If we turn our attention to the merry-mooded drama, we shall discern a
similar distinction between comedy and farce. A comedy is a humorous play
in which the actors dominate the action; a farce is a humorous play in
which the action dominates the actors. Pure comedy is the rarest of all
types of drama; because characters strong enough to determine and control a
humorous plot almost always insist on fighting out their struggle to a
serious issue, and thereby lift the action above the comic level. On the
other hand, unless the characters thus stiffen in their purposes, they
usually allow the play to lapse to farce. Pure comedies, however, have now
and then been fashioned, without admixture either of farce or of serious
drama; and of these _Le Misanthrope_ of Molière may be taken as a standard
example. The work of the same master also affords many examples of pure
farce, which never rises into comedy,--for instance, _Le Medecin Malgré
Lui_. Shakespeare nearly always associated the two types within the compass
of a single humorous play, using comedy for his major plot and farce for
his subsidiary incidents. Farce is decidedly the most irresponsible of all
the types of drama. The plot exists for its own sake, and the dramatist
need fulfil only two requirements in devising it:--first, he must be funny,
and second, he must persuade his audience to accept his situations at least
for the moment while they are being enacted. Beyond this latter requisite,
he suffers no subservience to plausibility. Since he needs to be believed
only for the moment, he is not obliged to limit himself to possibilities.
But to compose a true comedy is a very serious task; for in comedy the
action must be not only possible and plausible, but must be a necessary
result of the nature of the characters. This is the reason why _The School
for Scandal_ is a greater accomplishment than _The Rivals_, though the
latter play is fully as funny as the former. The one is comedy, and the
other merely farce.