servants). Farces combine dramatic simplicity with brevity to create a rich variety of
easily recognizable character types. Among the most prominent are the domineering
wife, the henpecked husband, the braggart soldier, and the dull-witted student. Characters
of this kind permit quick and usually light satirical thrusts at common social abuses.
Though the characters may be familiar, the plots of the plays are not realistic reflections
of ordinary events in the lower-middle-class households portrayed. The action of a farce
depends on improbable coincidences or unbelievable disguises. Moreover, when one
considers that all the roles were played by men, it is easy to see that realism was not a
quality that a medieval audience sought in a farce.
The world in which farce characters live is essentially amoral, because their actions
have no ultimate consequences. Unlike the morality play, the farce has no heroes and
embodies no ideals. Neither is there a higher power to reward good and punish evil. Its
characters are wholly absorbed in gaining some immediate material advantage through
trickery. The farce world is thus a kind of ethical jungle in which only the cleverest
survive. And no character, however clever, is immune to being tricked. The wily lawyer
Pathelin, for instance, cheats a clothier out of some expensive cloth, only to be cheated in
turn by a simple, but cleverer shepherd. Maistre Pathelin exemplifies an axiom of the
farce world: à trompeur, trompeur et demi.
A large number of farces deal comically with the problems of conjugal relationships.
The wife in Le cuvier is a domineering woman who makes her timorous husband,
Jaquinot, do all the housework—an ignominious role in medieval society. To ensure that
he forgets nothing, she has him make a list of the chores. When later she accidentally
falls into the washtub, Jaquinot refuses to pull her out because that chore is not on his list.
He finally extricates her only after she agrees that he will henceforth be master of the
house. Unfaithful and deceptive wives also are a frequent topic of these plays. In Resjouy
d’amours, the wife hides her lover in a sack when her husband returns home
inopportunely. In a fit of suspicion and jealousy, the latter sets fire to the house to smoke
out his rival. At his wife’s pleading, he saves the sack because it contains all their
“worldly goods.” When no lover comes out of the burning house, he asks his wife to
forgive him for his suspicions. Such plays, while making the spectators laugh, had the
effect of ridiculing weak husbands, who were perceived in the Middle Ages as a threat to
social order and stability.
Other objects of ridicule in the farces are dull-witted students (Maistre Mimin),
country bumpkins (Mahuet), cowardly soldiers (Colin, fils de Thévot), and bombastic
lovers (Les trois amoureux de la croix). The kind of ridicule such plays utilize may be
lightly satirical, but in all cases the comic elements take precedence over the satire.
There is, however, a subgenre of the farce in which social satire was clearly the
primary goal of the playwright. This is the allegorical farce, in which the characters are
no longer ordinary people who are sometimes foolish, but fools of various stripes in the
guise of personified abstractions. The use of such characters allows the playwright to
attack the abuses of the powerful behind the mask of folly. One type of allegorical farce
is the farce moralisée, a good example of which is Les gens nouveaux qui mangent le
monde et le loge de mal en pire. The gens nouveaux are those who have recently acquired
wealth and power but who have abandoned traditional values to seek only fame and
financial gain. Caring nothing for those they govern, they systematically pillage le monde
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