Farce

katherine.heavey@glasgow.ac.uk

Origins of farce
Farce began in Greek and Roman theatre, and both
Shakespeares Comedy of Errors (c. 1594) and [Ben] Jonsons
The Alchemist (1610) are sometimes so described; [] the
advent of silent film made farce international through such stars
as Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, and Buster Keaton. In Latin
farsa means stuffing; farces are typically stuffed with ever
more intricate scenes which become increasingly frantic in pace
and relation to plot. Associated with comic buffoonery, farce
demands great skills of timing and physical clowning from
actors; tending to anarchy, it can abound with scatological and
sexual references
John Lennard and Mary Luckhurst, The Drama Handbook: A
Guide to Reading Plays (Oxford, 2002), p. 95.

The romantic comedy of Shakespeare and some of his

contemporaries and the comedy of humours (of types or

idiosyncrasies) of Jonson suggest from the outset two
dominant directions which later comic writers will take: a
comedy which revolves about love and marriage and
which frequently employs nature and its rhythms as
central to both dramatic structure and theme, and a more
classical comedy which satirises hypocrisy, eccentricity,
manners, and morals, and which is predominantly urban.
R J Dorius, in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and

Poetics, ed Alex Preminger, 1975, 146

Objections to comedy
First, comedies, which they suppose to be a doctrinal of ribaldry, they be

undoubtedly a picture or as it were a mirror of mans life, wherein evil is

not taught but discovered; to the intent that men beholding the
promptness of youth unto vice, the snares of harlots and bawds laid for
young minds, the deceit of servants, the chances of fortune contrary to
mens expectation, they being thereof warned may prepare themself to
resist or prevent occasion. Semblably remembering the wisdom,
advertisements, counsels, dissuasion from vice, and other profitable
sentences most eloquently and familiarly shown in those comedies,
undoubtedly there shall be no little fruit out of them gathered. And if
the vices in them expressed should be cause that minds of the readers
should be corrupted, then by the same argument not only interludes in
English, but also sermons, wherein some vice is declared, should be to
the beholders and hearers like occasion to increase sinners.
Sir Thomas Elyot, The Book named The Governor, 1531, I. xiii.

Authorial play
Prologue: But understand, this our Suppose is nothing else but a
mistaking or imagination of one thing for another: for you shall see
the master supposed for the servant, the servant for the master: the
freeman for a slave, and the bondslave for a freeman: the stranger
for a well known friend, and the familiar for the stranger. But what? I
suppose you already suppose me very fond, that have so simply
disclosed unto you the subtleties of these our Supposes: where
otherwise indeed I suppose you should have heard almost the last of
our Supposes, before you could have supposed any of them aright.
George Gascoigne, Supposes, in A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres, ed. G.
W. Pigman (Oxford, 2000), p. 7.
Prose drama first performed 1566; adapted from Ariosto, and in turn
used by Shakespeare in The Taming of the Shrew.

The divided self

Jupiter: Alcmena dearest, in me you see
A husband, and a lover; and the latters
The only one, I think, who really matters.
The husband merely cramps and hinders me.
The lover, fiercely jealous of your heart,
Would be the only one for whom you care,
And will not settle for some part
Of what the husband deigns to share.
He would obtain your love at its pure source,
And not by way of nuptial bonds and rights,
Or duty, which compels the heart by force
And so corrupts all loving intercourse
And spoils all amorous delights.
Molire, Amphitryon, trans. Richard Wilbur (NY: Theatre Communications
Group, 2010) p. 33.

Two perspectives
Amphitryon: Perhaps, Alcmena, you anticipated, a
Last night, in visions of your sleeping mind, b
The glad return I contemplated, a
And having, in this dream your mind created, a
Repaid my eager love in kind, b
Feel that your heart is vindicated? a
Alcmena: Perhaps, Amphitryon, you are aberrated, a
And vapors so becloud your mind b
That memories of last night are dissipated, a
And you can question all that I have stated, a
And my true love, by your unkind b
Mistrust, be slandered and negated? a
Amphitryon, p. 50.

Language as revelation of character

In Commedies, the greatest Skyll is this, rightly to touche
All thynges to the quicke: and eke to frame eche person so,
That by his common talke, you may his nature rightly know:
A Royster ought not preache, that were to straunge to heare,
But as from vertue he doth swerue, so ought his woordes
appeare:
The olde man is sober, the yonge man rashe, the Louer
triumphyng in ioyes,
The Matron graue, the Harlat wilde and full of wanton toyes.
Whiche all in one course they no wise doo agree:
So correspondent to their kinde their speeches ought to bee.
Richard Edwards, Damon and Pythias (1571)

A serious business?
Sosia: The lot of underlings is far
More cruel when those we serve are great.
[] With them, long years of servitude
Will never stand us in good stead.
Their least caprice, or shift of mood,
Brings down their wrath upon our head.
Yet foolishly we cling and cleave
To the empty honour of being at their side,
And strive to feel what other men believe,
That we are privileged and full of pride.
Amphitryon, p. 12.

Hierarchy and power

Ant S (to Dromio S): Because that I familiarly
sometimes
Do use you for my fool and chat with you,
Your sauciness will jest upon my love,
And make a common of my serious hours.
When the sun shines let foolish gnats make sport,
But creep in crannies when he hides his beams.
If you will jest with me, know my aspect,
And fashion your demeanour to my looks;
Or I will beat this method in your sconce.
2.2.26ff.

Adriana (to Antipholus S): How comes it now, my husband, O

how comes it
That thou art thus estranged from thyself?
Thyself I call it, being strange to me,
That, undividable, incorporate,
Am better than thy dear selfs better part.
Ah, do not tear thyself away from me;
For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall
A drop of water in the breaking gulf
And take unmingled thence that drop again
Without addition or diminishing
As take from me thyself, and not me too.
2.2.118ff.

Equality in farce
Dromio E: We came
into the world like
brother and brother,
And now lets go hand
in hand, not one
before another.
5.1.422-3.
Is everyone equal, at
the end of farce?

Farce and other genres

Farce is tragedy played at a thousand
revolutions per minute (John Mortimer).
What is the relationship between tragedy and
farce? Where does farce come close to
tragedy, and what saves it? Which specific
moments of Amphitryo and The Comedy of
Errors could you identify as particularly
significant?

Further reading
Alexander Leggatt (ed.), The Cambridge

Companion to Shakespearean Comedy

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002)
R. W. Maslen, Shakespeare and Comedy,
Arden Critical Companions (London: Thomson,
2005), Chapter One: Comic Manifestoes
Kiernan Ryan, Shakespeares Comedies
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009),
Chapter One: Killing Time