One of the things that I have found most puzzling in the farces of the 16th century is the general lack of logic or plot. Not only are they generally too short to contain anything complicated, but they also follow completely illogical premises in order to get them to the joke's punchline. The same may be true of this farce where one husband complains about how awful his wife is and the other brags about his wonderful spouse, but somehow they agree to switch. Within the genre of spouse swapping, this play is by far the most confusing as the characters lack any sort of consistency and the plot is an afterthought to the jokes which are principally based on beating a spouse or sexual innuendos. Looking forward to the next century, I think one could argue that the greatest achievement of Molière was simply adding a sense of logic and plot to his comedies, making them a story to follow as opposed to a barely connected thread of sex jokes.
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Most farces take their subjects from marital disputes, and this farce uses wife swapping as the basis of the joke on matrimony. A nobleman is having an affair with Naudet's wife, and to distract Naudet from their lovemaking the nobleman orders him to do a series of tasks, one of which is to deliver a letter to his wife. Naudet does so, revealing their spouses' infidelity, and promising to do to the noblewoman what the nobleman is currently doing to Naudet's wife. It reminds me of one of the stories in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron, where two couples swap wives for years without issue. This complicates the primary fear of the medieval man, being a cuckhold. If both men are out gallavanting with the other's wife, the sexual superiority inherent in the act of cuckholding is neutralized. As Naudet says at the end of the play to the nobleman, that if the nobleman doesn't pretend to be Naudet, Naudet won't pretend to be the nobleman. In this way, neither man can be cuckholded because there is no sense of superiority.
La Farce du Ramoneur is essentially a double entendre on the idea of sweeping chimneys as a sexual act. The Chimney Saeep laments that when he was a young man, he could sweep many chimneys but now that he is old, he barely manages to sweep his own. There are many jokes here about impotence and the phallic object of the chemney sweep's stick, but truly it is a play with very little action. What I believe is the difference between farces of the 16th century and the comedies of the 17th is the plot. Farces act as one joke, or one scene that could be a part of a larger comedy. Comedies however, involve a story that must find a resolution beyond the punchline of the joke.
La Farce du Chaudronnier is another farce that takes as its subject a marital dispute, but frames it as a battle of silence. A wife and her husband are arguing and he claims that she can't keep her mouth shut. As a result, she devises a game in which they must both stay silent and the first to speak must buy a kettle of soup. During the process of this game, a Kettle Maker appears, intent on making the couple talk, which he does when the husband responds to the Kettle Maker fondling his wife. While it would seem to a reader that a game of silence is antithetical to a farce, the reader is forgetting that farces were equally based on physical humor as they were based on puns. The Kettle Maker dressing the husband up as a saint is equally comic as the quick witted spars between the couple. Farces do not necessarily have to run at a break neck speed, but performers can also take their time to draw out jokes that an audience finds particularly entertaining. It is sure that farces comprised a certain amount of improvisation on the part of the actors in order to react to the audience.
La Farce de la Cornette is an absolutely delightful play on words. A wife tricks her husband into believing that when his nephews come to talk about her infidelity, they are really talking about his bonnet. The play here is that the french "elle" can refer to both the wife and to the bonnet. Rather than operating on the simple humor of physical comedy, this play relies on dramatic irony, or the fact that the audience knows more than the characters. We are in on the joke and can therefore laugh about it with the wife and her valet. Like La Farce de Calbain, this play puts the woman in a position of power where she can use her wit to get what she wants. While in the period this may have contributed to the stereotype of the wife as a trickster, in a modern performance we can see it as an empowering step for women who had few other options than to trick their spouses.
La Farce de Calbain is a refreshing respite from the repetition of spousal abuse in many of the other farces of the period. The wife wants a new dress because up until this point she has been wearing rags, but every time that she asks her husband for money, he responds in song. She seeks advice and is told that she should drug her husband so that while he is asleep, she can steal his purse. He awakes, discovering the robbery and demands his wife to return his money. However, she responds in turn by singing. He threatens to beat her, but she declares that she will leave him, bringing him to apologize and soften his ways. This is one of the common comic devices of farce, that the deceiver is deceived. Here, it is remarkable to see the woman taking control of the man's tools and using them against him in order to succeed. Whereas other wives are described and conniving, licentious, and controlming, this wife is portrayed as perfectly reasonable and justified in her actions, bringing a bit of balance back to the marital relationship which is nonexistant in other farces.
La Farce du Meunier combines two of the genre's favorite comic devices, spousal abuse and scatalogical humor. The miller is on his deathbed begging his wife to call the priest, who she is in fact having an affair with. While shenanigans are taking place at the miller's house, Lucifer is directing one of his devils on how to capture a human soul, telling him that the soul comes out the bottom. While the priest is reading the miller his last rights, the miller is overcome with diarrhea which the demon catches in his sack. He returns to hell, proud of his accomplishment, only to be berated by Lucifer for stinking up hell. As noted by several scholars this play is meant to be performed in concert with the Mystère de Saint-Martin, mirroring the holy scent at the ascent of Saint Martin. It makes me think of the old saying that cleanliness is next to godliness, but truly, in a period where sanitation is next to non-existant, one has to imagine that such smells were rather commonplace. This play would be an interesting case study for anyone who is interested in sensory studies.
La Farce du Pont aux Anes relies heavily on the physical comedy typical of farces, and by physical comedy I mean beating a woman. Like La Farce du Cuvier, the husband is emasculated by his wife who does nothing. The husband goes to seek advice and is told to go observe the donkeys on the bridge. He sees that one can only make a donkey move by beating it, and takes it as a metaphor where his wife is the donkey. In the period, women were not allowed to perform onstage, and so the physical violence acted out on stage is not against a women, but a crossdressed man. Still, the prevalence of physical violence as a raw material for comedy is a troubling reflection of the status of women in society and its expectations of them. We will continue to see this comic material even in the work of Molière, despite the fact that his women are more developed and independant agents in their own lives.
La Farce du Pâté et de la Tarte like many other farces of this period, relies on physical humour primarily in the form of beating people. The play follows two poor beggars who come to a pastry shop. The couple gives them nothing, but they hear the man tell his wife that he will be going out to dine, and that she should give the pâté he made to a valet. One of the beggars comes to take the pâté claiming to be the valet. This leads to the husband returning, enraged to find that his wife has given away the pâté. He beats her, and then the two beggars in turn for having eaten the pâté. These acts of physical comedy, though we may not find them as funny now, display the influence of commedia dell'arte on French farce of this period. We can see the creation of stock characters who are easily recognizable to an audience, with a list of phrases and actions typique to them, allowing actors to improvise within the form.
La Farce du Cuvier is a short but biting family farce about a husband who is subjugated by his wife and her mother to do all the chores. The wife accidently falls into a vat of dirty washing, and when she calls to her husband to help her out, he responds "This is not on my list". Eventually he helps her out after she promises to do all the housework. This period in history is interesting in terms of marital relations in that there is a historical understanding that women had few rights and often suffered under their husbands, but at the same time in popular literature we see the opposite dynamic, where women are seen as the agressors to their poor husbands. We might think of the Quinze joies de mariage as an exemple of this relationship. This popular representation of women as the "old ball and chain" exists today, making the farce both antiquated and contemporary from a feminist perspective.
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Jennifer KellettM.A. French Literature Florida State University Archives
June 2021
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