Farce

What Is Farce?

Unlike “high comedy” or comedy of manners, which exploits verbal wit and rounded naturalistic characters, farce depends on physical joking and stylized acting and exploits flat-type characters, often known as “comic masks.” Carefully balanced plot structures ensure it treads a fine line between entertaining and giving offense. These plot structures are found in all types of farce from the simplest fairground performances to the fully developed five-act plays of the late 19th century, and their functioning is central to the nature of farce.

Farce is essentially conservative. It does not seek to point to any particular lesson for its audiences and has little reforming zeal—or even despair—about the ways of the world and human nature. Socially respectable victims make it funnier (provided any moral implications about their humiliation are avoided), but at the end of the comic upheavals, farce plots restore conventional authorities—or at least save their face. This distinguishes farce from other comic genres or styles such as satire and absurdism's “black” or gallows humor (sometimes called metaphysical or intellectual farce), which are critical in purpose, as well as from tragicomedy and romantic comedy, which engage the audience's empathy.

The fundamental jokes in any farce plot are first, the inescapable fact that all human dignity is at the mercy of the human body and its appetites and needs; and second, an acknowledgment that the human body itself is imprisoned by the space-time continuum. If there is any moral message, it is simply that our common humanity levels all of us down.

Farce is thus best regarded as comedy reduced to its fundamentals, stripped down to its basics, designed purely to entertain. Despite—perhaps because of—its avoidance of social comment and empathy, farce is a rigorous theatrical form, requiring finely honed performances from its actors, with speed, precision timing, and plausible interpretation of stock characters. While farce is a distinct genre, its structures and techniques can be and often are fruitfully used in support of other more complex dramatic purposes and comic styles.

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