FARCE (Fr. farce, from Lat. farsus, p.p. of farcire, to stuff). A dramatic piece of a gro tesquely comic character. The difference between it and regular comedy is more in degree than in kind. Both aim to excite laughter, but while legitimate comedy does so with a comparatively faithful adherence to nature and truth, the farce assumes to itself a much greater license, and does not scruple to make use of any extravagance or any improbability that may serve its usually very simple plot. Instead of refined wit or humor it substitutes broad absurdities. Broadly speaking, farcical elements have entered into many of the forms of primitive comedy. Thus, both in the significance of the word and the kind of 'stuffing' it denotes, farce would seem to bear an analogy to the early Latin saturw, while the popular commedia dell' aric of a much later day in Italy were of a somewhat similar character. The name farce, however, seems to have been first applied in its present sense particularly to the pieces produced by the French society of the cicres de Laroche as a contrast to the moralities played by the religious orders. They have been con founded in their origin with the sermons joyeux, or parodies on the ritual of the Church. A char acteristic of many of the farces was a mixture of dialects. In one scene of the Farce dc Pathc
lin, the principal personage speaks seven or eight. This most famous of all the farces has been at tributed to different authors, most commonly to Pierre Blanchet, one of the Itazoche in the fif teenth century. and even to the poet \Tilton. At a later date, Molii\re elevated and refined me dieval farce into pure comedy in his Medecia malqrd Les ridicules, and other inimitable productions. In England, the farce canto about the beginning of the eighteenth cen tury to he regarded as something distinct from comedy proper and to constitute a special form of composition. Out of the numerous farces which 1)( 'ell performed before It1nglish-speaking audiences, those of Samuel Foote especially have kept a place in literature. On the stage at the present day. the name farce, or sometimes the vulgarism 'farce comedy,' is freely applied to almost ally light piece in which the comic goes to preposterous lengths.
Consult: Petit de Julleville. La comedic ct Ms in•urs en France on moycn age (Paris, 1886) ; and letiperloire du tb(Salre eontique en Pollux au moycn age (Paris, 1886) ; lnehhald, A Collection of Farces and Othcr Altarpieces (London, 1815 ) .