H.L. Ginsberg
The book of Esther may be described, if one stretches a point or two, as a mock-learned disquisition to be read as the opening of a carnival-like celebration.
M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms
Farce is "a type of comedy designed to provoke the audience to simple, hearty laughter... To do so it employs highly exaggerated or caricatured character types, puts them into impossible and ludicrous situations, and makes free use of broad verbal humor and physical horseplay."
J.M. Davis
In farce, "type-characters are... quite unconscious of their limitations. They act and react blindly, driven by their rigidity. Although a type is certainly capable of congratulating himself on his cleverness or his good fortune, he will lack self-consciousness. More often that not, the audience's position of privilege permits it to foretell a downfall that is concealed from the character himself.
M. Charney, Comedy High and Low
Curiously enough, comedies often begin with some climactic event, which may be more dire-or at least more convincing - than the actual climax of the work, especially since comic climaxes tend to be extremely melodramatic and implausible. We have some outrageous, arbitrary edict... The reasons for the crul law are left vague and unexplained, but, as good comic auditors, we accept what we are told without passing judgment. Comedy literally demands the willing suspension of disbelief.
B.M. Knox
Comedy was the licensed clown of Athenian democracy; in its proper place and time its civic and religious duty was to release its audience from restraints and inhibitions... It is the safety valve of the emotional pressures of life in the polis...