How to deal with farces? 

Suggestions for an alternative research program

Femke Kramer

Groningen (NL)

Present-day responses to the nature of the (late) medieval world of farce can roughly be divided into two lines of thought. In the first, farce-world is treated structurally. Its aim is to map the abstract plans and patterns which form the basis of farces, assuming that these plans and patterns constitute their comical, humorous character. The second is a socio-historical line of thought. It is dominated by the notion that humour, at that time, was brutal and cruel, unlike the kind we are used to in our days. Scholars representing this line of thought tend to rationalise the alleged brutality of the early humour by pointing out the social or ethical aims it was supposedly directed at. It is assumed that the society represented in the farce-world, or at least a part of this society, was exactly the opposite of the world for which the spectators were supposed to aim in their own lives.

In their fundamental recognition that farce-world is a man-made literary construction instead of a raw reflection of every day life, these two approaches are preferable to most previous ones. Yet, the current research program neglects essential dimensions of the genre. As for the structuralistic approach, the presuppostion is doubtful that the humour of the farce-world lies in the abstract plans and patterns 'unveiled' by means of structural analysis. It is more likely that the humorous potential of farces resides in thematical dimensions of the texts and in the theatrical opportunities they offered to their performers. As for the socio-historical approach, the rationale attributed to the plays may be questioned; it overestimates the serious social impact of the plays, and is founded on a biased attitude to laughter. For a full understanding and a proper appreciation of the genre, scholars ought to account for the contemporary reflection about laughter and for the positive functions ascribed to laughter in the period in which the plays were written and performed. In reply to each of the approaches, an alternative can be proposed that will allow for a more comprehensive understanding and appreciation of the genre.

The material

The earliest farce texts that have survived from the pre-renaissance Netherlands are the six sotternieNn, preserved in the Van Hulthem manuscript (c. 1410), accompanying the famous abele spelen. Approximately 80 farce texts, most of which are labeled as clucht or esbatement, date from the later fifteenth and the sixteenth century, and are part of the vast dramatical heritage of the rederijkers, the amateur poets, playwrights and actors who dominated the cultural life in the late medieval Low Countries. The texts do not form a very clear-cut corpus, and generic terms often confuse present-day readers, but in broad outlines, and with the exception of certain irregularities (which in itself are most interesting cases) they do display a high degree of uniformity. The self-proclaimed aim of the plays invariably reads: Arousing pleasure and laughter.

Personnel, themes, plots and locations hint the (tacit) existence of a rather limited arsenal of farce elements. Characters, in most cases four or five per play, derive their identity from their family relations (husbands, wives, children, mothers- and fathers-in-law), their social relations (friends, neighbours, lovers, chiefs and servants), their trade or profession (peasants, butchers, cobblers, doctors, quacks, innkeepers, midwives, clergymen, soldiers, etc.), other social qualities (for example rogues) or from a handicap (blind men, deaf women). They frequently appear in stereotyped constellations (husband-wife-lover, peasants-townpeople). Unlike commedia dell'arte characters, however, farce characters do not have strongly fixed properties - much depends on the plot and the constellation in which they appear -, though some patterns can be discerned in this respect as well. Husbands can be silly, violent and/or addicted to alcohol; wives can be adulterous, devoted to their husbands, or overbearing. Children can be terrible (Hanneken Leckertant, Tielebuys), though at times, they are simply a bunch of hungry mouths (Bervuete bruers, Ons lieven heers minnevaer). Not every farce couple quarrels all the time; not every farce peasant is mentally retarded, and not every clergyman is driven by sexual desire.

The plot is generally triggered by some sort of dissatisfaction with the status quo, be it lack of money, food, status, power, or sexual satisfaction, and the primary actions are often aimed at the fulfillment of these basic needs. Some examples of initial situations are: A peasant desires for status, and decides to become a marksman (Een boer die wil leeren schieten); a married woman desires for pleasure and picks up a young man who can satisfy her needs (Lippen en Lijse en Jan Vleermuijs; performed as Schaamstreken by Theatre Company Marot at the 1998 SITM conference); a peasant wants to become rich and decides to sell one and the same calf to three different butchers (Jan Fijnart). Sometimes a farce plot begins with an undesired situation or even a state of emergency: A woman suffering from her husband's alcoholism searches for a way to make him stop drinking (Lijsgen en Jan Lichthart; Die mane); a man suffering from severe itches tries to get rid of the fleas (De vloijvanger); a fisherman and his wife are caught in a storm at sea, and feel forced to confess their sins to each other (Van den visscher).

The intrigues are generally centered around some form of deceit or ruse, a misunderstanding, or (less frequent) an unexpected event; combinations occur as well. In many cases, a character is reprimanded for being too ambitious. An effective scheme is known under the expression B trompeur, trompeur et demi (for example: A blind man is robbed and recovers his money by means of a clever trick; Van den blinde diet 'tgelt begroef), though often the trompJ is cheated or punished twice. Sometimes a typical loser is saved by some lucky coincidence, like the 'hero' in Goossen Taeijaert, who is swindled by a butcher. To protect himself from a 'spousal spanking', he dons a cowskin. A rich passer-by thinks he is the devil himself, and runs off, leaving Goossen all his money.

Remarkably often the plot fully depends on some sort of pun: A figurative expression is taken literally, or the other way round. In Ons lieven heers minnevaer, a wise man (named Goed Onderwijs, 'Good Teaching') inadvertently makes a poor man believe that God is the (biological!) father of his children. The poor man draws up an expense account of the maintenance costs in order to make God pay for it. His attempts to receive repayment bring him to the parish church, and finally even to Rome, but God's earthly representative is not inclined to give him money.

A fine example of a literal expression explained metaphorically occurs in Cornelis Everaert's esbatement Van den visscher: Forced to confess her sins to her husband while caught in a thunderstorm at sea, the woman admits that two of her boys are fathered by the servant and by the chaplain. After her confession, however, the storm dies down and they safely land on the shore. When the fisherman bursts out in fulminations against his bastards, the wife reproaches him for misunderstanding the deeper meaning of her confession: "When you rowed our boat, weren't you my servant? And when I confessed my sins to you, weren't you my chaplain? Hence, these boys must be your own sons!"

Completely inadvertant misunderstandings occur as well. In Van den preecker, an innkeeper's wife receives a piglet from a traveling preacher as a reward for her (unspecified) assistance; she names the animal 'Preecker', after the giver. One year later, a new young preacher arrives in the village and moves in the inn. The innkeeper and his wife realise that they have no food to serve to their guest, except for the pig. When the preacher overhears their discussion about whether or not to slaughter Preecker, he fears that he has ended up in a village of cannibals, and flees to a most awkward place - the pigsty. A whole series of misunderstandings follows when the innkeeper approaches the preacher's hideaway while whetting his knives ("Our pig can speak!" the perplexed woman notices), and in the end, the local priest and the sexton are summoned to exorcise the evil spirit from the pig.

The three examples mentioned above seem to be typical for the genre in that language - to be more precise, the equivocality and unreliability of language - is an important driving principle of the action. The countless examples of wordplay and miscommunication in farces match with another important feature of the genre: Most of the texts are constructed with the utmost linguistic creativity, at the level of rhyme as well as vocabulary. By putting characters upon the stage as blabbering drunkards, quacks advertising their merchandise and tramps speaking an unfathomable thieves' lingo, the rederijkers demonstrate a strong fondness for extravagant and imaginative parlance. The linguistic richness of the playtexts may not be too surprising, considering the cultural environment in which the rederijkers operated: As the Dutch counterparts of the French rhJtoriqueurs, they were naturally fascinated with language.

Not only in sound, but also in vision the rederijkers-farces hint a preference for the picturesque. Obviously, we can only guess what the plays-in-performance looked like, but the frequent appearance of fancy characters such as quacks, doctors, voluptuous women and tramps must have offered an opportunity for attractive images. Likewise, certain locations seem to have been popular because of their scenic possibilities. Many farces encompass scenes in which characters are involved in graphic actions, such as eating, drinking, flirting, dancing, courting, quarreling, fighting, (cross-)dressing or undressing. In like manner, exorcisms, drunkenness, and actions in which animals (dogs, cats, horses, cows, pigs) are involved must have had a visual lure. Sometimes, an entire scene seems to have been invented for the mere fun of the picture. For example, De schuijfman encompasses a scene in which a mounted priest, as a result of a prank played by two tramps, is chased by a colt carrying an old woman's corpse on its back.

Current farce readings and alternatives

A structuralistic approach

In the 1980's, the French romanist Bernadette Rey-Flaud (1984), followed by the Dutch literary historian Wim Hhsken (1989), devised a model in which farce elements (characters, intrigues) are reduced to symbols, and farce plots are represented in algebraical notations consisting of signs and symbols. The fact that farce plots provoke literary historians to design such a model is in itself revealing as far as the nature of the genre is concerned. Obviously, farce plots have an almost mechanical predictability. The observation that farces are machines B rire, as phrased by Rey-Flaud in reference to Henri Bergson's theory of laughter (Bergson 1900), and that the schemes are invariably centered around a ruse or a misunderstaning may be valuable, but with respect to the comical effect at which the plays aim, the notations yielded by the method are less relevant. The humour of farces is not caused or determined by the mechanical structure of the plays.

Structural analysis does not live up to the expectations it evokes as to objectivity and accuracy - as literary criticism has made clear in the past fifteen years. Making a farce scheme according to the method of Rey-Flaud and Hhsken calls for decisions as to which of the characters is the central figure in a play - marked as a sujet when this figure is a deceiver, and as an objet when he is the victim of deceit. These decisions are conclusive with regard to the valuation of the status of a farce section - either as dJfaite or as victoire - or sequence of sections. The model does not account for cases in which it is difficult to decide which character is the central figure. Consequently, a section in which A succesfully deceives B, can be marked both as a victoire (for A) and as a dJfaite (for B). In such cases, the method allows two opposite notations of one and the same play. Likewise, it is impossible to convey situations in which a 'hero' assumes that he is in a victorious position (for example: The old man in Jan Goemoete thinks he has undergone a rejuvenation cure), while everyone else - the other characters and the audience - can see that he is the victim of deceit (he is covered with pitch and feathers). Such situations, in which dramatic irony arises, are likely to have been succesful laughter-provoking formulas, but they cannot be expressed in the model.

The notion of farce as a mechanical execution of stereotyped actions may in itself be interesting. If structural approaches are aimed at reducing a variety of phenomena to generalisations that facilitate communication and amplify our understanding of the phenomena, however, the deep structures imposed on the plays by Rey-Flaud and Hhsken seem to push the idea of generalisation too far. This method, furthermore, disregards farce ingredients such as the graphic images (eating, drinking, defecating, cross-dressing etc.), the playful language, or the picturesque characters (quacks, rogues etc.) mentioned in the section above. Elements such as these must have been largely responsible for the humorous impact of the plays. When they are reduced to signs and symbols, however, their humorous potential is no longer visible. Full understanding of the farce-world and its humorous potential calls for a description model which accounts for the contents of the plays as well as for the structures which lie behind their intrigues.

Script theory

Ideally, a description model of sixteenth-century farce produces generalisations which have actually and consciously existed in the sixteenth century. Designing such a model, however, implies speculating about the content of sixteenth-century minds - obviously an inoperable research category. Yet, given the frequent occurrence of thematical and theatrical elements, we may come closer to sixteenth-century notions of farce schemes by applying the concept of 'scripts' - in the sense of the theory devised by R. Schank and R. Abelson (1977) - to farce description. Script theory deals with the storage and retrieval of knowledge, and serves to understand ways in which people handle story-level understanding. Some of its basic principles are: Conceptualisations can be analyzed in terms of a small number of primative acts; all memory is episodic and organized in terms of scripts; scripts allow individuals to make inferences and hence to understand verbal or written discourse. The classic example of the script theory is the restaurant script (Schank and Abelson 1977:42-46). Roughly, it has the following components: Scene 1: Entering; scene 2: Ordering; scene 3: Eating; scene 4: Paying, leaving. There are many variations possible on this general script, having to do with different types of restaurants or procedures. For example, in many cases the waiter takes in the money; in some restaurants, however, the check is paid to a cashier. Such variations are opportunities for misunderstandings or incorrect inferences (and hence, for that matter, for humorous situations).

Supposing that the authors of farces had a certain limited reservoir of humorous 'scripts' at their disposal, a farce can be considered as the elaboration of a successful script, or the synthesis of several ones. A description of the scripts ought to account for both intrigues and for thematical and theatrical elements such as the ones mentioned above. Several sorts of scripts are conceivable: They can be centered around characters (a quack script; a rogues script; a peasant script), around locations (a tavern script; a household script) or around other thematical elements (a theft script; a chicanery script; an adultery script). One play may comprise several scripts overlapping or embracing each other. An adultery script, for example, may occur as a farce-filling pattern, displaying only the activities of the woman, her lover and her husband, but in other cases it is used in connection to another script, such as a rogues script, as in Lippen en Lijse en Jan Vleermuijs (Schaamstreken) or an enfant terrible script (as in Coster Johannus: an adulterous woman's young son Loeris is told that the clergyman who is secretely visiting his mother is named Nobody. However, by declaring cheerfully to his father that 'Nobody' promised to give him a hobbyhorse, he manages to betray his mother after all).

Besides, scripts are basicly 'fuzzy': They consist of a variable and flexible set of components at the level of dialogue, apparel, 'furniture', actions, and intrigue. Some of these may be essential, but many others are optional. The realisation of a script is amenable to external influences, much like the restaurant example, dependant on the context in which it is used. A quack script, for example, encompasses some essentials such as the salesman character boasting about his capacity to cure diseases, but other characteristics are optional. Some quacks are evidently and consciously cheats while others are convinced of their own skills. Likewise, the intrigue may end up in a either victory or a defeat of the quack. In most cases, the quack is an obscure passer-by, intervening in some other script, but in a farce such as Meester Hoon en Lippen Slechthooft he is elaborated to a 'complete' character, who has a wife, a headache, and several other 'human' properties. Precisely the fuzziness of the scripts provided possibilities to create new plots on the basis of 'old' material, sometimes even ending up in cross-bred scripts, like the quack and servant who display rogue-like traits in Jan Goemoete.

In comparison to an analysis yielding deep structures of the machinations that are at work in farces, script theory allows the researcher to remain close to the way playwrights, authors and actors - and perhaps even spectators - presumably stored and retrieved their farce-knowledge and -experiences, especially at the level of characters. This may seem difficult to prove, but the way in which farces present themselves in writing, mentioning characters by their basic traits and qualities, does point to a way of thinking about farces in script-like concepts. In fact, the generic designation in itself can be considered as an overall script, directed at the performers of the plays: By presenting itself as a farce, the text proclaimed its general intention - arousing laughter - and thereby imposed a specific acting style upon the actors.

Two socio-historical interpretations

The current socio-historical approaches are largely based on a rather tendentious reading of the thematical dimensions of the plays. They focus almost exclusively on the reign of folly and the lack of ethics (Knight 1983), respectively on certain forms of conduct in the world of farce (Pleij 1975-76). Medieval laughter, in their view, was a cruel and childish form of laughter, at the expense of silly losers and victims of misfortune, violence and deceit. They manage to rationalise this rather uncomfortable property of the early comic drama in such a way that the genre receives a sociological function, either in the field of ethics or in the pragmatic field of bon gouvernement. Though based on similar lines of thought, however, the ethical interpretation and the pragmatic explanation point out quite different objectives regarding the precise function of the humour.

According to the ethical explanation, farce-world is "a mimesis of a fallen world" (Knight 1983:169) in which malicious behaviour prevails, and people make life hell for each other, making the same mistakes again and again. However, precisely by depicting such an a-moral society, farce exercised a civilising influence on the spectators, by showing them a world in which no one would possibly want to live. The message implied by farce was: Do not treat your fellow man in the way these characters treat theirs; farce-world, as a whole, is a condemnable world. In this perspective, laughter aroused by farce is implicitly considered to be directed against a-moral behaviour of people in general.

The pragmatic reading of farce-world and its objectives leads to a notably different interpretation: Farce, in this view, represents a world in which social or physical weaklings (such as the poor father in Ons lieven heers minnevaer; Pleij 1975-76) are - in the eyes of the performers and their audience more or less rightfully - punished for their foolish conduct and their miserable position. By showing such a society in which only the bright and clever manage to survive, farce-world served to show the people how to be sensible citizens. The message implied by farce was: Be wiser than these stupid victims of deceit and disaster, or else you will end up miserable and destitute. Hence, it is assumed that the laughter was not directed against farce-world as a whole, but only against those who are not able to survive succesfully in this world.

Against both rationales, several objections can be brought forward. For example: The pragmatic readers of farce pretend to know exactly which of the characters were the laughing stock, and which were those with whom the spectators sympathised, or even identified themselves. There are several examples which can serve to demonstrate that, even these days, it is difficult to indicate the precise laughing matter of comedy. The laughter evoked by the popular television comedy from the seventies, All in the family, for example, was not per se politically correct laughter. Many viewers turned out to sympathise with Archie Bunker against feminists, black people and foreigners, such as his Polish 'meat ball' son-in-law. If the effects of present-day humour are already difficult to predict, how can we possibly determine the precise aims and the impact of humorous phenomena from a distant era?

The socio-historical explanations of the late medieval humour conceal a discomfort with laughter and humour. Scholars who feel the need to excuse the alleged cruelty or childishness of the early humour, apparently close their eyes to similarly 'cruel' or 'childish' present-day humour. In their urge to stress the difference of the late-medieval society, they fail to realise that many humorous phenomena in our days are in many ways similar to those of the fifteenth and sixteenth century - and not only in 'lower' strata of twentieth-century humorous productions. Precisely in our century, moreover, taboos as to what can be presented in a humorous context have been broken. Tossing around with a dead body, for example, as in the farce mentioned above (De schuijfman), also occurs in first-rate present-day comedies such as Fawlty Towers and Blackadder.

Positive evaluation of laughter

This problematic scholarly attitude to humour can be placed in a more general discussion about theoretical approaches to humour. The explanations mentioned above are tacitly founded upon the axioms that humour is inextricably associated with repudiation, and that laughter primarily expresses malicious delight or even hostility. This line of thought matches with theories of laughter developed by scholars whom Max Eastman typified as "lugubrious philosophers with their 'theories of laughter', which are apologies for laughter and attempts to excuse it by giving it the name of some other act or state of feeling" (Eastman 1937:39).

In present-day reflection about humour, the 'theories of laughter' referred to by Eastman are known as superiority or degradation theories. In short, these superiority theories are founded upon a perception of laughter which is eloquently phrased by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan (1651:45): "Sudden glory is the passion which makes these grimaces called laughter." Laughter, in this view, is a remnant of the primeval growl which was intended to overawe enemies, or of the roar with which our ancestors celebrated a victory - a simpleminded notion of laughter; to paraphrase Eastman's critical comment upon this line of thought: Those who equate laughter and hostile roaring in humans, probably confuse two forms of behaviour which may look similar but which in effect are as far apart as wagging the tail and growling of dogs. Though some forms of laughter may comprise an element of ridicule, spontaneous laughter in general expresses joy and playfulness.

Superiority theories only occupy one end of the spectrum of possible thought about laughter. Generally, two other types of theories are distinguished: Relief or release theories, concentrating on psychological causes of laughter (laughter as an overflow of energy by the loosening of inhibitions; Freud 1905), and incongruity theories, which focus on properties of the laughter stimulus (i.c. the collision of two incompatible lines of thought; e.g. Koestler 1964). A fourth type of theory which rarely receives scholarly attention, but which is common in public opinion and in the application of humour in psychology, stresses the joyful, playful state of mind in which people are inclined to produce laughter, and the positive effects laughter has on mental, physical and social well-being. Eastman was a fierce advocate of the notion of laughter as a symptom of playfulness, or rather, playfulness as a condition for laughter. People who are 'in fun', Eastman stated, are able to enjoy and accept things they would experience as disagreeable or grieving if they were in a serious state of mind. In a way, this corresponds with Wallace Chafe's 'disarmament theory'. While laughing, Chafe observes, people are physiologically and psychologically 'disabled', and hence, humour saves them from the consequences of natural, logical reasoning; it keeps them from doing things that could be counterproductive, like stress or violence (Chafe 1987).

The theories which focus on the pleasure and fun expressed by spontaneous laughter instead of stressing the component of hostile derision, accord with notions that were current in the days in which the farces were written and performed. The sixteenth century saw an increasing inquisitiveness in laughter as a physiological phenomenon with a vital influence on individual and social health. Obviously, this notion was not new. After all, the 'sanguine' and hence beneficial impact of pleasure and laughter on the human complexion, in particular its properties as an antidote for melancholic maladies, had been one of the leading principles of Western medical science since the days of Hippocrates. Nevertheless, the issue seemed to revive in a particularly powerful way in the sixteenth century - perhaps in response to an increased fear for melancholy and delusion, or to a changing way of (city) life in which amiable social intercourse became more and more essential. By explicitly and elaborately rationalising the notion of wholesome laughter, and by rendering it operational for physical and social purposes, the sixteenth-century physicians and theorists seem to approach the topic in a very contemporary way, by re-reading classical authors on the matter and by producing studies such as Le traitJ du ris (Laurent Joubert 1579) and a hausse of artes iocandi aimed at social health (see Schmitz 1972 and MJnager 1995).

Present-day appreciation of farces ought to reckon with the physiological, psychological and social impact ascribed to the causation of pleasure and laughter. Farces evidently form an important component of the corpus of laughter-provoking media of the time. They were considered as a remedy for fearsome diseases caused by melancholy, and, though perhaps indirectly, as a social lubricant which can make life more pleasant. In this respect, it is also important to realise that the self-proclaimed laughter-provoking aim of the plays was invariably accompanied with an explicit restriction as to infamy and disgrace. A good esbatement, the regulations for farce-productions usually read, makes people laugh without shame or disgracefulness (zonder vilonie). Laughter caused by farce humour, this seems to imply, ought to be a wagging of the tail, and not a growl.

Our understanding of farces could gain in depth if we focus our attention on the thematical and theatrical dimensions of the plays, and consider the possibility that these were stored in sixteenth-century minds in the shape of script-like schemes. The appreciation of farce can be improved if the positive effects ascribed to humour and laughter are taken into account. Such modifications of the current research program will enrich our notion of the genre and of the people who wrote, performed and enjoyed the plays.

I wish to thank dr Eric Saak for his comment upon previous versions of this paper.

Works cited

Plays:

Bervuete bruers ed.: Willem van Eeghem, Drie schandaleuze spelen. Antwerpen, 1937.

Van den blinde diet 'tgelt begroef ed.: W.N.M. Hhsken [e.a.], Trou moet blijcken: bronnenuitgave [..]. Deel 7: Boek G. Assen, 1997.

Een boer die wil leeren schieten Ms. Gemeente-archief Leiden no. 72421 ff. 131-144.

Coster Johannus ed.: Wim N.M. Hhsken [e.a.] 1997

Goossen Taeijaert ed.: Wim N.M. Hhsken [e.a.] 1997

Hanneken Leckertant ed.: Wim N.M. Hhsken [e.a.] 1997

Jan Fijnart Ms. Trou moet Blijcken, Haarlem, boek M, ff. 1v-14v.

Jan Goemoete ed.: Herman Meijling, Esbatementen van de Rode Lelije te Brouwershaven. Groningen, 1946. Diss. Utrecht 1946.

Lijsgen en Jan Lichthart ed.: Wim N.M. Hhsken [e.a.] 1997

Lippen en Lijse en Jan Vleermuijs ed.: Wim N.M. Hhsken [e.a.] 1997

Die mane ed.: Wim N.M. Hhsken [e.a.], Trou moet blijcken: bronnenuitgave [..]. Deel 1: Boek A. Assen, 1992.

Meester Hoon en Lippen Slechthooft N. van der Laan, Rederijkersspelen naar een handschrift ter bibliotheek van het Leidsche gemeentearchief. 's-Gravenhage, 1932.

Ons lieven heers minnevaer ed.: J.J. Mak, Vier excellente kluchten. Amsterdam, Antwerpen, 1950.

Van den preecker ed.: Wim N.M. Hhsken [e.a.] 1997

De schuijfman ed.: Wim N.M. Hhsken [e.a.] 1997

Tielebuijs ed.: M. de Jong, Drie zestiende-eeuwse esbatementen. Amsterdam, 1934.

Van den visscher ed.: Cornelis Everaert, Spelen van Cornelis Everaert. Ed. J.W. Muller en L. ScharpJ. Leiden, 1920.

De vloijvanger ed.: Wim N.M. Hhsken [e.a.] 1997.

Cited works:

Henri Bergson, Le rire. Essai sur la signification du comique. GenPve, [1900].

Wallace Chafe, 'Humor as a Disabling Mechanism'. American Behavioral Scientist 30 (1987), 16-26.

Max Eastman, Enjoyment of Laughter. [New York] 1937.

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan. Oxford, 1909. Facs. of ed. London, 1651.

Wim N.M. Hhsken, Noyt meerder vreucht. Compositie en structuur van het komische toneel in de Nederlanden voor de Renaissance. Deventer, 1987. Diss. Nijmegen, 1987.

Laurent Joubert, TraitJ du Ris. Suivi d'un Dialogue sur la Cacographie FranHaise. GenPve, 1973. RJimpression de l'Jdition de Paris, 1579.

Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation. A Study of the Conscious and Unconscious in Science and Art. New York, 1964.

Daniel MJnager, La Renaissance et le rire. Paris, 1995.

Herman Pleij, 'De sociale funktie van humor en trivialiteit op het rederijkerstoneel'. Spektator 5 (1975-76), 108-127.

Bernadette Rey-Flaud, La farce ou la machine B rire. ThJorie d'un genre dramatique 1450-1550. GenPve, 1984. Diss. Montpellier, 1982.

R.C. Schank & R. Abelson, Scripts, Plans, Goals, and Understanding. Hillsdale (NJ) 1977.

Alan E. Knight, Aspects of Genre in Late Medieval French drama. Manchester, 1983.

Heinz-Ghnther Schmitz, Physiologie des Scherzes. Bedeutung und Rechtfertigung der Ars Iocandi im 16. Jahrhundert. Hildesheim, New York, 1972.