh Patterns in the
Theatre", (unpublished M.A.thesis, Dep't.of Speech, Louisiana
State University, 1945).' -

53George R. Kernodle, "Excruciatingly funny or, the 47
Keys of Comedy", Theatre Arts (December, 1946), p. 719.

54J. L. Styan, The Dark Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1962), p. 42.

33
have both been wanting. Many other writers add merely that
there are countless ways of classifying or analyzing the
comic or humorous.
In a nuclear age such as ours, one scientific theory
can cancel out another but Playwright Ionesco feels that the
truths found in works of art complement one another. He says:

The great works of art and the great poets seem

to find confirmation, completion and corroboration
in one another; Aeschylus is not cancelled out by
Calderon, or Shakesgeare by Chekov, or Kleist by

a Hapanese No play.

With this in mind, we will proceed to state the theories
briefly and to include other authoritative agreement where
it exists.

Carolyn Wells in An Outline of Humor (1923) simplifies
the problem by recognizing only two commandments or theories
upon which hang "all the law and the prophets of the world
of Humor." They are Aristotle and Plato, the chronological
beginning of much dramatic theory beyond comedy.

The Disappointment or Frustrated Expectation theory
of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) states that laughter arises from
'the presentation of men as worse than they are in life. What
this meant is not certain but it could mean that comedy
represents the most foolish of men or men generally as more
foolish than they are or appear to be in real life.

Plato (427-347 B.C.) felt that the pleasure we derive
in laughing at the comic is an enjoyment of other people's
misfortune, due to the feeling of superiority or gratified
vanity that we ourselves are not in like plight. This has
been called the Derision or Discomfiture theory and was
expressed more clearly by Aristotle though it came nearer to
impinging on and coinciding with his own Disappointment theory.

 

55Eugene Ionesco, "Experience of the Theatre", The
Content and Craft of Drama, ed. Robert W. Corrigan and James
L. Rosenberg (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Co., 1964),
p. 295. .

34

The Derision theory is often called the Superiority or
Degradation theory and the idea is based on a rather indefinite
statement of Plato's 56 that pleasure of the ludicrous origin-
ates in the sight of someone else's misfortune. I

Cicero (106-43 B.C.) subscribed to the Derision theory
and in DeOratore, he describes the source of the ridiculous.
It originates in certain offensiveness and deformity: ". . .
for those sayings are laughed at solely or chiefly which point
out and designate something offensive in an inoffensive
57 He goes on to describe the different kinds of the
ridiculous and how far ridicule may be carried. According
to Grant58 the "theory of the laughable" was developed more in
the writings of Cicero than any other Greek source.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) declared for the Derision
theory and his "sudden glory" found in the Treatise on Human
Nature (1650) is delightfully expressive.

The passion of laughter is nothing else but
sudden glory arising from the sudden conception
0 some eminency in ourselves by comparison with
the infirmit ‘hfothers, or with our own formerly:
for men laugh at the follies of themselves past,
when they come suddenly to remembrance, exgspt that
they bring with them any present dishonor.

George Meredith (1828-1909) likewise accepted Derision but
modified its harshness.

manner."

 

56Plato, "Philebus", The Works of Plato, trans. B.
Jowett (New York: Dial Press, 1936), pp. 47-50.

57

Cicero, Marcus Tullius, Cicero on Orator and Orators,
trans. or ed. J. S. Watson (London: H. G. Bohn, 1662), p. 289.
58

Mary A. Grant, The Ancient Rhetorical Theories of the
Laughable CGreek Rhetoricians and Cicero) (Madison:m
University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature,
1924), No. 21, Ch. II. ”

59Thomas Hobbes, Works, ed. Sir William Molesworth
(Cambridge: The University Press, 1928), Vol. IV, p. 46.

35

These two early theories may well be the basis for a
broad theory of comedy but there have been other significant
views expressed which bear our attention. Among these is the
idea of comedy as a corrective agent expressed in the 4th
century by Donatus. He believed that man learns what is of
use in life and what must be avoided by observing the habits
and customs of public and private affairs treated in a comedy.

Philip Sidney (1554-1586) declared that laughter almost
always came from things most disproportioned to ourselves and
nature. This has been called the Incongruity theory and it has
been supported by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Arthur Schopenhauer
(1788-1860) and the English drama critic, William Hazlett (1778-
1830). Incongruity, or Contrast, as a basis of laughter is
probably one of the most widely accepted theories. The clearest
statement of it is by Schopenhauer who sees the cause of laughter
in every case as:

. . . simply the sudden perception of the
incongruity between a concept and the real
objects which have been thought through

it in some relation and the laughter itself
is just the expression of the incongruity.6o

Comedy served a high purpose to George Meredith who
believed that true comedy was the expression of a completely
rational view of life. It held up to the "thoughtful laugh-
ter" of the reader or spectator all that was out of proportion,
affected, pretentious, hypocritical, or pedantic in frail
humanity. It exposed self-deception, injustice, false humility
and conceit without bitterness. Meredith's An Essay on Comedy
and the Uses of the Comic Spirit (1918) has become a classic
in the study of comedy as has Laughter (1911) written by the
French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941).

Bergson defines the comic purely in terms of adaptation.
We laugh at man's failure to adapt himself to shifting circum-

 

60Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as WilT:and Idea, trans.
R. G. Holdane and J. Kemp (London: Kegan Paul, Trench,
Trubner and Co. Ltd., 1891), I, 76.

 

36
stances which allows no sympathy and fellow feeling. Both
Meredith and Bergson demand an intellectual attitude on the
part of the spectator of comedy and a total absence of emotion.
Often a lengthy series of circumstances will pile one upon the
other to create a "snowball effect."61 Blistein illustrates
with a series of beatings going from father to son to servant
to errand boy and finally the errand boy kicks the dog.

Bergson also finds comedy in automation, the substi-
tution of the artificial for the natural or the mechanization
of the living. Laughter is consciously or unconsciously
corrective in nature and Bergeson's theory has been traced out
along three lines of repetition, inversion and "interference de
series."62 He sees in each a reduction of the living thing to
a machinelike inelasticity. This sounds much like the Super-
iority and Incongruity theories we have mentioned earlier.

Let us consider the subject of laughter by his discovery
of similarities between the technique of wit and the technique
of the dream. Sigmund Freud (1856-1934) believed that laughter
is the result of an unexpected release of psychic energy. One
laughs when he is prepared for one thing and then receives
another. This is sometimes referred to as the Liberation theory.

His "economy of psychic expenditure"63

emphasizes the expenditure
of great energy with a small result and the release of inhibi-
tions, especially erotic ones, which help to explain laughter

at the indecent joke. Eric Bentley recognizes this latter

quality'and capitalizes on the repressed wishes in his "safety

 

61Henri Bergson, "Laughter", Comedy--Wylie Sypher (ed.)
(Garden City, N. J.: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1956), p. 113.

621bid.

63Sigmund Freud, Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious,
trans. A. A. Brill (New York: Mof at, Yard and Co., 1 l ,
p. 180.

37

valve" theory of farce.64

‘The same basic idea is expressed by Bliss in a
similar theory that says the secret of laughter is in a
"return to nature." Man being only partially civilized:
". . . the human being, from childhood up, must curb, repress,
skulk, hide control" and "laughter is the result of suddenly
released repression, the physical Sign of subconscious satis-
faction."65

A Play Spirit or Play Instinct theory has been advanced
by Max Eastman (1883- ), American philOSOpher and psychol-
ogist. ‘This even broader foundation to the comic is based on
what he calls the "play instinct" of children. A child laughs
at an unexpected accomplishment and also at unexpected disap-
pointment. The sense of humor is a primary instinct and this
instinct is to take a shock or disappointment playfully.66

This theory was suggested earlier by J. Y. T. Greig
and James Sully67 who felt that a child's laughter merely
arises from a feeling of well-being. The idea appears to be
somewhat allied to the Liberation theory of Freud.

Albert Rapp (1904- ), feels that: "Laughter is
born out of hatred and aggressiveness. It is basically and
categorically savage." 8 He further states that the first

 

64Eric Bentley, "The Psychology of Farce", Let's Get A

Divorce! and Other Plays (New York: Hill and Wang, Inc., 1958),
p. xiii-xiv. Bentley is concerned primarily with Freud's Civili-
pagion and Its Discontents, trans. Jean Riviere (New York: J.
Cope and H. Smith, 1930).

65Silvia H. Bliss, "The Origin of Laughter", American
Journal of Psychology, XXVI (April, 1915), pp. 238-39.

66Max Eastman, The Sense of Humor (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1921), p. 226.

67James Sully, An Essa on Laughter (New York:
Longmans, Green and Co., 1902), p. 149.

68Albert Rapp, The Origin of Wit and Humor (New York:
E. P. Button and Co., Inc., 1951), p. 13.

38
or earliest source of wit and humor was "thrashing laughter",
the roar of triumph in an ancient jungle duel, and that our
laughter of ridicule is a direct descendant of thrashing
laughter. Cartoonist Al Capp confirms this view in his own
philosophy that: "All comedy is based on man's delight in
"69 He adds that the Charlie Chaplin
films were extremely funny because all were based on this

man's inhumanity to man.

premise.
Elmer Blistein in Comedy in Action (1964) devotes two
chapters, in this small book, to the fact that cruelty and
comedy have much in common. To point that out is easy but to
explain why they have much in common is not so easy. Blistein
suggests that: ". . . we may be laughing in hysterical relief
that we are not the victim,"70 or we may laugh to see pomposity
deflated. He then offers: ". . . the theory that we laugh at
cruelty if the pain that results from it is limited: it may
hurt, but not maim; abuse but not kill."71

with the thought that: "We laugh because we know, consciously
72
H

He concludes

or unconsciously, that what we are watching is not real.
It may be added that these theories may not hold in all
instances or examples but they represent considerable insight
into laughter. I

While these theories of comedy and the cause of
laughter may not cover completely the comic field or the
risible, they are at least useful in pointing up some of the

 

69Al Capp, "The Comedy of Charlie Chaplin", Atlantic
Monthly 185 (February, 1950), p. 25.

70Elmer M. Blistein, Comedy in Action (Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, 1964), p. 60.

7llbid., p. 62.

72Ibido , p. 640

39
apparent causes of laughter. Laughter may signify one thing
or another but must be most carefully prepared. "He who
organizes a whole evening of 'merriment' must indeed be an
organizer." says Bentley, for:

Nothing could be more fatal than to stake all
on making a good beginning and then let events
take their course . . . and it is something
every author of a farce must have in mind--

or better, in his bones.73

Playwright Sidney Kingsley in an interview before the
opening of Lunatics and Lovers made this observation: "I've
studied all the theories. The nature of laughter is one of
the most mysterious subjects in the world. So far as dramatic
rules are concerned, anything is right if it works."74 Or
as musical comedy writer Otto Harbach admits:

After twenty years of writing shows and re-
writing them at rehearsals, I still find
that the first-night audience upsets all
calculations. Laughs I counted on don't
materialize and laughs.are "9gscovered"
where I hadn't expected any. .

It may well be true that the cause of laughter remains
half hidden, half revealed but always constant and universal
throughout recorded history. Showman-playwright George M.
Cohan wrote that we all laugh and cry at the same things and
the elemental ideas that "got a rise" out of our ancestors
will do the same for us. He uses the clown, through the ages,
to illustrate permanence of the same kind of humor.76 We

 

73

74Murray Schumach, "Ex laining a New Type of Farce",
New York Times (Dec. 12, 1954 , II, p. 5.

75Otto Harbach, "Making You Laugh is no Joke", Colliers
78 (October 9, 1926), p. 13.

76George M. Cohan and George J. Nathan, "The Mechanics
of Emotion", McClure's Magazine Vol. 42 (November, 1913),
p. 69.

Bentley, op. cit., p. 235.

40
might then conclude that the generative and creative source,
the writer of farce, has used and will continue to use the
basic farce devices to provoke laughter.
Some critics would have us believe that laughter is
dying or as Taylor smilingly puts it: "We are headed straight
for a laughless age . . ." where the ". . . future man will

never laugh; at the most, he will smile."77

He quotes that
laughter is the expression of a coarse emotion, which, as
culture increases, is refined to the form of a smile. Play-
wright Abe Burrows has recently observed that: "There is
nothing to kid any more. This is the age of consensus, and
78 A later

statement from the same source declares: "A closer examination

all the humorists are censoring themselves."

of current comedy reveals neither a renaissance nor a reform-
ation but the beginnings of what could, unless it is reversed,
become the dark ages of American humor."

Al Capp has warned us against the gradual loss of our
fifth freedom saying: "Without it, the other four freedoms
aren't much fun because the fifth is the freedom to laugh at
each other."79 One cannot arbitrarily dismiss these views
but they may well be expressing a needless concern that is
voiced in every generation. The human need for laughter seems
to stand guard against this pessimistic posture.

In the theatre the many defenders of farce have expres-
sed this value from the theatrical point of view. Matthews
has called laughter: ". . . the great antiseptic . . .

quick to kill the germs of unwholesome sentimentality by which

 

77

78Anonymous, "American Humor: Hardly a Laughing

Matter", Time (March 4, 1966), pp. 46-7.

79A1 Ca 9, "It's Hideously True", Life Vol. 32
(March 31, 1952 , p. 104.

Taylor, op. cit., p. 24

41
comedy is often attacked." He adds that laughter clears
the air which is a boon in itself and a gift to be thankful
for. Bentley calls a good laugh an emotional "work-out",

80

that our psychic violence or animal spirits can be worked off
in laughter.81

Professor Grotjahn of the American Board of Psychiatry
wrote that:

. . . laughter is taken as a sign of strength,
freedom, health, beauty, youth, and happiness.
. . . Everything done with laughter helps us
to be human. Laughter is a way of human
communication which is essentially and ex-
clusively human. . . . He who understands the
comic begins to understand humanity and the
struggle for freedom and happiness.82

It is from this elusive realm that the writer of farce draws
his technique. He has learned much from the past and the
present. From theory and experience he has observed the
laughable and the near-laughable. While most farce writers
are aware that their material is funny, the true genius

that creates the laughable escapes all but a few.

 

80Matthews, Studies of the Stage, pp. 213-14.
81

82Martin Grotjahn, Beypnd Laughter (New York: McGraw
-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1957), pp. ix, 263.

Bentley, The Life of the Dramg, p. 224.

CHAPTER III

"All farces congeal when they are transferred
from the stage to a cold description of them."

-Francisque Sarcey

THE ANATOMY OF FARCE

The quotation that heads this page was taken from a
review written by Sarcey, one of the perfectionist critics
of the French theatre. He was partially into his analysis
of Ta Dame de chez Maxim (1899), written by the master far-
ceur, Georges Feydeau, when he paused to make this observation.
The statement forewarns this writer that the excite-
ment and comic effect of farce theatre may be lost in an
objective and responsible analysis. Description can hardly
reproduce the vigor of this comic genre. In one sense the
wild spirit of farce and the aura of academic precision are
so dissimilar that the task seems impossible. But unlike
some philosophers and psychologists of laughter, whose writ-
ings are tearful and tedious, we will attempt through the body
of responsible theatre literature to describe and not destroy
the vigorous anatomy of farce.

How farce and comedy differ

The boundary line between the comic genre of farce and
comedy is not well defined. It may be compared to the relation-
ship of two people named Smith and Jones. Each man has his own
particular personality traits and yet they have many character-
istics in common. Despite these differences and similarities
they belong to two different and distinct families. To some
the distinction between farce and comedy is clear and obvious
but to the majority of observers the differences are more

complex and the distinction sometimes harder to make.
42

43

There are those who, like Downer, believe that:
". . . the distinction may be more dependent upon subjective
reactions and the tastes of the times than upon absolute
criteria."1 This position has much validity when we realize
that comic drama and the subjects of humor have changed in
form and idea with time.

The view of Professor Heffner supports his classifi-
cation of comedy which we have already mentioned. He sees
farce as not:

. . . a separate form but rather a species of
comedy allied to 'pure' comedy. It differs from
this type of comedy in that it has relatively
little emphasis on satire and hence lacks
comedy's significant commentary on man and

his social condition.2

The last statement seems to be both true and false.
Before World War I American farce was generally devoid of
satire but by the time of World War II considerable satire
was being used in farce. The difference can best be seen in
the plays of Avery HOpwood (Gold Diggers, Seven Days, Eng
pnd Warmer, etc.) and those of George S. Kaufman (You Can't
Take It With You, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Once in a_Lng-
pimp, etc.). The Kaufman wit is well-known for its bold use
of satire but Hapwood specialized in wildly complicated
situations and had little or no concern for satire. Hopwood's
plays were often risque and salacious, or as a reviewer once
said: ". . . perceptibly improper but flagrantly entertain-
ing." Farce uses the tool of satire very readily when the
writer is imaginative enough to employ it. Rowe acknowledges

 

1Alan S. Downer, The Art of the Play. (New York:
Henry Holt Co., 1955), p.4308.

2Hubert C. Heffner, Samuel Selden and Hunton D.
Sellman, Modern Theatre Practice (New York: F. S. Crofts
and Co., 1946), p. 69?

44
that farce moves easily over into satire:

It is inevitable for the purpose of farce that
the object of ridicule, the butt of the situation,
will often represent undesirable human traits.
. . . It is a matter of purpose.

Satire, like farce, deals in types rather
than individual characterization, in farce for
the freedom of creation of situation, in satire
because it is the folly rather than the individual
that is held up to ridicule.

The distinction between farce and comedy is said by
some to be merely in emphasis. Comedy places maximum stress on
character where farce puts it on incident and compounding
situations. As a result the characters are better deve10ped
in comedy and the situations in farce.

Part of the confusion is apparent when we find the labels
switched so frequently. In one discussion The Importance of
Thing_Earnest may be classified as high comedy and in another
farce. Goldsmith called §he Stoops to Conquer comedy but some
of his critics said that it was farce. Millett and Bentley
maintain that the Goldsmith play is so close to this line that
it is sometimes labeled comedy, or even farce-comedy, but its
predominance of farce made it farce.4 Matthews placed it
closer to farce than comedy, feeling that much of it was fun
for its own sake.

All of this brings us to the realization that there is
considerable mixing of elements across the boundary between
farce and comedy. Each can contain strong elements of the
other, just as tragedy can have some comic or farcical elements
intermixed. The types are seldom pure.

The best evidence to support this is the oft-repeated
criticism that a comedy has degenerated into farce. Though

 

,3Rowe, op. cit., p. 137.
4Millett and Bentley, op. cit., pp. 120-21.

45
mixing occurs, one can raise a serious question about the
desirability of doing it. Tate's brief estimate of Terence
and Plautus can answer in part:

I esteem them both admirable in their own way;
that one chose to write pure Comedy in the
strictest Notion, and the other liberty of
extending Comedy sometimes into Farce; and
each got his Point, Terence--of being exact,
and Plautus--pleasant.

To those who demand precision in play writing and strict
adherence to a play type such mixture of elements would
"degenerate" and minimize its quality. It seems strange that
we never hear of a melodrama or a farce "degenerating" into
comedy or "generating" for that matter, which might be more
accurate. It also seems doubtful that the writer would be

as concerned about the limitations of his play form as he
would be with the idea or situation.

The detractors or less critical observers usually
observe that farce is inferior to comedy. Millett and Bentley
feel that farce is a less significant dramatic form than
comedy because it has a more trivial and temporary appeal than
comedy. They see the greatest difference in method where farce
is irresponsible and grossly exaggerated, while comedy is
keenly observant.

In a universal view, Lea offers this simple and forth-
right comparison:

. . . farce is comedy reduced to commercialism.
The best farce is what gives the maximum of
amusement for the minimum of intellectual
effort. The few go to the theatre to consider,

 

SNahum Tate, "Prefacez, A Duke and No Duke (London:
Printed for Henry Bonwicke, 1693), p. 15. There is no
pagination in this work but the pages have been numbered
from 1-16 for accuracy.

6Millett and Bentley, op. cit., pp. 116-17.

46

to cry, to conjecture; and the many go to be
amused.

This attitude reappears in the opinion of Thompson who calls
farce the ordinary condition of comedy. He sees farce as the
mediocre work of mediocre playwrights and actors before an
audience that easily appreciates.

The blame is sometimes attached to society more than
to the playwright. A dissertation on American comedy stated:

If the society of the day had developed a
strict code of manners, the comic writer

was able to write a comedy of manners, or

High Comedy, but if the society was chaotic

and confused, with no established code or class
system, the comedy writer tended toward farce,
romantic and domestic comedy for his dramatic
material.8

This cause-to-effect assertion appears on the surface to apply
readily today.

In spite of the dispute and discussion of where the
line is drawn between farce and comedy, several distinctions
are rather commonly accepted. One such distinction maintains
that comedy characters and situations are probable while in
farce one or the other or both may be preposterously unbeliev-
able. In this view, reality seems to be the test. What the
character does and how real the personality of the character
is, determine whether the play is comedy or farce. Comedy
concerns itself with real people doing real things and both
the situations and characters are honest while the play moves
to a logical and honest conclusion.

 

 

7K. M. Lea, Italian Po ular Comedy (New YOrk: Russell
and Russell Inc., 1962), p. 185.
8

Delwin Bennett Dusenbury, "A Study of Comedy in the
American Theatre Represented in the Productions of Native
Comedy in New York City from 1900 to 1920", (unpublished

Ph. D. dissertation, Dept. of Speech, University of Minnesota,
1947), pp. 31-2.

47

Crafton and Royer advanced a rule-of-thumb definition
of farce that has endured for almost forty years. They said
that farce: ". . . may have probable people doing improbable
things or improbable people doing probable things; but some-
where in the play there is improbability and exaggeration."9
By exceeding the limits of reality, a comedy can move into
farce as the distinction rests with reality. This theory has
been widely supported from the Restoration to the present.

Dryden's preface to An Evening's Love (1668) reflects
both his scorn for farce and the distinction of reality:

Comedy consists, though of low persons, yet of
natural actions and characters; I mean such
humours, adventures, and designs as are to be
found and met with in the world. Farce, on the
other side, consists of forced humours, and un-
natural events. Comedy presents us with the
imperfections of human nature; Farce entefsains
us with what is monstrous and chimerical.

Though Dryden contributed to the list of partially farcical
plays he seems to have little use for the exaggerations of
farce.

Tate's preface makes the same declaration that:
"Comedy may admit of Humour, which is a great Province of
Farce; but then it might be such Humour as comes within compass
of Nature and Probability: For where it exceeds these Bounds it
becomes Farce."11 This view remains strongly supported in the
20th century though it leaves unanswered questions in its wake.

 

9Allen Crafton and Jessica Royer, The Process of Pla
Production (New York: F. S. Crofts and Co., 1928), p. 256.

10John Dryden, hp Evening's Love or The'Mock-Astrologer
(In the Savoy. Printed by T. N. for Henry Herringman, and

are to be sold at the Anchor in the Lower Walk of the New
Exchange, 1671), p. 2. There is no pagination in the preface
cited here but the pages have been numbered from 1-10 for
accuracy.

11Tate, op. cit., p. 14.

48

If comedy abstains from crude and boisterous jesting
and is marked by some subtlety of dialogue and plot as some
have said, the distinction then moves to the degree or type
of exaggeration employed by the playwright. This becomes the
evasive term around which the distinction between farce and
comedy must be based. We know from history, and quite recent
history, that the improbable or exaggerated idea of one age can
become commonplace reality in a later period. The space stories
of Hugo Gernsback, Jules Verne and H. G. Wells and the comic
strip adventures of Nowlan and Calkin's "Buck Rogers 2429 A.D.",
started in 1929, and Alex Raymond's "Flash Gordon" have become
a reality in the NASA space ventures of the sixties. The
improbable happens almost daily.

An endless list of similar examples could be drawn if
space permitted. But let it suffice to say that each time a
record of one type or another is broken and a new record set
the line between the probable and the improbable moves. Each
time an incident or the sequence of a series of incidents or
events occurs the distinction between real incidents and impos-
sible incidents shifts. In the end we have to conclude that
the distinction between farce and comedy based on exaggeration
will forever be changing. The province of comedy will be
constantly enlarging and the ingenuity of the farce writer will
be taxed more heavily. There appears to be no fixed point
along the way at which the line might safely and finally be
drawn. Or as Tate said of farce: ". . . there are no Rules
to be prescribed for that sort of Wit, no Pattern to Copy,
'tis altogether the Creature of Imagination."12

Another difference appears to be in the people or the
characters of farce and of comedy. The distinction of probable
and improbable people has been mentioned and again we must
raise the question: what is an improbable person? It appears

 

12Ibid., p. 16.

49
that each individual is limited by his own experience. To
a young child, at least one and possibly more of his parents'
friends and acquaintances would be an improbable person. No-
where in his limited years of eXperience, either through books,
television, movies, plays or reality, has he observed such a
character. To the child he appears ludicrous and improbable
but to the parent he is one of a distinct group that may be
different but quite probable. The distinction between probable
and improbable people will change as we meet and observe more
people or as our years of observing people extends itself.
We can only conclude then that "probable people doing improbable
things or improbable people doing probable things" remains a
convenient simplification to describe farce. But because of
the changing nature of probability this generalization is not
precise enough to become a useful definition.

"The progress . . . from farce toward comedy is marked
by the degree of reality which the author has succeeded in giv-
ing to his characters."13 McIntyre's continuum also lacks
precision though the idea is useful. Another view states that
comedy represents a way of looking at life while farce is
not "concerned with truth of life or a view of life."14
we are to accept this distinction, we must tie it to the
"degree of reality" approach for while the farce may not be

If

following the most real and natural development of events it

is still a way of looking at life. The look may be brief and
somewhat "cockeyed" but this does not make it unreal. The look
does not penetrate beneath the surface to examine the ramifi-
cations and motives involved. The look of farce is usually
superficial.

 

13Clara F. McIntyre, "The Word 'University' as applied
to Drama", Publication of the Modern_Language Association.
(September, 1929), p. 928.

14Rowe, loc. cit.

50
Hewitt makes the distinction in minor human cal-
amities:

In comedy, these calamities arise mainly from

the folly, stupidity or vice of human beings;

in farce, they arise mainly from the ingenuity
of the playwright. Consequently, we find the

characters of farce further removed from real

life than the characters of comedy.

The outward intrusion of the playwright is also observed in
Albright' 5 definition which states that farce: ". . . stresses
external incident and unusual situation at the eXpense of

16 The characters of farce tend

to lack subtlety and believability as real people. They

carefully drawn character."

become instead broad types of character that usually depart
from rational human behavior. More frequently they are not
full-blown personalities that an audience can identify with
readily. Where a character has been fully drawn, such as
Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner, the play-
wright has drawn a caricature, in this case an exaggerated
likeness to Alexander Wollcott. But the farce character is
either an overdrawn caricature or a hastily drawn character--
not so normal as you or I.

Brander Matthew's distinction may have been the best.
In farce the incidents or situations control the characters
whereas in comedy the characters control the incidents.17
This practical and workable distinction has withstood the test
of time. We find it mentioned frequently. Clayton Hamilton
took a similar view in which he stressed the farce production
as much as the play structure. He said: "A comedy is a
humorous play in which the actors dominate the action; a farce

 

15

16H. D. Albright, Working,Up a Part (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1947), p. 135.

17

Hewitt, 0 . cit., p. 63.

Matthews, A Study of the Drama, p. 121.

51

. . . the action dominates the actors."18

In either case
the distinction rests with characters that manipulate for
themselves or those that are manipulated by the situations
or incidents in which they find themselves.

A third major difference between farce and comedy
appears in the effect each genre has on an audience. Classical
definition tells us little, if anything, about farce but it
credits comedy with a didactic purpose. Comedy holds the
faults and foibles of man before him in order for him to
learn his folly and correct his ways. Many distinctions are
made in the belief that comedy is more thoughtful than farce
and that farce has nothing that makes inward appeal. Nicoll
feels that it is: ". . . some inner quality--the stressing
of the spiritual as Opposed to the merely physical--that makes
. . . comedy out of farce."19 The two then differ in terms of
intellectual comparisons and appeals. Farce is frank to admit
this, allowing also that it makes no attempt at such inner
appeal in the first place.

In his preface, John Dryden declared that comedy
worked on judgment and fancy While farce worked on fancy alone.
His scornful attack held that comedy:

. . . causes laughter in those who can judge of
men and manners, by the lively represenpation of
their folly or corruption; the other'[ farce:7pro-
duces the same effect in those who can judge of
neither, and that only by its extravagance. 0

This distinction suggests a point at which the two
genres can be separated. If farce should attempt to explore

 

180. Hamilton, "Melodramas and farces", Forum 41
(January, 1909), p. 25.

19

Nicoll, The Theory of Drama, p. 89.
20 ’

Dryden, loc. cit.

52

the reasoning and deeper motivations of its characters, as
does comedy, the audience would be drawn more closely into
sympathy or feel a stronger empathy with character. Such
involvement would not permit us to laugh at the character as
freely as we do in farce. We need to be kept at the surface
of character if we are to laugh at him frequently. We need
this detachment if we are to feel happily superior. Thompson
agrees that farce does not depend for effect on illusion but
that comedy does. The law of comedy is realism but in farce
the spectator is under no illusion. This detachment is crucial
to the movement or rhythm of farce. Krutch observes that:
". . . in high comedy we usually are laughing at ourselves;
in farce, at somebody else."21 In his view we laugh sympath-
etically at our own mistakes which is the intent of comedy.
Swan expressed it well when he said: "Comedy produces pleasant
and sympathetic mirth: farce evokes the boisterous guffaw."22

"Since farce is merely a more obvious way of inducing
laughter than comedy it is only a grosser or broader variant
of the comic spirit."23 Though Gassner's statement is true,
the clearest expression of this distinction comes from Highet:

Comedy always wishes to evoke laughter, or at

least a smile of pure enjoyment. Farce does not

care what it does provided that everybody collapses
into unreasoning merriment. Most of us ignore this
side of art; some of us even ignore this side of life;
but the fact remains. The ridiculous is built into
human existence. Many of our essential activities,
some of our deepest emotions and severaT aspects of
our physical appearance, are ludicrous. 4

 

21
22

23John Gassner, Producing the Play (New York: Dryden
Press, 1941), p. 50. .

24Gilbert Highet, The Anatomy of Satire (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1952), pp. 154-55.

Krutch, op. cit., p. 92.
Taylor, 0 . cit., p. 538.

53

We might conclude this discussion with Nicoll's
view that farce as distinguished from comedy seeks no
literary graces and frankly exploits the realm of the
impossible. It does this because it is first and foremost
'theatre' and because there is no other way to provoke con-
tinuous laughter. To expect more from farce is to ignore the
principles of this art and impose on it a preconceived bias.
To measure it by the yardstick of "thoughtful" drama is as
meaningless as to ask comedy to meet the criteria of tragedy.

The hybrid: farce-comedy

Some critics have observed that we rarely find pure
farce in the modern theatre. They have said that this is true
of comedy as well. We frequently read that tragedy in the
classical sense is impossible today. If pure forms of the
drama do not exist today we might question again the value
of classification and the precise definition of genre. Never-
theless, we must define the terms we use as accurately as
possible in order to carry on meaningful discussion. The fact
that we may define a farce as one thing does not nor should
not imply that the playwright starts from that definition to
write his play. The creative process usually begins from a
different point and we then observe the finished product and
identify it. We would hardly expect to find the pure form
except in rare instances.

The mixing of genres has occurred and will continue
to occur in the theatre. The degree to which this is desirable
or undesirable will probably be argued endlessly. The purists
will continue to object to the mingling of farce with comedy
and the liberals will continue to ask for good drama by what-
ever mixture the playwright may choose. But there is a group
always present that must classify the whole of drama and it
is from this view that we get the hybrid called "farce-comedy."

54
Taylor claims that: "To solve the difficulty of
clearly distinguishing farce from comedy certain critics
have evolved a third species, a hybrid classification,--
25 The attitudes toward this classification
are as varied as the ways in which it is described and.

:farce-comedy."

defined. Professor Rowe accepts it when he agrees that:
". . . farce readily merges with other more complex and, in
a sense, higher forms of drama."26 And this appears to be
the prevalent attitude today.

In 1929 Carpenter declared that the tendency to label
plays "farce-comedy" was a poor one and that the two genre
would mix no more than evening clothes and chewing gum.

"Farce extracts from us one attitude; comedy another. When

a play attempts to exact both, we are confused and annoyed."27
This attitude reinforces an earlier observation by Brander
Matthews in 1890:

The bastard hybrid called "farce-comedy", prevalent
of late in our theatres--a queer medley of various
kinds of entertainment, musical, saltatorial, pan-
tomimic, and even acrobatic--may be ofteg clever
but it is rarely either farce or comedy. 8

Writing at about the same time, W. T. Price described
this hybrid as an American product that emerged around 1870.
He felt that it was significant that farce-comedy had no
honest name. It consisted of a conglomeration:

. . of acted anecdotes, odd sayings, burlesqueries
and grotesqueries, gathered from all quarters. Those
that succeed best have a faint outline of a story.
They harbor immature young women in short skirts,

 

25

26Rowe, op. cit., p. 138.

27Bruce Carpenter, The Way of the Drama (New York:
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1929), p. 116:

28

Taylor, op. cit., p. 31.

Matthews, Studies of the Staga, p. 213.

55

abound in song and dance, and could not exist
without the special doings of quaint actors.
The concoctions of Charles Hoyt have bits of
genuine humor; and the class,trivial as it is,
opposed to orderly art as it is, must be
accepted as indicative of American genius.29

In his study of American comedy from 1900 to 1920,
Dusenbury observed that the line between farce and comedy was
almost negligible throughout the period. He reasoned that
both forms gave emphasis to theatricality in acting, and in
staging, and that the farces contained as much commentary on
the questions of the day as the serious plays.30

Interestingly enough the confusion of labels for these
plays continued for some time and produced such terms as "farce-
comedy", "melo-farce", "mystery farce". In fact, from the
period between 1913 and 1950 approximately one in four farces
were called "farce-comedy". The term had become well estab-
lished in the American theatre.

At least part of the basis for Dusenbury's observation
seems to be faulty. His distinction between farce and comedy
appears to exclude farce from any social commentary and allow
comedy the exclusive rights to that function. This seems to be
an oversimplified and an inaccurate comparison to make. We
shall explore somewhat later the role of satire in farce but
let it suffice here to say that farce is capable of satire,
usually a very broad and obvious satire. It will not employ
the subtle and more pointed satire that is the weapon of comedy.
Instead the point may be so blatant and inflated, like a large
bladder filled with air, that as the farce pounds away we are

struck first with mirth and secondly with its social comment

 

29W. T. Price, ThegTachnique of the Drama (New York:
Brentano's, 1892), p. 197.

30Dusenbury, op. cit., p. 75.

56

which is obvious. The pretensions of the nouveau rThhe
social clmber in Moliere's The Would Be GentTgman, the broad
mockery of British class society in Wilde's The Importance of
Being Earnest and the obvious exposure of manufactured
entertainment in the Spewacks' Toy Meets Gig; are all examples
of farces that primarily provoke laughter but also make their
comment on society. To call a play, "farce-comedy" because it
is farce with a social observation is to misunderstand the
nature of farce. All drama makes its comment on life and
mankind. The melodrama strums our emotions with thrills and
expectations but it also paints a clear silhouette of good
and evil in life. The farce must make us laugh while pointing
a fat finger at our folly.

The definitions of "farce-comedy" agree to the mixing
of farce and comedy but differ frequently with the blend.
Some of these definitions are practically meaningless. One
such comes from A Dictionary of American EngTish and reads:
"A 11 ht comedy approaching farce in improbability, absurdity,

etc." 1

And another states: "An entertainment mixing the
exaggeration of farce with the realism of comedy."32 Both
lack precision to the degree that their intent is ambiguous.
John Dietrich's widely used play direction text defines
farce-comedy as: ". . . a low comedy style of writing or play-
ing in which ludicrous situations and exaggerated characters
provoke boisterous laughter."33 The virtue of this statement

is the awareness that farce is both "writing" and "playing".

 

31William A. Craigie and James R. Hulbert (ed), 5
Dictionar of American En lish (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1965), Vol. II, p. 933.

32Walter Parker Bowman and Robert Hamilton Ball,
Theatre_Lahgp§ge (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1961), p. 131.

33John E. Dietrich, Play Direction (New York: Prentice-
Hall, 1953), p. 459.

 

57

The doing of farce or the playing of the farce play is the
fundamental requirement to which we will focus our attention
in the next section of this chapter. The weakness in Dietrich's
definition appears to be its similarity to pure farce.’ Ludi-
crous situation and exaggerated characters provoking boisterous
laughter is a fair definition of farce, if not of “farce-comedy”.

O'Hara and Bro become more specific when they identify
farce-comedy as: ". . . a modern mingling of comedy characters
in farce situations."34 This blend of one part comedy to one
part farce makes a strong argument for the hybrid term. This-
view disagrees with Dietrich's in terms of character. It
calls for real and probable people of comedy instead of the
exaggerated and improbable characters of farce. Professor Rowe
affirms and elaborates this definition of farce-comedy:

This is a play which plot-wise consists of farcical
or ludicrous situations but founded on character-
ization and truth to life, and which in consequence,
may engage the captions to some degree as well as
arouse laughter. ,

Most modern writers admit that farce and comedy are
often mixed but many refuse or are unable to classify the
mixture as "farce-comedy". If the descriptions of O'Hara,

Bro and Rowe are accurate, we can readily see that "farce-
comedy" takes the strengths or primary elements of each genre,
the situations of farce and the characters of comedy, and
unites them in one play. By using the best of each genre the
result should be an improved product. But this genetic theory
may break down in this instance where the blend may actually
destroy the individual strength of each genre. From the
standpoint of comedy, we would think less and laugh more at
"farce-comedy”. From the view of farce, we would think more
and laugh less. The term "farce-comedy" seems to be needless

 

34
35

O'Hara and Bro, 0p, cit., p. 194.
Rowe, op. cit., p. 137.

58
and pointless. In the end we might agree with George Jean
Nathan's somewhat facetious but astute observation that a
farce-comedy was so named by its author when he realized
that it wasn't quite funny enough to be called a farce but
was too ridiculous to be classed as a comedy.

Prodpction: the basic requirement for farce

If we have clarified the distinction between farce and
comedy and successfully disallowed the hybrid term, "farce-
comedy", one condition remains to be discussed before observ-
ing the primary elements. That condition may well be con-
sidered the basic requirement of farce: the doing or the play-
ing. The farce production is its most significant and crucial
necessity. Farce can only be experienced in performance.

In his brief but effective chapter on farce, Hatlen
says: "The distinctive essence of farce can be realized only
in performance by accomplished comedians before a live audience."36
The fulfillment of farce can only be realized on stage where
the actor and the director make their contribution to the
playwright's script. Each has a significant role to play:
the actor with his tricks and sense of timing; the director whose
interpretation and deft hand gives it movemenGIand the play-
wright whose imaginative situations and complications give it
form and substance. We cannot underestimate the contribution
made to farce by talented directors and skilled actors.

The playwright of farce writes for the stage. He is
frank to admit that his play contributes little to literature
because his medium is exclusively the stage. He uses his most
expedient and effective form of expression--the theatre. He
would rather have us see his play than read it. Nardin has
said: ". . . it is only in the theatre that the playwright

 

36Theodore W. Hatlen, Orientation to the Theatre
(New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, l9 2 , p. l 8.

59
can really convince us that a play is actually a farce" and that:
"Closet farce is unthinkable, for the nature of farce demands
that no time be given for reflection."37 To the latter point
Hughes and Scouten add: “. . . in fact, closet farce is a
contradiction in terms."38

The actor contributes heavily to farce as we have
already stated. Many farces, especially the one-act farces
written as after-pieces, were devised for particular actors to
enable them to display their favorite comic skills. The actor-
play put its greatest emphasis on the actor's own personality
and usually disappeared with his death. But the bulk of farce
which we are concerned with here has also depended on skillful
acting. The playwright's original sketchy design may be dev-
eloped and even enhanced by an imaginative comedian. Hatlen
observes that: ". . . in characterization especially, farce
depends upon the doing."39 Such roles as Tony Lumpkin in

She Stoops to Conquer, Lady Bracknell in The Importance of

Being Earnest, and Sganarelle in The Doctor in Spite of
Himself afford excellent opportunities for the actor to en-

hance and enrich the character.

George Lewis suggests in the playing of farce that the
actor abandon himself to the situation and allow: ". . . the
fun of it to do his work . . ." which is ”. . . farce, not
comedy."40 In order for the actor to appropriately free him-
self, he must of course possess the natural instinct and keen
awareness that comes with considerable experience. All farce
seems easy and effortless in production and each of us at one
time or another has felt as Carpenter that it is unfortunate

 

37James T. Nardin, "Farce--The Theatre's Challenge",
The Theatre Annual (New York: 1956), p. 37.

38
39

40George Henry Lewes, On Actors and the Art of Acting
(New York: Grove Press, 1957), p. 8.

Hughes and Scouten, loc. cit.

Hatlen, op. cit., p. 136.

60
that amateurs choose so often to do plays like The Tmportance
of_§eing Earnest. Without the imagination and precise skill
of competent acting the best farce can prove to be a tiring
evening in the theatre.

One of the keys to farce production is action and this
characteristic alone accounts for its broad popular appeal.
Hatlen insists that: "The language barriers are slight because
the performer in farce often expresses himself in the universal
41 The action of the plot,
together with the acting of the players makes farce visually

vocabulary of gesture and action."

interesting and exciting to an audience.

Stephenson suggests that the origin of farce initiated
and demanded the element of action. "To get at the nature of
farce, we go back to beginnings, in either time or structure
. . . out-of-door performance calls for exaggerated tones,
sweeping gestures, loud singing and furious dancing . . ."42
That farce has retained this vigorous and robust kind of action
to the present suggests that its purpose and method has always
been understood by playwrights and actors, if not by critics
and historians.

In modern times the advent of silent pictures proved
to be an ideal medium for farce. Action was the basic require-
ment for the film farces created by Mack Sennett, Charlie
Chaplin, Buster Keaton and others. The mechanical ability of
film enhanced the opportunity to accelerate human movement and
thereby provoke laughter. The action of the slapstick humor
and the chase became a trademark of the Keystone Cops, the
Marx Brothers and many series of farce films. Regardless of
time and form, action has remained at the heart of farce.

O'Hara and Bro insist that the interest in mere action

 

41
42

Hatlen, op. cit., p. 129.
Stephenson, op. cit., p. 85.

61

always exceeds the interest in characters. If we subscribe
to Heffner's dichotomy of action as "normal or anormal,‘
the farce character deviates from the norm with ludicrous
and ridiculous action that is anormal.

The interest in this action appears to be external
rather than internal to Krutch. He says that: "We eXpect
visually grotesque situations, and the victim stumbles over

43 The chief concern is for

a chair instead of over an idea."
outward action rather than inward. Emphasis in farce is on
visual action which must be the surest road to laughter.
The history of the drama, according to Baker, shows that the
public throughout the ages, cultivated as well as uncultivated,
has cared more for action first in plays. "Only rarely does
even a group of people for a brief time care more for plays of
characterization and dialogue than for plays of action."4
The playwright of farce, aware of this fact, goes directly to
his business of conceiving and compiling action for the pop-
ular stage.

The action of farce consists primarily of the broad
and violent physical variety. Stage farce can hardly achieve
the breadth of the farce film mentioned earlier but it proceeds
with the same intent. Stephenson believes that the physical
buffoonery which is usually accepted as a necessary part of
farce is inessential. From his view, that farce is more method
than genre, he says: "It helps to look upon violent action as
the gesture that accompanies violent speech. Together they
implement the item that withstands scrutiny in definitions of

the farce; that is, brevity."45 One cannot question his claim

 

43

44George Pierce Baker, Dramatic Technique (Cambridge:
The Riverside Press, 1919), p. 20.

45

Krutch, op. cit., p. 92.

Stephenson, op. cit., p. 89.

62
of brevity for the farce of all ages has reflected this.
Rapid action with quick complication of situations has proven
to be a successful formula for consistent laughter. But gross
buffoonery has been a staple of many a long forgotten farce.
This type of "fun for its own sake" which has its limits was
typical of both French farce and the earliest American adap-
tations at the turn of the century.

The famous Russian director, Meyerhold, confirmed the
fact that physical action and exaggerated character combined
with plot situation can only add up to laughter. This emphasis
on action and violence is natural for a genre that seeks an
obvious appeal. Bentley insists that farce is notorious for
its love of violent images for: ". . . without violence, there
would be nothing in the world but goodness and literature is
not mainly about goodness: it is mainly about badness.”46
At any rate, farce action is broad and vigorous or as Clapp
described the "old-fashioned" farces: ". . . strong, sometimes
vulgar, often noisy, usually vital fun."47

Another significant aspect of the farce production is
its vigorous tempo and rapid movement. Both farce and comedy
are rapid in movement when compared to tragedy or even to
Shakespearean romantic comedy. Both depend on keen timing in
production for their effectiveness. But the need is greater in
farce for the performer's sense of timing, his skillful use of
movement, gesture, and posture and his manner of playing and
inventiveness in comedic creativity. He can frequently use
his ingenuity in devising comic business. This also applies to
the director or producer of farce, who, according to Hewitt:

 

46

47Henry Austin Clapp, "William Warren, Comedian", Th3
American Theatre As Seen By_Its Critics 1752-1934 Montrose
J. Moses and John Mason Brown ed New York: W. W. Norton
and Co., Inc., 1934), p. 82.

Bentley, The Life of the Drama, p. 221.

63
". . . will need to use all the materials of production to
create an effect of rapid tempo through sharp and marked
changes in tempo, volume, and pitch in the acting."48
maintains that:

. . . directors of farce always call for tempo, tempo,
tempo . . . it is a question of the speeding up 0
human behavior so that it becomes less than human.

Bentley

His view supports the Bergson theory of automation or mechan-

ization of the living but Bentley insists that this rapidity

is not a mere technical asset but a psychological necessity

of: ". . . making actions seem abstract and automatic when

in real life they would be concrete and subject to free will.”
To verify this we can examine Kernodle's statement that:

Played fast enough, any emotional scene will pro-
duce laughter.. . . In many farce scenes the
comedy is produced simply by playing the emotions
for all that can be squeezed out of them, at such
a fast speed that they explode into laughter. 1

He believes that the key of comedy is set by the rhythmic
pattern of performance. The speed, the energy, the staccato

50

or legato quality and the subtle but powerful patterns of
tension, suspense, repetition, contrast, sequence and inter-
ruption make up this pattern. The farce with its non-reflective
purpose can only move rapidly or more rapidly.

While much of the gross buffoonery and nonsensical
action of the past has literally gone by the boards, the move-
ment and pantomime in farce remain broad and emphatic. Our
saphisticated attitude in modern society forbids acceptance
or encouragement of this gross physical action. As a result

 

48
49
50
51

Hewitt, op. cit., p. 64.

Bentley, The Life of the_25pmg, p. 247.
Bentley, "The Psychology of Farce", p. xx.
Kernodle, op. cit., p. 720.

64
we see more spoofing of gross action in order to hide it
or make it acceptable. This may not be completely accurate
because today we have gone beyond the spoof into the realm of
"spoofing the spoof." Almost daily examples of the spoof are
available in the theatre, cinema and television. Rowe suggests
that both pure farce and melodrama:

. . . have been taken over from the stage by the
motion pictures and television, in part because
of the relation between a broad appeal of those
forms and functioning of the motion pictures and
television as mass media, and in part because

of the scOpe that the screen offers to the basic
material of farcg and melodrama: vigorous
external action. 2

Today's motion picture and television industries are massive
consumers of visual humor.

In production the devices of farce rely heavily on
visual humor centering on physical activities. The visual
appeals of both farce and melodrama are considerably greater
than any other play type, including high comedy. It can be
stated of farce alone that the weakness in the play itself has
sometimes been overcome by the performer's farcical business.
Some weak farces have enjoyed moderate success because of
the visual humor contributed by the actor.

Part of Albright's definition states that effects in
general are likely to be exaggerated. The physical activities
of all the characters become visually exciting and vigorous.
It is this observation that brings Sypher to call farce a:

". . . sort of mechanical comedy."

French farce often demanded extravagant pantomime of
some kind in spite of its realism. Maxwell tells us: ". . .
such comic condiments as a fool's attire, a flowered face,

 

52Rowe, op. cit., p. 138.

53Wylie Sypher, "The Meaning of Comedy", Comed
(Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 195 , p. 209.

65
a buffoon's antics . . ."54 can be found in the texts. The

lazzo of the commedia player before this and the American
actor that followed has been broad and physically vigorous.
It is this quality in production that is so vital to the
success of farce. The farce truly belongs on the stage where
imaginative actors can make us laugh primarily through visual
humor and action that is rapid and violent in nature.

Unlike any other genre, the farce can only realize total
fulfillment in production. With this requirement fully stated,
we can begin a detailed analysis of the content of the genre

and observe the fundamental ingredients or elements that
produce farce.

The primary elements: situation; plot
From the writings of the last two hundred and seventy-

three years there appear very few detailed attempts to des-
cribe the anatomy of farce. Outside of the several studies
mentioned in the introduction, the bulk of writing has either
been a broad generalization of the nature of farce or a plea
for or defense of farce. A vigorous introspection has been
long overdue. This discussion of the primary elements of farce
will concentrate on the most basic and fundamental character-
istics of the genre as observed by its critics.

"In real life a man may get himself into an occasional
comical situation. In farce he simply slides from one impos-
sible situation to another."55 This observation by O'Hara and
Bro captures the most significant characteristic of farce:
situation. Because of its basic function in farce we call it
a primary element.

Situation is completely and unmistakably the playwright's
invention--the generative force or contribution to the farce.

 

54Ian C. M. Maxwell, French Farces and John He ood
(Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1946), p. 42.
55O'Hara and Bro, op, cit., p. 21.

66
This is also the distinct mark of farce which separates it
from any of the major types of drama. Nicoll observes that:

It is thus distinct from each [genrg7 in this
one quality of exaggerated situation, while all
differ from it in an insistence upon something
larger and broader than mere incident.56

Hughes, in his analysis of English farce, describes
the farce generally as episodic in structure or: ". . .
fitful, full of shifts and surprises."57 This appears as true
of Aristophanic and Old Comedy as of modern farce though the
Greek poets must have been observing a somewhat prescribed
form. Smith and Rhoads, in their book on farce-comedy,
define pure farce as: ". . . a drama depending for amusement
upon situation rather than upon character interest . . . upon

absurd situations. . . .58

They then divide farce-comedy
historically into two types: Aristophanic, which is loose and
episodic in structure and; Plautian, of the "well-made play"
structure but also involving absurd situations. Our point here
is not to diSpute the use of farce-comedy which we have already
done but instead to focus on a particular use of the episodic
in farce.

Both Millett and Bentley and Nicoll agree that the
individual incidents and the plot are more important in farce
than the characters or the implications of the action as a whole.
The latter maintains that the dependence of character and
dialogue upon situation is the main characteristic of farce.
The point has already been made that the situation conceived by
the playwright actually dictates or controls the characters.
Such reliance on situation or the incidents of farce must
validate its role as a primary element. Edith Hamilton states

 

56

57Hughes, A Century of English Farce, p. 21.

58Robert Metcalf Smith and Howard Garrett Rhoads, Types
of Farce-Comedy (New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1928), p. 3.

Nicoll, The Theory of the Drama, p. 214.

67
it simply in these terms:

The fun of farce is neither of the mind nor of the
heart; it is the fun of circumstance. . . . Farce
is concerned only with what happens to pggple;

it might be called the comedy of events.

In recent years the farce has often been called the
comedy of situation as confirmed by the following examples:
the successive situations (plot and story) are of primary
importance, Matthews; ". . . it remains a play of situa-
tion", Kleinéo; ". . . a play of ludicrous situations",
Roweél; and "Farce is usually the comedy of situation",
Hatlen.62 All of this suggests that the playwright exploits
a situation or set of situations which are highly atypical.

These situations are unusual and startling and very
often stress the external. Hewitt states that they are more
unusual and startling than the situations of comedy. While
calling the situations unusual and exaggerated, Albright
emphasizes the stress on external incident instead of inci-
dents brought about by the will and action of character.
Professor Taylor agrees with this essentially because he
ascribes to most of the views of Brander Matthews. He does,
however, include a statement that is questionable on the sur-
face and unclear in implication. It reads: "Laughable inci-
dents which do not reveal character, incidents which do not
further the development of the action are farcical, not
63 This distinction may be accurate, but if it is, the
compounding of incidents so that the action arrives at an un-
expected conclusion--this rather exclusive talent of the farce
writer--is misnamed. To carry it further we might generalize

comic."

 

 

59Edith Hamilton, op. cit., p. 504.

60Ruth Klein, The Art and Techni ue of Pla Directin
(New York: Rinehart and Co., Inc., 1953), p. 61.

61

Rowe, op. cit., p. 137.
62

63

Hatlen, op. cit., p. 129.
Taylor, op. cit., p. 29.

68
that the plot in farce is the plot of comedy and that only
the side-tracks or diversions and the lazzo or stage business
of the actor can be farcical. Such oversimplification is
inaccurate. Farce instances and situations do further the
action. The point at which the farce ends is usually more
improbable than that of comedy but even more improbable is
the particular sequence of situations and actions that brought
us to that solution. Hurrell accurately sums up the action of
any successful farce in one sentence: "A situation or a rel-
ationship gets out of hand and somehow, inefficiently perhaps
but eventually successfully, it is put right."64 It is true
that in comedy the characters, the instruments of plot, would
bring about a more natural sequence of situations approximating
what we would do in reality. But the province of farce is
circumstance and improbability and this can be as much a
stimulus to plot as character.

The farce situations usually depend upon visual humor
where man is shown as the victim of his biological nature, not
only sex, but any drive, appetite or situation in which he
loses his hearing or the control of himself and his circumstances.
Our interest is on the surface of character and what he appears
to be. It then seems natural that the body with its overt
desires and functions would be a basic source for farce situa-
tions and business. These physical activities often involve
a complicated series of misunderstandings.

The action that derives from situation usually involves
a simple meaning, at least on the surface. This alone can be
laughable but Koestler observes that in his discussion of the
comic of situations, Bergson came nearest to the essence of the
comic itself: "A situation is invariably comic when it belongs
simultaneously to two altogether independent series of events

 

64Hurrell, o . cit., p. 428.

69
and is capable of being interpreted in two entirely different
meanings at the same time."65 The laughter at the appearance
can be compounded by the laughter at what may be happening
within the character. We laugh uproariously at Jack and Algy's
confrontation in The Importance of Being Earnest but also in
expectancy of how each will squirm out of his own dilemma.

Farce situation unmistakably bears the marks of
improbability as verified and illustrated by the following
writers and their individual choice of terms: exaggerated
incidents and ridiculous events, Millett and Bentley; "highly
improbable and atypical" situation, Hatlen; "gross exaggeration
of incidents", Gassner; "most exaggerated and impossible" sit-
uation, Nicoll; patently absurd or the serious treated lightly,
Nardin.

Agreement is strong with Matthew's view that the sit-
uation and the plot are the controlling factors in farce.

Edith Hamilton simplified the idea observing that farce is
concerned only with what happens to people. But Professor
Nicoll laments what he calls an: ". . . undue insistence upon
incident . . ." in farce which exists nonetheless. He would
have farce, and melodrama as well, sapire to: ”. . . a pene-
trating and illuminating power of characterization, or at least
by an insistence upon something deeper and more profound than
mere outward events."

Without claiming profundity in any sense, Hurrell sug-
gests that farce does make its comment on the human situation.
He argues that tragedy deals with moral choices and comedy with
the laws, written or unwritten, that govern man and his com-
munity:

Farce ignores both the moral and the social laws,
not because it denies their existence, but because
it sees an alternative to this constant reference

 

65
66

Bergson, op. cit., p. 123.
Nicoll, The Theory of the Drama, p. 88.

70

to laws, moral or social, ag alternative followed
by the majority of mankind. 7

The key to this view is ingenuity and the farce reflects a
kind of assertion that man possesses the continual capacity

for setting his house in order through the ingenious use of his
capacity to make practical, rather than ethical decisions. It
raises the question of how man can contrive escape or conceal-
ment, after being caught in a predicament, so that the world
can continue smoothly and safely as it did before human weak-
ness asserted itself. Hurrell would argue with the lamenters
that:

Farce recognizes that there are alternatives to
the solutions provided by tragedy and comedy,
and that it is these alternatiggs that shape
the majority of our decisions.

This attitude does not preclude the improbability of situations
for we sometimes find ourselves in such unavoidable circum-
stances or improbable situations. Fortunately, we seldom find
ourselves in such a complex set of improbabilities as the
characters in a farce.

Much of farce is built on an absurd situation from which
seemingly endless complications grow. It has been suggested
that the audience suSpends its normal and rational faculties
and enjoys the many complications simply because they know
that the result will not be disastrous. Eric Bentley offers a
"safety valve" theory69 of farce which supports this assertion.
He feels that farce lets us enjoy unmentionable wishes and
adventures without suffering. Our repressed desires can be
vicariously fulfilled as we are permitted the outrage but
spared the consequences. Our everyday frustrations are somewhat
relieved, much like the "sudden relieving hiss of steam through

 

67Hurrell, loc. cit.
68

Ibid.

69Bentley, "The Psychology of Farce", pp. xiii-xiv.

71
a safety valve," as we enjoy and laugh at the violence on
stage without incurring the responsibilities or suffering the
guilt. He further states that in the application of this
formula which is called "bedroom farce":

We savor the adventure of adultery, ingeniously
exaggerated in the highest degree, and all without
taking the responsibility or suffering the guilé.
Our wives may be with us leading the laughter.

We can and ought to laugh at man, the victim of his biological
nature--his drives and his appetite.

Koestler believes that cuckoldry, the situation of a
man whose wife is unfaithful, is no longer comic:

The classic triangle has migrated from the
vaudeville stage to the waiting room of the
psychoanalyst . . . hence the modern comedy
has increasingly to rely for its effects on a
change from caricature to witticism, from the
comic of situations to brilliant dialogue.

. . . The general increase in education and
sophistication furthers the tendency towards
the dry, allusive wisecrack and the apparent
nonsense joke.71

This may explain the lessening of interest in farce in this
country. It would clearly explain the nearly complete absence
of "bedroom farce" from our stage today.

In summarizing the primary element of situation in
farce we can make several meaningful statements about its
nature and its requirements:

1. Situation dominates farce. Like comedy in general,
farce is dependent on complication though these situations and
incidents play a primary role in farce and secondary role in
comedy.

2. The sequence of compounding situations in farce is
more improbable than any single situation alone. Andrews
elaborates that: ". . . its situations must be always more

 

7O
71

Bentley, The Life of the Drama, p. 229.

Koestler, op. cit., pp. 103-04.

72
and more excruciatingly funny up to a grand climax of mirth,
and thence quickly to a still laughable solution."72

3. The situations in farce are improbable and exag-
gerated. They lack subtlety and usually depend upon the
coarsest and rudest of improbable incongruities. The humor
is often visual and comes from the physical characteristics
of the situation itself.

4. The compounding of situations occurs as a result of
practical decisions quickly made. The fact that they are often
wrong decisions adds to the fun and makes no further comment on
the human condition than that man can usually make the best of
bad situations. Such decisions in comedy and tragedy are
usually ethical or moral decisions respectively, according
to Hurrell.

5. Coincidence is accepted in farce. It differs from
the other genre in that its use is accepted and as Bentley
put it: ". . . chance ceases to seem chance, and mischief has
method in its madness."73

6. Inventing the farce plot requires great ingenuity
and imagination in manipulation of situations and compounding
the dilemma. In addition it calls for a shrewd sense of the
theatre and an awareness of comic theory.

The playing or production of farce rests in the hands
of actors and directors. Situation remains completely the
responsibility of the playwright. Both are equally important to
farce for without excellence in either the spirit of farce is
dead. This seems to be a distinctive condition of farce alone
among the dramatic genre.

If situation is the essence of farce then it must follow
that the plot and its development would be all-important to the

structure of the play. The two are interrelated in many ways

 

72Charlton Andrews, TheTechnique of Play Writing
(Springfield, Mass.: The Home Correspondence School, 1915),
p. 187.

73Bentley, The Life of the Drama, p. 245.

 

73
as the plot provides the skeletal outline of story onto
which each situation is attached. The situation and the plot
are interdependent on each other for a weakness in one reduces
the effectiveness of the other. For this reason we propose
that the second of the primary elements of farce is plot.

The plot of farce is highly deve10ped and manipulated
by the playwright to achieve its purpose of laughter. Clayton
Hamilton has called farce the most irresponsible (no subser-
vience to plausibility) of all the types of drama where the
plot exists solely for its own sake. He further states that
the playwright has only two requirements:

First, he must be funny, and second, he must
persuade his audience to accept his situations
for the mgment at least while they are being
enacted.

Both are formidable tasks. The first tends to defy pre-
scription and evolves out of comic genius. The latter, while
born of the same genius, must certainly develop from exper-
ience. Through the experience of trial and error he learns
how much of coincidence an audience will accept.

The farce plot is usually fast-moving and more or less
arbitrarily contrived or built of a series of contrivances. As
we have already observed, the reason for the rapid plot is to
prevent reflection on how or why a situation or event took place.

Having contrived the sequence of events that involve the
characters, the playwright does not want and, indeed, must pre-
vent the audience from considering such motivation, at least
beneath the surface. Inner motivation is not important and may
be a hindrance to the observer.

Sypher speaks generally of comedy but primarily of
farce when he says that in such a comic vehicle: ". . . fate

takes the guise of happy or unhappy chance . . ."75 which

 

74

75Wylie Sypher, "The Meanings of Comedy". Comed
(Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956 , p. 209.

Clayton Hamilton, op. cit., pp. 25-6.

74
makes a neat arrangement of improbable possibilities. He
calls the plot an 'artificial framework' which we assume must
equate in meaning with 'contrived' plot. The distinction is
one of plot evolved through the force of characters in the play
as against the plot, 'artificial' and 'contrived', of the
farce writer.

The plot of farce is much more complex than that of
comedy and is usually filled with a greater variety of incidents.
Throughout the literature on farce this characteristic appears
repeatedly from Matthews to Hewitt, which gives us further reason
for considering plot a primary element.

With such an emphasis it only stands to reason that
character becomes subservient to plot and is relegated to second-
ary importance. Millett and Bentley support the Matthews' view
that in farce the plot dominates character. Thompson, however,
takes exception to this opinion and cites The Man Who Came to
Dinner as an example. He argues that if Matthews means "controls"
Or "determines the nature or outcome of", then Sheridan Whiteside
in that play refutes the idea because he is the source of what
plot there is.76 While this is true, in part, one has to look
carefully at the situation. The basic premise or original sit-
uation is not controlled, nor determined by Whiteside. The
broken leg that put him in a wheel chair at the Stanley home in
Mesalia, Ohio, is a contrived situation imposed by the playwright
or "fate in the guise of unhappy chance." Much of what he does
thereafter is partially or totally dependent on this situation
over which he presumably has little control. What he does is
less like a famous drama critic and lecturer and more like the
caricature of the same--highly improbable. To relegate the
Stanleys to the upstairs and only the use of the back entrance,
intimidating and ordering all the occupants of the house about,
addressing Mahatma Ghandi as Boo Boo and the editor of Atlantic

 

76Thompson, op. cit., p. 260.

. 75

Monthly as Stinkie, inviting the prisoners from the Crock-
field Home for Paroled Convicts to visit, bringing a lawsuit
against the Stanleys are only the initial set of improbabili-
ties in this play. The character of Whiteside is ingenious
but the clever manipulation by Hart and Kaufman is even more
ingenious. Whiteside is hardly making ethical decisions but is
most certainly making practical ones, at least from his point
of view. The true farce lies in this complex set of improb-
abilities as it does in the original situation. In this sense
the plot seems to dominate character, even that of Sherican
Whiteside.

Taylor also supports the view that plot dominates
character and applies the test-to the "comic" film where the
important element is: ". . . not the living persons but the
inanimate objects,--the custard pies, the wobbly auto, the
revolving doors, the sheeted ghost."77 He insists that one
leaves remembering only that a pie was thrown and forgetting
who threw it or why it was thrown. What happened is more sig-
nificant than the persons involved and their motivation.

The script of farce is sometimes regarded as the
scenario for action. Such a statement implies a lack of vital
and comic dialogue which is inaccurate. The fact does remain
that dialogue, to be discussed later, is a secondary element
while the plot is basic.

The motivation behind plot structure is difficult to
identify. Perhaps it is the challenge of comic invention that
drives a playwright to write farce. Avery Hopwood once wrote
that it was easy to make people cry but difficult to make them
laugh:

I do not write more serious plays, for one thing,
because it is too easy. . . . It is more of an
adventure to set before the popular taste a play

in the comedy vein. And since the audience has to
be more responsive, mentally, would it be conceited

 

77Taylor, loc. cit.

76

of me to suggest, that the playwright has to be
more active, intellectually, when he contrives

a comedy, than when he labors in the less arduous
field of the "serious drama."78

Or perhaps it is a more elusive spirit expressed by Bentley:
"The passion that spins the farcical plot is that younger
brother of wickedness, the Spirit of mischief."

The main interest in what happens or in the action of
farce depends completely on the ingenuity of the writer in
inventing complications, turns and counterturns. Downer calls
it: ". . . a kind of structural prestidigitation." There
appears to be no formula or pattern for farce in the texts on
playwriting and it may be considered rightly a mental slight
of hand. Andrews states merely that the humor must arise
chiefly from the complications of plot and warns that disaster
is imminent whenever the fun lags. Even more slight is
Grebanier's contribution that the plot is loosely put together:
". . . to keep things moving, as diverting or thrilling sit-

80 The
prevailing characteristic has long been the extravagant develop-

uation follows diverting or thrilling situation."

ment of plot and buffoonery according to Nicoll and others but
how this is done remains somewhat obscured.

Professor Hatlen contributes a meaningful analogy of
the farce plot with an aircraft:

The structure of farce is a framework for vigorous,
rapid, and exaggerated action in which the characters
move, rather than think, and where evoking laughter
justifies nearly any means. Once the engine has been
cranked up and set in motion, the speed is accelerated,
and by unexpected blowouts, backfirings and explosions,
the mechanism careens crazily through space, gathering

 

78Avery Hopwood, "Why I don't Write More Serious Plays",
Theatre Magazine (April, 1924), p. 10.

79

80Bernard Grebanier, ~Playyriting (New York: Thomas
Y. Crowell Co., 1961), p. 291.

Bentley, The Life of the Drama, p. 248.

77

momentum until it finally lurches to an awkward
but happy landing in a cloud of steam with all

of the parts still spinning; and while there has
been a whirlwind of activity, the machine has not
really moved an inch in any direction.81

As a result of this piling up of events it is not the
least surprising that the story cannot be taken seriously.
Anyone who has seen a farce can tell you that whether it was
Plautus' Menaechmi, Moliere's The Doctor in Spite of Himself
or Kaufman and Hart's You Can't Take it With You. The play-
wright frequently has no message as such but instead wishes
only to make a comment or brief observation, for his aim is
chiefly to divert audience attention and entertainment. Most
frequently the logical development of plot is obscured or sub-
ordinated to the ludicrous situations that keep reappearing.
In terms of depth, the farce confines itself to the super-
ficialities of life as it cannot dig deeper into human conduct
and still maintain its purpose. The Nardin study stated this
as an essential part of pure farce:

The plot may be of various kinds so long as it

is established that the central situation is not

in any way related to the world of serious values
or emotions; in other words, the author must
establish for his story an irrational, amoral world,
where nothing causgg pain and where love does not
have significance.

In order to remain at this level, the farce plot must move
rapidly and thereby prevent reflection on what has happened.
The minute that the plot slows down we sink beneath this
superficial level much as the water skiier whose tow boat
reduces its speed.

Another characteristic of the farce plot then is speed.
Many farces are one long pretext for flight and pursuit such

 

81

82James T. Nardin, "A Study in POPUIar American Farce,

1865-1914", (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Dept. of English,
University of Chicago, 1950), p. 13.

Hatlen, loc. cit.

78
as The Italian Straw_§§£, Charley's Aunt and Gettin Gertie's
garter and their plots, according to Bentley, have much in
common with "the chase”, which was the mark of the Keystone
Cops.

In a structural analysis of modern farce, Albert Nadeau
illustrated this well when he charted the plot lines and major
crisis or climax of five farces and three serious plays. His
conclusions follow: "In farce sensational elements serve to
set the chain of incidents underway posthaste," or: ". . . we
have a certain and immediate initiation of plot." Various and
complex plot meshing provide for scattered plot crises through-
out the play from start to finish. There is also a "very late
crisis in the dominant plot" with relatively short falling action.
He concluded that:

If, in pure farce, there is no audience attachment
to the character, it seems only logical that a
farce should end abruptly after the crisis, since
the plot is finished at that point for all
practical purposes.

All of the farces under study reached their dominant crisis
no more than six pages from the end. 0f the serious plays
A Doll's House reached this point with seven pages remaining,
The gherry Orchard with fourteen and Thg‘Weavers with twenty-
six pages left to play.
Lea claims that farce plotting generally breaks down
at the denouement where the knots are "cut and not untied."
The claim appears to be as true of the majority of modern farces

as with the improvised commedia dell'arte which she calls farce.85

 

83

84Albert H. Nadeau, "A Structural Analysis of Five Modern

Farces According to the Principles of Kenneth Thorpe Rowe",
zgnggblished Master's thesis, Catholic University, 1950), pp.

Bentley, The Life of the Drama, p. 248.

85Lea, op. cit., p. 196.

79
Instead of cleverly and swiftly untangling the web that he
has spun, the less imaginative playwright resorts to something
external to solve his dilemma, a type of "deus ex machina."
A magician arrives with magic water that revives the dead, cures
the lunatic or acts as a love potion. It may well be, at this
point of resolution, that we can distinguish good farce from
poor.

As early as the seventeenth century, Tate acknowledged
that: "Farce may admit of most admirable Plot, as well as sub-
sist sometimes without it." We read that much of the early
American farce was extremely slight in plot, the plays of
Charles Hoyt and George Ade for example. At about the same
time the nineteenth century masters of the French farce were
using incredibly complex and elaborate plots. Bentley des-
cribed them as: ". . . the kind of farce which is said to be
'all plot' is often much more than ingenious, it is maniacal."86

The solution of the farce story represents a crucial
problem for the playwright but some feel that an even more
critical problem is the original premise. We have said earlier
that this original situation must be acceptable to an audience.
It must be improbable but not impossible. It must give promise
of mirth and create enough anticipation in the audience to
insure its acceptance. It must allow for sufficient complica-
tions to sustain the fun and provide for comic surprises.
MacMillan believes that: ". . . its excellence is to be sought
in the originality of the conception and in the skill displayed
87 Most of the farces that fail
on the stage, warns Haberman, fail because they lack a good

in the execution of the joke."

farce premise.88 A special blend of probability--improbability,

 

86

87Dougald MacMillan, "Farce", Dictionary of World Lit-
erature. ed. Joseph T. Shipley, (New York: The Philosophical
Library, 1943), p. 235.

88LeRoy Day Haberman, "American Farce on Broadway, 1914
to 1956", (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Dept. of Speech-
Theatre, Stanford University, 1959), p. 17.

Bentley, The Life of the Drama, p. 247.

80
of reality and unreality, of characters probable and improb-
able is required to open a farce-~enough magic to lift us out
of the world of reality and place us happily in the irrational
and amoral world of farce. We have made this transposition
readily because we came to the theatre primarily to be
diverted and entertained. We might also have come for an
escape from the shocking realization of daily life. And though
we came for fun, we may find some implicit criticisms of society
and its mores. The comment may be too broad to resemble the
satire of comedy but it may provide a message of momentary
cheer. The use of satire will be treated later but let us coc-
clude here that satire in farce appears as a by-product and not
the essential reason for its existence.

In summary we can observe that the plot of farce is
closely interrelated with situation. Together they become the
two primary elements that distinguish farce from the other
comic genre. The basic characteristics of farce plot can be
summarized in the following statements:

1. The farce plot provides a framework for situations
that are laughable. Its ingenuity often lies in the complex
compounding of improbabilities though it can succeed on a
slight and simple structure equally well.

2. The plot of farce dominates character as it carries
both its characters and the audience out of the world of
reality and serious emotions and values into an irrational and
amoral world of fun.

3. Both the original premise or situation and the
climax of the play are crucial points in its structure demand-
ing deftness and considerable imagination from the playwright.

4. The farce plot must move rapidly to prevent
reflection by character and sudience on the things that have
transpired. This calls for a continually accelerating series
of situations that gradually build to a climax.

5. The climax of a farce plot occurs very late in the
play because there is no real need for falling action. It is

81
closely analogous to the joke; nothing is necessary after
the "punch line."

6. The farce plot is capable of satire though its use:
is of secondary importance. Its primary function is enter-
tainment.

We can return to an earlier statement by Bentley that
plotting a whole evening of merriment is no easy task and
follows no prescribed pattern. It requires an understanding
of these characteristics but even more the talent to make a
joke theatrical.

The secondagy elements: character;dialogue
The elements of character and dialogue are considered

 

secondary because they are dependent upon situation. They are,
of course, vital ingredients of any type of drama and essent-
ially so of farce. But so much of the shaping and limitations
of both character and dialogue is determined by the primary
elements in farce that they stand subordinate.

From the body of literature on farce there appears more
disagreement in the area of the secondary elements than anywhere
else. This may stand to reason as the shadings are less dis-
tinct than the more obvious elements of situation and plot.

We see, as an example, that the characters are real persons

or mere types and that they are stupid and foolish or ingenious.
These disputes carry over into dialogue as well as other elements
of farce. For the most part they depend upon (1) the writer's
purpose, whether he be analyzing, defending or persuading,

(2) the writer's point of view or his side in the dispute, or
(3) the writer's set of illustrations, the plays he cites as
examples. The latter condition can be manipulated to form
logical support for almost any opinion. It is probably as

true of all play types as of farce that the elements and
characteristics change from author to author as well as from
play to play by a single author. As a result it becomes as

82
difficult to describe accurately the characteristics of a
genre as it is to define the genre. Lawrence observed that:

It is impossible to frame a definition of any
particular dramatic genre which would be thoroughly
descriptive of the salgsnt qualities of every
example of that genre.

This does not prevent us from examining the views and arguments
advanced and from making meaningful observations from a
detached and objective view, which is our goal.
"Farce is the ideal way of merely stating character."90
This statement appears, on the surface, to be suspect as over-
simplification. In reality it attempts to place character in
accurate perspective with the other elements and also to
describe the average farce character. As we look at the great
range of characters found in much of farce, Stephenson's state-
ment stands as a succinct appraisal. It makes even more sense
when we realize the function of plot in the farce. From the
first situation on, the plot becomes the thin ice over which
the numerous complications and coincidences slide on their way
to the climax. Time alone in the theatre will not permit the
detailed development of character unless it happens to be a
major character around which the plot turns. Even then, by
the nature of the speed of plot, we cannot penetrate beneath
the surface motivations of the character. As a result we must
accept the sudden recognition of this person as a general type,
familiar to us and probably known quite well in our world of
acquaintances. It should then be obvious that time will not
permit more than the instant recognition of character--the
mere stating of character in farce.

Instantly recognized characters need not become mere
objects. Drama critic W. P. Eaton observed in 1910 that"

 

89
90

Lawrence, loc. cit.

 

Stephenson, o . cit., p. 91.

83

A farce will be successful, then, quite as much
according as its characters are human and inter-
esting as its action is rapid and surprising.
A farce without character is seldom enduring.

Eaton failed to support this statement but used it instead as
one of his arguments against London Times critic Walkley,

who claimed the farce was gone, or rapidly going, because it
outraged the modern sense of the realities of life. Eaton's
view then is that they must be real life and blood persons with
many, if not more, of the same problems that face ordinary
people in life. They cannot survive as mere cardboard figures
or chessmen in the story of farce.

It is this less-than-well-developed character, this
stated character, of farce that leads most writers to charge
that farce is inferior to comedy. McIntyre speaks for many in
observing farce as inferior because character interest is
reduced to a minimum. This seems to be the very heart of the
argument or prejudice against farce. We will return to this
problem later but let it stand at this point as a truism. In
terms of character interest and development by the criteria
(literary merit) most frequently applied, the farce is inferior
to all other genres. It has little interest in strengthening
character development. As a result we find farce characters
are usually not well developed characterizations but instead
are character types that can be manipulated as the writer wills.

O'Hara and Bro have stated the reason for this as well
as anyone. They insist that we, the audience, are interested
only in what the characters do in the developing situations.
They further state that the people are not really characters
but types and that we know the type so well that the author need
not individualize them for us. Matthews put it somewhat differ-
ently when he said that they existed solely for the sake of the
story. From this view, the story is not created by characters

 

91Walter Prichard Eaton, "The Return of Farce:,
American Magazine (December, 1910), p. 267.

84
moved by their own volition as in tragedy and comedy. The
characters are only what the plot allows them or forces them
to be. They are dominated almost completely by plot.

‘ It is understandable then that the characters of farce
are generally simple and less real than human beings. They
are of a simplicity, says Rowe, that leads very naturally to
farcical action and buffoonery and even their physical appear-
ance is laughable. They get absorbed in themselves and are
sublimely unaware of their own deficiencies. They are very
likely to be conceited and as the butt of jokes they are not
embarrassed. We laugh freely at them without any malice or
contempt and we often cherish them for the fun they afford us.
They are sufficiently "whacky" to come off as caricatures instead
of characters. Bentley claimed that the farce writer required
the: ". . . gift of some lunatics (such as paranoiacs) to
build a large, intricate, and self-consistent structure of
improbabilities." He described the characters as:

. . . monuments to stupidity, disturbing yet,
surely, deliberate reminders that God lavished
stupidity on the human race with a recklessly
prodigal hand. They put us in mind of our own
stupidities. They even teach us (if we are not
too stupid) what stupidity is . . . farce ggarac-
ters pass beyond stupidity into craziness.

While Bentley gets carried away with his description and over-
states, for example, the nature of the average farce character
he strongly affirms the realm in which this character operates.
The farce character is not maneuvering in a world of thought-
ful decisions but rather in a world of action. We are not
observing him thinking as we do but instead acting as he must,
and this may be similar to some of our own foolish actions.

It must be this attitude that brings Hurrell to declare that:
"The common denominator of farce characters is ingenuity.

."93 The farce characters, and this could only be a small

portion of them, are resourceful and inventive in making

 

92Bentley, "The Psychology of Farce", p. xix.

93Hurrell, loc. cit.

85
practical decisions but these decisions usually produce
only immediate and not long-term results. They solve the
current problem often with no thought for the long-range effect.
In this sense the farce characters become caricatures but they
come suspiciously close to real human nature. The distinction
may be luck or chance that separates our own actions (decisions
and results) from those of the characters in farce. We may just
be luckier, or unlucky from another view, than the farce chara-
cters. The hand of Providence may be kind to us where the
playwright's hand can be ruthless and cunning.

We have mentioned earlier the view of Professor Heffner
that comic characters are either normal or anormal and that
they become ludicrous as they depart from the norm. His two
broad categories in comedy are to excite laughter at ourselves
or to ridicule as we laugh at others. Within this framework
the laughter at farce characters (and Heffner doesn't recog-
nize farce as a separate genre but rather a type of comedy)
would occur primarily in ridicule asthey deviate considerably
from the norm. This distinction draws a fine line between
that which results in laughter though ridicule is present and
that which stresses ridicule but has laughter. When you add
to this view that in the former, we are essentially laughing
at ourselves and in the latter, at others, he has almost
disallowed the distinction to be made. The two become so
entwined that such tints or shadings of identity are impossible
to make as they rely on individual attitudes within the
audience. Can we not within the same moment at the theatre
each be laughing with a different reason?

Another contribution of the farce characters is that
of subject. Dickinson declared that: "The subjects [5f
farcgy'are derived from t3: stupidities, crafts,and petty

villainies of character." There is at least an implication

 

94Thomas H. Dickinson, An Outline of Contemporary Drama
(Cambridge, Mass.: The Riverside Press, 1927), p. 20.

86

in this statement that the kinds of people or characters of
farce are low or considered "low life." We will also find
this distinction drawn by others later in this discussion.
Hughes readily admits that there have been frequent attempts
to tie up farce characters and "low life" but he argues that
this principle has never been well established. "There are
numerous characters from the lower classes in plays not
labeled as farces and not a few members of the gentry, part-
icularly of the rural gentry, in farces."95

The characters of farce are less real and more conven-
tionalized than those of comedy and are not carefully drawn.
As a general rule, this observation by Hewitt and others is
true and we find numerous illustrations of it in Jonson, Wilde
and Goldsmith. But modern American farce began to depart some-
what from this, particularly in the works of Kaufman and his
collaborators. Sheridan Whiteside, Dulcines,‘and Laura
Partridge are only three examples of well-drawn central char-
acters around which these plays are built. Each is an easily
recognized type, however, and they are loveable in their way
but somewhat lacking in common sense. Kaufman's characters
on the whole are types and his successful business man, the
beautiful, brainless girl, the rich and socially prominent
young man, the unusual servant are all excellent foils for the
laughably silly central figure. There appears to be a slight
trend among the farces of the forties and fifties to paint
the central character more carefully and more vividly: take
Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey and Abby and Martha Brewster in
Arsenic and Old Lace, for example. Generally speaking though,
the vast majority of-farce characters are types, less real and
more conventionalized than the people of comedy.

Millett and Bentley feel that there is very little
character at all and that the people are caricatures, kept

 

95Hughes, op. cit., p. 11.

87
simple so they won't interfere with the improbabilities of
the plot.96 This is a valid reason in farce where the attention
is focused primarily on what is happening. Sypher and Krutch
call them puppets that are moved from the outside as the events
or circumstances require, but this is borrowed from Matthews
who proposed the following test:

. . . if the characters fade into nothingness, when
we seek to separate them from the events in which
they took part, and if their movements have been so
illogical and so completely controlled by another
will than their own, that we are ever left in
wonder as to what they will do next, then the play
in which they are puppets is farce or melodrama.9

As a generalization this rule-of-thumb has justly stood the
test of time. At best it is helpful in making quick distinc-
tions in genre. But at the same time, it appears to have
weaknesses when observed more closely. It seems to make more
of a distinction among play types than among characters and
this may have been Matthew's intent. We would expect nothing
of character in farce if the events or situations were removed
because without the events we would have no farce. This
"comedy of events" is dominated by situation and plot and the
interest must be sustained on what happens to the people or
characters. Character, as has been stated, is a secondary
element but not a needless element. This test seems no more
accurate than a comparable condition applied to comedy: if the
events or situations fade into nothing when separated from the
characters . . . then comedy. Both situation and characters
are indiSpensable to comedy and to farce. Each pursues its
own purpose with a different blend of these elements but
neither comedy nor farce can function without characters and

 

96
97

Milley and Bentley, op. cit., p. 122.
Matthews, A Study of the Drama, pp. 121-22.

88
situations.o Matthew's test seems more useful in determining
genre than in illuminating and distinguishing the characters
of farce.

Since character is subordinate to both situation and
the purpose of laughter, the farce characters must be typed
rather than individualized and develOped to leave room for plot
manipulation that achieves its laughable purpose. Throughout
theatre literature the type character of farce has been des-
cribed and identified in different ways.

Krutch called them puppets but elaborated further that:
". . . the chief personages in farce usually are--or are put in
a situation where they seem to be--clowns. And a clown is a

butt, or victim."98

His behavior would very frequently be
exaggerated and highly physical. The farcical characters of
Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and The Merry Wives of
Windsor are typical of this and are nearly always of the
rough-and-tumble type. These characters, according to Nicoll,
are deliberately Sacrificed to situation.

Haberman has called them stereotypes, who are not
people as much as they are personifications of human traits.
Heffner, Selden and Sellman describe them as a static type
peculiar to comedy that do not develop and change with the
action. Hatlen confirms this view that they are usually simple
stock characters, often from ordinary life. They also tend to
lack subtlety and plausibility, according to Albright, though
there are examples to the contrary. Pinero may have been the
best exception as he strove to make even his farce characters
and circumstances plausible. He believed that life was an
organic whole whose parts were dependent upon and strictly
. related to one another.

Speaking primarily of early American farce, Nardin saw

 

98Krutch, loc. cit.

89
farce characters devoid of common sense and veering toward
the insane, without causing dismay in the audience over their
apparent lack of reason. This meant the playwright:

. . . may either rely on stylized caricatures

or may sketch them roughly to show that they are
light-hearted people, incapable of rational
behavior or of deep emotion, and unconcernsg
over, and even unaware of that deficiency.

In a word, the characters are not sensible.
Eric Bentley has shown the relationship of farce
characters to human beings in this manner:

The farceur does not show a man as a little
lower than the angels but as hardly higher
than the apes. . . . If farce shows man to be
deficient in intellect, it does not show him
deficient in strength or reluctant to use it.
Man, says farce, may or may not be one of the
more intelligent animals, he is certainly an
animal, 88d not one of the least violent
either.1

Through most of these descriptions we can draw the
widely accepted generalization that the people of farce have
exaggerated character traits. One could hardly argue with
Millett, Bentley, Gassner and others on that point. But there
is an exception to be taken when this simplified generalization
is critically observed. This is the first: because of the
nature of farce plotting and its rapid pace we cannot observe,
nor do we want to, the complete picture of character. We must
observe only those traits of character that will be affected
in the story. The left-over traits may be interesting for a
discussion of the character, but are useless in this particular
sequence of events, the play. As a result we get, in the farce
character, only part of his personality exposed in the play,
very often the more obvious or obnoxious characteristics at

 

99Nardin, loc. cit.

looBentley, The Life of the Drama, p. 250.

90
that. Secondly, we are observing this character as he makes
numerous decisions throughout the play. The fact that most of
his decisions are wrongly made may be an exaggeration from
reality but a necessity to plot. The right decisions would
fail to provoke laughter and so we get an exaggeration not
so much of character traits as poor choices, bad luck or
wrong decisions. So while we see this character type, not
fully drawn but lightly sketched, making one mistake after
another, we might well conclude that we were watching grossly
exaggerated character traits.

Farce characters have been categorized by Hatlen into
two main types: the crafty manipulators who keep the action
moving, and the awkward, unlearned or unsuspecting characters
who are the targets of laughter. The manipulators are made up
of tricky servants or parasites who live by their wits while
rustics, foreigners, foolish old men, hypocrites and poseurs
of all kinds constitute the latter group. Bentley identifies
these two groups as "the knaves and the fools" allowing that
while the fools are more numerous, the knaves are more influ-
ential. He further equates the knave in farce to the villain
in melodrama. These two broad character types have not come
about arbitrarily but evolved through theatre history as we will
see somewhat later. The distinction is useful in generalizing
the nature of farce types.

The names given these farce characters have often been
laughable or at least indicated the nonsense of the play itself.
Names like Benjamin Blowhard, Sir Fitful Gust, Adolphys Fitz-
tOpper, and Tompkins Tipthorpe sound funny if nothing else.
In some instances the names were actually puns, such as Phil
Graves, Rashleigh Gay, Welland Strong, I. McCorker, Vesta Bule
and Nora Marks.

In summary, the characters of farce have been the most
violently active human beings that were ever imagined. For the
most part they have moved in a vigorous and active physical

91
world. And they in their plight have provoked our loudest
subconscious reaction--laughter.

The characters of farce have remained essentially as
they have always been. While Haberman and others feel that
the characters are unchanged, from the earliest days, O'Hara
and Bro suggest that the tendency today is to demand more
character motivation even in farce. They feel that present
audiences demand more plausibility of character than did the
audiences of the past. Part of this is the result of greater
sophistication and the inquiring spirit of our nuclear age.

As a result we see among writers like O'Hara, Bro and Rowe

the strongest support for "farce comedy." According to their
view this greater character motivation and development brings
farce into closer relationship with comedy which accents
character, and so they settle for the middle point. As stated
earlier this writer feels both the position and the term
"farce-comedy" are needless and pointless. To stake a middle
ground is suffocating to both farce and comedy as it permits
them to exist only in their pure form. Any mixture of farce
into comedy or vice versa would have to become "farce comedy"
and this would represent the bulk of all comic drama. Better
we should label a play comedy or farce because it possesses a
preponderance of the primary elements and characteristics of
one genre. A farce with stronger character motivation can
still remain a farce even though its author paints character
more deliberately than others have. The same could be said of
all the elements such as dialogue or the use of satire. If
we must have something called "farce comedy", let it be that
precise mid-point where the elements are equal, where charac-
ter and situation play comparable roles, where all other charac-
teristics are equally those of farce and of comedy. And let the
defenders of such a genre tell us when we have such a blend.

While characters may not be changing radically there
may well be a character dimension, in terms of motivation, added

92
to modern farce as expressed in Hewitt's description of
Thornton Wilder's farce, The Matchmaker. The characters
are not in revolt against our culture and our values but are
in conflict with the drive toward self-preservation, security
and peace and against the ideas and attitudes which discourage
marriage:

Wilder has used the form and method of farce to
celebrate . . . the radical, the pioneering, the
exploring, the creative spirit in man. . . .
The Matchmaker is gay; it is exhilisiting. It
is not a tranquilizer but a tonic.

The characters in this farce are often sensible and at times

exercise their own free will. Even wealthy old Horace
Vandergelder chooses to be "taken" in marriage in order to
find some adventure in life. Yet in the final analysis
these characters are dominated by restrictive situations
_that control their lives. The play has extraordinary action,
a kind of light-hearted rebellion, and high spirits. It is
a farce. '

As we look back over the history of farce we find that
the stock, type characters have changed very little. From the
earliest rustic farces of Megara, Atella, and the hl ax,
theatre scholars and historians have generally supported the
view that there were four type characters. Bentley identifies
three of these as different kinds of fools: The Blockhead,
The Braggart, and the Silly Old Man. The fourth type was the

Trickster, or the knave.102

Freedley and Reeves identify a
fifth type of character called "Cicirrus" which was possibly a
bird or animal-like mime. The evidence to support this comes
chiefly from vase paintings which show the masks that were worn
by these actors. The four human-like characters were called

"Bucco," the fool, "Dossenius" or "Mandacus." a witty hunchback

 

101
102

Hewitt, "Thornton Wilder Says "Yes"", pp. ll3-l4.
Bentley, The Life of the Drama, p. 249.

93

with a large wart on his beak-like nose, "Maccus," a stupid,
gluttonous, awkward fool, and "Pappus," the good natured but
gullible old man.103

Down through the years fools of one sort or another
have abounded in farce. The dunce or lack-wit has been a
characteristic figure as have the shrewish wife and the hen-
pecked husband. In describing the characters of French farce
Maxwell identifies them as common folk such as small tradesmen,
farmers, servants, ministers and parasites. He gives an
intimate picture of their common life.

These people wash up as well as dine, tend babies
as well as beget them, scald the milk and fire the
oven, weave baskets, buy caldrons, cheapen cloth,
know the village beasts by name. They are keenly
aware of the difficulty of making both ends meet,
and live in a world of domestic tasks and trials.

Eventually in Italian farce the interest in intrigue sub-

104

ordinates character, and according to Lea the servants were

the agents of this intrigue.105

From its beginnings in the Megarean farces through the

 

103George Freedley and John A. Reeves, A Histor of
the Theatre (New York: Crown Publishers, 1941), pp. 3§- 34.
This source is one of several significant theatre histories
that treat the Atellan farce and its masks with somewhat varied
interpretations. The others include: William Beare, The
Roman Stage, 2d. ed. (London, 1955); Margarete Bieber, The
History of the Greek and Roman Theatre, 2d. ed. (Princeton, 1961);
Geor e E. Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy, (Princeton,
1952 ; and Allardyce Nicoll, Masks Mimes and Miracles. Studies
in the Popular Theatre (New York, 1963). In a recent pro-
vocative article Professor Trapido, of the University of
Hawaii, re-examines the historical evidence, contrasts the
interpretations and concludes with this cautious overview:
"The wonder may be, not that we can prove so little about the
Atellans but that we have enough evidence to guess at so much."
Joel Trapido, "The Atellan Plays", Educational Theatre Journal,
XVIII (December, 1966), pp. 381- 90.

104Maxwell, op. cit., p. 36.

105Lea, op. cit., p. 174.

94

medieval French farce of the mid-fifteenth century and into
the great periods of French, Italian and English farce between
the sixteenth and eighteenth century, the characters of farce
are common people immersed in the activities of everyday
existence. They are rustics and as such appealed to the
popular audience of rustics. Though we see Moliere and others
raising the general level of farce characters to those of the
court, the farce has remained the drama of ordinary people.

The braggart soldier of Roman comedy and farce and of
the commedia delljarte remains a stock farce character in

 

modern times. He may be Ensign Pulver in the U.S. Navy but
his ancient ancestor is the Roman soldier. He thinks the same
thoughts, makes the same mistakes and the same ludicrous
decisions and may even suffer the same punishment as the brag-
gart soldier. He is basically the same character as his two
thousand year predecessor. The deceived husband, the know-it-
all, the country clod, the scheming parasite, the fun-loving
student and the choleric parent of Greek and Italian farce
have become racetrack touts, pompous employers, cowhands,
blustering politicians and college freshmen in the farce of
today. ‘

The stock characters from previous generations have
been borrowed by farce writers of every country, say O'Hara
and Bro.106 To these have been added the heroes of the native
folklore of other countries such as the Robin Hood plays in
England and the "little man" character in America. The
"little Man" has become a stock character in this country as
we see the verse writer of Three Men on a Horse, the young
husband of Hopwood's Fair and Warmer, or Dagwood Bumstead of
the comic strips.

To succinctly summarize the nature of farce characters

 

106O'Hara and Bro, o . cit., p. 157.

95

is almost impossible because of their diversity. As we
have observed they vary from were silhouettes to rather
detailed personalities. The average farce character does
tend to represent a type of person, not fully developed on
stage, but instantly recognizable to the audience. As such
he remains primarily in that vast majority of recognizable
common folk. He is one of that group that we know so well,
the "average guy." To use the less common individual would re-
quire time in the play to develop his personality, a luxury
withheld from the writer of farce.

It is precisely at this point that the farceur meets
a paradox unresolved to the present. The low state of farce
among the dramatic genres is attributable to the playwright's
unwillingness or inability to develop detailed characters.
Farce has always been condemned because its characters were
common or low life people and it sacrificed character to
situation. McIntyre states well the standard by which all of
literature including drama has been judged. "After all, has
any representation of life which has not given us at least one
memorable character been ranked permanently with great liter-

"?107The answer is probably no but it may succeed as great

ature
theatre. Wny must the drama fulfill the standards of liter-
ary excellence? Does great literature necessarily make great
theatre? If not, why must theatre make great literature? It
seems more reasonable that all drama should be measured by its
fulfillment of theatrical standards of excellence. Literature
and drama are two art forms and neither should be judged solely
by the standards of the other, no more than we would expect
ballet to measure up to the standards of opera. The paradox
for the farce writer seems to be this: if he stays on the
surface of character, thereby slighting its development, in

order to see situations develop and surprises unfold, he has

 

107McIntyre, op. cit., p. 928.

96
achieved his purpose of laughter; if he develops character
more fully and goes beneath the situational surface, he has
broken the thread of laughter and failed at farce. Except for
the tragedies of Seneca and the works of later enthusiasts
of "closet drama," all drama should be evaluated, not by
literary standards but by dramatic standards. Thompson's
test of a good play may not be adequate but it seems to
derive from a more accurate premise: "How dramatic is a play
when performed in daylight on a bare stage?"108 On such a
scale, the good farce can excell as the drama of action, as
surely as can comedy, tragedy or melodrama.

The dialogue of farce is often considered the loose
framework on which all types of verbal wit and humor are hung.
It varies among plays from the brilliant strokes of wit in
Moliere, Wilde and some of Shaw to the coarsest broad humor
of Margaret Mayo, Avery Hopwood and Wilson Collison. Dialogue,
like character, takes a secondary role in farce. It can only
be what the situation permits it to be. It stands to reason
that as the characters of farce are limited by the primary
elements, their language will likewise be limited. With
emphasis placed on action it is natural that dialogue would
occupy a less prominent role. But this dialogue, irresponsible
as it may be, is a vital and necessary part of farce.

Stephenson views dialogue as the essential content of
farce. He sees action and characters as: ". . . merely
devices for getting immediately down to comic Speech."109
This view puts Stephenson alone among the writers on farce but
but he is joined by others in agreement that the writing of
effective farce dialogue is an exacting and rather rare skill.
Verbal wit may be found in farce though it is more frequently

 

108
109

Thompson, 0 . cit., p. 102.

Stephenson, op. cit., p. 90.

97

a part of comedy. The French distinguished and identified
three kinds of verbal wit as mots desprit, mots de caractere,
and mots de situation. The latter type which points up the
humor of the situation would be a prevalent part of the dia-
logue of farce. Mots d'esprit or witticisms, like Wilde's,
which can stand by themselves can also be found in farce but
they require the talents of a Wilde or a Kaufman, whose "wise-
cracks" fall into this type of verbal wit. Moliere seldom
uses this form but concentrates heavily on mots de caractere
for his comedies and mots de situation for farce. The point
we wish to make here is that in the truly great farces both
witticisms and wit that stem from situation are so skillfully
conceived that they leave the impression that neither action
nor characters are as important. In this sense we would agree
with Stephenson for it is a rarity when we can laugh equally
hard at violent physical action or slapstick and the more
subtle but equally brilliant verbal wit. We seldom find it
even among the masters of comic drama. It is often at this
level of verbal wit that critics argue over The Importance of
Being Earnest. In spite of its farce premise, situations and
plot which dominate the play, some feel that its witty dia-
logue, which is very much like high comedy, is too brittle and
sparkling for farce and it must therefore be called comedy.
But this dialogue, brilliantly witty though it be, occupies a
secondary role to the dominant and primary elements of situation
and plot and Wilde's play must be recognized as an outstanding
example of farce.

George Kaufman, in contrast to Wilde, discovered for
himself and used repeatedly: ". . . a method based on the humor
that is to be found in accurate reporting of the conversation

of commonplace characters."110 From Dulc , Merton of the

 

110Carl Carmer, "George Kaufman, Playmaker to Broadway",
Theatre Arts Anthplogy (1961), p. 160.

98
Movies, and The Butter and Egngan to You Can't Take It With
12p, The Man Who Came to Dinner and The Solid Gold Cadgllac
we find a great abundance of common folk saying very ordinary
things. The warmly personal retort or "wisecrack" that was
Kaufman's Specialty is used by both the common and the "smart-
set" characters. Carmer tells us that Kaufman also used an
interpreter-character who pointed out and accentuated the
laughable qualities of satire for the audience. Dulcy's
brother, William Parker, filled this role in Dulcy, a wise,
hard-boiled female extra did it in Merton and a stenographer
was the interpreter-character in The Butter and Egg Man:

 

Such characterizations, embodying what the members

of the audience would like to think their own
attitude, give the playwright plenty of opportunity
to exercise his talent for dramatic irony, a device
not the most to be admired in a dramatist's repertory,
but particpiirly effective with not-too-intellectual
audiences.

Kaufman was writing for a different time and audience than
Wilde. Where he wished to make his wit more subtle, it was
possible still to reach the popular audience with the aid of
this interpreter.

The average farce will not measure up, in terms of
consistent verbal wit in dialogue, to these two great writers.
But it will have its moments of sparkling dialogue. Among
its linguistic devices will be puns, repetitions, "tag lines",
wisecracks, insults, vulgarisms, cant phrases, deformed lang-
uage, and current expressions. One will also find in the
dialogue of farce the generous sprinkling of jokes, or on its
more SOphisticated level, epigrams, to get laughs. In terms
of the average farce, we must agree with O'Hara and Bro who
say that much of the dialogue is side stepping rather than

112

forward moving. These digressions for laughter, while

 

lllIbid., p. 161.

112O'Hara and Bro, op. cit., p. 27.

99
momentarily enjoyable,’account for the inferior quality of
the average farce. Writer Samuel Spewack said it best:

A first-rate writer of farce ruthlessly eliminates
any scene, no matter how funny in itself, which
does not serve the structure of his play.113

This would be equally true of inserted gags or jokes because
Spewack writes in objection to the popular myth that a farce
consists of "funny lines."

It is probably true that the farce is usually not
compatible with a critical ear, for it seeks first to enter-
tain through action and situation. But it must be equally
false to assume that farce dialogue cannot appeal to an intel-
lectual frame of reference when handled by the masters of wit.
Brilliant dialogue and fascinating characters enhance the
farce as well as they do comedy. They must be indispensable
to comedy and even though they are secondary elements of
farce, they are vital ingredients to good farce.

 

113Spewack, op. cit., p. 6.

CHAPTER IV
TOWARD A DEFINITION OF FARCE

In 1693 Nahum Tate wrote that he had not yet seen any
definition of farce and that he would not dare be the first to
venture a definition. The "Preface", in which he expressed
this, was, however, a meaningful description of what had been
thought about farce for a long time. His intent was to estab-
lish farce as something separate from comedy on one aide and
burlesque and buffoonery on the other. According to Golden:
”It brought together, for the first time, in any orderly and
cogent manner, the principles then current upon which farce
could find some solid footing.”1 Tate apparently hoped that
other writers of farce would refute or confirm his views but
they never did. Instead they continued to write popular farce
for the theatre, outwardly unconcerned with the principles
or definitions.

It was almost two centuries later to the year (1894)
that Brander Matthews published Studies of the §ppgg containing
"A Plea for Farce". Matthews, at that time, was professor of
dramatic literature at Columbia University, a position he held
from 1891 to 1924. This brief but forceful plea was only a
preamble to his detailed treatment of farce found in A Study
of the Drama. The critical analysis of all forms of drama has
made this text useful to theatre scholars from the day it was
published in 1910. More important to us is his detailed and
critical description of farce, possibly the earliest and most
influential discussion in modern times. While Matthews'

 

1Golden, op. cit., p. 69.

100

101
description is exacting, he either refused or avOided the
opportunity to define farce.

Two other essays were written at about this same time
and contributed to the critical discussion of farce. "A
Defense of Farce", written in 1901 by G. K. Chesterton,
deplored the attitude which marked farce as debased and triv-
ial and explored the causes. It said a great deal about the
nature of farce but made no attempt to define the genre. The
second essay, "Farce", is a chapter from the book, On The
Theatre, written by the famous Russian director, Vsevolod
Meyerhold, in 1913. It was translated by Nora Beeson for the
first time in English and published in 1959 in the Tulane Drama
Review. Because of its recent translation, this discussion of
farce in performance has not significantly influenced the bulk
of theatre literature.

Since the establishment of a chair for the Brander
Matthews Professor of Dramatic Literature at Columbia, two
recent occupants have further contributed to the literature of
farce. The first and lesser contribution to farce comes from
Joseph Wood Krutch, who held the chair from 1943 to 1952.

Even though a prolific writer, his short contribution to farce
appeared in Thgptre Arts in 1956 under the title, "The Funda-
mentals of Farce." In this effective but far-too-brief
description of farce, Krutch in effect repeated the posture

of Tate. He made no attempt to define farce but urged that
someone ought to do it. His challenge has been accepted by the
second occupant.

Eric Bentley, Brander Matthews Professor since 1954,
has surpassed the master whose chair he occupies so far as
farce is concerned. There is quite naturally some similarity
between his essay "The Psychology of Farce", published in 1958,
and the chapter entitled "Farce" in his 1964 book, The Life of
the Drama. Opinions are almost unanimous that the latter is
the only "full-dress attempt" to deal with the subject in any

102

adequate way today. That explains the reason that much of
Bentley appears in this study. And yet critic Bentley has
failed, at least to date, to give us a definition of farce.

The concluding objective of this chapter will be the
statement of a definition of farce composed by synthesizing
the most meaningful elements of the genre. The source of this
definition will then be a composite of views, attitudes and
critical Opinions from Tate in 1693 to the current Bentley.
Though the first two hundred years of this time yield little
beyond Tate, the last seventy-two years have provided con-
siderable material. It is from these sources that our
definition will derive.

The extrinsic characteristics of farce

The preceding chapter attempted to distinguish farce
from comedy and explore the anatomy of the genre, farce. The
primary elements of situation and plot were investigated in
detail as well as the secondary elements of character and
dialogue. Together they compose the body of significant
characteristics that make up the structure of farce. Their
contribution toward a definition will represent the backbone
of this statement. But it is not sufficient to define in
terms of intrinsic elements alone. In our view this has proved
to be the problem with much of farce literature. Many writers
have chosen to isolate and observe a segment of farce and then
attempt to define it from this restricted basis. In order to
avoid this pitfall we will now reach beyond the inner elements
of farce, beyond structure, to analyze its outward appearance
and its purpose.

Unfortunately many views of farce are influenced either
by the writer's personal bias or the long-standing attitude
that farce is an inferior dramatic type. This can be observed
even among some of our most reputable critics. Whether it
occurs subconsciously or through intent, the effect invites

103
suspicion. If the tenor of this study appears to justify
and rationalize farce, that is not its intent. That would
hardly serve our purpose. Instead, it is this writer's function
to observe the nature of farce as objectively as one would ob-
serve melodrama, comedy or tragedy. Each has its purpose and
each its form. Each says something different about man and
his environment.

Farce, like the other forms of drama, deals with con-‘
flict, action, character, situation, plot and involvement.
These elements are treated in a uniquely different method and
form. We have observed before that initial or basic conflict
in farce is an external one, often arbitrarily imposed upon
the characters. The action which ensues is generally excessive,
violent and predominantly visual in nature. As a result, slap-
stick has become the signature of farce. Whereas comedy must
constantly confine itself to probability, Haberman acknowledges
that:

Farce can go to outrageous lengths to force a
laugh through physical contrasts, ludicrous
movements, greatly exaggerated or distorted
facial and body features, weird costumes and
horseplay.2

This emphasis on Spectacle is further confirmed by Heffner,
Selden and Sellman though they feel that within certain re-
strictions it can also be a part of "pure" comedy.3

Colorful stage settings, costumes and make-up are as
vital to farce as comedy. But the farce does not demand such
spectacle except in occasional plays where the locale is an
important aspect of the comic situation such as You Can't
Take It With You, M Sister Eileen, etc. What it often requires
is a setting with numerous windows and doors leading to closets
and other rooms to allow ample patterns for movement and

 

2Haberman, op. cit., p. 19.

3Heffner, et a1, op. cit., p. 70.

104
resources for farce business. With emphasis on the action,
the setting for farce must enhance this movement by being
functional. As Taylor has suggested, the farce tends to
minimize the living person somewhat as it stresses the inan-
imate objects, the custard pies and wobbly autos on film and
the door slamming and collapsible chairs on stage.4 The farce
remains indifferent to spectacle for its focus has always been
on action and movement.

The ridiculous or burlesque element is highly important
to farce as it contributes to the slapstick technique. Exag-
geration of incidents and of character traits have always been
a staple of farce. To many the chief element of farce is its
exaggeration of possible incongruities. And the key to it
all is improbability.

With vigorous action comes an impulse to attack, a kind
of hostility and aggression, without which, Bentley believes,
farce cannot function. And yet this hostility enjoys itself in
the situations and plot of farce as much as in joking. The
subjects of farce are certainly closely allied to the subjects
of jokes and they both reflect aggression against the moral,
ethical or social codes of man. Subjects such as the mother-in-
law, the traveling salesman, the farmer's daughter, and "modern"
cuckoldry are as common to farce as to the joke. Attacks on
religious practices and beliefs, cultural characteristics and
attitudes, marital relationships, racial idiosyncrasies, social

classes, and many others are evident in both farce and the joke.5

 

4Taylor, op. cit., p. 29.

5The Russian playwright Anton Chekhov wrote a number
of short farces in the 1880's which he called "jokes". They
were apprentice pieces and although minor are not unim ortant:

Marvin Felheim, Comed Pla s Theor and Criticism New
York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1962), p. 109.

The following one-act farces are all identified by Chekhov

as "A Joke in One Act"; The Brute (1888), A Marria e Pro osal
(1888- 1889), A Wedding (1889-1890) and The Celebration (E891):

105
Mere meaningful, however, is the concept of aggression
which Bentley sees in the majority of farce. He illustrates
with this vivid example:

In one of Noel Coward's EarceE/a man slaps his
mother-in-law's face and she falls in a swoon.

Farce is the only form of art an which such an

incident could normally occur.

If he slapped his mother the scene would be shocking, but the
mother-in-law relationship is a subject of joking and therefore
funny or laughable.

An audience watching this scene, this aggression, is
vicariously experiencing the incident. One may dearly love
his own mother-in-law but as a group, mothers-in-law are con-
sidered a meddlesome, disgusting but unavoidable legacy to the
marriage. The repressed wish to clout one's own mother-in-law
finds an outlet as he watches the incident on stage. This
healthy release, in joke or in farce, effects "a modest
catharsis", according to Bentley. One can laugh and enjoy the
satisfaction of seeing a mother-in-law get what she deserves
without being taken to court, alienating his wife or being
stricken from a will. He is permitted the outrage but apared
the consequences. The catharsis or release allows him to work
off the frustrations caused by his own mother-in-law or by the
group as a whole. It acts as a "safety valve" to those in the
audience who have miserable mothers-in-law or who enjoy the
mother-in-law joke.

Bentley derives his "safety valve" concept from Freud
whose Liberation theory has been stated earlier. He may be
placing too much emphasis on aggression when he says:

 

Anton Chekhov, The Brute and Other Farces. Eric Bentley (ed.)
(New York: Grove Press Inc., 1 .

6Bentley, The Life of the Drama, p. 240.

106

It seems to me that if farces are examined they
will be found to contain very little 'harmless'
joking and very much that is 'tendentiousl.
Without aggression farce cannot function.

If by "tendentious" he means a "point of view" or "bias",
we cannot take exception, for without its satiric slap, the
farce seems relegated to playfulness exclusively. But play-
fulness has also been a function of farce through various
periods of theatre history.

The nineteenth century French farce and its ribald
and often vulgar treatment of sex in the "bedroom farce" can
be compared with the American version of "bedroom farce"
popular in the first two decades of the twentieth century,
filled with mere playfulness. Dusenbury states that the
American playwright was developing a type of farce, remi-
niscent of the popular English and French marital farces,
which was less immoral and more acceptable.8 The aggression
against family piety and propriety which Bentley refers to in
building his argument is strong in French farce. But the
harmless and ludicrous fun of the American farces of Avery
Hopwood and Margaret Mayo might better support the play instinct
theory of Max Eastman.

In his book, Epjpyment of Lau hter, Eastman takes strong
exception to Freud and repeatedly declares that he is wrong
in identifying comic pleasure with release from adult inhi-
bitions. His arguments are convincing, but more important here
is his view that things can be funny only when we are in fun
and that grown-up people retain in varying degrees the
aptitude for being playful or in fun.9 Playfulness, rather

 

71bid.
8Dusenbury, cp. cit., p. 556.

9Max Eastman, En o ent of Lau hter (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1936), p.

107
than aggression, seems more evident in the American farces
described by Dusenbury. It started with Twin Beds and
Apartment 12-K in 1914. The latter play by Rising:

. . . adopted 'the-inebriated-man-in-the-wrong-
bedroom' idea of Twin Beds, along with the absent
husband and the innocent wife, but added the sus-
picious mother-in-law and a burglar to make the
farce more farcical. Fair and Warmer (1915),
Parlor Bedroom and Bath (1917), in Mabel's
Room (1919), Please Get Married (1919 , She

Walked in Her Slee (1919), The Girl in the
Limousine (1919), and Nighty Night (1919) are
0 the bedroom farce genre, with many other

productions suggesting the setting but not
actually displaying the scene on stage.10

Krutch described them as: ". . . usually innocent enough in
action but . . . always promising to take a turn into some-
thing not quite so innocent."11 Regardless of the degree of
innocence, it seems obvious that the theatre-goer who chose
to see any of the plays named here must have gone in the
spirit of fun expectant of an evening of playfulness.

The bedroom farce leads us precisely into one of the
"characteristic sins" of farce, according to Grebanier.
He warns that the writer of farce should not yield to the
temptation of steeping the play in vulgarity. The farce of
antiquity was crude, gross and apparently licentious in speech
as was the commedia which followed. In fact the charges of
vulgarity and immorality or unmorality have been leveled at
farce of all ages. There have been periodic crusades against
"dirty plays", of which farces have been considered the
chief offenders.

Such a movement took place in America in the 1920's as
a demand for censorship was provoked by suggestive plays,

 

10
ll
12

Dusenbury, op. cit., p. 101.
Krutch, o . cit., p. 93.

Grebanier, op. cit., p. 291.

I [I'll ll '1 III l. 1'

108
particularly farces. Critic John Corbin made the distinction
between the French and.American morality in 1918 slightly
before the crusade got underway:

Two farces are endeavoring to wag the tail

of the dog these days, one in the pure French
tradition, (or rather, in the French tradition
purified) and the other in our native American
style. Has it been sufficiently noted that we
have deve10ped a new and indigenous genre in
farce? Keeerer Smiling, at the Astor, falls

in line with Get—Rich-Qpick-Wallingford,

Turn to the R1 t, A Tailor-Ma e Man and a
score of others. Business deals and sudden
riches are the point at issue, with at most

a background of love or married life.

Farces of Gallic origin, like She Walked in
Her Slee , . . . centre as inevitably in
marital infidelity, real or suppositious--
real in the case of the imported play,
suppositious in its American imitation.

To consider either style as an exponent of
national morals is perhaps to consider it

too seriously. Immorality that has become a
convention, especially a humorous convention,
has lost much of its taint. Yet it is worth
pointing out that, as French farce makes a
mock of the national instinct for love-making,
so our native form of high jinks centres in shady
business practice. . . . Are we conventionally
immoral i3 money making as the French are

in love? '

Nine years later critic George Jean Nathan acknowledged
that conventionality as well as the least original and merit-
orious French farce imports were the reasons for the decline
in America of this particular form of stage farce:

There was a time when the sex didos of the French
farce writers seemed very saucy and juicy, but
today they have come to take on an air of conven-
tionality, and not only of conventionality but,

I dare say, of relative innocence. The so-to-
speak more serious drama has gone so far with

 

13John Corbin, "French and American Morals in Farce",
New York Times (Aug. 18, 1918), II, p. 2.

109

sex themes that the French farces, even at
their naughtiest, begin to seem tame.14

The decline of French imports began with World War I
but American playwrights and producers were fashioning their
own brand of "bedroom farce" and much of it resorted to
sensational material. In the post-war prosperity, entertain—
ment was in demand and the bedroom farce enjoyed a renewed
Spurt of popularity. Farce writers capitalized on risque
titles and plots in such plays as Scrambled Wives, Margy the
Poor Girl, Rollo's Wild Oats, Getting Gertie's Garter, A
Bachelor's Night, Tgy It With Alice, The Harem, The Blonde
Sinner, The Demi-Vir in, and Ladies' Night.

‘Ladies' Night, written by Hopwood and college professor
Charlton Andrews, ran for 375 performances beginning in August
of 1920. In defending his play against charges of immorality,
Hopwood called the play simply a satire on ridiculous fashions:

I have simply forced audiences to face ridiculous
facts, and, if these facts savor of immodesty, that
is the fault of Fashion, and not my fault. . . .
This play is neither immoral nor is it unmoral in
the present stage of society. . . . In a play like
'Ladies' Night' there is no trace of sexual feel-
ing, because the whole thing is carried out in

a comical way. . . . One cannot be amorous, and
laugh one's self to death. . . . The drama is a
democratic art, and the dramatist is not the
monarch, but the servant of the public. The voice
of the public should be considered the voice of
the gods. My thesis seems to be axiomatic, and
unsusceptible of argument. Yet it is continually
denied by the Uplifters, who persist in looking down
upon ige public, and decrying the wisdom of the
many.

A year after Hopwood's statement, his co-producer of
Ladies' Ni ht, A. H. Woods, was reported to be forsaking

 

14George Jean Nathan, "The Passin of French Farce",
American Mercury 12 (December 1927), p. 5 6.

1silvery Hopwood, "Is the Undraped Drama Unmoral?",

Theatre Magazine 33 (January, 1921), p. 6. .

110
the bedroom farce because it would soon lose its popularity
if continued indefinitely. He claimed it had nothing to do
with being brought before a New York grand jury to defend his
production of The Demi-Virgin. This was another Hopwood farce
based on a French Original, which, though publicly denounced
as an immoral play, brought an acquittal for Woods by a jury
selected from a panel of three hundred who saw the production
and disagreed with the charge. The Deni-Virgin opened on
October 18, 1921 at the Times Square Theatre and ran for 268
performances. Woods approved of the bedroom farce:

. . . on the ground that the public approves of
them, pays to see them, and that he himself sees
nothing wicked or immoral in them. . . . Those who
are afraid of having their sensibilities bruised

by my plays need not buy tickets for them. . . .

It is argued in defence of "zippy" shows that th
public is more or less shrouded in gloom, and the
reformers are constantly doing something or other
to take the joy out of life. . . . Plagues, Hard
times, All sorts of woes. I should be considered

a public benefactor when I try, by means of a zippy
show, to drag people out of the depths of despond. 6

Whether the "depth of despond" was as serious as Woods
saw it in 1922 is questionable but the gloom of impending
financial doom was just a few short years away. The movement
for a new morality of the stage was gaining wide acceptance
while the theatre in general was prospering.

American theatre was experiencing a transitional
development that was eventually to bring it to a momentary
peak in 1927. Many varied factors were contributing to this
growth and development. The Pulitzer Prize was initiated in
1917 for the best American play. The year 1919 had brought
the actors' strike, the termination of which had led to the
formation of Actors' Equity Association. At about the same

 

16Anonymous, "Bedroom Farces Are Passe Declares Their
Leadizg Producer", Current Opinion 73 (September, 1922),
p. 36 .

111

time the famed Theatre Guild was forming as an outgrowth
of the Washington Square Players. Hopwood's Gold Diggers
opened what was to become a run of 720 performances and
reportedly net its author an income of $236,000.00.17
Financial success could be realized in the theatre. Touring
shows were in a healthy condition. A record 268 Broadway
productions arrived in New York in 1927. "Talkies" were begin-
ning to attract many of the Broadway hapefuls who saw a new
field of employment opportunities in sound motion pictures.
But the theatre of these lush days was soon to experience a
setback with the advent and aftermath of the depression in
1929.

Haberman explains that:

. . . profanity, near nudity and obscenities
became commonplace in serious drama, the farces
that employed them lost their erstwhile shock
appeal. By 1929, a play that was merely 'naughty'
was outmoded and mild. In order to be considered
daring, a play had to go to such lengths that it
was in danger of beigg intolerably offensive to
playgoers of taste.

What we then can observe is a prospering theatre in
a sensational time. Farce, with its basic simplicity of
purpose, became an obvious form to express the gay and accel-
erating times. The apparent simplicity of farce made it
attractive to the hack writers and producers seeking quick
financial returns in the fast-growing theatre. As a result,
many plays were written to exploit the sensational, serious
drama as well as farce. In the hands of such writers the
farce began to lose favor and to decline in popularity. These
farces became the obvious targets of the new morality and the
deprecatory attitude toward farce as a genre accelerated.

 

l7
Arno L. Bader "Avery Hapwood Dramatist" Michi an
’ ’ REE—g“, p. 68.

Alumnus Qparterly Review Vol. LXVI, No. 10 (Dec. 5,

18Haberman, 0p, cit., p. 150.

nl'llllllllvEII-II III".- III

 

 

 

112
The good and honest farces that were written suffered by
association with the "sensational" plays called farce. Both
the truly playful atmOSphere and the hostility of genuine
farce had been misused and abused. Though farce was by no
means free of guilt, it unfortunately absorbed the brunt of
disparagement for a movement it actively supported, but did
not lead. Again, as so often in the past, the farce stood con-
demned without trial.

One of the prominent roles of farce has been as an
afterpiece, in which brevity was a prime requisite. In this
role, as in its original sense of "stuffing”, the farce
functioned as episodic relief or comic filler:

In England by 1800 it was not uncommon to apply
the designation farce to any short piece that was
performed after the main play, regardless of its
character; and, with the general confusion of
dramatic terminology in the 19th century, farce
lost its identity and became indistinguishable,
except for its brevity, from decadent comedy of
manners on one hand and from vaudeville extrayg-
ganze, pantomime, and burlesque on the other.

American farce existed primarily as afterpiece until
the Civil War (1861-1865) but after the war the farce became a
popular full-length entertainment.

Millett and Bentley acknowledge that:

In the Restoration when the word farce was introduced,
it was not used to refer to a special type of comic
technique at all, but to the short humorous play which
was coming into popularity, a play of three acts
instead of the customary five. 0

Professor Hughes feels this distinction is both "broad and
careless." While it is true that most pieces labeled farce
ran to less than five acts and most plays in one act only were
labeled farce, even this rule had some interesting exceptions.

 

19MacMillan, loc . cit .

20Millett and Bentley, op. cit., p. 121.

 

 

 

lullll II" It ‘11 4‘

113
He cites several illustrations and concludes that: ”In
dozens of cases plays in two or three acts were labeled
indiscriminately farce or comedy."21

As we have stated earlier, Stephenson insists that
brevity is the one item that withstands scrutiny in defini-
tions of farce. "Not accidently, as many critics assume, but
'of their nature, farces are brief." Anecdote, fable, folk tale
and the like are suitable materials for farce: ". . . because
farce requires short subjects." The devices of farce serve
it well because they: ". . . call for short rhythms and
brief limits."22 He concludes that to accomplish its purpose
of laughter, the method of farce is critical, a comic shorthand.

Though brevity is a condition of farce, by virtue of its
subject matter and its form, it is not an exclusive charac-
teristic nor a distinguishing element. "In spite of what seems
a fairly common misapprehension in our day, farce was not dis-
tinguished from comedy on the basis of length."23

The farce, like the joke, aspires to laughter. Our
common experiences tell us that we laugh as hard and more
frequently at short jokes than at lengthy ones. We also know
that laughter in a group or crowd is infectious and tends to
accelerate and intensify itself. But there are limits to this
process which exist as much for farce as for the joke. The
restriction of brevity imposes itself on the farce which seeks
always maximum laughter.

In the light of such historical variations, one can only
conclude that brevity is as consistent with farce of all periods
as it is with jokes. Certainly the joke and the farce sit-
uation seem inconsistent with the five-act length for this must
unduly strain the compounding complications and appreciably
reduce the impact. In the same sense, the question of one- or

 

2LHughes, A Century of English Fgrce, pp. 758.
22

23

Stephenson, op. cit., pp. 89-90.

Hughes, loc. cit.

114
three-act seems immaterial. Chekhov's one-act farces
required nothing more to make their point. Morton, Gregory,
Monkhouse and other writers of one-act farces have found this
true as well. Abbott and Holmes required the full three-act
time to get their verse writer "kidnapped" and returned safely
in Three Men on a Horse. The majority of writers employ the
longer form and the determination between one- or three-acts
must surely be made by expediency. The historical change in
terminology appears to support this conclusion.

Simplicity appears to be another mark of farce. From
subject matter to audience appeal the farce has remained free
of complication and readily understood. In spite of the com-
plexity of situation and plot, no one can misinterpret or fail
to understand the story of the farce. Millett and Bentley
identify it as one of the simpler forms of drama because it
demands no thought for its appreciation. As a result of this
simplicity it has been, together with melodrama, the most pop-
ular of dramatic forms. But this popularity and simplicity is
misleading to the critic in particular.

Because of its intense speed the audience is kept at
the very surface of situation and is prevented from reflecting
on incidents past. The resulting degree of illusion is small
and the spectator retains a comparatively detached perspective.
Thompson makes the distinction between comedy and farce on this
point of illusion. He sees comedy depending for effect on
illusion because its law is realism. The farce is not con-
cerned with either illusion or reality.24

In the broad view everything about farce smacks of
simplicity. Its purpose is laughter, its playing is active,
it accepts coincidence, its plot structure can be simple, its
typical characters are ordinary people, its characters usually

 

24Thompson, op. cit., p. 218.

115
say ordinary things in obvious ways, and its greatest appeal
is to the popular audience whose intelligence may be said to
be quite average. To some, the simplicity of farce marks it
as trivial. Mention has already been made that because of its
seeming triviality, the farce has been overlooked by scholarly
criticism.

Eric Bentley tells us that the great drama critic Sarcey
and playwright Labiche both justified farce on grounds of its
triviality. Sarcey found the serious plays about adultery
unsavory and felt that the playwrights should get instead a
little fun out of the subject. While watching a good farce we
often experience the feeling that the playwright had fun in
writing it and the actors are in like manner enjoying it. It
seems so easy and simple to do.

In The Life of the Drama, Bentley expresses this paradox
of simplicity most graphically. He says that farce may seem
simple in that it goes right "at" things. It is absolutely
direct and presents an unmeditated vision. Farce may also:

. . . seem simple in its acceptance of everyday
appearances and of everyday interpretations of

these experiences because it can use the ordinary
unenlarged environment and ordinary down-at-heel-

men of the street. The trouble is that farce is

simple in both these ways at once, thereby failing

to be simple at all. Farce brings together the'

direct and wild fantasies and the everyday and

drab realities. The interplay between the two is 25
the very essence of this art--the farcical dialectic.

After six years of research into the nature and method
of farce, this writer can readily verify the Bentley view.
At the surface the farce bears every mark of simplicity. If
one does not believe this after seeing or reading a farce, he
has only to turn to the majority of critics and scholars for
confirmation. But investigation and observation into the
very nature of farce beneath this surface image reveals a

 

25Bentley, The Life of the Drama, p. 241.

 

 

III. l4l III II in"! II. I’- II| l

116
series of complex and often subtle relationships and tech-
niques that tend to defy recognition.

Farce is truly the drama of beguilement. The farce on
stage has deceived both audiences and its many critics for
years. The audience invites and accepts farce for the laughter
that it provokes. They eagerly accept its coincidences and
improbabilities. But the critic faces a dilemma. If he
assumes the audience role, his critical effectiveness is
diminished. To stand apart from the audience, where he must,
the critic cannot enter the experience. Either posture must
be uncomfortable and the critic often writes of the surface
impression and laments the obvious simplicity. Within this
apparent simplicity lies the universal power of farce: the
universality of appeal to high and low, to the intelligent
and the simple; the universality of purpose--to laugh and enjoy
life. "Farce is as universal and perennial as the need for
laughter."26 To this we can only add the climactic and
colorful statement by Meyerhold:

The farce is eternal. If its principles are for

a time expelled from the walls of the theatre,

we nevertheless know that they are firmly engraved
in the lines of the manuscripts left by the
theatre's greatest writers.

The attitude that farce is inferior and lacks sig-
nificance because of simplicity presents an interesting phenome—
non. It stems more often from the critics and dramatic theo-
rists than from anywhere else in the theatre. Exacting dir-
ectors admit that staging a farce requires skill and knowledge.
Some will say that it is more difficult and demanding than
directing comedy or serious plays. .Serious actors quickly
confirm the difficulty of farce. Some readily acknowledge

 

26

27VsevolodMeyerhold, "Farce", trans. Nora Beeson,
Tulane Drama Review (September 1959), p. 148.

Lea, cp. cit., p. 185.

117
that farcical acting is a sensitive technique not found in
many performers. Many playwrights have attempted and abandoned
farce because of its highly specialized demands and allusive
nature. The simple farce puts great demands on its practi-
tioners who seldom speak in its defense. As a result the
deprecatory attitude perpetuates itself.

The pprpose of farce
The farce beguiles the unconcerned and the unaware

with its simple and light-hearted fun. Yet through careful
analysis we are not deceived by this drama of beguilement. On
occasion we see farce at its spectacular best and yet we know
it need not rely on spectacle. We see farce that is playful
and foolish, and yet we know it to be hostile and aggressive.
We see farce at times immoral and licentious and yet we know
it to be as moral as society. We see farce brief because of
its subject matter and form and yet we know it can be fully
protracted with numerous intricate complications. We see
farce as simple and yet complex.

Farce may also beguile us in its purpose or its
purposelessness. From one view we might assume that farce lacks
any serious purpose. Hughes may be speaking for all farce
writers and yet may be oversimplifying when he makes the follow-
ing observation:

Ip the face of so nearly uniform an opposition
figuring the period from 1650 to l75§7 the writer

0 mere farce could hardly expect to be given

serious consideration, and he did not ask for it.

His tone . . . is frankly apologetic: "What I

offer here," he says in effect, "is trash, con-
cocted in haste for the purpose of mere light
entertainment for those who have no objection to

such frivolity. No one should make the error of
taking it so seriously as to examine it critically.28

This statement is as generally true of the English
playwright from the Restoration to the mid-18th century as

 

28Hughes, op, cit., p. 278.

118
it was in America during the first three decades of the
20th century. It is not surprising that we find the purpose
of farce described in many sources as it is in the following
statements: "immediate entertainment is the sole aim",
Millett and Bentley; "the purpose of farce is to entertain",
Hatlen. This fact alone makes farce appear purposeless to
some while others see a positive purpose. Eaton's attitude
may console the former group. "It is no reflection on our
taste if we enjoy the frank fun and honest nonsense of clean
and witty farce."29 The latter would praise this purpose and
propose that this, in itself, is a serious purpose.

Two prominent American playwrights have supported the
view that farce has a serious and meaningful purpose. The
great farces survive because they are intelligent, writes
Samuel Spewack, and to make people think without pain is a
formidable task.30 Thornton Wilder concurs with Spewack in
saying: "Since farce is an intellectual exercise, the only
ornament it welcomes is the additional intellectual pleasure
of lines of social comment and generalization.” Wilder goes
on to give support to the serious purpose of farce:

Farce would seem to be intended for child-like
minds still touched with grossness; but the history
of the theatre shows us that the opposite is true.
Farce has always flourished 3n ages of refinement
and great cultural activity. 1

Once again we see the duality of farce. This drama of
beguilement can be purposeful while appearing to lack purpose
beyond entertainment. But is this actually the case? One
might suspect the opinions of the men who wrote Boy Meets Girl
and The Merchant of Yonkers, later successfully re-written as

 

29

3oSpewack, op. cit., p. 7.

31Thornton Wilder, "Noting the Nature of Farce",‘ggy
York Times (Jan. 8, 1939), Sect. 9, p. 1.

Eaton, op. cit., p. 273.

119
The Matchmaker, as being overstated and biased. They are
claiming that farce makes people think and that social comment
and generalization can be a part of farce. We have mentioned
before that farce is capable of satire and we now see confir-
mation for this view.

Though the term "satire" tends to have varied meanings
at different times in history, we can establish our definition
somewhat firmly through the contributions of Frye, Garnett,
Robson and others?2 Satire blends or brings together for
observation a critical attitude toward society with humor and
wit. Its aim is to amuse the observer with that which is
ridiculous or unseemly and its limits range from fantasy to
absurdity. The object of ridicule or attack may be ideas,
conventions or people and they are frequently observed from
more than one viewpoint. When people provide the object of
ridicule the focus is often on the group but, whether together
or individually, character tends to become caricature. Though
satire encompasses both invective and irony, it tends to be
more effectively satiric when minimizing the abusiveness of
invective and the gloom and sullenness of irony.

Tate's preface contains the earliest statement that
farce could use satire, if we interpret accurately his usage.
He wrote: ". . . Farce is not inconsistent with good Sence,
because 'tis capable of Satyr, which is Sence with a Veng-
eance."33 This was written in 1693, a time in which the words

 

32Northrop Frye, Anatom of Criticism. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1957; Richard Garnett in Encyclo-
paedia Britannica. 11th ed., Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press, 1911; William W. Robson in Cassell's Ency-
clo aedia of World Literature. S. A. Steinberg ed. New York:
Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1954; William F. Thall, Addison
Hibbard and C. Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature. New
York: Odyssey Press, 1960.

33Tate, op. cit., p. 14.

120
"satire" and "satyr" were often confused and interchanged.
Other than the interchanging of words, The Oxford Companion
to the Theatre tells us that there is no connection between
satyric drama and satire or any form of Greek comedy. Tate's
references prior to this statement are to similarities in the
plays of Aristophanes and the plays of Shadwell, Beaumont
and Fletcher. In addition, Tate has defined his term as "Sence
with a Vengeance" which seems close to "invective," a common
term in definitions of satire. From this point of view, it
seems clear that Tate and others he spoke for recognized that
farce was capable of satire. We ought also to underscore
Tate's terms "'tis capable" and note the option. Farce can
function with or without satire and thus it is given secondary
importance.

There have been few to follow Tate in this view.
Thompson allows satire in farce when it is the mere ridicule
of an individual. Otherwise it belongs to the comedy of idea
because it involves comparison of the ideal in life with
actuality. Professor Rowe, quoted earlier, acknowledges that
farce moves easily into satire. Bentley's aggression or
hostility can readily be manifested as attacks on persons,
ideas, or institutions of various forms. The overwhelming
majority of writers elect either to ignore discussing the role
of satire in farce or support the distinction between comedy
and farce that allows comedy the sole property of satire.

34

 

v

34"The words satire and satyr were probably at one time
pronounced alike, as the derivatives satiric and sat ric are
still; and the common use of,y and 1 as interchanges e symbols
in the 16th and 17th c. still further contributed to the con-
fusion." N.E.D. VIII, p. 119. Under the figurative definition
of satire: "a thing, fact, or circumstance that has the effect
of making some person or thing ridiculous," N.E.D. illustrates
with a spelling like Tate's in exactly the same year:" 1693,
Norris Pract. Dics. (1698) IV, ii Religion has no advantage
from the Commendations of those whose Lives are a constant
Satyr upon it."

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121
Highet makes some meaningful distinctions in satire
for us. He finds that in nearly every satire there are some
elements of farce and that comedy and farce are kind compared
to satire and their purpose is good:

The writer of comedy or farce . . . likes people
not in spite of their peculiarities, but because
of them. He could not endure the notion that all
the oddities might disappear and leave the world
to routine and to him. . . . The purpose of comedy
and farce is to cause painless undestructive
laughter at human weaknesses and incongruities.
The purpose of satire is through laughter and
invective, to cure folly and to punish evil;

but if it does not achieve this purpose, it is
content to jear gg folly and to expose evil to
bitter contempt.

Highet uses a human analogy to distinguish the point of view
of comedy and farce. Comedy shows the amused friend who loves
his friends' absurdities and farce reveals the servant who
likes his master but cannot keep from befooling and mimicking
him. Highet's thesis seems to assert that farce makes use

of satire primarily to poke fun or ridicule with no conscious
intent to correct. This may be in Bentley's thinking when

he calls farce the art of escape, running from social problems
as well as all other forms of moral responsibility. From this
vantage point the farce writer cannot realistically hope to
correct but can make us obviously aware of some folly.

Nardin observed no satire in American farce from 1865
to 1914. By his definition farces were plays: ". . . from
which rationality and normality have disappeared."36 We have
no reason to question his confusion because most of the plays
in this period are unavailable and this view is confirmed by
others.

 

35Highet, op, cit., pp. 155-56.
36

Nardin, o . cit., p. 6.

.l‘lllllll:[..lllllnll.l|lllll.| [I [III III! I Ii! it!
I‘ll ll

122
In his study of American farces from 1914 to 1950,
Haberman‘implied a similar conclusion:

It can by outlandish exaggeration. and over-
statement focus attention upon a person,
system or institution, but, unlike satire,
its edge is blunted by its uppeal portrayal
of characters and incidents.

We can and ought to raise several serious questions to
this view. Haberman's picture of farce characters seems some-
what stark. The people of farce may be instantly recognizable
types that are not fully developed or revealed but they are
not unreal. They are flesh and blood people caught in a set
of circumstances that are improbable. Neither farce nor
satire are as concerned for the individual as they are for the
folly. It seems also that exaggeration and overstatement are
the tools of both satire and farce. They may be functioning
in farce strictly in a mimicking and fun-making manner and
in satire that cannot achieve its corrective purpose and so
must jeer and make fun as well.

One could also charge Haberman with the obvious over-
sight of Kaufman except that this is the period of the ”farce-
comedy." By refusing to question this "genre", we must assume
the writer's acceptance of it. From such a view the caustic
satire of Kaufman's farces would relegate them to ”farce-
comedy" and not farce. It is true that most Kaufman plays
have elements of both farce and comedy. Carmer wrote that:

No living American is more adept than he at spanking
the silly vagaries of his contemporaries. Scholars
may feel that his rod of correction is too much of

a slapstick to allow of his endeavors being digni-
fied by the term, comedy of manners, but their
purpose 38 very evidently the same that Congreve
claimed.

 

37
38

Haberman, op. cit., pp. 15-16.
Carmer, op. cit., p. 168.

123

The terms comedy of manners, drawing-room comedy,
artificial comedy, and high comedy have all been used some-
what interchangeably and generally denote the type of comedy
that focused on the correction of social absurdities. Nicell
has called it "Congreve comedy" after the master of the form
that originated in France with Moliere and was prevalent
during the 17th and 18th centuries. At its best it was
delicate and quite disarming but at its worst equivocal and
indecent. It was always witty and usually elaborated on
seeming trivia. Its sharp point of satire was frequently
thrust among high society, the sophisticate and aristocrat.
While Kaufman was often nipping at the socially prominent, he
was also working over the average man, the average business,
the average organization, and the average politician. His
sweep was broad enough to cover large corporations in 233
Solid Gold Cadillac (1953), or the movie industry in Merton of
the Movies (1922). But he offered few, if any, solutions to
these social ills. In this sense many of Kaufman's plays are
much closer to farce than to comedy, even though the dialogue
is witty. But let us return to satire for the moment.

It appears that satire itself has been changing.
Worchester generalizes this evolution in his preface when he
writes:

I have attempted to show that the vast laux satura
or hotch patch of satiric literature is susceptible
of classification and that a natural evolution has
occurred, whereby complex and subtle forgo have
arisen out of simple and primitive ones. 9

Criticism of our increasingly more complex society may be
more opportune but at the same time has become more difficult.
With a more complex society and equally complex problems, we

 

39David Worchester, The Art of Satire (New York:
Russell and Russell, 1960), p. v. This is the second printing
of this book, originally published in 1940 by President and
Fellows of Harvard College.

124
must agree with Duff that the answers or solutions today are
more obscured and complex:

Contemporary satire, largely represented by novels
and plays rather than by poetry, exhibit one
striking difference from the satire of the ancients.
There is less confidence on the part of the modern
satirist that he himself stands on sure ground in
his social criticism. . . . This loss of sureness
seems to characterize the present-day attitude in
contrast with that of even a few generations ago

. . . and it serves to explain why many novels and
plays now appear, after a series of negations, to
end on a merely interrogative note. . . . The
ancient satirist had a less complex world to survey,
so that it is easier under his criticisms to grasp
his pOsi£6ve beliefs and to understand his

outlook.

This brings us to the point that has been overlooked
since Tate. Farce can and frequently does use satire but as
a by-product and of secondary importance. We find it in the
plays of Aristophanes, Plautus, Moliere and Kaufman though
their basic or primary purpose seems to be entertainment.

In the hands of masterful writers the inclusion of effective
satire becomes an accessory to the fact of fun. It is not
introduced as Klein has stated, as an attempt to reform farce
through the use of satire. It must be from just such a bias
that the bulk of theatre literature has overlooked the role
of satire in farce. It is this writer's feeling that we have
seen in America from World War I to the present the inclusion
in farce of a broad and most blatant satire. This has not
been the pointed satire that would correct or punish our fol-
lies but the rollicking, fun-making satire that points up and
accentuates the folly itself. While it has caused us to hold
our sides in laughter, it might also have made us think. We
obviously had fun and we must have seen the obvious point.

 

40J. Wright Duff, Roman Satire: Its Outlook on Social
Life (Berkeley, Calif.: University 0 Ca 1 ornia Press,
1936), pp. 10-11.

125

We will now move from a major omission to unanimous
agreement in theatre literature. 'The fundamental purpose of
farce is to arouse or produce laughter. To a man, all will
agree that this is the very heart of farce.

Because of this unanimity it would serve no purpose here
to identify the many sources. It may suffice to say that from
Brander Matthews' 1894 essay to Leo Hughes, in a letter to this
writer dated February 6, 1966, this basic purpose has been
repeatedly verified. For over seventy years laughter has been
recognized as the paramount purpose of farce. With the prin-
ciple clearly in mind, we need look only at the variety of
terms and colorful descriptions to realize the significance of
this purpose: the sole or the highest aim; to excite, arouse,
or produce laughter; designed for laughter; fun for its own
sake; laughter for the sake of laughter; riotious, continuous
and unrestrained laughter; constant series of laughs--continually
in a roar of merriment and; hilarity, continued and increasing.

This vigorous laughter affords man a healthy release.
It serves much the same function in the theatre as does joking
in everyday conversations. Rowe sees this as a laudable
purpose in itself, for laughter within proper bounds is a
healthy release to natural human responses. In yet more force-
ful terms Matthews has called it:

. . . the hearty laughter which has cleared the
air, and which is a boon in itself and a gift

to be thankful for. . . . But laughter is a gift
for which mankind is rarely as grateful as it
ought to be. We are eager to find distractinn
from worry and surcease of sorrow if only for a
moment, and we are ready to pay the humorist the
wages he asks.

This may be the stimulus from which Bentley conceived
his "healthy release” which he calls "a modest catharsis“

 

4I'Matthews, §tudies of the Stage, p. 214.

126
because it predates the earlier Freud by twenty-two years.
In The Life of the Drama, Bentley makes the following
observation: '

Gilbert Murray has suggested that the idea of
catharsis is easier to apply to comedy than

to tragedy--easier in the sense that we agree
to it more easily. There is already a consensus
of opinion that some of our psychic violence--
what our grandfathers called excess animal
spirits--can be worked off in laughter. It is
generally agreed that a good laugh does us good,

that it doez us good as a sort 0 emotional
"work-out". 2

' The prolific American farce writer Avery Hopwood,
whose "bedroom farces" and other farces earned him many
fortunes over, expressed his view quite freely:

I remember, at college, [finiversity of Michiga§7
we heard much of "the tragic katharsis" of
Aristotle. This was his teaching, that from the
witnessing of a great tragedy, an audience derived
‘ a kind of "purification" or "katharsis". But, in
my opiniOn, there is a comic, as well as a tragic,
katharsis. And the majority of people, I feel
reasonably certain, derive more benefit from a
good comedy than from an equally good tragedy.43

Though he died in 1928, Hopwood reflects what is
probably true today. His experiences and familiarity with
American theatre and the theatre abroad just after the turn
of the century give some validity to his observations. The
idea of a comic catharsis has been inferred or expressed by
other writers as well. One of these was the French play-
wright Anouilh who said, "everything is ugly, everything is
sad, and afterwards we know it. But the soul must be purged
bylaughter." In his La Petite Moliere, Anouilh is implying
a comic catharsis as the only virile attitude to take in

 

42Bentley, op. cit., p. 224.
43

HOPWOOd. "Why I Don't Write More Serious Plays",
p. 10.

127
the face of the human condition-~to laugh at it.
Playwright Maurice Valency, professor of comparative
literature at Columbia University, alludes to a catharsis in
Greek or classic comedy:

The classic forms; essentially objective,
invite an almost cruel degree of hostility

on the part of the audience with regard to

the clownish characters on the stage. They
were meant, most likely, to effect a purgation
of emotion through laughter, and to leave the
audience in that stoical state of mind--
apatheia--which the Greeks consid2£ed
appropriate to the ideal citizen.

Professor Louis Kronenberger also implies a comic
catharsis as he observes comedy as criticism:

If through laughing at others we purge ourselves
of certain spiteful and ungenerous instincts--
as through tragedy we achieve a higher and more
publicized catharsis--that is not quite the
whole of it. Comedy need not be hostile to
idealism; it need only show how far human

beings fall short of the ideal.45

The most recent and complete view of a comic catharsis
is presented in Comedy in Action by Elmer Blistein.. The
passage reads as follows:

I suggést that if there is a physiological

theory of tragedy, and Aristotle's Poetics with

its emphasis on catharsis is at least one such
theory, then it is equally possible to have a
physiological theory of comedy. This theory would
also emphasize catharsis, but not catharsis of the
emotions of pity and terror. The emotions that

we seek to pur e in comedy are those of scorn and
mockery . . . “of the comic antagonist, the comic
villain. Strangely enough, the tragic hero and the
comic villain have some things in common. Both are
over-reachers; both suffer from hubris; both try to

 

44Maurice Valency, "The Comic Spirit on the American

Stage", Theatre Arts (September, 1958), p. 22.

45Louis Kronenberger, The Thread of Laughter (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), p. 5.

128

possess more power than is rightfully theirs.
The tragic hero is destroyed by the operation
of nemesis; the comic villain is frustrated
through the mockery of our laughter. The
audience of a comedy does not ask that the
villain be dezgroyed; it merely asks that

he be foiled.

Many sources and considerable detail have been
included here to substantiate the idea that laughter provides
a healthy release for man. Such a release tends to purge the
emotions of worry, of scorn and mockery, of our spiteful and
ungenerous instincts and to momentarily end our sorrow and
restore the balance to our psychological and physiological
being. We feel strongly that there is a comic catharsis,
modified somewhat from the tragic catharsis. Since Aristotle's
complete observations on comedy are not available, we can only
speculate that he wrote it first. At any rate, it seems to
invite the detailed scrutiny of further research.

A comic catharsis, if there can be such, would be
applicable to both comedy and farce for both hold the purpose
of laughter. The focus of such purgation would vary with
comedy and farce as well as interrelate. It would interrelate
in the sense that our emotional and our intellectual functions
are inescapably entwined. It would interrelate because
comedy and farce are both capable of thought and foolishness.
It would vary essentially because comedy is primarily intel-
lectual and farce is basically emotional. In this view the
purgation through comic catharsis would help us solve our
problems in comedy and help us bear our problems in farce.
Both would benefit the man who laughs.

Though the farce may lack a serious purpose, it must
be evident by now that its true purpose is laughter. If
this cannot claim to be a serious goal it must certainly

 

46311Ste1n, 020 Cite, PP. 39-400

129
be evident that it is a worthy one. The drama of beguile-
ment continues to be simple and yet complex. It will prob-
ably always seem foolish but quite worthwhile. So long as
there is laughter in the theatre, the farce will continue to
seek more and greater sources of laughter while appearing
only to enjoy them.

Toward a definition of farce

The difficulty in attempting a definition of farce is
the frequent contradictory points of view expressed in the
literature. This has been particularly evident in this study
which seeks definition by deduction. Such arguments began
with the initial question of whether farce can be defined.
Tate responded negatively and Matthews positively. Tate
said there were no rules to be prescribed, no pattern to copy
and that farce was altogether the creation of imagination.

He then retired from commenting on farce hopeful that someone
would prove him wrong.

It took two hundred years and Brander Matthews to dis-
pute Tate's assertion. Matthews insisted that farce was an
art with laws of its own which he later elaborated. His
writing was a pioneering venture to describe the farce but it
fell short of definition, perhaps wisely.

Generally speaking, farce has meant what it does now
though this has remained a superficial understanding of the
genre. There has never been, nor is there today, a consistent
use of the term. There have been few earnest attempts at
definition and even fewer detailed studies of farce. It is
not merely oversight that has created this situation but an
attitude of avoidance. Having seen no definition, Nahum Tate
declined to be the first to venture a definition. Even today
Professor Gassner expresses a common attitude: "I am not at
‘all sure that an absolute definition can he arrived at."47

 

47Quoted from a letter to this writer dated Jan. 9, 1966.

130

Another problem that obstructs definition is the mis-
information and vagueness so prevalent today. Specialized
reference books such as drama dictionaries and handbooks
frequently appear with oversimplified and meaningless def-
initions and descriptions that distort and mislead. Several
examples are included here to illustrate the problem.

Sobel's The Theatre Handboo , which has provided assist-
ance to the theatre student since 1950, defines farce as
follows:

A comedy designed only for entertainment and
laughter. There is no serious or sincere attempt
to depict character nor is there genuine concern
with probabilities or realities. A farce ages
not intend to be convincing--on1y amusing.

Sobel defers for his authority to Dryden whose indifference

to and prejudice against farce we have already discussed.

The only credit we can extend Sobel is that he chose a dif-
ferent and more detailed Dryden source than did Samuel Johnson.
The definition in Johnson's Dictionary reads as follows: "A
dramatick representation written without regularity."49

Wilfred Granville's A Dictionapy of Theatrical Terms
published in 1952 recognizes the nature of the farce interlude
but defines the farce in these meaningless terms: "Short for
farcical comedy, which is played at a quicker tempo and on
broader lines than pure comedy.”

Theatre Langpage by Bowman and Ball comes slightly
closer to the farce but persists in ambiguity: "A broadly
humorous dramatic composition, or a portion of one, which
is based on improbable situations and is unsubtle in

 

48Bernard Sobel, The Theatre Handbook (New York: Crown,
1950), p. 337.

49

Samuel Johnson, A Dictionar of the En lish Lan a e
11th ed. (London: Printed for J. Johfison, etc., 1799).
50Wilfred Granville, A Dictiona of Theatrical Terms
(London: Andre Deutsch Ltd., 1952), p. 73.

131
idea or characterization."51

The effects of such reference sources on the general
reader are several and are undesirable. Such vagueness
cannot possibly assist to a better understanding of farce.

The numerous omissions only compound the inaccuracy of

what ought to be reliable sources. The indifference or pre-
judice reflected in such definitions can only confirm the
long-standing but erroneous belief that farce is inferior
drama. Such bias is inexcusable in sources designed to assist
the reader and the theatre student.

Certain developments in the 20th century have further
complicated the problem of defining farce in modern American
drama. Haberman's study identified and elaborated this
problem most effectively.

First, there was the stigma of farce which was felt
by many playwrights. As a result they intentionally mis-
labeled their plays usually billing them as comedies. A
second deve10pment was the growing practice of employing press
agents to handle advertising matter for theatre producers.
These publicists frequently eschewed precise terminology in
favor of catch-all terms or intentional distortions. It should
be understood that these men, while well qualified in promotion
and persuasion, were generally unschooled in theatre history
and a knowledge of the dramatic forms.

A third development could be charged against many of
the popular playwrights. Haberman claims that these men,
unfamiliar with the history or characteristics of the genre,
unintentionally mixed forms and thus watered down the defini-
tion. To the dramatic purist this would represent a capital
offense, but the creation of a fine dramatic work seems far
.more desirable than the preservation of a definition.

 

51Walter Parker Bowman and Robert Hamilton Ball,
Theatre Langpage (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1961), p. 131.

132

The fourth development has been mentioned earlier in
this study. Critics were often guilty of confusing comedy
and farce and of interchanging the terms when discussing the
plays they were reviewing. Whether the reason was indifference,
ignorance, prejudice or vengeance, the confusing effect was
the same. These are a few of the reasons that explain our
lack of a clear definition of farce.

Our purpose now is to compose a concise and meaningful
definition of farce. Throughout the preceding portion of this
study we have attempted to analyze and describe the true nature
of farce. Where disagreement has occurred we have attempted
.to make objective choices and to verify our position. It
seems logical at this point to bring together the several
aspects of the nature of farce in order to deduce an accurate
definition. Central to this definition will be the primary
elements of situation and plot and the primary purpose which
is laughter.

Farce, in essence, is the drama of cumulative and
improbably compounded situations. From the initial situation
on, the plot, as it deve10ps, becomes filled or "stuffed" with
incidents and complications-~a piling up of coincidences.

In good farce these situations become incredibly complex and
imaginative.

The plot is constructed much like the anecdote or the
joke. It is filled with broad and exaggerated humor, a kind
of joking turned theatrical. It is concluded with the climax
or the "punch-line."

The rising action becomes a complicated structure of
absurdities that are accumulated for laughs. The direction
must always be upward as the rapid sequence of scenes bring a
constant series of laughs. Here again plotting is crucial
as the juxtaposition of one scene with the next must produce
"a continual roar of merriment,fi as Nicoll described it. To
achieve this requires an ingenious and complex set of inter-

133
relationships designed to advance the action and produce
laughter. Krutch insists that nobody gets out of one scrape
before he gets into another. We might add that the audience
is hardly finished with one laugh before they are given another.

In terms of complication, the obstacles that present
themselves throughout the farce are usually commonplace or
of a low order. Low, in this sense, refers to the comic effect
as measured by Thompson's comic scale of wit and it includes:
(1) the shock of surprise of indecency; (2) the physical action
or upsets; (3) the plotting or comic effects that arise from
the plot and; (4) wit or the verbal comic effects. These are
listed in ascending order and in increasing subtlety and
constitute the areas in which farce is found.

Farce begins by accepting the ordinary and everyday.
Bentley says: ". . . while it begins by accepting the bland,
placid, imposing facade of life, [:it:7 proceeds to become
farcical by knocking the facade down."52 In The Law of the
Drama (1894), Brunetiere defined farce by considering the
obstacles against which the will struggles. "Locate the
obstacle in the irony of fortune, or in the ridiculous aspect
of prejudice, or in the disproportion between the means and
the end."

Climax then, whether major or minor, brings resolution
by chance and not by human will or choice. Because farce
characters cannot or do not bring about the result, Clayton
Hamilton and others have called farce the most irresponsible
of all types of drama, avoiding social and moral responsi-
bilities. Since the will of character does not determine the
resolution, Hurrell's view that these characters ingeniously
adapt and adjust to resolution and other crises seems valid
and descriptive. In farce, as in life, man is being tested
and he usually demonstrates his ability to set his house

 

szBentley, "The Psychology of Farce", p. xv.

 

I '7'.-. I III] I‘ 'I ll. ll If . l

134
straight after adversity. Carmer's description of Kaufman
farces seems applicable to farces in general:

The unpleasant complications which confront the
character as a result of his stupidity are com-
pletely overcome at the end of the play with a
magnificent stroke of luck, frgguently occasioned
by this very thick-headedness.

Luck, chance, circumstance but not human will or choice
determine the resolution of farce.

With more attention focused on situation and less on
characters, the farce has greater audience detachment with
little concern for illusion. Interest centers in intrigue
rather than in character. This emotional detachment pre-
dominates over audience identification. Hadeau has claimed
that farce is pure to the degree that it is void of emotional
audience involvement.

The situations in farce are filled with ludicrous,
unexpected incidents and usually move quickly from a probable
opening situation to a series of completely improbable
situations. These situations are usually exaggerated to the
extent that they are absurd, unusual and highly improbable
and coincidence is readily accepted. Nardin suggested an
alternative or the "height of absurdity" when a serious sit-
uation is treated lightly.

O'Hara and Bro use "impossible" as an adjective describ-
ing the type of situation which may occur but this is incorrect.
As Hurrell points out, the impossible suggests fantasy and that
is rarely the province of farce.

The complications, either major or minor, and the
catastrophe stress external incident. The climax is unexpected
or consists of a number of unexpected happenings or surprises.
To shock by use of the unexpected has long been a staple of
farce.

 

53Carmer, op, cit., p. 160.

135

Situations can be both logical and illogical. They
frequently begin logically and then develop quite illogically,
or after accepting certain initial illogical improbabilities
they then proceed in a life-like and logical manner. Wilder
claims farce is based on logic and objectivity which is
half true. The author may ask the audience to concede two
or three wild initial improbabilities but thereafter he must
proceed with rigorous consequence. From atiightly different
view Hurrell observes that the improbability may exist in the
fact that situations are carried to their logical conclusions.

Rapid and vigorous physical action abound in the farce
situation. This action is often achieved through a compar-
atively crude technique of exaggeration and slapstick per-
formance. The common-type characters of farce often appear
automated or machine-like. ‘Matthews likened them to puppets
on strings.

The purpose of farce is to evoke laughter, which
provides the stimulus for a comic catharsis. The laughter
that provides this healthy release tends to purge our emotions
of worry, scorn and spiteful instincts and at least momentarily
terminate our sorrow. With our hostilities vicariously
vented, our mental and emotional beings are returned to a
balance.

The truly distinguished farce may contain excellent
wit but relies primarily upon situation. The conversations
of many average farces are often senseless but humorous.

Farce is capable of satire, usually of a broad and
boisterous nature. While satire may provide the machine for
plot, its role is subordinate to laughter. With laughter
its foremost objective, the farce continues to be quite
naturally the popular theatre. Its appeal is massive because
its law is amusement before instruction. Its obvious
simplicity can charm with unpretentiousness. It requires
little subtlety or intelligence to perceive and goes about

136
its mischief with child-like abandon.

Farce usually lacks literary significance for its
purpose can only be achieved on stage. Of all the dramatic
genres, the farce is the most theatrical.

The above summary has been develOped out of the total
analysis that preceded it. Contributing to this were the
numerous descriptions and definitions from the past and the
present. It represents this writer's efforts to analyze
and correlate these expressions. The detailed descriptions
of some sixty writers have been coordinated with the obser-
vations and ideas of numerous other theatre practitioners,
scholars, critics, and historians to evolve this work.

The definition Of farce which follows represents a
composite of critical Opinion. It reflects the most meaning-
ful and convincing observations that are available. Needless
to say, the vast majority of theatre literature available
today contributes little or nothing to the discussion Of
farce. The need for a definition that is both understandable
and accurate has long been overdue. The major focus of this
study can be terminated in these three sentences.

FARCE IS THE POPULAR DRAMA (OR THEATRE) OF LAUGHTER
CREATED BY SITUATIONS THAT PROGRESS FROM SIMPLE TO‘WILDLY
COMPLICATED, FROM PROBABLE TO GROSSLY EXAGGERATED AND ARE
FILLED WITH LUDICROUS UNEXPECTED INCIDENTS AND RAPID VISUAL
ACTION. THE AUDIENCE OBSERVES COMMONPLACE CHARACTER TYPES
WITH AN EMOTIONAL DETACHMENT THAT IS DEDICATED TO A COMIC
CATHARSIS. FARCE HAS BEEN AND IS CAPABLE OF A BROAD AND
BOLD TYPE OF SATIRE.

The detailed qualifications necessary in most defini-
tions have all preceded this point. If there is merit in
this definition it belongs to those whose convictions and
serious thoughts have gone into this work. It is the hope of
this writer that the definition offered here may assist others
in serious research of the neglected farce.

CHAPTER V
THE FARCE TECHNIQUE: BASIC DEVICES

In defining farce we have established the limits of
the term under study. We have described the genre by its
properties and the farce play by its attributes. We have
placed the farce into a class where it belongs and enumerated
the marks of traits which distinguish it from other members of
the comic theatre. And yet no matter how simple, positive, hard
and fast this definition may be, we must admit with Josiah
Royce that it cannot tell the whole truth about a concept.

If we know more precisely what farce is, should we not
seek out the methods used by the farceur to achieve his goal?
The question posed a necessary and logical next step in this
study: to focus our attention on the farce technique.

With production as the basic requirement for farce, the
contributions of the producer and the performer are as signifi-
cant as that Of the playwright. The play script requires the
complementary techniques of skilled performers and directors
in order to realize the complete farce which demands production
in the theatre before an audience to reach full expression.

Hatlen has suggested that the theories and devices Of
farce are the same as those Of comedy except on a more elementary
level.1 This is admittedly true because the writer of comedy
seeks comic ideas, characters, situations and dialogue as a
method through which he can make human observations and comment
upon them. His humor and comic devices are more subtle,
restrained and probable for he is bound more closely to reality.

 

lHatlen, op. cit., p. 130.

137

138
His comic techniques are tempered by the seriousness Of the
folly he exposes and the precision of his corrective point.

In writing farce the playwright seeks first to provoke
laughter through the broadest situational intrigues and devel-
opments he can imagine. He finds few restrictions because
his purpose is fundamentally to make us laugh. The full
spectrum of comic theory is at his disposal and every comic
convention of the past awaits him. The farce writer is
limited only by his own experiences, imagination and ingenuity.

The word "device" appears frequently throughout theatre
literature with some few varied meanings. Ironically, through-
out this vast source Of material the term is never defined,
apparently because of its somewhat Obvious meaning. "Device"
implies an ingenuity or cleverness of invention and, as it is
used here, the "farce device" or "device of farce" means the
contrivance, the gadget, the tool, the trick or the technique
described in the script or Observed on the stage to evoke
laughter. The actor, the director and the playwright contrib-
ute within the bounds of their immediate responsibilities.

We will assume that, for this study at least, a farce
device is a method or technique used originally by the play-
wright to achieve his purpose of laughter. The device naturally
arises first out of the playwright's work but both the director
and the actor can contribute original devices of their own to
supplement those found in the script. The director's and the
actor's methods or techniques of arousing laughter can also be
identified as farce devices but where these are not critically
and adequately observed, recorded or described, there is little
that can be concluded.

When we isolate or identify something as a farce device
we must bear several things in mind. First, the device is
being used primarily for farce purposes and thus we label it a
farce device. It is Obviously true that a farce device will
be found both in farce and in farcical scenes in all other

 

111‘ I 1 '1. 1 All '1‘

139
forms of theatre. We find farcical scenes abounding in ser-
ious drama either for comic relief or extending character
dimension or for various other reasons. Their inclusion need
not alter the identification of dramatic type nor does it
necessarily reduce the effectiveness and purpose of the play
itself. A farce device then may be found in any type of drama
but would naturally appear with greater frequency and variety
within farce itself. Conversely, the play that employs a
majority Of farce devices should be called a farce.

Secondly, a farce device may be characterized not only
by purpose but by mode of perception. A device may direct
itself to aural perception, visual perception or both. With
so much of farce exploiting the physical aspects Of man and
its strong reliance on visual humor, it is not surprising that
eight Of the nine devices involve visual perception. Because
of these different stimuli we initiate the organization of
farce devices in two broad areas that may Operate independently
or dependently and simultaneously: aural devices and visual
devices.

Aural devices provide an auditory stimulus primarily
through dialogue and sounds. They generate almost exclusively
from the playwright and act upon the intellect, consciously
or subconsciously. Because the farce dialogue is the most
abundant in numbers and involves the greatest complexities, it
will be treated first.

Visual devices originate basically in actions and appear-
ances which create a visual stimulus. The devices of violent
physical action, stage tricks or business, and exaggerated
stage properties can function independently and appear primarily
as visual devices. The remaining devices most commonly operate
as both aural and visual devices of farce.

Though this organization may seem loosely contrived,
its value may lie in its simplicity.

’The devices used in this study represent an attempt to

140

place the many various techniques into some common structure
and simplified order from which they can be viewed more mean-
ingfully. As such it represents a beginning to the ordering
of farce devices. It does not claim to be all-inclusive and
definitive nor are the devices mutually exclusive. There has
been no attempt to force any stated technique into one or
another of the categories. ’

, The nine basic farce devices presented here provide a
set of fundamental techniques or methods of farce. They were
inspired by and originated with Professor Leo Hughes' devices
found in A Century of English Farce.2 Other basic devices
were added which expanded and elaborated on the original
devices to make them more universally applicable. A compilation
of implicit and explicit views and descriptions developed from
a broad cross-section Of comic theatre. Examples and illus-
trations were also compiled in an effort to identify, define
and organize the basic devices proposed herein. We will now
proceed to the techniques of farce and observe the basic farce
devices.

1. Farce dialogue
George Pierce Baker defined the chief purpose of

dialogue in a brief phrase: ". . . to convey necessary infor-
mation clearly."3 Good dialogue is kindled by feeling and made

 

2Hughes' second chapter, "Structure and Devices" (pp. 21
-59), contains a detailed discussion of five devices and their
variations: (1) Concealment-~disguise, (2) Repetition, (3) Vio-
lent physical action, (4) Extravagant stage properties, (5) Exag-
gerated or Overdrawn characters. Hughes acknowledges first the
episodic nature of farce with no unity except of purpose, which
is laughter. Episodes are linked together primarily by common
characters. The structure of the farce consists of the frame-
work and the details: the framework composed of a chase contain-
ing the many intrigues; and the details consisting of the farce
devices, "the real stuff Of farce."

3Baker, Op. cit., p. 309.

141
alive by the emotion of the speaker. Clarity, compression
and naturalness are the usual technical qualities of dialogue
according to John Howard Lawson. He adds:

Speech is a kind of action, a compression and
extension of action. . . . Dialogue enables

the playwright to extend the action over the wide
range Of exents which constitutes the play's
framework.

This identifies the chief functions of most dialogue
as seen by two great teachers of playwriting. It may also help
us to understand the difference between structural dialogue and
farce dialogue. The former conveys needed information and
extends the action of the play. The latter provokes laughter
and may be defined as the speech utterance which contains humor
in the form of jokes, puns, wisecracks, sounds and many other
forms for the primary purpose of provoking laughter.

Since dialogue of one sort or another is found from
beginning to end in a play, it should not be surprising that
the frequency of the farce dialogue device will be greater
than any other single farce device. In several representative
modern farces the percentage of farce dialogue devices found
averaged over sixty percent of the total of all devices.5 In
other words, approximately two-thirds of the devices identified
in these plays involved farce dialogue. While this was not a
precisely controlled scientific survey, it did modestly support
the preponderant use of this device.

One statement must be added here about the performer of
farce which has relevance to both writer and performer. The

 

4John Howard Lawson, Theor and Techni ue of P a rit-
Tpg (New York: Hill and Wang, 1960), p. 288.

5The analysis involved the identification of each
instance in which one of the nine basic farce devices appeared
in the following plays: Cradle Snatchers, Stepping Sisters,
Bo Meets Girl, Three Men on a Horse, Turn to the Hi ht, T e
,Mpn WHO Cgpe to Dinner, TEe Bat, Fair andTWarmer, TEe Gold—-

Diggers, and The Demi-Virgin.

 

142
utterance of the comic line must be as exacting as the content
of that line. The actor's ability to deliver the comic line,
his sense of pace and timing, is crucial to the intended purpose.

The accompanying physical movement or business of the
actor contributes further to the effect. From another aspect
the director's plan and execution of these factors relate
significantly to the end result. An actor's relative position
on stage and his physical appearance and posture, also a part
of the director's responsibility, must and does determine when
a given comic line will provoke the response of laughter. In
this sense, the author's script containing numerous farce
dialogue devices relies heavily upon the director and the actor
to fulfil its purpose.

We must also be aware that in the invention of his play
the playwright does not concern himself to any degree with one
or all of the farce devices. His imagination may conjure up
the incident or scene he wishes to portray with or without
a specific awareness or conscious intent to use certain farce
devices. As a result we find farce dialogue co-existing with
other devices.

Sheridan Whiteside's insulting remarks to his nurse,
Miss Preen, in The Man Who Came to Dinner may illustrate this
best. The use of farce dialogue of the wisecrack variety is
numerous within the first scene:

"Great dribbling cow!" (Offstage to Preen)
"Doesn't that bird-brain Of yours ever function?"
. (Offstage)

"You move like a brokendown truck horse!"
(Offstage)

"Will you take your clammy hands Off my
chair? You have the touch of a sex-starved
cobra!" (Offstage)

"Go in and read the life of Florence
Nightingale and learn how unfit you are for
your chosen profession."

"What do you want now, Miss Bed Pan?"

"My Great-aunt Jennifer ate a whole box of candy
every day of her life. She lived to be a
hundred and two, and when she had been dead three
days she looked better than you do now."

143

Even in such a minimal relationship as that of White-
side and his nurse, the compounding of devices can clearly be
seen. In addition to the farce dialogue device so evident, we
can see the device of repetition as Preen is repeatedly insulted.
The above quoted lines are spread over thirteen pages in the
acting text. Incongruity is evident as the famous critic be-
littles a lowly nurse, as he returns insult for kindness, and
as the varied descriptions do not fit the neatly uniformed Miss
Preen. The fact that she takes his insults so seriously and
frustratingly redoubles her effort touches on the exaggeration
of character device as well. Most of these lines, actions and
reactions occur simultaneously and we, therefore, cannot be
certain of what really triggers the laugh. One thing is certain
and it is that laughter results from these lines in this bril-
1iant farce.

The variety of sub-divisions that fall under the broad
heading of farce dialogue devices may be independently aug-
mented by each individual who reads it. It will also be noted
that many of the sub-types are capable of added variations.
With this in mind we will proceed to describe, without concern
for order, the varied examples and illustrations of farce
dialogue devices.

(1) Simple types of wit including the pun.

Example: "He took fourteen hundred dollars from Sam Goldwyn
at cribbage last night, and Sam said, "Banjo, I will never
play garbage with you again.""

The Man Who Came to Dinner

(2). The use of extravagant and affected language.
Example: "There, my beloved--repose your agitated anatomy!"

The Double-Bedded Rgpm '

(3) Repetition through interlinked dialogue.

Example: "Emily: But who are you, air? and what do you want?
Fanny: Yes, sir, what do you want, air? and who '
are you?"

Grimshaw, Bagshaw and Bradshaw

144

(4) Verbal slip of the tongue.
Example: "It's too much--it's much too much!--a tet-a-tet
with a one-horse woman, in afly--I mean with a fly with a
one-horse woman!--No, that's not it.--With a woman, in a
one-horse fly!"‘

Lend Me Five Shillings

(5) The interjection of a casual or incidental remark
into a conversation.
Example: "I'll tell the man where to drive to, my dear.
Mind how you get in; you're holding the child upside down!
Mind you tell Old Burley how distressed I am I can't come.
Good-bye."

If I Had aThousand a Year

(6) Incongruity of or the building up for an unexpected
punch line.
Example: "Now the very great majority of people I'm ashamed
to say, would instantly have picked that pocket-book up--which
is exactly what I did."

Who StoTe_the Pocket-B293

(7) The use of the trivial.
Example: In discussing the merits of a suitor whose name is
Tompkins (spelled with a p) Tipthorpe (with an s) the conver-
sation ends with--"Ah, I see; that accounts for it; but, I
say, what with an admiral for an uncle, and a‘p to his
Tompkins, to say nothing of an SIto his Tipthorpe, I'm only
afraid he'll consider himself a cut above the daughter of a
nurseryman."

Catch a Weazel

(8) Repeating cant phrases.
Example: "Divorces are made in Heaven--," ". . . in married
life three is company and two is none," and "The very essence
of romance is uncertainty. If I ever get married, I'll cer-
tainly try to forget the fact."

The meprtancs pf Beipg gprnest.

145

(9) Verbal duels.
Example: "Wagtail: "Kindness", and "attention!" Oh, yes-~of
course. (humming) Ri-tum-tiddy iddy-ri-tum!"

Bobtail: What do you mean by "Ri-tum-tiddy iddy?"

I insist on your explaining your "Ri-tum-tiddy iddy!" What
do you mean?"

'My Precious Betsy

(10) Extended verbal duels.
Example: Almost all of John MOrton's Box and Cox except for
scenes with Mrs. Bouncer

(11) Contrasts between what is said and the real intent.
Example: "Go before I do you a serious mischief" and "I shall
do you a frightful injury."

Box and Cox

(12) Excessive verbosity when bluntness or action
would be more normal.
Example: "Halloa-Halloa! yOung woman, when you're quite done
joggling the table, perhaps you'll leave off; indeed, when I
tell you I am trying to marry (in his writing of a novel) the
youthful Frederick to the Lady Clementina, the necessity for
your leaving off joggling the table must, I am sure, be
evident enough."

Master Jones's Birthday

(13) Elaborate puns and lengthy dialogues which set up
simultaneous and separate meanings for the participants.
Example: (a reference to stock markets creates this mis-
understanding--):
"Chaffington: I mean things are not brisk, for instance, mines
are down.
Green: Of course they are; a very longway down, some of 'em.
Chaffington: Canals are stationary; Gas, by no means, brilliant.
Green: Ours is shocking bad up here!"

If I Had a Thousand a Year

146

(14) Name-forgetting and mispronunciation repeatedly.
Example: Lt. O'Scupper repeatedly forgets Felix Fluffey's
name in Morton's‘Love in the Tropics and throughOut the play
calls him Duffey, Guffey, Muffey, Snuffey, and Puffey. Often
dialogue is interrupted to correct the error.

(15) Use of the aside. Audience directly given the real
thoughts of the participant and a knowing wink or rib poking
gesture frequently accompanies the speech.

Many of the previous illustrations are the contribution
of Richard Arnold6 in his study of the farces of John Maddison
Morton. Lea7 suggests the following devices common to commedia
dell'arte and the English stage:

(16) Direct address to the audience (Different from the
condition and presentation of the aside).

(17) Use of a dialect.

(18) Use of parody and mistaken word. Latter sometimes
occurs as a malapropism.

The manner of delivery and method of utterance remains
crucial to all of these devices and it will be particularly
important for the remaining devices which follow.

(19) Rapid alternations of questions and answers.

(20) Abusive and insulting expressions. The preceding
lines from The Man Who Came to Dinner exemplify this.

(21) Imitating or mocking the speech of another.

(22) Use of vulgarisms or swearing.

(23) Use of epigram or aphorism.

Example: "It is an embarrassing thing to break a bust in the
house of comparative strangers."
Pinero's The Schoolmistress.

 

6Richard L. Arnold, "A Study of Comic Techniques in the
Farces of John Maddison Morton", Western S eech Journal, Vol.
XXIX (Winter, 1965), pp. 22-27.

7Lea, Op. cit., p. 405.

147

(24) Use of wisecrack. Usually a phrase or a sentence
of which brevity is the soul and body.

Example: Seeing the laundry room filled with mountains of
soapsuds in Mister Roberts, Ensign Pulver exclaims, "It's
a Winter Wonderland!"

In some instances the device relies more on the utter-
ance and accompanying sounds than upon the strict dialogue that
is spoken.

(25) Funny sounds of certain words like "Oshkosh" and
"Gorgonzola."

(26) Build speech to a breathless state, gasp for air,
and then speak the last word or the gag or punch line.

(27) After completing a speech, gasp and laugh or
produce a throaty laugh. The effect of this can be to start
or "kick" a laugh in the audience.

(28) Mocking the laugh of another, ending with a grunt,
groan or cry.

(29) Grunts, groans, hissings and belchings given
before, during or after a speech.

Beyond the sounds that emanate from the actor are the
sounds of music and a variety of special effects used to provoke
laughter. "Sound effects . . . have almost the same charac-
teristic factors as human Speech, being restricted only partially
by the nature of the actual sound they imitate."8 Albright's
view seems to support the inclusion of sound effects under this
aural device. It may not be an example of farce dialogue but
it hardly appears significant enough for a device or category
of its own. We include it here because of its auditory stimulus
in the following forms. '

 

8H. D. Albright, William P. Halstead and Lee Mitchell.

Princi les of Theatre Art (Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1955), p. 397.

148

(30) Musical comment to a scene, an action or dialogue.
An example of this can be found in Three Men on a Horse, where
such orchestra selections as "My Little Gray Home in the West",
"Happy Days Are Here Again", "Some One of These Days", "All
Alone", "It's the Talk of the Town" and "Horses" are played
before and between scenes to make their comic point.

(31) Musical background such as "Hearts and Flowers" or
"Home, Sweet Home" played to a sad scene for comic effects.

(32) Comic sound effects like the explosion of fire-
works in You Can't Take It With You, the blasting underfoot in
My Sister Eileen, or the numerous doorslams in The Servant of
Two Masters. There are numerous effects that might be listed
here but a few of the more common would be sounds of automobile
crashes, glass breaking, tires or brakes squealing, toilet
flushing, birdcalls and door chimes.

Many other sub-types could be listed under the farce
dialogue device and the preceding list represents only a broad
sample of some of the most characteristic or typical ones found
in farce. Even though these examples are perceived through our
auditory senses and can be considered strictly aural devices,
they are and should be most often found intertwined with other
farce devices. One can surely see by virtue of its breadth and
variety why the farce dialogue device is the first and possibly
most important of all farce devices.

2. Violent physical action
This basic farce device employs all types and degrees

of gross physical action, usually in the spirit of playfulness
or suggesting pain or discomfort, for the prime purpose of
arousing laughter. Found in the playwright's stage directions
and dialogue, it depends finally on the director and actor in
performance for precise execution.

With its major focus on action and movement the farce
has consistently specialized in visual humor. In fact, the art

149
of slapstick has virtually become the signature of farce. The
term "slapstick" incorporates both the devices of violent
physical action and stage tricks or broad acting business for
it means a fast, boisterous and zany physical activity com-
bined with horseplay.

The sense of this action is well expressed by Lea in
describing the pace of commedia dell'arte playing: ".’. .
comedy broke into a trot which quickened every now and then
into a galloping farce."9 Perhaps an even more vivid description
is suggested by Hatlenz' "In the journalistic fare of the
theatre, farce is the comic strip of the Zam-Bang-Powie
school."lo '

‘Violent physical action has always been a staple of
farce on stage and it was to become equally important to the
movie industry near the turn of the century. Stuart describes
a thirty-second movie made in 1895 by the Lumiere brothers
showing the watering of a lawn, a child stepping on the hose,
the gardener looking into the hose nozzle, the child stepping
off and the gardener getting wet. "That burst of water sig-
naled the marriage of the infant motion-picture industry to
the ancient art of slapstick." Thus the screen farce was born
which ultimately gave us Mack Sennett and the Keystone Cops,
Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, and W. C. Fields.

In the new medium, it was possible to capture

a considerable breadth Of comic action in any
locale, to focus attention on the smallest
significant detail, and to combine the resultant
pieces of film in whatever lengths and whatever
sequences might be necessary to create the
maximum comic effect. The result was a comedy
form that has extracted more laughter from

 

9Lea, Op. cit., p. 179.

10Hatlen, op. cit., p. 128.

150

more people than any other amusement evef devised
with the possible exception of tickling. 1

Farce action in film was characterized by Mack Sennett
as "controlled pandemonium", a phrase that aptly describes the
farce action on stage. Charles Hoyt, whose farces, with or
without music, broadly satirized contemporary events, held much
the same view as Sennett. His comic formula required as many
doors as a stage set could Support and the thrusting of comic-
strip characters in and out at maximum speed. Alan Downer
credits the American farces of the 1930's with fantaStically
fast action, considerable door banging, exits through windows,
and hiding in closets and under beds, only slightly more
excessive than those of the Restoration.

Supporting the farce device of violent physical action
are two comic theories. They were jointly identified by the
master of the device, Charlie Chaplin: ". . . playful pain-as
you say-that is what humor is. The minute a thing is overtragic
it is funny."13 Certainly this device requires a playful
attitude which Eastman emphasized in his analysis of laughter.
The act of violence cannot cause suffering in either the per-
former or the spectator. Either result would destroy the
atmOSphere of play and laughter. In addition to playful at-
titude, the fear of cruelty or brutality can be as potent in
evoking laughter as the fact. Blistein quotes Buster Keaton
as saying, "The best way to get a laugh is to create a genuine
thrill and then relieve the tension with comedy."14 The comic

 

11Walker Stuart "A Slapstick Renaissance", Th3
Reporter (Nov. 5, 1964 , p. 40.

12Alan S. Downer, Fift Years of American Drama 1900-
1950 (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1951), p. 130.

13

14

Eastman, Op. cit., p. 331.
Blistein, Op. cit., p. 60.

151
chase illustrates this best, especially when the crack-up
at the end is avoided. The chase is one example but anything
suggesting pain or discomfort that is done "in fun" can provoke
laughter and some illustrations follow.

Dougald MacMillan states in the Dictionary_of WOETQ
Literature that: ". . . Of the physical action three types
have been develOped, farcically denominated suicidal, fatri-
cidal, homicidal."15 In the suicidal type, the actor is the
victim of his own practical joke. A confederate or "stooge"
receives the custard pie in the face in the fatricidal type
of farce action. This assistant often appears in the audience
as an innocent and unsuspecting spectator. The third or
homicidal type directly involves the audience, according to
MacMillan, as when Olsen and Johnson would invite three men
and three women onstage and offer prizes in a race for the
women to remove the men's undershirts. These distinctions of
types seem useless for any purpose other than the application
of terms that describe. The homicidal type, as MacMillan
describes it, does not affect the farce drama but appears to
describe the farce action found in variety shows, extravaganza
and audience participation programs of various types.

The following examples of the violent physical action
device in farce only serve to illustrate some variations to
be found within its limitations.

(1) The chase. The speeding up of human behavior so
it seems less human and more automated is a well known device
which brought fame and fortune to screen favorites like
Sennett, Chaplin, Fields and many others. Bentley has called
it the pride and glory of the Keystone Cops and cited the plots
of An Italian Straw Hat and Charlie's Aunt each as one long
pretext for flight and pursuit.

 

15MacMillan, op. cit., p. 236.

152
Leo Hughes described the chase as the ideal thread
which held together the various episodes within the farce.
He saw it also as the motivation for introducing the devices
of concealment, repetition, and violent physical action that
are so basic to farce:

The chase has the advantage of providing

suSpense without at the same time distracting

our attention too much from the discrete episodes.
At the same time it allows the dramatist to
maintain a pace too fast for the leisurely exam-
ination which the wilgest flights of fancy do

not readily survive.

Though the pursuit and evasion of the chase was not widely
used in Restoration farce, it saw its fullest development in
the film farce which has given way today to the animated
cartoon on screen and television. Animated or human, the
chase characteristically finds the knees and feet high in
much effort with the feet literally spinning before starting
and many missed turns in the course of pursuit. Probably
the earliest extant chase in dramatic literature is the
brilliant one found in Aristophanes' The Birds.

(2) Headlong flights. Apart from the chase, this
type of action frequently involves comical movements in which
the actor moves across or about the stage in wide sweeps or
s-curves at high speeds taking long strides. This was the
chief trick of George M. Cohan. With the head held high and
holding a side or profile pose while moving, the actor steps
high and leads with his elbow extended.

(3) Comic fights and duels. One of the most familiar
examples of this device is the farcical duel between Viola
and Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. In
another illustration Arnold describes a different type of
ludicrous struggle in Morton's A Most Unwarrantable Intrusion:

 

16Hughes, op. cit., p. 25.

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153

Snoozle follows the Intruder around the room
putting back in order the elegant furnishings
that the Intruder is upsetting. When the
Intruder begins to pry into a drawer of a large
round table, Snoozle removes the drawer fromahis
reach by turning the revolving table a half turn.
The Intruder continues to annoy his host by
dropping muffins in the fish bowl on the other
half of the table. This forces Snoozle to
revolve the table top another half turn which
again returns the drawer to the Intruder's side
of the table. When the precocious Intruder
grabs for the drawer handle again, Snoozle
violently pulls the table away which completely
removes the drawer from the table and causes a
mass of letters, papers, and other contents

to fall out.17

This type of action needs little more elaboration because of
the variety of familiar illustrations that exist throughout
dramatic literature. Again, the suggestion of pain and
violence done "in fun" provides the humor in this device.

(4) Comic beatings, spankings and other violence.
The kick which flattens a stooping man, the blow which levels
another character and similar acts are also numerous in farces
of all ages. Perhaps the classic illustration of this device
appears in Aristophanes' The Frogs when the god, Dionysus, and
his servant Xanthias have exchanged identities on their way to
Hades and must absorb a series of beatings to prove their
identities. They exclaim, cry out and shout verse to avoid
complaining from the beating they receive. In The Tricks of
Sea in, Moliere devised a scene where the servant hides his
master, Geronte, in a sack and then proceeds to beat him pre-
tending to be an imaginary enemy. The humor appears to be
multiplied in such scenes when the beating falls on the master
rather than the servant.

(5) Comic tumbles and pratfalls. The fall, or near
fall, of a fat man caused by a rug, step, bar of soap, or

 

17Arnold, op. cit., p. 24.

154
banana peel has consistently provoked laughter. The comic
possibilities are considerably enhanced when the recipient,
from pompous politician to sanctimonious puritan, deserves
chastisement for his antisocial behavior.

(6) Pie in the face. This age-old device and its many
variations have been a stock-in-trade item of farce. The
current practitioner is Soupy Sales whose antics and pie-
smeared face appear regularly on television. Hughes declares
that:

While it may not be necessary_to go the whole
way with the Hobbesian view [Qerision theor§7
that laughter is essentially scornful and
triumphant, it must be admitted that there is

a disposition to find enjoyment in the physical
discomfort of the buffoon who has a pie thrown
in his face or is kgocked sprawling or is
covered with soot.

Variations of this device include the mock-shaving
trick in which a painful shave is administered to the victim
while stealing his money. In some instances the shave is
concluded by powdering the face with soot, flour or snuff.

In other variations the victim has water--or more offensive
liquids-- thrown on him or he is dunked in a well.

(7) The practical joke. This device can and usually
does involve physical action that is violent. Blistein calls
it a form of: ". . . cruelty that frequently causes
laughter."19 While our present sophistication causes us to
insist that we frown, not laugh, at practical jokes, the over-
whelming majority of us will laugh when we see one. The
practical joke, literary or non-literary, deals with physical
and emotional pain and has been a staple from Aristophanes'
The ClOuds through Shakespeare's Love's Labors Lost to Sam and

 

18
19

Hughes, 0 . cit., p. 50.
Blistein, op. cit., p. 59.

 

' .III I. III '1 III I [Ill-ll. I." {II 7|

155
Bella Spewack's'gTss Me, Kate! Blistein sees them differing
Only in degree and not in kind. 'In such instances the pain is
not permanent and the hurt is in fun with the pompous deflated,
the rascal rewarded and the only serious damage inflicted on
pride.

Many types of violent physical action have occurred
as a result of accidental or unexpected incidents which hap-
pened during a performance. Such incidents or actions have
frequently remained in the performance when they produced more
laughter than the planned action. The actor accidentally
falling into the orchestra pit or a piece of scenery or stage
prOp toppling on some one's head has produced such lively
response that it became a permanent incident in the farce
production.

The variety of violent physical action devices have
only been sampled here but this device remains the most sig-
nificant visual technique of the farce and depends almost
exclusively for effectiveness on the director and his actors.

3. Stage tricks or broad busgpess: the lazzi

 

This basic farce device is probably the oldest of all
the devices and is a principle contribution of the actor. It
can be defined as the actor's stage business or "by-play",
both planned and improvised, which may contribute to the action
of the farce episode or exist independent of that action, but
which constantly seeks to provoke laughter.

The term lazzo (most familiar form of word is plural--
lazzi), from the Italian commedia dell'arte, is helpful in
describing the device. Professor Hughes actually calls these
acting details or pieces of stage business, lazzi and credits
it as "the real stuff of farce."20

 

2°Ib1d., p. 24.

156

Professor Nicoll devotes several pages to the dis-
cussion and illustration of lazzi. Though the derivation of
the term is not clear, Nicoll insists that there existed both
verbal lazzi and action lazzi, the latter usually rough and
tumble. "The lazzi were simply scenes of action independent
of the episodes outlined in the scenario."21 They usually
varied in type and degree from a scene in which two guards
allow a prisoner, on his way to prison, to tie his shoelace
and he grabs their legs, throws them over and escapes, to
another scene involving the famous clown, Harlequin:

. . . Harlequin interrupts the scene [gcapin, a
servant explaining to Flaminia, the mistress,

a plan to prevent Harlequin from leaving with
different lazzi; sometimes he pretends that his
hat is full of cherries, which he feigns to eat
and the stones of which he pretends to pitch at
Scapin's face; sometimes he makes show of
catching a fly, of clipping off its wings in

a comic manner, and of eating it; and so on.22

By our standards today, such crude bits of business
may seem absurd. They seem to have been present since the
folk farces of antiquity and have develOped by borrowing from
many other devices. Stephenson called it: ". . . the
reductio ad absurdum within the simple propositions of
behavior."

Hughes sensed this interrelationship so strongly that
he refused to recognize stage tricks as a device. Instead
he placed the devices of concealment and disguise, repetition,
violent physical action, exaggerated stage properties and
exaggerated or overdrawn character as the details which con-
stituted the pieces of stage business or lazzi. Within

 

21Allardyce Nicoll, Masks Mimes and Miracles (New

York: Cooper Square Publishers, Inc., 15335, p. 219.
221bid., p. 220.

23Stephenson, op. git., p. 90.

157

the limitations of his study this must be a tenable position
but when we look beyond England and the Restoration to mid-
eighteenth century there appears to be sufficient support to
identify stage tricks and broad business as a farce device.
Typical of this device is the following list of "things

that men laugh at" compiled in 1913 by George M. Cohan and
George J. Nathan. They prefaced the list with a statement

that these were found in cheap farce and slapstick plays as
well as "legitimate drama."

1.

10.

Giving a man a resounding whack on the back
under the guise of friendship. The laugh
in this instance may be "built up” steadily
in a climactic way by repeating the blow
three times at intervals of several minutes.

A man gives a woman a whack on the back,
believing in an absent-minded moment that
the woman to whom he is talking is a man.

One character steps on the sore foot of
another character, causing the latter to
jump with pain.

The spectacle of a man laden with many
large bundles.

A man or a woman starts to lean his or her
elbow on a table or arm of a chair, the
elbow slipping off abruptly and suddenly
precipitating him or her forward.

One character imitating the walk of another
character, who is walking in front of him
and cannot see him.

A man consuming a drink of considerable size
at one quick gulp.

A character who, on entering an "interior"
or room scene, stumbles over a rug. If the
character in point be of the "dignified"
sort, the power of this laugh-provoker is
doubled.

Intoxication in almost any form.

Two men in heated conversation. One starts to
leave. Suddenly as if fearing the other will
kick him while his back is turned, this man
bends his body inward (as if he actually had

158
been kicked) and sidles off.

11. A man who, in trying to light his cigar or
cigarette, strikes match after match in an
attempt to keep one lighted. If the man
throws each useless match vigorously to the
floor with a muttered note of vexation the
laugh will increase.

12. The use of a swear-word.

13. A man proclaims his defiance of his wife
while the latter is presumably out of
hearing. As the man is speaking, his
wife's voice is heard calling him. Meekly
he turns and goes to her. This device has
many changes, such as employer and enployee.
All are equally effective.

14. A pair of lovers who try several times to
kiss and each time are interrupted by the
entrance of someone or by the ringing of the
doorbell or telephone-bell or something of
the sort.

15. A bashful man and a not bashful woman are
seated on a bench or divan. As the woman
gradually edges up to the man, the man just
as gradually edges away from her.

Cohan and Nathan called these the "bag of tricks" or
"tools of emotion" which an actor could employ. In addition
to laughter, they listed some proven methods of producing
thrills and a comparable list for producing tears. Their
whole approach hinged on the idea that theatrical emotions
were largely mechanical and that certain external stimuli make
us think but after repetition we react to them as reflex
actions, from the spinal cord rather than the brain.

Ruth Klein, in a directing text published in 1953,
recognized that there were many "standardized devices or tricks
of farce" and identified a few of the frequently used tricks as
follows:

 

24Cohan and Nathan, op. cit., pp. 75-76.

159
Gulp to show embarrassment.

Signaling to one person behind another's
back and changing the signal when caught.

Two or more people sitting down, or getting
up, crossing legs, folding arms in unison.
Any action in unison can be made farcical.

Passing unwanted things, even people, from
one to another.

Doing things in series--one at a time, two
at a time, and so forth.

Pacing-~alone or in pairs--in parallel or
opposite directions.

Following close behind another who is pacing.
Stopping short in front of person following.
Bumping or tripping one another.

Imitating another's action with same intensity
or with greater exaggeration or with timid
restraint.

Almost sitting on the hat.

Two stooping to pick up something at same time
with an Alphonse and Gaston sequence.

Handing person who is tearing things up, some-
thing of his own to tear up.

The guilty person discovering the feet of the
one who has caught him 39d then letting his
eyes go all the way up.

In order to provide a better cross-section of illus-
trations the following examples of stage tricks and business
have been gathered from widely varied sources:

Bend a servant or companion over and use his
back as a writing surface.

After shaking hands, he shakes his hand clean.

Swing a sword, stick or bat back over the head
and someone following takes it. Victim looks
about, up sleeve or under coat for the lost
object.

A frightened man runs and jumps into the arms
of another man or sometimes a woman.

 

25

Ruth Klein, The Art and Techni ue of Pla Directin
(New York: Rinehart and Co., Inc., 1953;, p. 32.

 

160
Biting the finger pointed at you.
Man tip-toeing after a woman.
Men bowing till one slaps the other and exits.

Kissing a lady's hand after which fingers walk
up her arm. The kiss may follow.

Lighting a match on a baldhead.

Walking between two intended assailants with
sticks or clubs and they brain each other.

Preparing to kiss a lady, he closes his eyes,
the lady slips out and he moves in on nothing.

Further examples can be found in farces as well as in
mime, burlesque, pantomime, variety acts and vaudeville
routines. The device of stage tricks and broad business is
found as frequently out of farce as in. Variations of this
device have been borrowed and invented by actors throughout
time.

4. Exaggerated stage properties

The third of the solely visual farce devices is the
use of exaggerated stage properties. This device involves the
use of any stage property including costume that appears
ridiculous, exaggerated or incongruous or the animation of
inanimate objects for the sake of laughter. Such properties
appear less frequently than most of the other farce devices
but its employment has persisted.

Kernodle declares that different ages have preferred
different means for setting the comic key and the ancient play-
wrights often set their key with exaggerated properties.26
Aristophanes devised animal and bird choruses of many types
with exaggerated masks and later, Plautus still used masks
with big noses, exaggerated eyebrows and flabby and shredded
ears.

 

26Kernodle, op. cit., p. 721.

161

Harlequin's batte or slapstick in the commedia dell'-
gggg passed through many hands on its way to becoming the cane
of W. C. Fields and Charlie Chaplin. Numerous other properties
including chamberpots and clysterpipes were a common part of
continental farce. The blunderbuss and the pistol found
frequent use in the Restoration farce where they appeared as
absurd weapons to induce fright and the resulting horseplay.
' Hughes describes the surgeon's tools used in Ravenscroft's
The Anatomist as the most ridiculous and frightening assort-
ment of surgical instruments that could be obtained. The use
of water or a seltzer bottle as a weapon has long been a
basic gag in American farce and burlesque, since Winchell
Smith's The Fortune Hunter in 1909.

Hughes states that:

. . . though the meager pictorial record and
scanty stage directions leave us few specific
details to judge from, we may assume that no
opportunity to draw laughter was wasted when

a little judicigpsness in choosing a prop would
turn the trick.

He further states that more elaborate stage props,
suggesting the machine play and anticipating the pantomime,
were borrowed from the continental drama. "Plays of Faustus
and Emperor of the Moon type make full use of dishes which
fly out of the hands, of tables which rise up to the ceiling,
of statues which speak."28

Stage clothing or costume, which seems more a stage
property than a disguise when used to provoke laughter, has
contributed in diverse ways to preposterous situations, actions
and characterizations. Morton often dressed his low comic
types in bright colored trousers or jackets as did the earlier

commedia. A gentleman might mistakenly put on the wrong hat,

 

27Hughes, op. cit., p. 47.
281bid., p. 49.

162
one too small so that it perched impertinently on top of the
head and another too large covering the ears and eyes. The
hat gag has been used with as many variations as there are
actors, for it appears true somehow that there has always been
a hat available to make any face appear comical.

The baggy pants and oversized shoes of Charlie Chaplin
have been used by generations of comedians as a typical example
of the exaggerated prop. Red flannel underwear, mentioned by
Krutch as being so successful in Reunion in Vienpg, typifies
another use of this device. Costume accessories such as
garters, girdles, bloomers and suspenders have been used with
similar results.

Charlie's Aunt, one of the classic modern farces,
demonstrates further uses of the exaggerated stage property
device in the wearing of female attire. While this suggests
disguise, the sight of Lord Fancourt Babberley, a college boy
dressed up as a Victorian aunt from Brazil, aiding his friends
_ Jack and Charley with their romantic pursuits, seems more
ludicrous than deceptive.

Chairs that collapse and other pieces of furniture
constructed to shatter or give way when used have long been
sources of great amusement. Though the use of exaggerated
stage properties may admit to a certain weakness on the part of
the playwright, such extrinsic devices must be justified when
we recognize that his purpose is to entertain by whatever means
he finds appropriate. Certainly this device remains an effect-
ive means to the end of laughter.

5. Repetition
The device of repetition provokes laughter by repeating

a word, a sentence, an idea, a situation or event, an action

or reaction, a character or characters, or a manner of speaking
in excess of what we could reasonably expect. The effect of
such "coincidences" produces laughter when they exceed the

163
limitations of probability. It is deliberately planned and
calculated by playwrights and spontaneously improvised by
performers. It can be the mere repetition of a gesture, a
movement or an action which has earned a laugh. Hughes says
that:

. . by some principle which may roughly
approximate a law of human reaction the response
grows in intensity with each successive repetition.
Since the result can only be gauged approximately,
however, the number of times that a repetition will
be greeted with the desired response gust be left
to the farceur's skill and judgment.2

One of the strongest and most useful of the farce
devices, repetition, can be found as both an aural and visual
device, at one or the same time. Henri Bergson saw it as the
favorite method of classic comedy and one of three significant
processes or comic elements in situations and in words:

It consists in so arranging events that a scene

is reproduced either between the same character
under fresh circumstances or between fresh charac-
ters under the same circumstances. Thus we have,
repeated by lackeys in less dignified language, a
scene already played by their masters. Now, imagine
ideas expressed in suitable style and thus placed

in the setting of their natural environment. If

you think of some arrangement whereby they are
transferred to fresh surroundings, while maintaining
their mutual relations, or, in other words, if you
can induce them to express themselves in an alto-
gether different style and to transpose themselves
into another key,--you will have language itsslf
playing a comedy-~language itself made comic.

Bergson illustrates frequently from Moliere and partic-
ularly from The School for Wives which does nothing more than
repeat a single incident three times: Horace tells Arnolphe'
that he intends to deceive Agnes' guardian, who turns out to

 

29Ibid., p. 33.

30Bergson, op. cit., pp. 139-40.

164
be Arnolphe himself; Arnolphe believes he has counteracted
the move; and Agnes contrives that Horace gets all the benefit
of Arnolphe's precautionary measures. The same symmetrical
repetition appears in George Dandip: Dandin learns that his
wife is unfaithful; and summons the assistance of his in-laws;
but Dandin himself must apologize in the end.

Lea declares that the device of repetition was the
most interesting contribution made by the commedia dell'arte
to the art of farce construction. She says that when something
happens three times in succession we laugh whether it be a
joke or not. Her footnoted illustration is taken from Li due
simili and offers the simplest example:

When Aurelia and Flaminia are tired of arguing

in the street, Flaminia gives Aurelia a blow

and goes into the house, leaving Aurelia's

blow to fall on Pantalone, who comes up the street
at that moment; Aurelia disappears and Pantalone
hits Coviello, Coviello's blow falls on Lelio,
Lelio's on Franceschina, and Frgnceschina's on
Zanni, who is the last arrival. 1

She concludes by admitting that the professional
comedians of the commedia did not concern themselves with the
reason for the laughter but made use of the fact. The idea
reappears in many sources but is candidly expressed by Klein:
". . . the big laugh comes on the third time."32

Apart from the series of repetitious events, Kernodle
illustrated the powerful technique of repetition when he
observes that:

In broad farce a key of robust laughter is
constantly set by pairs or groups of characters
moving in unison, moving toward or away from each
other, crossing a leg, raising a hand or starting
to speak in unison. A whole sequence of action is
repeated to great comic effect when the 'worm turns'

 

31
32

Lea, op. cit., p. 195.
Klein, loc. cit.

165

and one character gives back the treatment he
has received. Even more complex sequences
have been used in plays and vaudeville skits
in which, a third, fourth or even fifth
person gets the same kind of deal.

Stephenson supports repetitions in speech, action,
and scene as one of the essential means of farce. He calls
it "staccato successions" and lists among possible varia-
tions those of gesture, movement, business, action, episodes
or scenes, and of speech types in duplicate examples.3 Two
actors may do the same thing simultaneously or in succession.
Normally, the movements are not exactly alike as one may be
an unsuccessful copy of another or one may gesture with the
right hand and the other with the left. The master may kick
a stone after which a servant kicks it and injures his toe.

Repetition is used to effect the characters in a
plot. Character repetition can be observed with the twins of
Plautus' Menaechmi and Shakespeare's double repetition of two
sets of twins in Ihngomedy of Errors. Through disguise
identical appearances are sometimes developed, as in John
Lacy's Old Troop, or Mbnsieur Raggou (1665). Hughes provides
this illustration of repetition of disguise:

The cheese is confiscated, sold, reconfiscated,
resold. Flea-Flint disguises as Raggou and,

much to everyone's confusion, we have two Raggous,

or would have if Raggou had not disguised as
Flea-Flint so that the latter is multiplied.

Finally, with one more common variation of the
device, Raggou buys the puppet show and manages

to keep his own identity concealed; Flea-Flint

buys it from him, expecting to be equally succegsful,
but in his case the outcome is quite different. 5

 

33
34
35

Kernodle, op. cit., p. 721.
Stephenson, op. cit., p. 89.

Hughes, op. cit., pp. 32-33.

166
One of the most significant variations in repetition
is the "Snow-ball" device of Bergson's. He defines it as:

. . . an effect which grows by arithmetical
progression, so that the cause, insignificant at
the outset, culminates by a necessary evolution

in a result as important as it is unexpected

. . . for instance . . . a caller rushing violently
into a drawing-room; and he knocks against a lady,
who upsets her cup of tea over an 01 gentleman,
who slips against a glass window which falls in

the street on to the head of a constablg, who

sets the whole police force agog, etc.

Blistein illustrates the "Snow-ball" effect with a
repetition of comic beatings that finds each one in the series
funnier than the last:

The father beats the son, the son beats the
servant, the servant beats the scullery or
errand boy, and the boy, finding no human being
below him in the order of things, promptly kicks
the dog. 7

Variations of this are also found in Steele's The Conscious
Lovers (1722) and Sheridan's The Rivals (1775) to name two
of many comedies and farces using it.

6. Inversion

Inversion is another visual-aural device which we
define as the reversal of position, order, or relationship in
characters, attitudes, actions, or speech for the prime purpose
of effecting laughter. Bergson defined it simply in this
statement: "Picture to yourself certain characters in a certain
situation: if you reverse the situation and invert the roles,
you obtain a comic scene."38 Its application has been broad
and, according to Bergson, could include everything that comes

 

36
37
38

Bergson, op. cit., p. 113.
Blistein, op. cit., p. 45.
Bergson, op. cit., p. 121.

11...]! 1.1...
I! .‘

Ill- llllll.‘ ill
I all

167
under the heading of "topsyturvydom."

Stephenson identifies inversion with the phrase,
"antitheses (of types, accents, dialects, behaviors)."39
one of the "essential means of farce", his antitheses, or
Opposites, encompass the speech, actions, and characters of
farce.

As

Historian Kernodle makes the point that playwrights
have often found the key to laughter in sharp contrasts and
reversals. Aristophanes gave us Socrates up in a basket
thinking, Euripides composing verse on top of a ladder, the
dictator competing with the baloney-seller, and the general
in The Acharnians floundering in the ditch. Plautus
frequently used rhythmic patterns of repetition and reversals.

Inversion appears most frequently as a plot mechanism
in both comedy and farce. It is, therefore, the device of
the playwright or the generative force. The examples are
numerous but let us observe several which illustrate its
flexibility.

We find inversion when female characters assume domi-
nant roles as in L sistrata, The Warrior's Husbppg and Th;
Queen's Husband. ‘A classic example of reversal is found in
the medieval farce, Master Pierre Patelin, when the lawyer
is caught in a net of his own weaving. In Happiest Days of
Your Life a girls' school finds itself billeted in a boys'
school to the horror of all concerned. Barrie's comedy,

The Admirable Crichton, reveals a butler who assumes control

of a household when the family is marooned on an island, but
upon being rescued and returned home resumes his former servile
role. The tables are turned in It Pays to Advertipg and a
lesson is learned after intending to teach the lesson. The
meek verse writer in Three Men on a Horse finally takes command

 

39Stephenson, op. cit., p. 89.

 

168
of the situation. Again we see the turnabout of a down-trodden
character who ultimately dominates in The Solid Gold Cadillac
and Born Yesterday. A Texas Steer takes a man out of his
element to see how he'll act in another, from western ranch to
eastern congress.

Stephenson comments briefly on the diverse use of
inversion. "Turning the tables, a favorite device with farce
writers, may seem to be a characteristic pattern, but it, too,
is appropriated ready-made and unaltered from anecdote and
folk tale."40

Inversion in situation or in words is less interesting
to Bergson than repetition perhaps because it is easier to
apply. The minute something is spoken, the professional wit
looks for a meaning that can be made by reversing it:

One of the characters in a comedy of Labiche
shouts out to his neighbour on the floor above,
who is in the habit of dirtying his balcony,
"What do you mean by emptying your pipe on to
my terrace." The neighbour retorts, "What do
you mean by putting your terrace under my

pipe?" There is no necessity to dwell upon this
kind of wit4 instances of which could easily be
multiplied. 1

Inversion has served all of literature as a type of
plot complication. As a farce device its use has been part-
icularly effective when the reversal comes as a surprise and
when the new order offers laughable relationships and con-
sequences.

7. Concealment

The device of concealment involves the evasion of
detection by others, or the hiding of an object, person or
information in order to provoke laughter. Equally important

 

40Ibid., p. 87.

41Bergson, op. cit., p. 138.

169
to this purpose is the kind of concealment and the place of
concealment. This visual-aural device can range from extremely
simple to complexly improbable and contributes to the intrigue
of farce where its method is as important as its occurrence.
Professor Hughes uses the traditional term "disguise"

to identify this device though he expresses dissatisfaction
with it:

What I have termed the disguise motif is

so varied and complex that it proves difficult

to fit under so specific a heading.. It may

range from the mere attempt to evade detection

by assuming another--or another's--appearance. . .
to a point at which all pretense of verisimilitude
is abandoned and the clown poses £3 a tree or a
statue or other non-human object.

Other terms have been used which are not synonymous
with "concealment" but describe a type of concealment--words
like "confusion", "mistaken identity", and "deceptions".

Lea expresses the vast proliferation of disguises in this
passage:

The device of disguise is at least as old as

the Graeco-Roman comedy of Plautus and Terence:
with the dramatists of the Renaissance it became
almost an obsession. . . . Given the lead in
fiction and printed drama, the situations of the
girl-page, the young lover as a servant, a
physician or a woman, the old lover as a tradesman,
the servant as his master, as a stran er or a
necromanggr, were multiplied and modi ied,pg
nauseam.

Because the term "disguise" and "mistaken identity"
seem more descriptive and specific, we have chosen to use the
more general term "concealment" which more fully embraces the
span of this device. The range of disguises or concealments
that Hughes suggests make meaningful illustrations of the
diversity within the device.

 

42Hughes, 0p. cit., pp. 35-36.

43Lea, op. cit., pp. 408-09.

170

Concealment at its simplest level, the mere evading
of detection, functions as a plot technique to any literary
form. When viewed solely from this role, its significance to
farce seems secondary. But when concealment serves both to
advance intrigue and provoke laughter it fulfills most com-
pletely the function of a farce device.

The farce playwright has used concealment at least
since Aristophanes had Dionysus and his servant Xanthias switch
identities in The Frogs in order to provide the means for
complicated misunderstandings. Concealment in the hands of
playwrights of all periods appears chiefly to aid the plot
complications but the farceur has turned it also to the end of
laughter. It has a long and illustrious history and is
herewith discussed in this dual sense which is the province of
comic theatre.

The Menaechgi of Plautus has been mentioned before with
its reunion of long lost twins. Shakespeare further compli-
cated the idea in The Comedy of Errors by adding a set of
twin-servants and multiplying the opportunities:

Disguise, long associated with the merrymaking

of a Saturnalia, Twelfth Night or Hallowe'en
festival, has been a stock-in-trade in theatrical
history for comic effect. Whether it is Ed Wynn
or Charlie's Aunt, you constantly see the
character through the disguise.

Aristophanes used disguise in The Wasps as Philocleon
attempts to escape from his house by a series of ridiculous
and hilarious efforts, the most improbable being his disguise
as smoke coming out of the chimney.

Lea explains the development of this device in 16th
and 17th century Italian comedy as follows:

Offshoots of the drama of disguise are the
devices of substitution and concealment by which
the lovers borrow each other's clothes, and so,

 

44Kernodle, op. cit., p. 720.

171

unwittingly sort themselves into the appropriate
couples or manage to evade their parents by

being carried from house to house in coffins

or chests or washing-baskets. These more
farcical effects, together with the sensational
scenes of supposed death and feigned or temporary
insanity, are particularly common in the commedia
dell'arte, but tzey occur also in fiction and
academic comedy. 5

The boy-bride or girl-page redisguised as a girl were
common to the English and Italian popular stage and spying
disguises adapted by a husband, a father or a duke were
particularly prevalent in England, according to Lea. Certain
of these plays were commissioned and written to exploit the
talents of a particular actor. The "breeches" parts in
English comedy are another but somewhat different illustration
of young women disguised as men.

Moliere's The Tricks of Sca in, mentioned earlier,
presents the rogue who hides his master, Geronte, from an
imaginary danger and then beats him, pretending to be his
enemy. Here, as with most of the farcical uses of concealment,
the characters on stage conceal only from other characters but
the audience detects the act and is in on the trick which
compounds the fun.

In Goldsmith's She Stoo s to Con er, Tony Lumpkin
deliberately causes mistaken identity by telling Marlow and
Hastings that his home is an inn. The two visitors then treat
their host as the landlord and his daughter as a maid.

In discussing American farce of the mid-1930's, Alan
Downer insists that concealment or hiding in closets and under
beds was more prevalent than it was during the Restoration
period. Most typical of these plays were a group called the
"Abbott comedies", so named for the playwright-producer-dir-
ector George Abbott who made them succeed in New York and

45Lea, op. cit., p. 409.

172
on tour. The plays included Three Men on a Horse, Boy Meets
.QEEL: Room Service, Brother Rat and What a Life. In addition
to concealment, these farces played on stage with vigorous and
rapid action and went to extreme lengths to escape consequences
of all types.

The range of ludicrous concealments appears limitless.
The age-old trick of a clown dressing in women's attire or
a college boy dressing as Charley's Aunt is as typically farce
as the clown who appears as a corpse, a devil, an ape or a bear.
Another type extends further into improbability when a clown
poses as a non-human object. He might pose as a figure in a
painting or tapestry before him or behind him. Hughes allows
that transformations by magic whether real or mock represent
still another type of disguise:

Since the ostensible object of disguise is
almost always to prevent detection, this device
suggests a related one: the liberal use in any
age of certain traditional places of concealment.
Continental drama seems to have favored the

sack. . . . English farceurs relied chiefly,
however, on more traditional properties as places
of concealment: chests, hampers, wash-baskets,
and barrels. So many examples of the use of all
these occur that it is hardly necessary to offer
specific illustration. Much the same thing may
be said of the numerous uses of rugs, of wells
and cisterns, or of chimneys for concealment.

. . . One final word on concealment. No other
device has been quite so fully and universally
used for laughs as darkness.

Concealment in farce employs the dual function of
plot intrigue and laughter.

8. Incongruity

The farce device of incongruity presents an idea,
action, speech or character that involves a contradiction.

 

46Hughes, op. cit., pp. 42-43.

173

Things or people apparently unrelated and in conflict with
one another are placed together in space or time in such a
way as to imply or state a connection between them and thus
produce laughter. Professor Nicoll writes in The Theogy of
Drama that incongruity is undoubtedly the greatest source of
laughter, and that:

It is the incongruity between two ideas that
resents to us the twin qualities of wit and
or. . . . Mere eccentricity is not comic
unless it be opposed to or contrasted with
something that is normal. No comedy can be a
true comedy unless there is presented alongside
of the humorous situation, words, or chazacter
something that is more or less ordinary.

Wallace Gray identified three types of incongruities
as: rational and meaningful; irrational and meaningless
,[Eut not purposelesg7; and irrational and apparently meaning-
less. The first type occurs when we laugh because it is
unexpected but yet we understand the rationality underlying the
event. The third type exists to make a point and can be found
in much of the dialogue of Ionesco's The Bald Saprano.

The second type of irrational and meaningless but
purposeful incongruity:

. . . is most frequently encountered in a farce
in the form of slapstick and has no purpose other
that to entertain. . . . This type of incongruity
is pure fun and occurs in a situation or context
in which we have been encouraged to accept the
incongruity, as in a chilg's game of marbles,
'for fun, not for keeps'. 9

A lovely girl appears on the screen and as she smiles
beautifully a custard pie hits her in the face. Gray further

 

47Nicoll, The Theor of Drama, p. 196.

48Wallace Gray, "The Uses of Incongruit ", Educational
Theatre Journal Vol. XV, No. 4 (December, 1963§, p

49Ibid., p. 344.

174
illustrated with the mime character in a pppppng_ngTlp££g
play who starts to sit on a chair when someone pulls the chair
out from under him. Instead of falling the mime sits comfortably
as though in an imaginary chair.so

Stephenson provides the term "incongruous juxta-
positions"51 which seem not to alter but to add description to
the term. Relationships between elements must certainly point
to the heart of the incongruity. The device constitutes another
of the visual-aural devices used in varied ways.

In farce we frequently find a character condemning a
certain undesirable line of conduct and only moments later
proceeding to do it himself. Such incongruity seems more
subtle than instances in which a character appears with a
hatchet or an arrow sticking in his head or someone cracks a
walnut on the head of a friend only to have a bump appear.

The Matchmgkgg abounds in foolish fun with chairs pulled
out at the wrong time, people entering swinging doors at the
same time, maids skipping to answer doors and Mrs. Levi sprawled
on the floor in all her finery. Many of these illustrations
incorporate incongruity and violent physical action as well as
other farce devices.

Krutch illustrates physical incongruity by the infant
Cleopatra pushing her brother off the throne or the prim sec-
retary in Candida getting tipsy. Jack Worthing putting on
mourning for the death of the non-existent brother in Earnest
might be called an example of visual incongruity. Not only are
the lines funny but the hat with a black band adds to the
total incongruity. The fun in such actions, ideas, witty lines
and characters lies in the contradictions represented to the
audience.

 

soIbid.

51Stephenson, op. cit., p. 89.

175

9. Exaggerated Characters
The condition of farce which demands rapid pace and

quick recognition, requires stock or standard characters.
These characters appear to be types of individuals that an
audience can identify early and recognize easily. They may
range from mere silhouettes to detailed and complete personal-
ities but they usually display exaggerated character traits.

Seldom do we find these characters fully developed but
they frequently display certain of the idiocyncracies of
ordinary people carried to exaggeration. Such traits are made
readily observable and predictable as playwright and performer
combine their talents to give the farce character life. Farce
is always acted and as Professor Corrigan declares: "No'
other form of drama makes such great demands on the actor."

The device of exaggerated character is defined as
characters that are self-absorbed, sublimely unaware of their
own deficiencies, sometimes conceited but generally with exag-
gerated or anormal behavior that makes us laugh. We will use
the term "stock types" which refers to both traits of personal-
ity or stereotype and of standard and established character-
izations.

We can trace the ascendancy of the stock characters
of antiquity down to the presentéday descendant. Such genea-
logical lines of development from primitive times would tend
to focus on a character change from its original form. With
historical data so meager, this approach seems hardly feasible.
Our concern ought to be for the similarities that exist between
farce characters today and their ancestors. If we make this
distinction clear we can observe the consistency of character-
izations among the farceurs, writers and performers, of all ages.

52

 

52Robert W. Corrigan (ed) Roman Drama (New York:
Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1966), p. l .

176

The ancient stock types mentioned earlier reveal, so
far as meager evidence will allow, a rustic simplicity of
characters, all masked: Maccus, the stupid, gluttonous,
awkward fool; Bucco, the fool; Pappus, the good-natured but
gullible old man; and Dossemius or Mandacus, the witty hunch-
back with wart on nose. Bentley identifies essentially these
same four characters as three fools--the Blockhead, the Brag-
gart, and the Silly 01d Man--and the Trickster or knave. What
we have are four stock "type" characters that are exaggerated
and comical on stage but they do not descend to the present in
these forms. They are molded and recast by each generation and
the charaCter that emerges today is not a replica but a comic
"character" that has evolved out of the ancient mold.

He bears many of the same marks as his ancestor but he is now
a twentieth century version of the Silly Old Man. It may be
somewhat less than accurate to call him a character type but
in reality he is the Old Man type in modern dress and manner.

The device of exaggerated characters was a favorite of
Plautus according to Casson. In Casina he gave us the
lecherous old codger, Lysidamus, who appears to descend from the
Silly Old Man. His scheming servant in Pseudolus reflects back
to the Trickster or knave of an earlier day, as the title
indicates. The braggart soldier, PyrgOpolinices, of Miles
Gloriosus is often considered to be the original Braggart
himself. Slightly later Terence presented Thraso, the rich,
pompous and conceited soldier, so vigorously used and abused
in The Eunuch.

Out of the medieval period came Mak, the rogue and well-
known sheep stealer, in The Second Shepard's Play. The unknown
playwright of this fifteenth century manuscript probably had
no knowledge of the Trickster type that‘Mak resembled. Also
from an unknown playwright came The Wakefield Noah which
combined the sermons from God with the farce of Noah and his
shrewish wife. Invited by Noah to enter the ark and abandon

177
her gossip, Noah's wife breaks out in a fit of violent
scolding. She appears to be one of the earliest chattering
and shrewish wives to take the stage.

Nicholas Udall, in the sixteenth century, offered
another braggart in the title role of Ralph Roister Doister.
This pompous and gullible braggart, who assumed himself
irresistable to the ladies, represented a much-purified adap-
tation of the braggart soldier of Plautus.

A German version of the trickster appears in Th3
Wandering Scholar From Paradise by Hans Sachs. The sixteenth
century writer sketches a witty, unacrupulous student who
wheedles money and goods from an old woman and the horse from
under her husband.

Volpone, the fox, presents the best developed trickster
of this period. Jonson's delightful character is unique on
several counts: instead of the servile class, the fox is a
Venetian magnifico and master himself; instead of being
humiliated in defeat he proves to be a good sport when
defeated. These are but a few of the traits of Shakespeare's
Sir John Falstaff in The Mergy Wives of Windsor. This jovial,
rotund rogue, friend of Prince Hal's in Henry I , is gulled,
beaten and dumped into the Thames from a laundry basket. Like
Volpone before him, the conniving Falstaff takes defeat well
in stride. Shakespeare's complete treatment of this character
qualifies Falstaff as a character of comedy but his gross action
and vigorous antics seem to make him strongly farcical.

Moliere's tricky Tartuffe and the old fool, Orgon, are
cleverly combined in one of the best comic pieces of the seven-
teenth century. Tartuffe attempts to steal the old man's money
and wife and Organ, the credulous, wealthy fool, vigorously
defends the intruder beyond all reason.

From The Doctor in Spite of Himself and The Affected
Youn Ladies, Moliere contributes other types in the faggot-
gatherer Sganarelle, who would be master and erstwhile doctor

178
of his house, and Jodelet, the valet who passes himself off
as a man of quality. "Sganarelle or Jodelet . . . may represent
jealousy or avarice or boastfulness."53 While these characters
manifest personal qualities, they also bear resemblances to an
earlier fool and tricky servant.

Wilde's Lady Bracknell appears to have nothing in common
with the earlier shrewish wife of Nbah but the society dowager
magnifies the domineering manner and shameless mercenary
interests of her earlier sister. She seems utterly inhuman
and very amusing.

Many of John Morton's farce characters are of the con-
ventional stock type. He used the foolish old man or old
woman with excessive complacency and affectation, many varia-
tions of the overly self-satisfied and smug type, the coarse
talking, blundering, whiskey-drinking, cocky Irishman and a
most interesting group of middle class journeymen and clerks,
most with an exaggerated code of Victorian morality and
decorum. According to Arnold there is a strong reliance upon
extravagant ideas, behavior, and decorum by Morton.

The exaggerated characters of American farce reflect
individual traits as well as obvious similarities to basic
stock types. The short but numerous Mulligan Guard farces of
Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart developed a drama: ". . . out
of the lower life of the larger Eastern cities . . . signifi-
cant because of the fidelity with which the types of character
are portrayed."54 Quinn later continues with this description
of the character types of Harrigan's creation:

They were almost perfect pictures of the
guerillas of life, hanging on the skirts of
the other races and in their reckless gayety,

 

53Hughes, op. cit., p. 32.

54Arthur Hobson Quinn, A Histor of the American
Drama From the Civil War to the Present Da (New York:
5335. p- 32

Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1

I I lllll III I
II‘ I ' II' I!

 

II I al III I'. II II I i I I

179

improvidence, impudence and superstition,
adding almost unlgmited possibilities to
the human comedy. 5

Harrigan played the Irishman Dan Mulligan and Hart played his
wife Cordelia until 1885 when they dissolved their partnership.

Charles Hoyt, whose farces with music or without,
broadly satirized contemporary events, develOped caricatures
or comic strip characters with some reality. They were types,
nonetheless, as were the characters of George Ade and George
M. Cohan. Ade's The CoTlege Widow offered a group of highly
exaggerated characters and Cohan's Hit the Trail Holliday
presented a character based on the career of Billy Sunday,

a bartender who leads the prohibition crusade. Such charac-
ters, fully-developed or fragmentary, contributed a unique but
definite American "type" to the list of standard farce charac-
ters. ' ‘

The little man-hero of American comic drama developed
as a distinctive native type at the hands of numerous play-
wrights. He often appeared stupid but always managed to
succeed because of the peculiar world around him. George
Kaufman used him as a loveable main character. George Abbott
made him a shade smaller but still a hero. This develOpment
has led Professor Gassner to credit the ”loveable nitwit"
as the basic ingredient of American low comedy.56

The farce characters in any age cannot be observed
through major characters and types alone. Numerous lesser or
minor characters have added fantastic dimensions to this device.
They have touched many qualities, including the sensational,
cruel, reckless, gross, crude, passionate, intense, grotesque
and rowdy. They have impressed us as improbable while seeming

 

551bid., p. 87.

56Gassner, Twenty Best Plays of the Modern American
Theatre, p. xvii. .

I'll: I I'll ill! l 1"! ll..|u ll.‘ :1 II II III II II III I l

180
to be quite real. They have served as the puppets which the
imaginative, comic minds of playwrights have maneuvered for
the sake of laughter. The farce device of exaggerated charac-'
ters will continue to appear disSimilar to life while drawing
heavily on man's incredible antics.

These then are the basic devices that have emerged
out of the comic theatre of farce. Their origins are obscured
in time and yet their presence seems to be evident since anti-
quity. It must certainly be evident at this point that the
presence of a farce device can more readily be noted than the
resulting laughter can be explained. Perhaps without rational-
izing, we may confess to a greater interest and concern in the
former than the latter. We, like farce, are more concerned in
the doing than the reason. In one sense, our dilemma might
have been best expressed in the words of the English drama
critic, J. F. Grein, when he described an "Abbott comedy":

The actors work with a will and like Trojans;

they rush about the stage as if panic had stricken
them; they blurt out their wild bits of dialogue

as if under pneumatic pressure; they shout,
gesticulate, play tricks, gambol with the irrespon-
sible abandon of an amiable lunatic asylum let
loose, they give us no time to think; to analyze or
to criticize; somehow they laugh and will make us
respond--and the result is that people on the stage
and people in the house let themselves gayly go,
both parties really full well aware that thgy are
"dashed" if they know what it is all about.

.A dearth of farce texts has compounded the difficulty
of locating a representative sample from all periods. As
a result the evidence and illustrations that have been used
were randomly selected from an unrepresentative sampling of
farces. If all the desired farce texts had been available,

 

57Montrose Jonas Moses (ed), Re resentative American
Dramas (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 19415, p. 331.

181
the weakness of analyzing and judging farce from the play
script would nevertheless remain. In spite of this the study
has been profitable in focusing on farcical similarities
through the literature. With little else to research Professor
Hughes' statement reinforces our view:

Inadequate as the mere text of farce is, however,
we may, with the assistance of the fuller and
more useful commentary of contemporary theatre-
goers, learn enough of the structure and devices
of farce to observe ghe persistence of elements
common in all ages.5

This has remained the ultimate purpose of the present
study from definition to device. A closer scrutiny of farce
has long been overdue. To the degree that playwrights,
scholars, and historians have been objective and precise, this
study may validly be called the nature of farce.

From definition to device the correlation appears
strong. ‘All farce devices address themselves to the funda-
mental purpose of laughter and a comic catharsis. In defi-
nition farce is the popular drama or theatre of laughter in
which an audience, emotionally detached, can experience the
comic catharsis.

Farce concentrates its major focus on situations that
progress from simple to wildly complicated filled with ludicrous
unexpected incidents. The farce devices of inversion and con-
cealment offer useful techniques to execute this function.

The situations further develop from the probable to the
grossly exaggerated through the use of repetition, exaggerated
prOperties and exaggerated characters. The devices of violent
physical action and stage tricks or broad business create the
rapid visual action found in the definition of farce.

To the definitional commonplace or ordinary character
types, the farce devices of exaggerated type characters,
incongruity and farce dialogue contribute a variety of means.

 

58Hughes, op. cit., p. 59.

182
These same devices offer the necessary tools to the play-
wright who employs bold satire in his work. Again by
definition the genre of farce is capable of a broad and bold
type of satire that may frequently be too obvious to be
pungent.

The history of farce must certainly reveal the duality
of the genre in yet another way. The farcical purpose and
its techniques have consistently augmented the works of other
forms, dramatic and non-dramatic. At the same time it has
perpetuated its own legitimate genre of drama. There is no
reason to believe that this dual function will or should ever
cease. Man's need for laughter can only increase as the
problems and complexities of the world accelerate. The
farcical spirit in all its forms stands ready to meet that
need.

As this study began, a defense of farce seemed a biased
research approach but our conclusion now justifies a vigorous
defense of this much maligned genre. The simplicity of purpose
and elementary form of farce theatre now prove more involved
and complex with its duality of form and technique. The history
of farce has yet to be written. Other superficial fragments of
this history point more strongly than ever to the need for
greater understanding of farce. When this history is recorded
it will incorporate several views.

The farce is eternal. From ancient Atellan plays
before the golden years of Greek drama the farce form and sub-
stance first appears in recorded history. Its purpose and
basic devices remain unchanged as does its popularity through-
out recorded time. There need be no attempt to elevate, to
upgrade or inflate the value of the theatre of laughter. The
audience and the genre seek a common goal of entertainment
through laughter.

Lea describes the relationship of the commedig dell'-
pgpg to farce in the following thoughts that prophetically

183
illustrate the role of farce in the theatre:

Farce it is and to farce it must return.

We hunt out its development astride the
horse of a merry-go-round that is predestined
to a circular career. The drama is not
advanced, but it has had a glorious penny-
worth on the way round.

 

This study concludes itself most effectively in the
definition of farce and its nine basic farce devices already
stated. They represent the culmination of a study into the
nature of farce. And yet there remain some explanations and
observations that ought briefly and finally to be made and
are herewith included.

The bibliography that follows identifies the sources
used but much of this textual material contributes quite mini-
mally to the research. A smaller proportion of these sources
provides invaluable assistance. The entire bibliography made
some contribution to this study and yet it represents a
fraction of theatre literature explored in the process.

It should be stated here that the great majority of
theatre literature omits or avoids any meaningful discussion
of farce. It contributes little or nothing that might clarify
either the characteristics, the definition or the techniques
of farce. From the few that attempt some critical insight,
much is superficial and inaccurate. Frequently the writers
defer to one or several of the primary sources used in this
study. All of this points further toward the need for con-
tinued research in this area.

 

59Lea, op. cit., p. 196.

184

It seems reasonable that a detailed investigation
into the true origin of the theatrical term "farce" and how
that term became the nomenclature for the genre of farce would
contribute immensely to our understanding. Such a study would
contribute significantly to our fragmented history of farce
and could develop into a study of its own which collects the
scraps of information from many sources into a meaningful
history of farce.

It is the hope of this writer that the definition of
farce arrived at in this study would be tested. Perhaps the
most obvious test would come through a detailed analysis of the
plays themselves, which raises the problem of availability.
This in itself offers another project in terms of information
retrieval. Because many farces were never published but were
often copyrighted to protect the writer and producer during the
run of the play, a systematic search and identification ought
to be made of Library of Congress manuscripts. In addition to
this, a systematic search through collections and library
holdings across the nation might culminate itself in a union
catalogue of farces in United States libraries. With the
plays thus located the opportunity to use them for analysis
would invite attention.

The concept of comic catharsis needs extended research,
either refuting the idea or supporting the concept as does this
study. A thorough analysis of the reviews and criticisms of
the productions of significant and representative farces might
provide greater insight into both comic catharsis and the
nature of farce.

Another meaningful project would be an expanded assort-
ment of farce devices to provide a convenient catalogue or
handbook for actors, directors and playwrights interested in
farce. These are a few of the related studies that must be
done in the area. Quite obviously much of this will require
that farce texts be available for research.

185

Though the definition and devices arrived at earlier
conclude themselves quite naturally, several significant
observations must here be summarized.

Farce is the only dramatic genre that is completely
and irrevocably theatre, for it can fulfill its purpose only
in production. It has been and continues to be the comic
drama of situation, relying most heavily on the improbable
compounding of events or situations in a surprising and exag-
gerated sequence. It is currently seen more on television than
in the theatre as we find almost daily examples of the "situ-
ation comedy" on every broadcasting network. The medium differs
but the characteristics and techniques are usually farce.

Contrary to prevailing Opinion, the farce is not plot-
less but is filled with an abundance of rapidly changing im-
probable situations. Ludicrous and exaggerated characters while
appearing as cardboard stereotypes are very real and ordinary
people. The dialogue of farce is capable of both wit and satire
in spite of general opinion to the contrary. Great wit has
always been the product of the few masters of comic theatre and
it has appeared infrequently in any period. When satire is
present in farce it is a broad and obvious type, more a by-
product and certainly of secondary importance to farce.

The basic purpose of farce is and always will be to
arouse laughter by every means possible. Its future seems
secure because of the need in man for laughter and the need in
the theatre for a type of comic drama that provides entertain-
ment first and is directed to all men.

The farce with its vigorous and gross exaggeration speaks
to young and old, to simple and sophisticate. Susanne Langer
speaks of all comic theatre in the following observations that
direct themselves particularly to farce:

Humor has its place in all the arts, but in
comic drama it has its home. Comedy may be
frivolous, farcical, ribald, ludicrous to any

186

degree, and still be true art. gaughter
springs from its very structure.

The art and craft of the farceur is focused most
directly toward laughter. The nature and technique of the
farce survives and endures because of our need for unrestrained
laughter in the theatre.

 

60Susanne K. Langer, Feelin and Form (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953 , p. .

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