Order
and Disorder
in
Farce
JESSICA MILNER DAVIS ( Northbridge )
Much writing abouthumour concentratesupon the “stimulus - response” se quence, in which the humorous material (which may be verbal and/or visual, perhaps even enacted) provokes (or fails to provoke) areaction expressingap preciation ofthe humour by theaudience. The true natureof this sequenceis of course much morecomplex, as isthe range of possible reactions. Both environ ment and medium of presentation playan importantpart, but so do intentions
and/or expectations both on the part of thejoker/s and ofthe audience (which it self operates bothcollectively and individually). All these aspects willmodify the appreciation of the humour, or the lack ofit.
Expectations
about
Humour
and
Comic Style
in
Farce
In studyingfarce, arecognised dramatic comic genrewith a long-standing tra dition forcheerful, popular amusement, therole ofexpectations in humour co messharply into focus. Whether the humour stimuluscomes from a fair-ground Punch andJudy show,aMardi Gras parade, a comedy-club or bar,the Viennese Volksoper, watching acartoon on video or in a particular T.V. time-slot, seeing the letters-page political cartooninthe dailynewspaper,from being part of a so cial exchange initiated by a smileandthewords“haveyou heardthe oneabout
...?”, orfrom down-loadinga web-site collection of jokes on a particular theme, our expectation is not only that a humour response will be appropriate, but that a particularkind of humorousmaterial, presented in a particular way, will be en countered. The predictive power of suchframing is self-evident; and it applies for both creators and consumers of humour.
From early in the recorded originsof theatre and theatrical performance(by which I mean both impromptu events and those organized for set times and events), a codified hierarchy of how andwhen to be funny evolvedfor perfor mers. Its levelsare identified by thedifferent names of types or styles of come dy,which then serve as a key to establish anaudience’s expectations. Knowing thatoneisabout toencounter a comicopera, or a stand-up comic, or recognising a suspiciously familiar recitation asa parody, orage-old stock charactersas tho se ofabed-room farce,orseeingthe square boundary frameandanimatedfigu resof atwo-dimensional cartoon, all these thingsservetosignal notonly somet hingabout what kind of humour to expect but also (roughly)how toreact to it. From the “high” comedyofmanners(Shakespeare, Moliere, Goldoni, Chekhov, Wilde, Shaw, Stoppardand the best ofT.V. sitcoms),through tragi-comedy, sa tire and black comedy, to burlesque, slapstick and “low” farce, the comiclabel summarises what to expect in terms of characters, plot, style ofactingand “tona lity”of laughter.Thelaughter might be warm andsympathetic;it might be tin ged with sadness and gravity at underlyingwisdom about the sins ofthe world and the unfairness ofthe human condition; maybe cheerful and brave, or rec klessanddefiant; it may be liberating, raucousandindulgent, allowing the co mic violation of social taboos and restraints, and the exhausting belly-laugh of repeatedcomic stimulation. The answer will dependtosome extent not juston the nature ofthe stimuli, buton our expectations and anticipation of what we will see and hear. The “play-frame” for the stimuli includes the fact that we knowthe name of the comic genre, as well as the time and location of perfor mance1.
1 WilliamF. Fry emphasizes this conceptof the “playframe” surroundinghumour andlaughingand its importance,drawing on the work ofGregory Batesonand anthropologistsin general about observing humorousexchanges;seeforexample FryW., 1963, Sweet Madness, Palo Alto, Calif., Pacific Books,
123-147andelsewhere.
Traditionalexpectationsare looser forsome styles of comedy, more precise for others.Often atheatrical piece is artistically amixed bag, a managed sweep of comicstyles ranging fromhightolow and back again. Itmight be thought that the “highest”styleisthe purest, the most difficult to achieve, themost constrai nedin its artistic formulae and limits; that the “comedy of manners”orromantic comedy deserves its traditional positiononthetop rungofthe ladder by virtue of its elaborate code ofconstruction. However, interestingly, farce at the very bot tom rungisprobably the moststrictlycodifiedin terms ofrules of construction
Order andDisorder in Farce
JESSICA MILNER DAVIS
andcomposition, and it is certainly the most demanding to perform (as anyexpe rienced actor willtestify). Arguably, its mix ofdramatic elements(where the drama= character + plot + performance) also providesthe mosthighly comic stimulus -at least as measured in the crude terms oflaughter response (which is aproduct of both volume and duration). It isfarce which notoriouslyexhausts its audience’s with physical laughter.Whatthen is farceand how does itoperate?
Farce
as
a
Genre and the
Origins of
the Term
Writing in 1978, aftertenyears’ investigating dozens of European farce-texts ranging from classical antiquity totheendof the nineteenth century, I concluded that farce is characterized by a comic spiritwhich“delights in taboo-violation, but which avoidsimplied moral comment orsocial criticismand whichtends to debar empathy for its victims” (Davis 1978:86)2. On reflection, I might have ad ded that themorerespectable the comic victims are, and the more successfully moral implications are avoided,the funnier the farce will be. Its guiding rule is to tread a fine line between offence and entertainment.
2 DavisJ. M., 1978, Farce, London, Methuen.
Asdistinct from highcomedy of mannersand romantic comedy, farce-plots tend to be short; they arenot peopled by complex, sympathetic characters, but by simplified comic types. The humour favours direct, visual and physicaljokes over pyrotechnics of verbalwitand declares an openseasonfor aggression, ani mal high spirits,self-indulgence and rudeness. Incontrast to satire and black hu mour(whichcan be equally licentious and violent),the humour of farceis essen tiallyconservative: it has little reforming zeal-or evendespair - at the ways of the world. It tends to restore conventional authority, or at least to save authority’s face, at the end of its comic upheavals.
Farce makes use of techniques such as burlesque (referential mockery of cha racters and situations knownto the audience from outside the farce itself), and slapstick (physical but stylizedbeatings and the humiliation of agelastic targets); but it does so without seekingto point any particular lesson for its audiences. The fundamentaljokesof a farce-plot are probablythe inescapablefactthat all human dignity is at the mercy ofthehuman body and its appetitesand needs; and theacknowledgementthat those humanbodies themselves are imprisoned bythe
space/timecontinuum. If there is a meta-message ora moral here, it is that we are all leveled down by our common humanity. Noairsand pretences allowed.
Exigencyof this kind produceselaborate constraints in boththeconstruction anddelivery ofa good farce; but their mastery has not always been appreciated bycritics andtheorists. On the other hand popular audiences have returned a “give us more”vote onfarce since the dawn of theatrical time.The result is that comic artists with pretensions to statushave often reflected this ambivalence in theirpublic attitudes towardstheir work. Even in fifth century B.C. Athens, Ari stophanesbusily assured his audience (while serving themplentyof knock-abo-utfun) that his type oftheatre wasnotas“low” as thecheap tricks of the farcical playlets popular in neighbouringMegara. Delivering thePrologueto The Wasps for example, Xanthias the slave says:
Don’t expect anythingprofound, Or any slapsticka la Megara.
Andwe got no slaves to dish out baskets Of free nuts-or theold ham scene Of Heracles cheated of his dinner;
...Our little story
Has meat in it and ameaning not Too far aboveyour heads, but more
Worth your attention thanlow comedy (Aristophanes 1970: I,171)3.
3 Aristophanes, 1970, Plays, trans. P. Dickinson,London, Oxford University Press, Vol. 1, 171. 4 Bermel A., 1982, Farce:AHistory from Aristophanesto Woody Allen, N.Y., Simon and Schuster. 5 Potts L., 1949, Comedy, London, Hutchinson University Library,1949. A memberof Queen’sCollege
Cambridge, Potts wrote this popular volume asa literary guide for students, writers and actors of comedy on both sides ofthe Atlantic. It wentinto severaleditions, the latest in 1966.
Unfortunately, these centuries ofcritical disdain forthe genreof farce have seriously hampered efforts to assess its operations (Bermel 1982:15-16)4. No more than fiftyyearsago,the well-regarded English critic L.J. Potts wroteinhis brief volume oncomedy that farce is“comedy with the meaning leftout; which is as much as to say, with the comedy left out” (Potts 1949:37)5. But unfunny far ce is simply notfarce: ithas failedto achieve the delicate balancing actwhich ensures the funniness. There have been however brave exceptionstothe desire toignore farce, and even the British establishmenthasnot always beenso stuffy. In 1693, the then Poet Laureate (and dramatist) NahumTate, wrote inthe Prefa ce tohis popular comedyA Duke and No Duke,“I know not by whatFate it [far ce] happens (in common Notion) to be the most contemptible sort of Drama”.
Order and Disorder in Farce
JESSICA MILNER DAVIS
Buthealsocautioned“Ihavenot yetseen any definition ofFarce, and dare not bethefirst that venturesto define it”. Itis true that farcecame lateto the canon ofdramatic terminology, but if Tate had looked across the Channel, he would havefound an excellent definition - to myknowledge the first such- pennedin
1548 by Thomas Sebillet in his Art Poétique François. Farce,he says,is concer ned with“badineries, nigauderies et toutes sotties esmouvantes à ris et plaisir” (“bantering, tomfoolery and every kind of idiocy that can give rise to laughter and amusement”) (Sebillet1910:165)6. The English word in factderives directly fromthis French termwhich itself described a comic genre successfully establis hed in France for over a hundred years when Sebillet wrote.
6 Ed. F. Gaiffe,1910, Paris,E. Comély, my translation.
7 Delaudund’Aigaliers, P.,1598, L'ArtPoétique François, Paris,s.v. “Farce ”, my translation.
Fifty years later a Frenchmanual onliterary practicegave advice about this type of drama called “farce” that still rings true today:
Le suject[de la farce] doit estre gay et de risée, il n’y anyscenes ni pauses. Il faut noter qu 'il
n'y apas moins de science àscavoir bien faire une farce qu 'une egglogue ou moralité. (The subject [of a farce] mustbe merryand laughable; thereare neither scene divisions norpauses. Itshould benotedthatthere is noless sciencein knowing how to make a good farce than an ec logue [a pastoral] or amorality play) (Delaudun d’Aigaliers 1598: n.p.)7.
Ecclesiastical
Origins
Like other contemporary critical commentaries,these two definitions focus particularly on the subject materials of farce and on its formal structural ele ments.The reasons forthis liein the origins of theseearly French farces as ase parateand distinct category amongthe medievalreligious plays ofthefifteenth century, evolved ata timewhen formal dramawas emergingfrom several centu ries of increasing elaborationofthe Church liturgy. Since the twelfth century, in creasing usehad been made ofvernacular tropes(verbal and musicaldecorations to the liturgy), especially at the Christmas and Eastercelebrations, to convey “human interest”. (It should be notedthat this was not necessarily comic human interest e.g. Mary’slamentatthe foot of the Cross, or the dialogue of thesoldiers on watch outsidethe EasterTomb). This process became known as “farcing” (fromtheLatin verb farcire:to stuff), and indeedboththeverb and noun forms of “farce” in English and French still bear that somewhat antiquated meaning
(e.g.inEnglish,“force-meat”, or stuffing; and farce andfarcirinmodem French usage). Thus thelittle French episodes themselves were called inLatin farsae or farsurae, and numerous such padded-outepistles, or épitresfarcies, came to be
prescribed for specific feast days.
Intwelfth centuryFrench ecclesiastical communities, the celebrations forthe Christmas feasts were specially elaborate. Fromthe Feast of St. Stephen (first martyr, 26thDecember) to theculmination of the Christmasfestivities on 1st Ja nuary with theFeast of the Circumcision, each rank of the clergy had itsspecial day of indulgence and each liturgy its¿pitrefarde (e.g. for Feastof the HolyIn nocents, 28th December, a Boy Bishop from the choristers might be elected to ruleoverthe festivities and the words ofthe Magnificatwere elaborated in view of their special significance)8. All of this culminatedin theFeast of the Circum cision, the day ofthe despisedsub-deacons(the lowest order of all) whocontri buted such disruptionto established order that bytheend ofthe century, refor ming notices were ubiquitous. It should be remembered that the whole of this Christmas period, coveringthe northernhemisphere wintersolstice, correspon ded roughly with that from the Roman Saturnalia (17th December) to the Ka lends (lst-3rdJanuary),thus giving clear parallels withthe institutions oftheRex Saturnalisand the temporary exchangeof rolesbetweenmaster and man which characterized the Kalends9.
8 “Deposuit potentes desede: et exaltavit humiles”(“Hehathputdownthe mighty from their seat: andhath exalted the humble and meek”).The quotation is from the psalm called the Magnificat,or
the song of Mary inresponsetothe Annunciation.
9 For a excellentdiscussion ofthis “topsy-turvy” tradition, see Donaldson, L, 1970, TheWorld
Upside-Down, Oxford,ClarendonPress, 15-16.
Atthe Cathedralof Beauvais during theheight of celebrationof this riotous period, the ritual appropriate to the Feast of the Circumcision (an equivocal event in itself) waselaborated in such away that it became knownasthe Feastof the Ass. These celebrations featured thebeaston which Mary rode (andlaterJe sus, aswell as such other worthies as the OldTestament figure of Balaam). An ass wasescortedinprocession up the naveby canons bearingwine, while sin ging the burlesque “Prose ofthe Ass” (celebrating the paradoxical animal of blessedinnocence, divine instrumentality andsexual voracity). The censing and aspergingwere done with black puddings and sausages; thecelebrant wasinstru ctedto bray three times to conclude theService, with the congregation respon ding similarly. Inhis monumental studyof the mediaeval stage,E. K. Chambers
Order and Disorder in Farce
JESSICA MILNER DAVIS
describes theruling idea of the feastas “the inversion of status,and the perfor mance, inevitablyburlesque, by the inferior clergy of functions properly belon ging to their betters”(Chambers 1903:I, 325)10. But clearly, sexual images and the celebrationof folly itselfalso had a strong part to playand graduallytheFe ast of theAssmerged into thewider communityeventoftheFeast ofFools.
10 Chambers E. K., 1903, The Mediaeval Stage, 2 Vols, London, Oxford U.P.
In mediaeval England, the milder indulgencesof the Feast of theBoy Bishop were more common, although the Feast ofFools was not unknown. But inFran ce, theactivities of the licensed fools, or sots, wereso popular with the laity as well as withthe junior clergy,that when thereligious feast wasformally proscri bed in 1438, thetownsfolktook it over, formingtheir own secular societiesof fools toperpetuatethe annual temporary reign of folly. These were the compag
nies des fous, or sociétésjoyeuses.
As elsewhere in Christian Europe, the organization of communal dramatic performances was by then locatedoutside theChurch. InItaly and Spain it was in the handsof charitable associations, in England those oftrade-guilds, and in France, dedicated confréries(fraternities) named for a particular saintorreligio usconcept.This French method of organizationseems to have led to some divi sion of acting skills, or formal specialization, inperformingreligious drama and comedy (e.g. the understandingthat existed in Paris between the Confrérie de la Passion, which was granted a legal monopoly in 1402 to perform religious dramswithinthe city, and thepowerful Parisian branchof theBasoche, theguild of law-clerks, called Les Enfants sans souci,whose members performed in co stumeas sots). This collaboration wassignificant andunparalleled elsewhere in Europe, so far as is known: from it much flowed.
Accompanying the division oflabour came an important differentiation in dramatic structure. Texts of the early fifteenth century reveal thatany religious play such as a mystère (“sacred mystery”), ora vie de saint (“life of a saint”), both celebratory and instructivein purpose and narrative, might well include a separate comic episode, explicitly intended as comic relief - a farce in fact. In one MS (dated 1420 and quite possibly forming part ofthe repertoire of the Confrérie dela Passion), a series ofmiraclesperformed by Saint Geneviève car ries aforthrighttextual heading before introducing some separate comic play lets:
Miracles des plusiers malades
En farses pour etre mainsfades.
(More miracles of [healing] the sick
Donewith farces to be less dull.)(Jubinal 1837: 281)".
This evidenceofstylisticseparation and specialization is bom out by the re cord thatat Dijon in 1447, aMystèrede StEloi gave rise toalaw suit. Thecourt records affirm that “pardedans ledit mystère y avoitcertaine farce meslée par manière de faire reveiller au rire lesgens’’'’(“in the middle ofthe said mystery therewas a certain farce, put in so that it would excitethe people tolaughter”) (Petit de Julleville 1886: 330)1112. In this case however the comic balance of farce had tipped towards dangerous social criticism: the complaint before the court was that the audiencehad been excited to laughter against theKingand the Dau phin by political references in the so-calledfarce.
11 Jubinal A., ed., 1837, MystèresInédits du 15e Siècle,Paris, Techener, mytranslation. The MS is numbered 1131 inthe Bibliothèque SteGeneviève collection.
12 Petitde Julleville,1886, Répertoire du Théâtre Comique en France auMoyen-âge, Paris, Cerf.
Farce
Versus
Satire
Very early on in Francetherefore, a taste for rational categorization joined with a strong legal system to produce aformal differentiationin secular theatre, first between the serious andthe comic, and then between what we would now call farce andsatire. Theseclassificationssetthe pattern for the followingcentu ries and gofar towards explainingwhy it is the French term which in English na mes the precise comic genre we now recognize as farce. Even the compagnies
desfous, dedicated to celebratingthe spirit and letter of the licensed Feastofthe Fools, seemtohavemade aclear distinction between twokinds ofperformance, thesottie,and the farce. The sottie was performed by theiractors dressed as sots in what isquite recognizable asthe costumeof the “licensed fool”or clown -particoloured hoseandtunicwith cap and bells. The sotties turned uponthethe me of unmasking public and private figures to reveal the sot/fool behind. Not surprisingly, such biting allegorical satire constantly risked provoking official reaction,punishment andevenimprisonment ofthe actors, and eventually, in the mid-sixteenth century, all formal fool societies were suppressed.
On the other hand, the farceproper(correctly identified by Sebillet and others as anindependent, short, fast-paced play designedpurely to get people laughing)
Order and Disorder in Farce
JESSICA MILNER DAVIS
embodieda more tolerant attitude towardsthe stupidity of human nature andor ganizations. Probably the best-knowntext of thisperiod is Maître Pierre Pathe-
lin (c. 1480, and almostcertainlya Basoche farce, givenits focus upon legal qu ibbling)13. It exemplifies the common pattern (although in an abnormally extended form, being one of the more elaborate farces of this period): a short uproarious plotpresentinga comically balancedstruggle forpower between two opposingforces- husband and wife, or parentandchild, master and thief, or ju dgeandcheeky lawyer - whosecharacterizations are convincingly realistic and down-to-earth, but whose sufferings do not make large calls upon oursympat hiesnor invoke thecensor in us.The actors of thefarces did not dress as sots, but as the recognizably real (if caricatured)people ofcontemporary town and villa ges society.
13 See Bowen B., 1964,Les CaractéristiquesEssentiellesde la Farce Française et leur Survivance
dans les Années 1550-1620, Urbana, Ill., Illinois U.P.; and forthe text itself, Bowen B., ed., 1967, Four Farces,Oxford, Blackwell.
14 Cohen G.,1926, Histoire dela Mise en Scène dans le Théâtre Religieux Français du Moyen-âge, 2nd ed.,Paris, Champion, mytranslation.
15 Lanson G., 1901, “Molicreetla Farce”,RévuedeParis,Vol. III(May 1910),129-153. 16 Trans, by Cohen, R.,1963, Tulane Drama Review,Vol. VIII,154.
When the sociétés joyeuses passedinto demise, these farce playlets retained their popularity, judging by the large number of them printed throughout thesix teenth century. In 1545, members of atravelling troupe ofactors arerecorded as signingalegal agreementwhich boundthem to play “moralitéz, farces et autres jeuxroumains etfrançais” (“moralities, farces and otherLatin and French pla
ys”) (Cohen 1926: 204)14. This clearly showsthat farce asa distinctgenre for med part ofa new professional livelihood, that which in time providedthe trai ning ground for Molière and his colleagues.
Molière’s debt to this native farce traditionhas beenproudly acknowledged eversince Gustave Lanson’sclassic 1901 essay in the Révue de Paris, "Molière
et la Farce” (Lanson 1901).15Dissentingfrom the then traditional opinion that theartist’sachievementwas cheapenedbythe influences he absorbed from both theFrench and the later Italian farce (the commedia dell ’arte),Lansonargued: “These arehismasters, these are his origins. And he is great enough nottoblush at them. He is the best farceur, and for this reason he is thebest creator ofcome dy” (trans. Cohen 1963: 154)16. The great Russian director, Vsevolod Meyer- hold,tookexactly thesame view a littlelater, seeing in the essential theatricality
of farce the life-springs of theprofessionaltheatre from which, even inmodem times, it can seek to regenerate itself:
Theideaofthe actor’s art, basedon a worship of mode, gesture and movement, is indissolubly linked withtheideaof the farce. The farce iseternal. Ifits principles are for a time expelled from the world of the theatre, we nevertheless know that they are firmly engraved in the lines of the manuscripts left by the theatre’s greatest writers. (Corrigan 1963: 205-6)17.
17 “Meyerhold on Farce” is translated and reprinted in Corrigan R., ed., 1963, Theater in the
2 0"1Century,N.Y.,GrovePress,205-206.
18 Bentley E., 1958, “ThePsychology of Farce” in Bentley,E. ed., 1958, “Let’s Get aDivorce!”and
Other Plays,N.Y., Hill & Wang, vii-xx. Parts of the essay had previously appeared in The New Republicmagazine.
19 BergsonH., 1910, LeRire; Essai surlaSignification du Comique, Paris,Felix Alcan. 20 Bentley E.,1964,The Life ofthe Drama, N.Y., Atheneum.
21 Anon, 1761,Théâtre des Boulevards,ou Recueil desParades, Paris,Mahon, Vol. I, 238-260.
Farce
and its Comic Style
and
Structure
With this twentieth century rehabilitation, farcecould at lastbe examined as itself, not just as a sub-setof higher comedy, giving attention tothe psychologi cal basesof itspopularity, andtotheinternal structures bywhich it achieves its comic effects. That there are psychologicalforces atworkwasfirst noted by the atre critic Eric Bentley, in an important essay entitled “ThePsychologyofFar ce” which he wrote to prefacea selection ofnineteenth and earlytwentiethcen tury French farces by masters of the genre including Courteline, Labiche and Feydeau (Bentley 1958: vii-viii)18 Thesewere the same farces which, in first productiononthe Paris stagein the 1890’s, inspired the philosopher and scien tist HenriBergson to speculate about the mechanical patterns ofthe comic plots and charactersthat produced such gales of laughter and he publishedhisconclu sions in LeRire (Bergson 1910).19 BothBentley’sand Bergson’s analysesare fundamental to an understanding of the constraints which paradoxically ensure the generation of unrestrained laughter in farce.
For Bentley,farceis“practical joking turned theatrical”(Bentley 1964: 234)20 21 and heelaborates the extraordinary violenceandmayhemthat characterizes the genre. It is not justamatter of custard pies inthe facenor even abarrel of night- soil broken over theclown’s head.(Thismemorable scene concludes one popu lar eighteenth century fair-ground parade, or street-theatreperformance, called Le Marchard de Merde^. It features thethen popularfigureof Gilles thebone
Orderand Disorder in Farce
JESSICA MILNER DAVIS
headed clown, whohasbeenfooled into attemptingto make his commercial way in shit-selling to people who might needit. Hefails - miserably.) Farce plots ce lebrate the factthat people actually enjoy the thrill and the shock of escaping “the rules” ofpolite civilization. As Bentley puts it, “Man, says farce, may or may not be oneof the more intelligent animals, he is certainly an animal, and not one ofthe least violent, andone of the chief uses to which he puts his intelligen ce, such as it is, is to think aggression whenheis notcommitting it”.(Bentley 1958: xix) And womantoo of course, if theatre, film andTVaudiencescan be trusted.
The parallels with dream violenceand its customary taboo-violations are stri king. Bentley points to many apparent structural similarities (sequences of ac tions,such as chases;“routines” of dressing, packing; stereotypical characteriza tion of threatening bullies,thedependent child, the“stud-muffin”who isn’t, and so on; and even the styleof performance - largegesticulationemphasized by di stortions of time and space). Butdreams are (frequently) unpleasant:in pleasura ble farce, says Bentley, “one ispermittedthe outrage, butisspared the consequ- ences”.(Bentley 1958: xiii)
It might be thoughtfrom Bentley’s critique that farce is all fantasy inwhich “anythinggoes”. My own analysis shows that themore extreme theoutrageand the more directly it is expressed, the morecarefully constrainedthe dramatic te chniques will be(for example, in Noel Coward’s very restrained English come dy FumedOak*2, the technical acting and production challenges are very great indeed indeliveringthe famous“slap”to the cheek ofthe upper-class mother-in--law, which must seem to knock her outcold, without alarming the audience). Violenceis omni-present in farce, but oftenit is moresound and fury, than actu al; more symbolicgesture thanpotentaction; often deflectedto unwitting third partiesrather than to the truepsychologicalobject ofresentment; frequently mi nimized in its consequences; justified with rationalisations;andmocked with pa rallel sub-plots and repetitions2223. The targets ofaggression and violenceare pre sented as largely responsible for inviting their own fate (as being misfits, killjoys, selfish,mean, hypocritical,exploitative and/orjust plain stupid enough
22 FumedOakwas first performedat the Phoenix Theatre, London, in 1936. For the text, see Coward N., 1934-1958, PlayParade,5 vols, London, Heinemann; FumedOak appears in Vol. IV (1954),
133-159.
23 Oddlyenough,unless there isa high seriousness of purpose,mimicry inand of itselfis belittling or ridiculing;this holds true even for mimicry of themimic - mimicry squared asit were.
tofall forbeing fooled).They are iconic figures, representative of general gro ups(suchasparents,members of theopposite sex, countryyokels lackingcivili zed manners, unsympathetic guardians, rival lovers ofboth sexes, self-invited visitors, over-educated, boringpedantsandprofessionals, masters andbosses, or justplainannoyingwimps).They receive their punishment on behalf of a much wider set of offences thanthose they presentpersonally. And always they lack self consciousness, beingtotally unaware oftheir own limitations. Over their fluidhumanity isplastered the restrictive plating ofself-absorption. Communi cation with them onlytakes place on theirown termsand warnings go unheeded.
Type
Characters
or “Masks
”
These are “types”. Bergson described the type as a dramaticcharacter who lacks flexibility andis dominated bya rigidmental set(Bergson 1910: 96); and it is this inelasticity which prevents type-characters from adapting properly to changes in their surroundingcircumstances. Doomed to repetitiveness both in behavior and in mental processes, they display exactly that aspect of “du mechanique plaque sur du vivanf’(“something mechanical stuck over the li ving”) whichforBergson defines the comic instance(Bergson 1910: 39). More significantly for the crucial differencebetween violence as fun, andviolence be coming serious(for mental rigidity can and doeshave tragic consequences if the characters possess self-awareness), typesare capablemimicking themselves by beingrepeated, as well as of repeatingthemselves.This important observation of Bergson’s helps explainwhy like and unlike (or inverted)pairs andtriangles of characters are so typical ofbroad comedy: Abbott and Costello, the Three Stooges, the Seinfeld trio, Box and Cox (froma famous late nineteenth century London farce), the lost twins ofPlautus’Menaechmi,Shakespeare’s Comedy of
Errors andGoldoni’sServant of Two Masters,theclever servant paired withthe stupidservant, Tweedledum and Tweedledee24The artificiality signals botha di stancing ofthe charactersfrom the audience, anda lesseningof their humanity: they lack the flexibility, the self-consciousness and the individuality of life.
24 Bergson 1910:167-169. K.M. Lea also commentsonthe strange validityofthe stage rule that to do or say thesame thing three times in succession isinnatelyfunny, a fact well andtruly exploited
Order and Disorder in Farce
JESSICA MILNER DAVIS
Howevertypes mustnot be unbelievablenortotally unsympathetic.If audien ces feltno interestwhatsoeverin the chattering puppets on stage,thejoke would fail utterly. Farce succeeds because every character is rooted in human reality andconvinces the audience that their wayofthinking and doing is believable - excepting only that it is isolated from other characteristics of a fully-rounded hu man being, and pushed to extremes. Writing aboutthe full-lengthfarces ofSir ArthurWing Pinero, so popular on theLondon stageofthe 1880’s, J.R. Taylor comments that eventhe frenzies of Pinero’s solid, respectable Victorian figures are believable:
Oncethesecharacters exist, they are made to act according entirely to the dictates of their own natures,theonly improbability permitted being that they doit with greater abandon and lack of self -consciousness than most people in real life do mostofthe time. They accept, that is,for the duration of theplay,the logic of extreme solutions, and, having decided to act,never do things byhalf-measures. Hence the extraordinarysituationsinto which they manoeuvre them- selves.(Taylor 1967: 55)25.
25 TaylorJ., 1967, The Rise andFallofthe Well-MadePlay, N.Y., Hill & Wang.
26 Aconvenient edition is Booth, M.ed.,1974, “The Magistrate" and other Nineteenth Century Plays, London, Oxford U.P., 369-370.
And extraordinarythey are: in The Magistrate (1985), ittakes three acts for the audiencetofollow how Mr. Posket, presiding genius of the Mulberry St. Co urt,butfirmly under hissecond wife’s thumb, comes tosentence that lady to se vendays in jailwhen she appears inthe dockofhis owncourt-room. Recoiling in shock at his ownbehaviour,Posket isreassuredbyone ofhis Associates: “O come now, sir, what is seven days! Why, manya married gentleman in your po sition, sir, would have beengladto have made it fourteen”(Act III,Sc.II)26.
To actsuch characters is well known to be a highly demanding professional task. The emotionaland physicalskills of the actorare at a premium, and woe betide those on stagewho join the audience in laughter, losing theiressential gravity. No matter howcomic the events totheaudience, for those onstage they are real and earnest. Timing iscrucial for thecorrect reception of a custard pie or a knock-out slapto the cheek(as inFumed Oak), let alone for the precise (and substantial) machinery of revolving-door bedroom farces like thoseof George Feydeau. The acting must keep the audience in constant motion between antici pation of predictable action-and-reaction on thepartof the characters on stage, and delightful surprise at some unexpecteddevelopment thatreveals a moreco mplete symmetry of events. Takentogether, predictability andsurpriseadd up to
the pattern ofincongruity so often identified as fundamental to all humour97. And this is certainly an essential ingredient in farce structure.
Farce-Plots:
a
Typology
Interms of plot,thecomicconflictsareusuallymarshalled into a limitednum ber of recognizable shapes. Three highly significant principles of construction were identified by Bergsonin hisstudy ofthe Frenchstage at the time of Feyde au, Courteline and Labiche: repetition (of scenes, events, problems, phrases, and characters); inversion(which can berepetition with a twistor contrast, areversal or an opposition); and the “interference ofseries” (Bergson 1910:91, 95, 98ff). This lastisatermdrawnfrom optics, whichBergsonusedfor the misunderstan dingsand“crossed-wires” which are such a feature of comic dialogue and comic plotting. In it, two independent on-stageexperiences intersectso that theresul ting single event is interpreted in different waysby either side while the audien ce uses itsprivileged position tosee both sides and to enjoy the hilarity ofdeta ched superiority.
Applied to the life and concerns of type-characters, these principles dictate both theoverallshapeoffarce-plots andthatofthe internal minorepisodes. As Kathleen Lea remarked in her classic study ofthe commedia dell ’arte, plots need not be over-elaborate: the most fundamental may be a singleburla, orpractical joke, ora string ofthem connected bythethread ofthesame type-characters and their motivations. Thus a clown may merely say to the other, “Let’s do the old man”, or, “Let’s do him again”, and the farcewill move forward(Lea 1962: I,
188).
Withsuchbasic, unidirectional plots, there is astrongelement of Schadenfre
ude (or pleasure inthe painofothers),but it is balanced fortheaudience by the appealing vivacity of theprankstersand by the inability of their targetstojustify their conventionally bestowedpower and authority. Theseare what I call “humi liation farces” (Davis 1978: 28-32), structures and pleasureswhich hark back to the inverted ruleofthe Feast of Fools. Theirsimple catch-cry, “deposuit poten- tes de sede”, serves to justify a world of rebellion and indulgence. Normally 27
27 This dissection of incongruity isnotcustomarily made. Theusual approach to incongruity seesitas essentially a single-step process of perception or understanding on thepart of an audience in experiencing humour. This simplification limits many theories whichseekto explain thenature of humour by concentratingupon incongruity asits principal element.
Orderand Disorder in Farce
JESSICA MILNER DAVIS
they areshort;the longestI discovered was Garrick’s Miss in her Teens (first played atCovent Garden in 1747, but stillpopular 50 years later)28. It ekes out the themeby supplying arepeating series of useless loversto be humiliated by the desirable MissBiddy, culminating ina crusty oldaristocrat, who is revealed toolate to preventdisaster to bethe father of her preferred suitor,thehandsome young “Captain Rhodophil”. Eventually, SirSimon the father hands thegirl over tohis son, declaringher to be “too much” for him. Ah, the Realpolitik of farce: indeed she is, and in more ways than one.
28Reproducedin Bevis, R.,ed., 1970,EighteenthCentury Drama: Afterpieces, London, Oxford U.P., 77-108.
29 See forexample, hisMerryTales and ThreeShrovetide Plays in Leighton W., trans., 1910, London, Nutt.
30 Bowen 1964: 37-38, my translation.
Symmetrical patterns createdby the exchange or reversal ofcomic roles be tweenthe joker andhis/her buttareactually morecommon than humiliation- or deception-farces. Thus, a rebellious ormischievous practical joke produces a counter-attack, sothat the rebels are either check-mated, or suffer humiliation in their turn. TheseI label “reversal-farces” (Davis 1978: 43-49). One group featu res variations on the theme of “therobberrobbed”, aterm madefamous by the Shrovetide playlets{Fastnachtspielen) of Hans Sachs29,written and performed in sixteenth century Germany when the festivities inheritedfrom the Feastof Fo ols still held sway on thatone night ofthe year. Itis a pattern which successfully allows fortherestorationofchallenged authority toconclude the farce, even if it is clear thatthis is only a temporary halt to hostilities.
A second group however tends to a morebalancedoutcome. Focusing more narrowly upon repeated oscillations between thequarrelling or counter-plotting parties, ratherthanuponthe broad sweep of a single overall reversal, they can be conveniently categorised as “quarrel-farces” (Davis 1978: 50-60). Theirunder lyingstructural device was identifiedby BarbaraBowen in her study of French mediaeval farce andtermed “lebalancier” (the pendulum). She suggests that the satisfaction for its audience do not come so muchfrom an innate sense of justice (as in the robberrobbed), but “from a profound and unconscious desire to see two elements oscillateandreturn to equilibrium. Tobeginwith,the firstelement gains ascendancy- andit is irrelevant whetherthis is just or not - andthen the second” (Bowen 1964: 37-38)30.
Such an oscillation may be verbal, physical or metaphorical in nature; or all threetogether, as in the inspired marital quarrel-farces of both Chekhov31 and Feydeau (who intended to publishhissuite of one-actersunderthetitle, DuMar riage au Divorce)32 33 34. Probably the most famous is not sex-war based however, but male-to-male turf warfarebetween two lodgers, Mr Box and Mr Cox,who are tricked intosharing the same room in the eponymous early Victorian farce by John Madison Morton (first performed at the Lyceum in 1847)3L
31 E.g. The Bear,The Proposal,TheAnniversary, etc in Chekhov, A.,1965, Ten EarlyPlays, trans.Alex Szogyi,N.Y., BantamBooks.
32According to MarcelAchard, in his Introduction to Feydeau, G., 1948, ThéâtreComplet,Paris, Eds du Bélier, Vol. 1, xii. See also Shapiro,N., trans., 1970, Four Farces byGeorges Feydeau, Chicago, Chicago U.P., in hisEditor’s Introduction, pp. xl-xli.
33 In Booth, M., ed., 1974,"The Magistrate"and Other Nineteenth Century Plays, London, Oxford U.P.,175-198.
34 For a discussion oftherole of objects and accessories in Feydeau generallysee Gidel, H., 1979, Le ThéâtredeGeorges Feydeau, Paris,Klincksieck, 79-82.
35 A specialist French term foran entertaining, skilfullyconstructedcomedy with farcical effects, not the Americanvarietyprograms also calledvaudevilles, as Norman Shapiro reminds usin hisIntroduction
toFeydeau’s plays(Shapiro 1970: xiii-xiv).
36 In Labiche, E.,1960, Théâtre, ed. G.Sigaux, Paris, Gamier-Flammarion, Vol.II,227-308. 37Marriott A. and Foot A., 1973, No Sex, Please - We ’re British, London, Samuel French.
A temporarytruce isenoughto concludea quarrel-farce (it isallthe funnierif the type- characters arethreatening to start off again as the curtain falls). But someplot-structures overlay the basicoscillations with a larger, circular move ment. The effect ofthis is to emphasise the common status ofallcharacters as vi ctims, whether theyrealise it or not. Bowen remarked the frequent role in farce of certain talismanic physical objects, which almost come to possess a life of their own, sostrongistheir holdover the characters. One thinks immediatelyof the missing removable palate in Feydeau’s La Puce a I’Oreille (AFlea in the Ear, 1907), whichmagically convertsthe youngsecretary’s cleft-palate speech to fluent Parisian French and which insistson disappearing and reappearing like the Cheshire Cat inAlice inWonderland. Labiche’s famous vaudeville35 Le Cha peaude Paille d’Italie (The ItalianStrawHat, first performed in 1851)36 has a plotwhichissimply a chase across Paris to find a certain talisman(amissinghat, or its replacement). Thehunt is upwhen the hat is discovered in his own apart ment and the circular chase concludes.
Closer to today, the London comedy popular from its first performanceat the Strand Theatre in 1971,Vo SexPlease - We 'reBritish (byMarriott and Foot)37
Order andDisorder in Farce
JESSICA MILNER DAVIS
is similarly dominated byaflood ofobjects; in this case theyare unwanted sex--aids, mistakenlypostedinanonymousplain wrappersto an embarrassedcouple of very respectable newly-weds. Repeated deliveries from the “Scandinavian Import Company”(please note thisis the 1960’ s) culminatein the arrival of two live call-girls, whomistakenlypresent their eager offerings to the couple’s boss and mother-in-law,both of whom“just happen” to be visitingforcomplex rea sons.
Here the plot’scircularmovement utilisesa device identified andnamed by Bergson as Na boule de neige”(the snowball) (Bergson 1910: 81-84). This is a rolling ball of co-incidence and misunderstandings which, from small begin nings, grows in size and speed toenvelopeeverybystanderinitsfinal explosion and disintegration. It is a levelling device, true tothe spirit of folly, which reve alsto the audience (if nottothe characters on stage) that all are equally culpabili ty.In No Sex, predictably,the mother-in-lawturns out to bean oldgirl-friend of her son’sboss, and the boss in his turn isrecognised by one of the call-girlsas a former client, withresultingred faceswhichallowthe young couple toconceal their own small degrees of guilt.
At its most mechanistic,the snowball canbe as predictable as declared by Ge orge Bernard Shaw (who despised farce for its lack of social conscience):
I first learnt the weariness of itfromPink Dominos™, although that playhad anexcellentthird act; and I have been wearied inthe same way by every new version. Forwe have had itagain and again undervarious titles. Act I, John Smith’s home; ActII, the rowdy restaurant or casino at whichJohn Smith, in the courseof hisclandestine spree, meetsall the members ofhis house hold, including theschool boy andthe parlourmaid; Act III,his house the nextmorning, with theinevitable aftermath of the complications of the night before;whothathasany theatrical ex perience does notknow it all by heart? (Shaw 1934: II, 120)3839.
38 Anrather tameadaptation by English actor-manager Charles Wyndham of Les Dominos Roses by Hennequin andDelacour, apopular hitatthe racy PalaisRoyal Theatre inParis inthe 1870’s. 39 Shaw G.B., 1932-1948, Our Theatrein theNineties, 3Vols, London,Constable.
At its best, however, the device can achieve extraordinary brilliance and po lish in the hands ofmasters such as Pinero, Wilde, Labiche, Courteline and Fey deau, ortoday’s Stoppard and Ben Elton. Then the snowball machine creates a kind of “closed mental system, a worldof its own lit by its own lurid and unnatu ral sun”, as Bentley puts it. “Danger”, he says, “is omnipresent. One touch, we feel, and we shallbe sent spinning in space”(Bentley 1958: xx). Andparadoxi cally this effect is best achieved in a highly naturalistic setting.
Farce and
Violence
Possibly the most violent farce I have encountered is Georges Courteline’s LesBoulingrin(TheBoulingrin Family, 1898).40 Here Monsieur des Rillettes (“Mr Mince-meat”), a parasiticalvisitorwho ingratiates himself into being invi ted to dinner, dropsinto the middle ofavicious domestic squabble.The audien ce witnesses his increasingdiscomfiture, as anassiduous host and hostess press their competingattentions upon him. Politely springing to the lady’s defence when her husband criticizes her arrangements for his comfort, des Rillettes be comes himself the targetofescalating violence. He suffers direct(unintentional of course) physical harm from blows, kicks, hair-pullings, with his chair snat ched from beneath him to accommodate a better one. Badly corked wine is for ced betweenhis reluctant teeth in aneffort to demonstrate the incompetence of one spouse; undrinkablesoup-“genuineratsbane” - is pressed upon himby the other;heissplashed with foodandwine, and seized as a shieldwhenMonsieur threatensMadame with a revolver. The lights are shot out, blows and insults are tradedin the darkness; he is wounded in the calf, and falls heavilyto the floor while a crescendo of noiseand destruction ensues: plates, windows, the clock and all are smashed, and finally the house isset on fire. In the growing red light andtothe realistic sound ofthe fire-engine’s galloping horses, theguest is dren ched with a bucket of water as the maid attempts to douse the blaze. As the curta in fallsMonsieurBoulingrin appears silhouetted in the door-way, reminding his guest: “Butyoumustn’t go, M. des Rillettes! You’re goingto drink a glass of champagne with us!”41.
40 Translated by Bentley asThese Cornfields! in Bentley, 1958: 192-206.
41 Courteline G., 1938, Théâtre,, Paris, Flammarion,Vol. II, 49, my translation. Les Boulingrin
(literally, The Bowling-Greens) wasfirst performedat the GrandGuignol Theatre, Paris, in 1898.
Reflections
on Violence in
Farce
The pace and fury of the action, the perfectparallelism in constructionofboth verbaland physical countervailing acts of aggression, all signal thecircularwor kings ofthe snowball-machine in which the victims are trapped.Itisuproarious ly funny, neither bitternorcensorious aboutthefolly itportrays. Reflecting on why this is so,onwhylaughter is released ratherthansympathy, there are seve
Order and Disorder in Farce
JESSICA MILNER DAVIS
rallines of enquiryI would like to suggest. Thefirst isthedistancing effect,or theencouragementto detachment,which I believeis produced by the closed sy stem of which Bergsonand Bentley speak. Perhaps this producesa kind of co mic alienation (a parallel tothe famous Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt)whichre inforces for the audience their position ofsuperior perspective for all that is happeningon stage. The sameeffect is graphically illustrated by the ubiquitous contemporary TVshow, Funniest Home Videos, which features only too reali stic and believablehumans from whom the viewer feels almost complete detach ment.Not only arethe stars ofthese videoclipsstrangers who have chosen to submit disaster-shots of themselves and their families or friends, but the clips show them succumbingtoentirely predictable lines of force or co-incidence - at least with the hindsight offered after the event. Further, the disasters which ought on any moral considerations toenlistour sympathies are greatly removed from usin time and space, once bybeing captured on video and twice by being re-broadcast on television. The result may bethat we focus entirely on theme chanics, and not on the human (and sometimes animal) sufferers42.
42 Itmay be a specificallyculture-bound reaction, butI have often had classes ofAustralian students remarkthat they are more inclined NOT tolaughif the victims are domestic animals, rather than people.
43Bandura A., 1977, Social Learning Theory,Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall. Social learning theory proposes essentially thatbehaviour is learned through the observing others, as well as through the direct experience ofrewards and punishments.
44 Bandura A., 1979, “Psychological Mechanisms of Aggression”, in M. van. Cranbach et.al., eds., 1979,
Human Ethology:ClaimsandLimits ofa New Discipline, Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 351 -2.See also Bandura A.,B.Underwoodand M. Fromson, 1975,“Disinhibition of Aggression through Diffusion of Responsibility andDehumanization of Victims,Journal ofResearchinPersonality, Vol. IX, 253-269.
Social Learning Theory
and
the Enjoyment of
Farce
Secondly, there is the question of the general disengagement ofinternal con trol in laughingat the misfortunes of others. Inapplyinghis theoryof social lear ning (Bandura 1977)43 tothe vexed questionof why “decent moralpeopleper form culpable acts” (i.e. acts which they themselves disapprove of), the psychologist Albert Bandura has suggested that this paradox is madepossible by processes whichdisengage evaluative self-reaction from such conduct (Bandura 1979: 351-2)44. Psychologically speaking, this is certainly a preferable explana tion to either, failure of proper moral development or, the existence inallindivi
dualcasesofmentaldefence mechanisms. Bandura identifieda number of ope rant conditions which serve to disengage behaviour from self-evaluative consequences at differentpoints in the behavioural process (see below for a summary; Bandura 1979: 352). It is interestingto note a number ofsimilarities andparallelsbetweenthese conditions and themechanisms of farce and comedy that I have been examining.
In the case of Les Boulingrin, it could be argued thatour enjoyment of the ma yhemon stage is, in Bandura’sterms,“reprehensibleconduct”,seeking pleasure
in themisfortunesof others. Alsothat doing so isfundamentally immoral, given thedeterioration
Order and Disorder in Farce
JESSICA MILNER DAVIS
ser extent, tothe hosts). Focussing simply in this wayuponthe sufferings of the main victims,it is clear thatmostofBandura’s conditionsdoapply to any reac tion which allows us to find theevents onstage laughable. I shalldiscuss each condition in turn.
(a)
Moral
Justification
We have strongmoral justification fortaking pleasurein seeing desRillettes suffer: he has richly deservedhiscome-uppance by overweening self-confiden ce, selfishnessand apatronising attitude tohis hosts(including taking liberties with themaid). The play-text clearly shows himinviting himself to dinner, kno wingnext to nothing ofhishosts, and offering littlein return; he hasnoreal con cerns offriendship, onlya shallow politesse and an intention to extract as much free hospitalityas possible. Somehow itis particularly satisfying that each of his self-indulgent expectations is matched with aprecisereversal (he gets aquarrel instead ofharmony, discomfort instead of comfort, scandalousabuse insteadof polite conversation, dregs and leavings instead of fine cuisine,and a raging infe rno instead of a cosy hearth. Finally, he meets his match in a pert andpunitive maid-servant, instead of finding her a compliant sex-object).
(b)
Minimise
and
Ignore the
Consequences; (c)
Dehumanization
of
the
Victim
In addition, we know for afact thattheconsequencesof the mayhem are mini mal for thecharacters on stage - theyare actors and the action is only pretence. In termsof thepsychologicalconsistencyofthe characterization, we also know thatthese one-dimensionaltypes have suffered little and learned little: there will be no changes totheirmotivation and behaviour. This truth is only reinforced by thehost’s last manic invitation, “Don’t goaway!” as des Rillettes struggles to get outofthe house of doom. In summary, thesecomictypes brought to lifeby giftedactors are notfully rounded individuals aware of their own motivation and capable ofquestioning their own behavior. They amount in Bandura’s schema to“dehumanized victims”who are responsiblefor their own fate; any damage to them, their egos or their property can be safely ignored.
(d)
Displacement
and Diffusion
of
Responsibility;
Palliative
Co
mparison.
It curiously strengthens the kinds of moral justification outlined above to knowthatthe “deleteriouseffects” are all inflicted on des Rilletteseither byac cident or by deflection from their true target-even the maid’s final bucket of water. (Or isit an accident?the ambiguity is pleasing.) Thus theactionposses ses the distinct advantage that its mechanicsdefinitely displace responsibility for disastrous events to co-incidence and incongruous mischance.
I havealready pointed out the limitations ofdamage inflicted on the chief vic tim, but in thecase of thetwo spouses, there is no evidence apartfrom noisy co mplaints that either of their persons suffersphysical harm. Criesofhelp there are aplenty, but perhaps they are only what apsychiatrist would callatoken “cry for help”. In addition, a delightful diffusion of responsibility exists in which each member of the audience at a performance of thefarce can compare their ownmerrimentwith several hundred others laughing equally as hard. Moreo ver, all can displace responsibility for the existence ofthe farce itself onto the author, the cast andthe theatrical enterprise which chose to rehearse it and to sell tickets tothe night’s show. As forpalliative comparison, isit not better to laugh like this at atheatricalimage ofsomeone else’smarital wars engulfing acomple te stranger, rather than toallow the stressof one’sownfamilyrelationstoprovo ke similar catastrophic behavior in one’s own home?
Concluding
Reflections
It isof course the complex mechanical rules ofpresentation upon which farce plots and characters are built which invokethe same conditions which Bandura outlined in afar moregeneral scheme. While I do not wishto make toomuch of the parallels,the releaseof laughter mustcertainly facilitated by the mechanisms ofhis“disengagement practices”. Fortunately,there is no evidence ofreal moral harm from hearty laughterat what G. B. Shaw calledturning “human beingson to the stage asrats are turnedinto a pit, thatthey may be worriedfor the enterta inmentof the spectators”(Shaw 1934: II, 118-9). Indeedhis indignation remains isolatedinthe canonofcritical comment. Finallyhowever,thequestion of au dienceexpectations must return tothe forefrontof consideration: are not the rea ctions I have just described above exactly what we expect of a farce, exactly what the audience was anticipating andwhat the actorsand management
under-Order and Disorder in Farce
JESSICA MILNER DAVIS
took to provide in offering a farce in production?Weall expect that somehow, in wayswhich we still do notfully understand, the constraintsunder which farce operates willtrick our internal controls into allowing us to enjoy the unspeakable truths of thisfantasticbut realistic “slice of life” onthe stage,and less conscious ly perhaps thetruths aboutourselves into the bargain. Surelythis is thesecret of what Meyerhold correctly saw as “the eternal life of farce” in the theatre.
Porządek
i
nieporządek w
farsie
Oczekiwania widzów, ich cechy osobowościowe i czynniki środowiskowe pełnią ważną, lecz słabo zbadaną rolę w postrzeganiu bodźca humorystycznego i reagowaniu na niego. Tradycja teatralna wykształciła hierarchię typów i stylów komediowych o ok reślonych sygnałach strukturalnych, które pozwalają przewidzieć pewne istotne aspekty tego, czego z dużym prawdopodobieństwem widzowie doznają.
Wśród bogactwa gatunków od satyry i burleski po romantyczną komedię i slapstick farsa uważana jest za formę najniższą. Jest ona gatunkiem z długą tradycją, o najszty wniej wyznaczonych cechach i o najściślej określonych regułach komediowych. Niewer balne żarty czynią z niej gatunek “fizyczny”, szeroko akceptowany jako najmniej agre sywny i najbardziej “nieszkodliwy” rodzaj komedii. Ścisłość reguł farsy jest bezpośred nio związana z jej charakterem - przestrzeganie reguł pozwala farsie na częste ich łamanie, wywołujące śmiech widowni.
