Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- OTHER WORKS IN ENGLISH BY THE SAME AUTHOR
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Induction
- Chapter 1 Ben Jonson and his Sources
- Chapter 2 Humorous Characterization in the Comedies of Ben Jonson
- Chapter 3 The Influence of Jonson on Seventeenth And Eighteenth-century Comedy
- Chapter 4 The Intrusion of Humorous Characterization into the English Novel
- Chapter 5 The Meaning of the Comic
- Chapter 6 Nomadic Humours
- Chapter 7 Unconscious Revelation
- Postscript
- Index
Chapter 2 - Humorous Characterization in the Comedies of Ben Jonson
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 May 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- OTHER WORKS IN ENGLISH BY THE SAME AUTHOR
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Induction
- Chapter 1 Ben Jonson and his Sources
- Chapter 2 Humorous Characterization in the Comedies of Ben Jonson
- Chapter 3 The Influence of Jonson on Seventeenth And Eighteenth-century Comedy
- Chapter 4 The Intrusion of Humorous Characterization into the English Novel
- Chapter 5 The Meaning of the Comic
- Chapter 6 Nomadic Humours
- Chapter 7 Unconscious Revelation
- Postscript
- Index
Summary
EVERY MAN IN His Humour and Every Man Out of His Humour reveal an extensive use of the word humour, it enters and detonates into everyday speech, describes and defines situations, behaviour and character. The concept enriches the language and becomes a synonym for a not yet invented word – psychology. ‘The Comedy of Humours is simply based on that response to humanity evinced when an Englishman says of another that “he is a character”; it is the expression of an instinctive relish for oddity and absurdity.’
In Humour
The title page of Every Man in His Humour contains two lines from Juvenal: Quod non dant proceres, dabit histrio (what no great men give, the actor will) and haud tamen invidias vati, quem pulpita pascunt (you need not envy the poet, whom the stage feeds). Shakespeare appeared on the cast list of the play. It is possible that Shakespeare rescued the play from oblivion when the still unknown Jonson attempted to present it to Shakespeare's theatre company: ‘Shakespeare luckily cast his eye upon it, and found something so well in it as to engage him first to read it through, and after this to recommend Mr Jonson and his writings to the publick.’
In the ‘Prologue’ Jonson sets down his focus; he is creating something new. The play has to have a contemporary setting, observe decorum, ridicule vices and follies as well as instruct and delight:
He rather prays you will be pleased to see
One such today, as other plays should be;
…deeds, and language, such as men do use,
And persons, such as comedy would choose,
When she would shew an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes.
Except we make them such, by loving still
Our popular errors, when we know they’re ill.
I mean such errors, as you’ll all confess,
By laughing at them, they deserve no less.
He defines and honours comedy as She but the glass of custom dictated that comedy was of a lower order than tragedy and the playwright should therefore only ‘sport with human follies, not with crimes’. He did both, foolish acts lead to crimes.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- An Image of the TimesAn Irreverent Companion to Ben Jonson's Four Humours and the Art of Diplomacy, pp. 55 - 91Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2015