THE EARLY CAREER OF "FARCE" IN THE THEATRICAL VOCABULARY

Author(s): Leo Hughes

Source: Studies in English , 1940, No. [20] (1940), pp. 82-95
Published by: University of Texas Press

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Studies in English

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THE EARLY CAREER OF FARCE IN THE
THEATRICAL VOCABULARY
By Leo Hughes
The term farce has had an interesting history in Eng
lish.1 Today it is restricted almost entirely to its derived
sense of boisterous dramatic composition; but farce did not
enter theatrical vocabulary until the Restoration, though
the word itself was current in English soon after the
Norman Conquest.
Farce is derived from Latin farcire, to stuff or fill; it
seems to have been first employed by the English as a
term of cookery; for medieval and renaissance cook-books
speak of farcing a goose, a turkey, a pie. Even in its early
history, however, farce was not confined to the kitchen.
Chaucer, in describing his Friar, observes that his "typet"
was "ay farsed ful of knyves."2
The next step, the figurative application, was an easy
one. Again Chaucer will serve very well in supplying an
example: In The Legend of Good Women, he speaks of
"wordes farsed with plesaunce."3 In this last sense the
term was to be employed for the next two centuries and
more. A few examples will suffice. In Henry V, the king,
lamenting the heavy responsibilities and empty rewards
of royalty, soliloquizes:
I am a King that find thee; and I know
'Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,
The farced title running 'fore the king.4

*The N. E. D, must, of course, be the basis or beginning of such a

study as this; I have depended on it for some of the information from
pre-Restoration times. For the remainder of the materials I have
gone to the original works themselves.
^Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, 1.233.
M.1373.
*Act IV, scene i, 279-283.

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The Early Career of "Farce" 83

The nearest suspicion of a theatrical use of farce in pre

Restoration times occurs in the work of Ren Jonson, who
speaks with characteristic acerbity of his opponents' using
"stale apothegmes ... to farce their Scenes withall."5
But here the connection with the theatre is an accidental
one.
The history of farce in the theatre begins in France
during the Middle Ages, and, according to a well-estab
lished theory, it may be traced back to the liturgical origins
of the drama itself.

Dans le langage liturgigue, la farce fut une interpolation, une

sorte de paraphrase que Ton melait au texte consacre de Toffice
canonique. On lit ainsi dans de vieux ceremoniaux: 'Le Kyrie eleison
se chantera aux jours de fete avec farce.' . . . Quoiqu'on ne voie
guere au premier abord quelle ressemblance il peut exister entre ces
interpolations, generalement graves et serieuses, et les farces de
theatre dont une gaiete licencieuse parait le caractere commun et
principal; il est certain neanmoins que Torigine du mot est la meme
dans toutes ses acceptions.6

The development of a vernacular religious drama in

England parallels that in France, but no such close resem
blance exists between the developments in the secular
drama in the two countries. In France the acting of both
religious and non-religious plays fell into the hands of the
various amateur societies of actors; among these, particu
larly les confreries joyettses, les Basochiens, and les
Enfants-sans-Souci, there developed a whole host of brief,
boisterous, often quite vulgar plays to which the title farce
was attached.7 One looks in vain, however, for a similar
development in England. Whatever the cause, no such
societies of amateur actors came into being, and conse

^Introduction to Cynthia's Revels.

6L. Petit de Julleville, La Comedie et les Moeurs en France au Moyen
Age, Paris, 1886, 52-63.
7L. Petit de Julleville, Les Comediens en France au Moyen Age,
Paris, 1885.

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84 Studies in English

quently no development of farce occurred.8 The existence

in English literature of a few isolated plays of undoubt
edly farcical cast makes this general absence all the more
striking. The Secunda Pastorum is an excellent indication
of the potentialities, but it is almost wholly isolated. An
even closer parallel to French farce is to be found in a
much later group of plays, the interludes of John Hey
wood, for which parallels, if not sources, may be found in
contemporary or earlier French drama.9 Yet he invariably
called his pieces interludes, a term which seems to have
been applied with equal readiness to Heywood's lively
little plays or to such pious dramas as the Temptation of
Our Lord.
It is curious to find a different story in Scotland. Con
siderably closer in spirit to the French, the Scotch bor
rowed the term farce and used it with some frequency to
describe dramatic performances. That the type of play
indicated by this word (in all its protean manifestations
of Scotch orthography) was identical with the French
farce, there is every reason to doubt. Miss Mill suggests
that in Scotland farce referred to the machine-play rather
than to rough, homely comedy.10 Certainly the little comic
interim called "The Puir Man and the Pardoner," which
Sir David Lyndsay inserted between two more elevated
parts of his Thrie Estaitis, would come very near fitting
the characteristics for farce, in the broad modern sense
at least; yet Lyndsay called it an "interlude," using the
English term. Not that Lyndsay himself did not know or

8"There is nothing in England corresponding to the plentiful pro

duction of farces by amateur associations of every kind which char
acterized fifteenth century France. . . . The early suppression of
the Feast of Fools and the strict control kept over the Boy Bishop
afforded no starting-point for societes joyeuses, while the late develop
ment of English as a literary language did not lend itself to the
formation of puys." E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, Oxford,
1903, II, 197-198.
flKarl Young, "The Influence of French Farce upon the Plays of
John Heywood," Modern Philology, II (1904), 97-124.
10Anna Jean Mill, Mediaeval Plays in Scotland, Edinburgh, 1927.

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The Early Career of "Farce" 85

use the French word. In his Testament of Papyngo (1530)

he speaks of "ballattis, farses, and . . . plesand playis."
Moreover, a sixteenth century editor of Lyndsay's works
refers to him as the author of "Fairsis and publict Playis/'11
whatever the writer had in mind. All this is not to insist
that the Scotch had a definite dramatic genre unknown in
the England of that day, but to suggest that the Scotch
were under a greater obligation to the French than the
English were?for a term if not for a dramatic form.
The English were not affected by any desire to borrow
either name or use from their neighbors, and apparently
remained impervious throughout the first two Stuart
reigns. So far as I have been able to ascertain, the first
use of the word in England to describe a dramatic per
formance occurs in 1629, and under very interesting cir
cumstances. A French troupe came to London in that year,
doubtless at the personal invitation of the French queen
of Charles I, and played for several days. In the records
of Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of Revels, one finds
under November 4: "For the allowinge of a French com
pany to playe a farse at Blackfryers ... 2 i."12 Whether
or not the performance which Herbert records was actually
a farce would be hard to say. Certainly the French troupe
had serious plays in its repertory, but there is nothing to
prevent their having played a farce. Their chances of
succeeding with a less subtle type of play certainly must
have been better than if they had played a more profound
one, and on this occasion they must have been driven to
every resource to please.13 The 1629 record seems to be
unique; neither word nor dramatic form (if the French
troupe presented it) stuck.

11Henry Charteris, cited by Miss Mill, op. cit.f 78.

12J. Q. Adams, The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert, New
Haven, 1917, 59; note that Brande and Prynne (quoted by Adams)
use "comedye" and "play" in referring to the performance.
13Adams, loc. cit., quotes Thomas Brande's remark, which shows
that the French troupe was none too warmly received: "Glad I am
to saye they were hissed, hooted, and pippen-pelted from the stage,
so as I do not thinke they will soon be ready to try the same againe."

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86 Studies in English

With the Restoration the history of farce is no longer

so easy to trace. No longer was the word used, on rare
occasions, to mean merely to stuff, to pad, to inflate, as
in the days of Shakespeare and Jonson. That meaning was
kept, to be sure. The important thing here, however, is
the adoption of the word into the dramatic terminology,
in imitation of the French. How accurately the English
used farce, and what it meant to Restoration critics and
commentators, must be ascertained; but before attacking
the problem directly, I should like to speak briefly about
another?and, to the English, new?figurative use of the
term. From using farce to apply to a theatrical perform
ance, the object of which is to arouse laughter, it is an
easy step to using the word to describe anything ridicu
lous. Such an opportunity was not long neglected. In a
revival of Jonson's Silent Woman, at Whitehall, in Novem
ber, 1660, in the prologue the term "Farse" is used to
describe the government which has just been forced to
abdicate.1* The analogy to the theatre is kept throughout.
Here is an example not only of the strong animosity of
the powers of the day toward the preceding rulers, but
also an example of how the word farce could be used as a
term of opprobrium, a cudgel with which to belabor an
opponent?an opponent in the government or in the
theatre.
This use of the term to indicate the activity of a
political antagonist occurs again during the period, as in
Crowne's English Friar (1690), where the "Popish" activ
ities of the priests during the reign of James II are
spoken of as "farce." Somewhat different, but suggestive
of the same type of thing, is the savage satire on the
fugitive king, written in the same year and called The
Royal Flight: or, The Conquest of Ireland. A New Farce.
Dryden used the expression in his epilogue recited at the
initial performance of the united company, November,

14Quoted by A. G. Noyes, Ben Jonson on the English Stage, Cam

bridge, Mass., 1935, 176.

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The Early Career of "Farce" 87

1682, to refer to the noisy rabble of fops in the pit who

made it difficult for an attentive playgoer to enjoy the
performance?
These noisy Sirs so loud their Parts rehearse,
That oft the Play is silenc'd by the Farce."

Though farce is used ordinarily to describe or refer to

a scene or bit of action, it may be applied to a character.
In D'Avenant's The Rivals (1664) Leucilla calls Cunopes
a "farse."16 One of the characters in Ravenscroft's Care
less Lovers (1673) refers to another as "a meer Farce!"17
Twenty years later the word is applied to a figure beyond,
or outside the world of the theatre, in Robert Gould's
poem "The Corruption of the Times by Money. A Satyr"
(1693), in which a young fop parading the streets in all
his sartorial finery is referred to as "a farce."
It would be a mistake, of course, to leave the impres
sion that farce was used more often figuratively than as
a designation of a theatrical genre. Quite the contrary, it
was immediately adopted into the stage vocabulary after
the Restoration, and used with great abandon to describe
a confusing array of things. It was, for example, employed
throughout the entire period from 1660 to 1700 to label
any piece of comic action?preferably involving trickery
or practical jokes?on the stage. In Lacy's Old Troop
(1665) the Lieutenant calls Raggou's choice of hanging
or of marrying the old femme de guerre, Doll, a farce
which might turn out as a tragedy or a comedy.18 Antonio
invites Marcello, in Maidwell's Loving Enemies (1670),
to see his farce of putting Circumstantio into the pillory
because of his penchant for bombast.19 Mrs. Behn uses

"Montague Summers, The Works of Thomas Otwayf London, 1926,

I, 234.
16Act. II.
17Act II, scene i.
18Act V.
19Act I, scene i.

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88 Studies in English

the term similarly in two of her comedies20 to describe a

bit of stage trickery wherein gullible old men are fooled.
The contemporary use of the term is confusing if one
trusts implicitly in the accuracy of the user. The word
may be applied to a scene in a play which could never be
described as farcical?for that matter, to a scene which
is not farcical in itself. This hazy kind of usage occurs
several times in the last decade of the century, in Con
greve's Love for Love (1695), where Valentine calls his
playing sick a farce;21 or, again, in Cibber's Woman's Wit
(1696), where the term is used on two different occasions
to apply to parts of the intrigue which could hardly with
any accuracy be termed farcical.22
The same lack of definiteness is shown in the applica
tion of farce to a type of dramatic production which we
should now designate as burlesque or travesty. Langbaine
applies the word, in speaking of D'Avenant's Play-House
to be Lett (1662), not only to the second act, the adapta
tion of Sganarette, but to the travestied Caesar, Antony
and Cleopatra which forms the fifth act.23 The famous
Rehearsal was almost invariably called farce during the
Restoration period. The same appellation was used to
refer to Duffett's burlesques of the spectacular produc
tions of Settle and Shadwell in the rival theatre of the
Duke's company; The Empress of Morocco was printed, in
1674, with the descriptive term "A Farce" on the title page.
In a slightly different category are certain plays?un
acted, and very likely not designed for the stage?which
Allerdyce Nicoll, in his "Handlist," designates as "political
pamphlets written in the form of plays" but Which were
printed as "farces."24 Pluto Furens & Vinctus (1669)?
which I have been unable to examine?is called "A Modern

20False Count, Act IV, scene ii; Emperor of the Moon, Act L
21 Act IV.
22Act II, scene v.
23A? Account of the English Dramatick Poets, London, 1691, 110.
2*A History of Restoration Drama, Cambridge, 1928, 348 ff.

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The Early Career of "Farce" 89

Farse."25 A work which I have examined, and which I

presume to be much in the manner of Pluto, is The Royal
Flight (1690), mentioned above. It is similarly described
on the title page as "A New Farce," although it is really
nothing more than a savage satire of the type current in
the 1680's. Again, the anonymous satire upon the Lord
Mayor, The Puritanical Justice, printed in 1698, is described
on the title page as being "By Way of Farce."26
By the end of the Restoration period, farce is used to
describe almost any kind of stage performance which does
not meet with the approval of the devotees or supporters
of literary drama, as, for example, when the author of
A Comparison between Two Stages calls the singing-and
dancing acts which had grown so popular near the turn
of the century "one of the pleasantest Farces they have."27
In short, there are many evidences that farce was used
indiscriminately as a word-of-all-work, a handy label to
describe something which did not meet with the user's
approval, and it was used more than once by bitter rivals
as a means of dismissing with a scornful gesture the
literary works of an enemy.28
Something should be said, however, of the more accurate
use of the term, in the years following 1660, to describe
comic business, the "stuffings" of the stage. A striking
example of this occurs in the account of the printing of
The Wits, or Sport upon Sport. I have not been able to
examine the Actaeon and Diana of 1655-6, but I am told
by Dr. J. J. Elson, editor of the Cox-Kirkman-Marsh
farrago, that farce was not applied to any of the pieces
Ibid.
26I have not seen this piece; it is listed by Montague Summers in
his Bibliography of the Restoration Drama, London, n.d., 136.
27P. 45; see also Pepys's description of the little boy's part in
Shadwell's Sullen Lovers?"A little boy, for a farce, do dance
Polichinelli." May 2, 1668,
28Shadwell, in The Medal of John Bayes, blusters at Dryden:
How low thy Farce! And thy blank Verse how mean!
How poor, how naked did appear each Scene!

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90 Studies in English

therein. Yet in the 1662 edition of The Wits, Marsh de

scribes four of the five independent "drolls" as farces,
using such expressions as: "Argument needless. It being
a Thorow Farce, and very well known," or "A continued
Farce," or "an ancient Farce, and generally known." In
the 1673 edition of The Wits, by Kirkman, the title-page
for the whole collection designates the contents as "a
curious Collection of several Drols and Farces," whereas
Marsh had been content to describe his 1662 edition as
"Select Pieces of Drollery," applying farce to the four
independent pieces only.
That this word was a newcomer to the language is
borne out by a little scene from D'Avenant's hodge-podge,
The Play-Hotcse to be Lett, which Allardyce Nicoll sup
poses to have been played in 1662, the same year that
Marsh produced his full collection of drolls. In Act I
the House-Keeper, the Tire-Woman, and an English Player
are approached by a Monsieur who wishes to rent the
theatre during the vacation now in progress.

Hou8e-K. What would you do in't? we must like your trade

Before we let our shop, lest we should ride
With John Dory to Paris to seek rent.
Mons. Mi vil make presentation of de farce.
Tire-W. Farces, what be those? New French bobs for ladies?
Play. Pray, peace! I understand the gentleman.
Your farces are a kind of mongrel plays.
But, sir, I believe all French farces are
Prohibited commodities, and will
Not pass current in England.
Mons. Sir, pardon me! de Engelis be more
Fantastique den de Fransh. De farce
Bi also very fantastique and vil passe.
Play. The Monsieur's in the right for we have found
Our customers of late exceeding humorous.
Mons. De vise nation bi for tings heroique
And de fantistique, vor de farce!
Tire-W. I like not that these French pardonney moys
Should make so bold with old England.
House-K. Peace, woman! We'll let the house, and get money,
Play. But how will your French farce be understood?

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The Early Career of "Farce" 91
For all our travelled customers are gone
To take the air with their own wives, beyond
Hide-Park a great way; a homely country mode
Of their fore-fathers.
Tire-W. With grief we speak it;
They may be asham'd to leave their poor mistresses
And us behind 'em without customers.
Play. Pray save your tears for our next tragedy.
The Monsieur's all for merry farces, but,
As I said, sir, how shall we understand 'em?
Mons. Me have a troop of French Comoediens
Dat speak a little very good Engelis.
Tire-W. Bless us! a troop?
Play. Woman, thou art no linguist; they in France
Call a company of players, a troop.
Tire-W. I thought he had ta'en our long Tennis-Court
For a stable.
Play. And you are shelling beans for his horses.

This scene, which may refer to the visit in 1661 of

Channouveau and his company, tells of a new dispensa
tion for the English stage, a modification of comic prac
tice, or at least a willingness to recognize (and to name)
a tertium quid which had really always accompanied
English tragedy and comedy but which was now to be
come far more important in the fare of theatregoers.
There is every evidence that the French visit of 1661 is
an all-important event in the history of farce, that is, in
the use of the word. Plays of unquestionably farcical tone
had been published at a time just previous to this, but
had not been described as farces. Cokain brought out his
Trappolin in 1658, but, although he admitted having taken
it from a comedy he had seen in Venice (most likely a
commedia delVarte performance) ,29 he called it "an Italian
Trage-Comedy"; and even in the prologue and epilogue
which he wrote, possibly with a hope that his play might
some day see the stage, he failed to use the term farce.
Even in 1661 Francis Kirkman, who was to publish a
collection of "Drols and Farces" some twelve years later,

29Kathleen M. Lea "Sir Aston Cokayne and the 'Comedia dell'arte,9 99

Modem Language Review, XXIII (1928), 47 ff.

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92 Studies in English

called the farce-interlude Tom Tyler merely play. Then

came the French comedians and set a new fashion.
Pepys evidently did not encounter the same difficulties
which troubled D'Avenant's Tire-Woman in The Play
Home to be Lett When he went to see the troupe of
Frenchmen perform, he came away with no great fond
ness for what he had seen; yet he seems not to have been
without the proper word to describe the foreign novelty,
for he comments that "there being nothing pleasant but
the foolery of the farce, we went home."30 Too little is
known about the Frenchmen's repertory for one to be
certain what "the farce" was, but I am inclined to think
that it was a brief afterpiece, such as the farce Moliere
is said to have played after Nicomede, at his initial appear
ance before Louis XIV on October 24, 1658.31 Pepy's use
of the term, however, leaves much to be desired. His use
of farce to describe the "Polichinelli" dance in The Sullen
Lovers is certainly very loose. Possibly somewhat more
elaborate was Lacy's entertainment between the acts of
Horace, January 19, 1669. "Lacy hath made a farce of
several dances?between each act one: but his words are
but silly, and invention not extraordinary, as to the dances;
only some Dutchmen come out of the mouth and tail of a
Hamburgh sow." Alongside this delicate bit of Lacy's may
be set Dryden's extremely popular adaptation of UEtourdi,
Sir Martin Mar-all, which Pepys saw more than a year
earlier.82 This piece, he thought, was
the most entire piece of mirth, a complete farce
from one end to the other that certainly ever
was writ. I never laughed so in aU my life. I
laughed till my head ached all the evening and
night with the laughing; and at very good wit
therein, not fooling.

That Pepys approved of Dryden's adaptation whole-heart

edly is attested by his nine recorded trips to the play, with

so August 30, 1661.

81 See the Grands Ecrivains edition by Despois-Mesnard, I, 3ff.
82August 16, 1667.

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The Early Career of "Farce" 93

ever-increasing enthusiasm. Why then did he call it "farce"

on his first trip and "undoubtedly the best comedy ever
. . . wrote" on his last? Yet his use of the term is
typical of his period, since farce could mean a great many
things in the first few decades after the Restoration.
Something should be said, finally, about the treatment
farce received at the hands of the lexicographers of the
period. Here, as might be suspected, the account is a
similar one though much briefer to render. Postponing
for a moment the study of English dictionaries, I should
like to call attention to scattered examples of bilingual
or polyglot dictionaries. In none of the English-Latin
lexicons33 of the period before 1660 is farce defined in
terms of the theatre. Such authorities as Thomas Thomas,
Thomas Cooper, and John Rider or his reviser, Francis
Holyoke, are in virtually complete agreement in defining
the word as "stuff, cram," etc. Nor does farce occur in
any of the definitions of theatrical terms: interludium,
exodium, pantomimus, and the like, in the Latin-English
divisions of these works. With the Restoration, however,
Adam Littleton and Elisha Coles found it necessary to
expand the vocabularies of their Latin dictionaries to
allow room for additional definitions of the English
farce or the Latin exodium, though none of these later
renditions of the word are full or accurate enough to aid
in fixing the limits of the genre.
The modern language dictionaries of the period are
more interesting than the classical, since it was from
seventeenth century French that the term was introduced.
Furthermore, the French, the Italians, and the Spanish
had all used a form of Latin farcire in the theatres for

3SI have consulted the following editions: Thomas Cooper, Thesau

rus linguae Romanae & Britannicae, London, 1565; Thomas Thomas,
Dictionarium linguae latinae et anglicanae, Cantabrigiae, 1589;
Francis Holyoke, Dictionarium Etymologicum Latinum, London,
1639; Adam Littleton, Linguae Latinae Liber Dictionarius Quadri
partitus, London, 1678, 1703; Elisha Coles, A Dictionary, English*
Latin, and Latin-English, London, 1736.

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94 Studies in English

generations, and lexicographers had to render the term

into some appropriate English form. What, then, was
that English form? The standard Spanish dictionary of
the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the
Percivale-Minsheu Dictionarie in Spanish and English
of 1599 and 1623, is eloquently brief: Farga or Farsa
means "a play, an enterlude"; the plural form seems to
mean a little more: "playes, enterludes, comedies or trag
edies acted." The Italian equivalents are given in Florio's
World of Words of 1598 and 1611, revised in 1659 by
Giovanni Torriano. Florio's loose definition of Italian
farsa (farza) as "a merry tale, a pleasant discourse [,]
Also an enterlude or stage play" is expanded by a slight
but significant phrase by Torriano on the eve of the
Restoration. "A merry tale," etc., may also mean "a lame
Comedy." The French dictionaries84 tell much of the same
story: the terms farce, farcer, farceur, etc., are rendered
as "play or enterlude," "to mock, deride," "a maker of
Plays, a deviser of ieasts," etc. The standard French
English dictionary by Randle Cotgrave goes beyond all
these definitions. Even in the first edition of 1611, farce
is defined as "a (fond and dissolute) Play, Comedie, or
Enterlude; also, the Jyg at the end of an Enterlude,
wherein some prete knaverie is acted. . . ." In the Eng
lish-French dictionary by Robert Sherwood, which was
added to Cotgrave's work in 1632, the word farce nowhere
appears. Such an omission is, of course, easy to under
stand; what is difficult to explain, on the other hand, is
that in the issues of this double work after the Restora
tion the gap was not filled. A satisfactory explanation
would seem to be that the later editions were mere re
prints, not revisions.
With the account of the purely English dictionaries8*
the story may be brought to a close. In the works which pre

84I have been able to use only the Cotgrave dictionary, in these
editions: 1611, 1632, 1650, 1673.
85The few polyglot dictionaries which I have consulted?Baret's
Alvearie, 1573 and 1580, Minsheu's Guide into the Tongues, 1617,

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The Early Career of "Farce" 95

ceded 1660, the dictionaries of Cockeram, Blount, and

Phillips, farce received short shrift indeed: "stuffed, full"
was the laconic definition of Cockeram in 1650, a defini
tion which was echoed in Blount's first Glossographia of
1656, and in Phillips' New World of English Words two
years later. Cockeram's definition remained the same in
subsequent editions, as did Phillips' until eighteen years
after the Restoration. In Blount, however, we have a man
whose ear was peculiarly receptive to neologisms, as has
been pointed out elsewhere.36 When Glossographia ap
peared in a second edition in the year following Charles's
return from France the vocabulary was expanded enough
to permit a new term to enter. Besides the venerable
usage reserved to the kitchen comes the new one: "a fond
and dissolute Play, or Comedy; also the Jig at the end of
an Interlude, wherein some pretty Knavery is acted. . .
Perhaps new is not the right term, as a glance at the
early edition of Cotgrave's French dictionary will reveal
the source of Blount's definition. Whaever his source, it
is evident that the compiler of Glossographia was alert
enough to catch a new form which in the space of a year
or two had caught hold and which in a few more years
was to be employed freely in the English theatre.

and Howell's Lexicon Tetraglotton, 1660?give much the same

account as the bilingual works and, as might be supposed, in
briefer form. Where Spanish, French, or Italian calls for some
form of farcire, the English equivalent is enterlude, jest, etc.
36D. T. Starnes, "English Dictionaries of the Seventeenth Cen
tury," University of Texas Studies in English, XVII (July, 1937),
33 ff.

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