# Farce > A comedy built on an improbable situation that spins out of control, with mistaken identities, secrets, hidden lovers and slamming doors. Also known as farcical, bedroom farce ## In practice A farce is a [comedy](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/comedy) built on a situation that spins out of control. Someone tells a small lie, hides a person in a cupboard or mistakes one twin for the other, and every attempt to fix the problem makes it worse. The pace keeps rising, doors open and shut at the worst moments, and the characters stay deadly serious while the audience laughs. Farce asks the audience to accept unlikely coincidences but then follows them with strict logic. Once you believe that a man has two wives who must never meet, everything that follows has to make sense on its own terms. That precision is why farce is hard to write: the chaos on stage is planned down to the second. The word also has an everyday meaning. When people call a trial, a meeting or an election "a farce," they mean it was so badly run or so dishonest that it became absurd. The dramatic sense came first, and the everyday one borrowed its picture of events nobody could take seriously. ## A farce that turns one lie into two **A son hides his girlfriend when his parents arrive early** ``` INT. TOMÁS'S APARTMENT - DAY The doorbell rings. TOMÁS (20s) freezes. His girlfriend LENA (20s), wrapped in a towel, freezes too. TOMÁS That's my parents. They think I live alone and go to church. He shoves her into the hall closet and opens the front door. His MOTHER (50s) bustles in with a casserole. MOTHER We brought Father Ruiz. He wants to bless the apartment. FATHER RUIZ (60s) steps in behind her, beaming, and reaches for the closet door to hang up his coat. ``` The scene follows the basic rule of farce: one secret, a reason it must stay hidden, and a new arrival who makes hiding it harder. The priest is not a random joke. He raises the [stakes](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/stakes) of the first lie, and his move toward the closet sets the next problem in motion before the first one is solved. ## What a farce is A farce is a comic play or film whose humor comes from an improbable, fast-moving situation rather than from wit or character study. Its usual ingredients are mistaken identity, disguises, secrets, lovers hidden in wardrobes, chases, physical comedy and a plot that tightens like a knot. The audience knows more than the characters, and enjoys watching them dig deeper. The word comes from the French farce, "stuffing," from the Latin farcire, to stuff. In medieval France, short comic scenes were stuffed between the serious parts of religious plays, and those comic fillers gave the form its name. By the fifteenth century, farces were performed as plays of their own, such as The Farce of Master Pierre Pathelin. Farce is often called low comedy, because it relies on physical gags and situation rather than clever [dialogue](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/dialogue). That label undersells it. A great farce needs the tightest plotting of any comedy, since every entrance, lie and coincidence has to land at exactly the right moment. ## Farce vs. comedy, slapstick and satire Comedy is the broad [genre](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/genre); farce is one kind of comedy. A romantic comedy can be gentle and slow, built on two people's feelings. A farce is built on the situation. If you could remove the characters' inner lives and the plot would still be funny, you are probably looking at a farce. Slapstick is a style of physical humor: pratfalls, collisions, pies in the face. Farce often uses slapstick, but the two are not the same. A slapstick routine can stand alone as a single gag, while a farce links its gags into a chain of cause and effect, so each mishap is the result of the last. [Satire](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/satire) aims at a target in the real world and wants to change how the audience sees it. Farce mostly aims at laughter. Some works do both: Dr. Strangelove uses farcical chaos to satirize nuclear strategy. Comedy of manners, such as Oscar Wilde's plays, mocks social customs through witty dialogue, and The Importance of Being Earnest is often described as a farce of manners. ## Farce examples in theater and film The Roman playwright Plautus wrote The Menaechmi, about twin brothers mistaken for each other, and Shakespeare doubled the twins in The Comedy of Errors. In Paris around 1900, Georges Feydeau perfected the bedroom farce, in which spouses, lovers and rivals all end up in the same hotel. A Flea in Her Ear is his best-known play. Modern stage farce includes Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw and Michael Frayn's Noises Off, which shows the same disastrous play from the front, from backstage and then from the front again as the company falls apart. On television, Fawlty Towers fits a full farce into thirty minutes, with Basil Fawlty's lies collapsing in every episode. Film farces include Some Like It Hot, in which two musicians disguise themselves as women to hide from the mob, What's Up, Doc?, with its four identical bags, and A Fish Called Wanda. The Birdcage, a remake of La Cage aux Folles, turns on a family pretending to be something it is not during a single dinner party. ## The structure of a farce Most farces start with a lie or a secret that seems small and reasonable. A husband wants one quiet evening; a young man invents an invalid friend so he can leave the city whenever he likes. The audience has to understand exactly why the secret must be kept, because that reason powers everything that follows. Then the pressure builds. New characters arrive, each with a reason to be there and each a threat to the secret. The main character answers with a second lie to cover the first, then a third. Time runs short, the space gets crowded, and the number of things the characters must keep track of grows faster than anyone can manage. The [climax](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/climax) brings everyone together in one place, often one room, where the lies can no longer hold. Classic farces use a set with several doors so that characters can just miss each other. The ending usually releases the pressure all at once: the truth comes out, people forgive each other, and order returns, at least for now. ## How to write a farce Start with a main character who wants something simple and has a strong reason to hide something. Then make the stakes real to them: a job, a marriage, their reputation. The audience laughs at the panic only if the character feels it. Farce characters never think they are in a comedy. Plan the plot backward from the collision you want at the climax. List who must be in the room, what each one believes and what each one must not find out. Then decide how each person arrives. A spreadsheet of who knows what at every point in the script is a common tool, because a single slip in that logic breaks the spell. Keep the scenes short and the clock tight. Farce lives on speed, so cut setup that the audience can infer and let each new problem arrive before the last one is solved. Limit the locations, give doors and objects a job, and read the pages aloud to check the rhythm. If a scene stops for a joke, the machine slows down. ## Official sources & context Sources reviewed Nov 3, 2026 - [Merriam-Webster — Farce](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/farce) - [Wikipedia — Farce](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farce) ## Common questions ### What is a farce? A farce is a comedy built on an improbable situation that spins out of control, with mistaken identities, secrets, disguises and fast-moving physical humor. Noises Off, Some Like It Hot and Fawlty Towers are examples. ### What does farce mean? In drama, a farce is a fast, absurd comedy of situation. In everyday speech, calling an event a farce means it was so badly run or dishonest that it became ridiculous, as in "the trial was a farce." ### Where does the word farce come from? It comes from the French farce, "stuffing," from the Latin farcire, to stuff. Medieval French religious plays had short comic scenes stuffed between their serious parts, and those scenes became the farce. ### What is the difference between farce and comedy? Farce is one kind of comedy. Comedy covers any work meant to amuse, while farce depends on an exaggerated situation, fast pace and physical humor rather than on wit or character. ### What is a bedroom farce? A bedroom farce is a farce about romantic secrets, in which spouses, lovers and rivals hide in bedrooms and closets and narrowly miss each other. Georges Feydeau's plays made the form famous. ### What are examples of farce? Classic examples include Plautus's The Menaechmi, Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, Feydeau's A Flea in Her Ear, Michael Frayn's Noises Off, and the films Some Like It Hot, What's Up, Doc? and A Fish Called Wanda. ### How do you write a farce? Give the main character a secret with high stakes, add characters who threaten it, answer each threat with a bigger lie, and plan the climax so everyone collides in one place. Keep scenes short and the pace rising. ## Related terms - [Comedy](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/comedy): A story built to amuse, in which characters struggle with problems that end in happiness, often a wedding or reunion. It includes romantic comedy, slapstick, satire and dark comedy. - [Sitcom](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/sitcom): A comedy series about a fixed group of characters in a recurring situation, such as a family, a workplace or a group of friends, with a new predicament each episode. It is shot multi-camera before an audience or single-camera like a film. - [Parody](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/parody): A work that imitates the style of another work, writer or genre and exaggerates it for comic effect or commentary, as Airplane! does with disaster movies. - [Satire](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/satire): Humor that exposes and criticizes foolishness, vice or abuse of power, usually through exaggeration, irony or ridicule. Its target is real people, institutions or customs, and its aim is to make the audience see them clearly. --- Canonical page: