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280 FARCE AND SLAPSTICK aunt and not tlie niece, then every action will have an immediate result in laughter. 35. Care should be taken to select a plot that is clear and easily followed. Complication is to be avoided even in drama, but in comedy it is fatal to get the story too confusing. If you grow too ambitious and seek to tell a story with half a dozen complications, tlien the mind of the spectator will be given to the plot to the ex- clusion of the action or to the action to the detriment of the plot. 36. For illustration suppose that your story concerns one John Smith and five women who are all married to various other men with the same name. Here you must identify and remember each of these five women and connect her with the plot. Each time one enters she must be recalled. In keeping track of the five women we lose track of the story and so lose interest in the women, too. But take the story of a man who .borrows a wife and unknowingly gets five, it does not matter which is which; they can come and go as the author pleases without confusion to the plot, which is merely that the man has been supplied with too many borrowed wives. 37. One story was written about a man who had three doubles, each with an individuality of his own. The story was so compli- cated that it was fatiguing to follow. With a dozen doubles, acting as a mob, there was no trouble at all, for the doubles were then a part of the whole and did not have to be identified individually. 38. To give a two-edged rule you must have more action be- cause you have less plot and less plot because you have more action. You must have sufficient plot to fully motivate your action, but you must keep it simple and direct, because the spectator would pre- fer to follow action to following plot. (3.LV:7) (4.XXXIII:11) (ll.LVII:13) (15.LVII :6 & 16) (19. XXXVII :37) (20.XXXIX:22) (22.XXXVn :19) (25.XXXIV:6 XXXIX :10) (26.XX:15 L:13) (28.XX:14) (33.XXV :19 XXXIX : 22 LVII:8) (35.XLIV:5). CHAPTER LVII FARCE AND SLAPSTICK FARCE is that form of comedy in which tlie desire to amuse rises superior to strict probability. In comedy you are required to adhere with reasonable exactness to the realities of life. Your story must be accepted as a humorous but fairly correct presentation of life. In farce exaggeration is permissible if there is a return in added humor. We cannot, for example, accept as true to life the man-chasing old maid with corkscrew curls. It is conceded that there may be ladies, both young and old, who will slightly ex- ceed the bounds of strict decorum in their search for a husband, but