Аннотация:The critical prejudice against farce as an intellectually and artistically valid dramatic genre is probably as old as the word itself. derives from the Latin verb farcire, meaning stuff; its etymology recalls its early use as referring to an amplification, often impromptu and buffoonish, of medieval church liturgy. Writing about Italian comedy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, K. M. Lea epitomizes critics who suggest the intrinsic inferiority of farce as a dramatic genre: Farce is comedy reduced to commercialism. The best farce is what gives the maximum of amusement for the minimum of intellectual efforts.i This persistent critical bias against farce also underlies Barbara Cannings's criteria for identifying farce:
