Abstract
Jonathan Culler, in Structuralist Poetics, argues that part of the basis on which we make sense of texts is ‘by the existence of the genre, which the author can write against … (and) which is the context within which his activity takes place’.1 Genre helps to create the contract between reader or spectator and writer, the frame of acceptance which allows us to experience the work in an appropriate way. One of its functions is to establish the vraisemblable, what is permitted to happen in a work of art. For example, stereotypes, unlikely coincidences, frenetic activity are to be expected in the world of farce but are unlikely to occur in a naturalistic drama. At the same time it is important to remember, as Heather Dubrow points out, that
a writer may deliberately confound our tentative assumptions about the genre in which he is writing, or a work that is essentially in one literary form may include episodes in or allusions to many other literary forms as well.2
As to the first, Ayckbourn, in Bedroom Farce, arouses expectations in his title which are confounded in the actual events of the play, since none of the three bedrooms on stage is ever used for the activities we traditionally expect in farce.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics (New York, 1975) p. 116.
Heather Dubrow, Genre (London and New York, 1982) p. 37.
Ibid., pp. 28–9.
David Hirst, Comedy of Manners (London, 1979) pp. 96–109.
L. J. Potts, Comedy (London, 1948) p. 151.
Allardyce Nicoll, The Theatre and Dramatic Theory (Connecticut, 1962) p. 88.
Cleanth Brooks and R. B. Heilman (eds), Understanding Drama: Twelve Plays (New York, 1945) pp. 138–9.
V. Meyerhold, ‘Farce’ in R. W. Corrigan (ed.), Theater in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1963) pp. 205–6.
G. B. Shaw, Our Theatre in the Nineties (London, 1932), vol. II, p. 120.
Jessica Milner Davies, Farce (London, 1978) pp. 2–7.
Ibid., p. 6.
Ibid., p. 1.
Oxford Companian to the Theatre, quoted in Eric Bentley, The Life of the Drama (London, 1965) p. 227.
J. M. Brown in Saturday Review of Literature, 24 Mar. 1951, p. 26, quoted Leo Hughes, A Century of English Farce, p. 20.
N. R. Shapiro (introd.) Feydeau, Four Farces (Chicago, 1972) p. xi.
Quoted in J. Adamson, Groucho, Harpo, Chico and sometimes Zeppo (London, 1973) p. 165.
Walter Kerr, Tragedy and Comedy (New York 1967) p. 182.
Simon Trussler (introd.) New English Dramatists 13 (London, 1969) p. 11.
Morton Guewitch, Comedy: the Irrational Vision (Cornel, 1975) p. 234.
Eric Bentley, ‘The Psychology of Farce (introd.) Let’s Get a Divorce, and Other Plays (New York, 1958) p. x.
Eric Bentley, The Life of the Drama (London, 1965) p. 240.
Ibid., pp. 240–1.
Leo Hughes, A Century of English Farce (Princeton, 1956) p. vi.
Peter Shaffer, ‘A Times Profile’, The Times, 28 Apr. 1980, p. 7.
Ben Travers, A-sitting on a Gate (London, 1978) p. 94.
Henri Bergson, ‘Le Rire’, in Wylie Sypher (ed.), Comedy (New York, 1956) p. 112.
Quoted in Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd (Penguin, 1968) p. 184.
M. R. Booth (ed.), English Plays of the 19th Century, vol. IV (London, 1973) p. 13.
John Russell Taylor, The Rise and Fall of the Well-Made Play (London, 1967) p. 17.
R. W. Corrigan (ed.) Roman Drama (New York, 1966) pp. 11–12.
Quoted in John Lahr, Prick Up Your Ears (London, 1978) p. 272.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1989 Leslie Smith
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Smith, L. (1989). The Nature of Farce. In: Modern British Farce. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09759-3_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09759-3_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-09761-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-09759-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)