[From the preface to A Duke and No Duke.]
Tate (1652-1715) is chiefly remembered for his adaptation of King Lear (1681), which saved Lear at the end of the play and married off Cordelia and Edgar; his version held the stage well into the next century. The farce A Duke and No Duke (adapted from Aston Cokayne's Trappolin Supposed a Prince) was performed in 1684 and printed the next year; for the 1693 edition, Tate wrote a preface in the form of an 'Enquiry' into farce, a subject he says is ignored in Italian and French discussions of the stage, though there is enough for his purpose in the 'Syntagm of Marischott'(sig. a2). What follows is largely translated from De Personis, et Larvis, Earumque Apud Veteres usu & origine Syntagmation (1610), by Agesilao Mariscotti, as Scouten (1950) shows.
Tate says (following Mariscotti) that he cannot understand why farce is despised; it is a particularly difficult kind of drama to write well, since it takes 'the best Invention' to find, and 'the nicest Judgement' to manage, those properly farcical departures from the natural and probable which are 'pleasant in the Representation' (sig. b4v-c1). Then at the end of his essay he turns to his own examples, including ones taken from Jonson.
*****************************************I would not be a Heretick in Poetry, but Reason and Experience convince us, that the best Comedies of Ben. Johnson are near a-kin to Farce; nay, the most entertaining parts of them are Farce it self. The Alchymist which cannot be read by any sensible Man without Astonishment, is Farce from the opening of the First Scene to the end of the Intreigue. 'Tis Farce, but such Farce as bequeaths that Blessing (pronounced by Horace) on him that shall attempt the like. - Sudet multum frustraq; laboret Ausus idem.
The whole business is carry'd on with Shuffles, Sham and Banter, to the greatest degree of Pleasantness in the World. For Farce (in the Notion I have of it) may admit of most admirable Plot, as well as subsist sometimes without it. Nay, it has it's several Species or Distinctions as well as Comedy amongst the Romans Stataria mixta, &c.
['The quiet [kind of comedy], the mixed, etc.']
but still 'twas Comedy. So Comedy may admit of Humour, which is a great Province of Farce; but then it might be such Humour as comes within compass of Nature and Probability: For where it exceeds these Bounds it becomes Farce. Which Freedom I would allow a Poet, and thank him into the Bargain, provided he has the Judgement so to manage his Excursion, as to heighten my Mirth without too grossly shocking my Senses.
[Cites Terence as an instance of pure and therefore 'exact' comedy, and Plautus as a comic poet who sometimes allows farce and is therefore 'pleasant'.]
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, says our greatest Maister of Comedy, who scorn'd not to Copy sometimes from the Ancients; yet for one hint he has taken from Terence, he has borrowed three from Plautus. I will instance only that pleasant Passage in his Alchymist, where the Confederates banter and play upon Surly disguised like a Spanish Don, not supposing that he understood them. We find the same Humour in the Poenulus of Plautus, where the old Carthaginian speaks in the Punick language; Milphio a Roman Servant plays the wagg, and drolls upon him, under pretence of interpreting for him; the Stranger suffers him to run himself out of breath with his Ribaldry, and then surprizes him with thundring out as good Latin as the best of them could speak. Vulpone's playing the Mountebank in the Fox is Farce; and Sir Politick's turning himself into a Tortoise. This Passage however is undiverting, which proves (as I said) the Nicety of Judgment required in managing Improbabilities. Had this been told to the Audience like other Projects which are only recited, it might have made a pleasant Relation.
(sig. c2v-c3v)
'[He] may sweat much and yet toil in vain when attempting the same.' Ars Poetica l. 241-2,
Ben. Johnson's Verses on Shakespear.