The element that makes plays satiric is the nature of the performance they contain. Plays, of course, are performed, and their appearance before a public becomes the object of critical scrutiny in performance theory. Satire does not flow from the performance of a play but from the performance within it. My concern, therefore, is not with the substitution of performance for text but with satiric performance as represented by the text. A brief distinction of three levels of satiric performance should define such internal performances. (1.) At a primary level of satiric performance, language itself, as is generally agreed, is performative. Certain uses of language are classifiable as speech acts which function, as J. L. Austin long ago suggested, to do things. But simply to make a statement is to perform an act, to interpellate the auditor and to seek a response. Insofar as performance implies a distance from actuality, language is performance because words never completely represent what their speaker intends, even if, as we cannot, we could assume that they are accurately heard by a listener. The distances between signifiers and what they signify, between what speakers mean and what they say, and between what is said and what is understood, become both subjects and vehicles of satire. (2.) Language is uttered by characters who may have both personalities and social roles. Characters perform in those social roles, however strongly the roles also reflect their personalities.