[In the following essay, Snuggs contends that previous critics have misunderstood Jonson's notion of humors in his comedies, and suggests that Jonson used the concept not in a strict scientific manner but in the more popular sense of affectation and eccentricity.]

The Induction to Every Man out of his Humour, which contains Jonson's most significant statement about humorous characterization, has been universally interpreted by critics as follows: Jonson rebelled against the “abuse of this word Humour,” which had come to be used popularly to denote whim, affectation, or eccentricity. That spectators and readers of his comedies might understand the basis of his own comic characterization, he carefully defined humour in the strictly psychological sense:

As when some one peculiar quality
Doth so possesse a man, that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits, and his powers,
In their confluctions, all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a Humour.

He ruled out as “more than most ridiculous” the portrayal in comedy of affected or eccentric humours in the popular conception of the term.¹

Yet some of those who interpret the Induction thus are uneasily aware that Jonson's actual depiction of humours does not always conform to his own definition. Baskervill, to whom we are indebted for tracing in detail the semantic development of humour in sixteenth-century prose and drama, recognizes that many of the humours are affectations, but thinks that Jonson probably intended the definition to cover “both the inner and the outer manifestations of the disposition.”² Jonson is also censured for “his attitude to the ‘cable hatband’ style of humour” and for forgetting that affected humours may be useful to comedy; Shadwell and Congreve defined comic humours better than Jonson, “who does not always follow his own counsel.”³ Other students state that humours “of a slighter quality” than the definition allows, such as Matthew's affectation, afford “natural material for satiric comedy.”⁴ Still others point out that, although Jonson's definition limits humour to a “psychological master-bias,” study of Jonson's comic figures reveals two types of humour which do not meet the definition: the eccentricity and the social affectation. Since these two types far outnumber the psychological humours, Jonson usually does not follow his own definition.⁵

Jonsonian critics have come to this crux because they have failed to see the relationship of the definition to its context, the whole Induction. Despite the axiomatic principle that no passage can be safely interpreted out of its context, for over forty years this one has been lifted out and quoted as Jonson's definition of the humours in his comedies. Study of the whole Induction reveals that—contrary to the prevailing opinion—Jonson intended to portray affected and eccentric humours which are not in accord with his own definition. As Mitis, Asper, and Cordatus converse, Mitis uses humour in the popular sense of affected caprice or eccentricity. Asper, the mouthpiece of the author, catches him up in his usage.

ASP.
This Humour? good; and why this Humour, Mitis?
Nay, doe not turne, but answere.
MIT.
Answere? what?
ASP.
I will not stirre your patience, pardon me,
I vrg'd it for some reasons, and the rather
To giue these ignorant well-spoken dayes,
Some taste of their abuse of this word Humour.
CORD.
O, doe not let your purpose fall, good Asper,
It cannot but arriue most acceptable,
Chiefly to such as haue the happinesse,
Daily to see how the poor innocent word
Is rackt and tortur'd.

Asper then defines humour, first in the primary physiological sense, next in the transferred psychological.⁶ It ends with the lines which give examples of affectations as not genuine but pseudo-humours.

But that a rooke, in wearing a pyed feather,
The cable hat-band, or the three-pild ruffe,
A yard of shooetye, or the Switzers knot
On his French garters, should affect a Humour!
O, 'tis more than most ridiculous.

Cordatus adds:

He speakes pure truth now, if an Idiot
Haue but an apish, or phantasticke straine,
It is his Humour.

Asper's rejoinder is the key to an understanding of Jonson's meaning:

          Well I will scourge those apes;
And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirrour,
As large as is the stage, whereon we act:
Where they shall see the times deformitie
Anatomiz'd in euery nerue, and sinnew,
With constant courage, and contempt of fear.

Asper's statement that an affected humour is “more than most ridiculous” has universally been taken to mean that it is preposterous to call a mere superficial affectation a humour; only a genuine psychological temperament as he has just defined should be so called. The statement does mean this, but not only this; ridiculous was in 1599 close to its original Latin sense of comically incongruous, that which causes laughter, as in a satirically comic figure on the stage.⁷ Asper is also saying, then, that affected humours are excellent butts for satire. This interpretation is supported by Asper's comment on Cordatus' definition of a humour in popular usage—“an idiot” with “an apish or phantasticke straine.” Asper says that in the play those apes will be well scourged, that is, their affectations (apish straines) and their eccentricities (phantasticke straines) will be portrayed as humours, in the popular sense of the word. As in a mirror the spectators will see “the time's deformitie anatomiz'd in euery nerue and sinnew.” These rooks, idiots, and apes, parading their affected social pretensions or eccentricities, are the subjects of my satire. Through his Presenter, Jonson is telling us, then: I am fully aware of the meaning of humour in the genuinely psychological sense and I have defined it for you. But these “apish or phantasticke straines,” ridiculously called humours in the lax speech of these times, will serve not only to show the age its vices and vanities going under the guise of humours but incidentally “to giue these ignorant well-spoken dayes some taste of their abuse of this word Humour,” and to illustrate how “the poor innocent word is rackt and tortur'd.”

Other passages show that he thought of humours as assiduously cultivated affectations and eccentricities. In Every Man in his Humour Cash (Pizo in the Quarto of 1601) instructs Cob, the water-carrier, about humour as popularly conceived:

Marrie, ile tell thee what it is (as tis generally receiued in these daies) it is a monster bred in a man by selfe loue, and affectation, and fed by folly.⁸

Cash's description perfectly fits the humours of the play, especially those of Stephen, Matthew, and Bobadill. In the Prologue to The Alchemist he speaks of “manners, now call'd humours” which feed the stage. In the Induction to The Magnetic Lady he states that in all his plays “of the Comick thred” he has portrayed “some recent humours still, or manners of men, that went along with the times.” Jonson obviously uses manners in the sense of social behavior, identifying comic humours with “manners of men.”

Further proof that Jonson exploited the popular notion of humour as comic material may be found in Cynthia's Revels. In this “comicall satyre” eight of the characters are depicted as addicted to the affected graces and accomplishments, the trivial pastimes and fads of court life. All except Argurion, who is an allegorical figure representing money, have prototypes in Every Man out of his Humour. Philautia, Phantaste, and Moria are vain, affected ladies like Saviolina. Of the male figures, Amorphus is another Puntarvolo, Hedon is Fastidious Frisk over again, Anaides is modeled after Carlo Buffone, and Asotus is a skillful combination of the types of Fungoso and Sogliardo. That Jonson regarded these characters as affected humours like the “apish or phantasticke straines” of the comedy immediately preceding Cynthia's Revels is made clear in the Palinode:

AMO.
From spanish shrugs, french faces, smirks, irps, and all affected humours:
CHORVS.
Good Mercvry defend vs.
PHA.
From secret friends, sweet seruants, loues, doues, and such phantastique humours.
CHORVS.
Good Mercvry defend vs.(9)

In this burlesque litany the humours from which the two spokesmen cry to be delivered are “affected” and “phantastique.” The words specifiying the nature of these suggest eccentricities, mannerisms, foibles, vanities, which, as we have seen, Jonson said were the pseudo-humours of popular conception. It is clear, then, that most of the humours in Jonson's comedies are not in accord with his definition of genuine humour and that he intended that they should not be.

Did he also represent characters with a genuine humoral temperament? One humour in Every Man out of his Humour is apparently intended to be more than an affectation. Macilente is described as possessed of “such an enuious apoplexie, with which his judgement is so dazzeled, and distasted, that he growes violently impatient of any opposite happinesse in another.”¹⁰ As the humorists exhibit their follies he rails at them in outbursts of envious hatred. His intrigue to put the objects of his envy out of humour makes up the slender action. After every man except himself has been put out of humour, Macilente finds his own humour gone. But could such a deeply psychological humour be so lightly disposed of? That some such question troubled Jonson himself is shown by what he tells us in his defence of the “Catastrophe or Conclusion” which he originally wrote for the play but which proved so unpopular as to require alteration.¹¹ Here he writes an apology for Macilente's abrupt change of nature.

It is to be conceiu'd that Macilente being so strongly possest with Enuie (as the Poet here makes him) it must be no sleight or common Obiect, that should effect so sodaine and strange a cure vpon him, as the putting him cleane out of Humour.¹²

To meet this difficulty, Jonson says, in the original Conclusion he had brought on the stage an actor impersonating the Queen, “but many seem'd not to relish it; and therefore 'twas altered.” His purpose in so introducing Her Majesty he thus explains:

There was nothing (in his examin'd opinion) that could more neare or truly exemplifie the power and strength of her inualuable Vertues, then the working of so perfect a Miracle on so oppos'd a Spirit, who not only persisted in his Humour, but was now come to the Court, with a purpos'd resolution (his Soule as it were now drest in Enuie) to maligne at any thing that should front him: when sodainly (against expectation, and all steele of his Malice) the very wonder of her presence strikes him to the earth dumbe, and astonisht.¹³

This is the conventional flattery of Elizabeth so common in the drama. But, according to the humoral theory, one's temperament could change under great stress of emotion and circumstance into another temperament,¹⁴ but could not be shocked out by mere tricks, which in Jonson's comedies are usually little more than practical jokes. Apparently Jonson regarded the majesty and disfavor of the Queen as a sufficiently powerful force to change Macilente's envious temperament. If so, Jonson here depicts a humour which meets the definition in the Induction to Every Man out of his Humour.

Though Jonson portrays, then, both the genuine and the affected humour, the humour of his comedy is almost exclusively affectation or eccentricity. The explanation of this lies in Jonson's deliberate use of the term in two senses: one, as defined in the often-quoted passage, a genuinely ingrained temperament in accord with humoral psychology; the other, the prevalent extension and misconception of the term, an assumed or temporary characteristic, the assumption of which was itself absurd and demanded satirical treatment. Jonson's definition, then, is really two-fold, embracing both the genuine and the affected or eccentric; and since the affected and eccentric humour was an easier prey, was much more natural material for comic satire, and was far more commonly observable in that the vanities and foibles of the age went under the name of humours, he exhibits the affected or the eccentric humour much more frequently.

Before the Restoration no other playwright, so far as is known, mentioned the theory of the comic humour. But after 1660 the idol-worship of Jonson as the comic dramatist par excellence produced a good deal of commentary. The critical statements of three Restoration playwrights, Dryden, Shadwell, and Congreve, make clear that Jonson's conception of the comic humour is carried over with little change into the Restoration.

Dryden defined a humour in comedy as “some extravagant habit, passion, or affection, particular … to some one person, by the oddness of which he is immediately distinguished from the rest of men.”¹⁵ Here he is obviously not thinking of Jonson's definition of genuine psychological humour, but of the pseudo-humours in his comedies. To Dryden a comic humour is not any habit, passion, or affection, but an extravagant one; the contemporary sense of the word which best fits this context is given by the NED as excessive, irregular, fantastically absurd. When the qualifying phrases, “particular to … one person” and “by the oddness of which he is immediately distinguished,” are considered, Dryden's definition is virtually one of the comic humour of eccentricity.¹⁶ In another statement, however, Dryden identifies a “comical character” with “humour (which is an inclination to this or that particular folly),”¹⁷ and thus broadens his definition.

Shadwell, maintaining that the comedy of humours as created by Jonson was the perfect medium for satire, devoted himself to writing comedies which would be the closest possible imitations of Jonson's. Although in one of his definitions he virtually paraphrases Jonson's definition of genuine psychological humour,¹⁸ his other statements show him fully aware that in Jonson's actual depiction of comic humours, the social affectation is most frequent. After ruling out the use of by-words, foreign words, mere fantastic display of dress, and “downright silly folly” or “meer natural imperfection,” Shadwell states positively that “Comicall Humours” are “the Artificial folly of those, who are not Coxcombs by Nature, but with great Art and Industry make themselves so.”¹⁹ Moreover, he continues, a comic humour

ought to be such an affectation, as misguides men in knowledge, Art, or Science, or that causes defection in Manners, and Morality, or perverts their minds in the main actions of their lives.²⁰

In these critical statements of Dryden and Shadwell are defined the two chief types of comic humours in Jonsonian, other Elizabethan, and Restoration comedy. In Dryden's the eccentricity is emphasized; in Shadwell's, the affectation. Both of them were close enough to the Elizabethan period to understand the tradition of comic humours; each from his own point of view accurately interpreted Jonsonian and other Elizabethan practice. It is surprising that Dryden failed to stress the social affectation, the type which led toward the comedy of manners, for Dryden was otherwise the prophet of later Restoration comedy. The eccentricity tended more toward farce, as indeed it does in Dryden's imitation of Jonson's eccentric figures in such early comedies as The Wild Gallant (1663) and Sir Martin Mar-all (1667).

In his Letter to John Dennis Concerning Humour in Comedy (1695) Congreve makes a clear-cut distinction between genuine humour and the comic humour of satirical drama and points out the error in thinking that the two are identical. True humour naturally arises “from the different Constitutions, Complexions, and Dispositions of Men.” A genuine humour could not easily be thrown off as in the denouement of nearly all comedies of humours.

Tho our Actions are never so many and different in Form, they are all Splinters of the same Wood, and have Naturally one Complexion, which tho it may be disguised by Art, yet cannot be wholly changed: We may paint it with other Colours, but we cannot change the Grain.

A Man may change his Opinion, but I believe he will find it a Difficulty to part with his Humour.

In contrast to what he believes genuine humour, he describes the two main types of spurious humour.

EXTERNAL HABIT OF BODY IS OFTEN MISTAKEN FOR HUMOUR.

By External Habit I do not mean the Ridiculous Dress or Cloathing of a Character. … But I mean a Singularity of Manners, Speech, and Behaviour. … I cannot think that a Humour which is only a Habit or Disposition contracted by Use of Custom.

Affectation is generally mistaken for Humour.

These are indeed so much alike that at a Distance they may be mistaken one for the other. For what is Humour in one may be Affectation in another.

He instances Morose in The Silent Woman as a True Humour, Sir John Daw in the same play as an Affectation, and Cob in Every Man in his Humour as a Habit or Singularity of Manners. Since, Congreve adds, “it were perhaps the Work of a long life to make one Comedy true in all its Parts, and to give to every Character in it a True and Distinct Humour,” comic characters must on the whole show pseudo-humours.

Congreve, however, does not fully follow up what his own reasoning leads to: that affected and eccentric humours were better devices for satirizing the foibles of the age. Indeed, he laments that genuine humour has been so seldom represented in English comedy, even by the master, Ben Jonson, without seeing what Jonson saw clearly. In his portrayal of comic characters, however, Congreve employs the affectation with the highest artistry. When he portrays a True Humour, as he evidently does in Heartwell, the “surly old Bachelor,” he does not reach the highest comedy as in such delightful fools as Captain Bluffe and Sir Joseph Wittol of the same play; Lord Froth and Lady Froth of The Double Dealer; Scandal and Mrs. Frail in Love for Love; and Witwoud, Petulant, and Lady Wishfort in The Way of the World. Congreve's statement about the characters of The Way of the World in his dedicatory letter to the Earl of Montague is evidence that he intended these characters as affectations. His aim, he writes, was

to design some characters which should appear ridiculous, not so much through a natural folly (which is incorrigible, and therefore not proper for the stage) as through an affected wit; a wit, which at the same time that it is affected, is also false.

The comic humours of seventeenth-century drama, then, are not the temperaments as defined in the “science” of the times, as most critics and literary historians have taken them to be, but the pseudo-humours of affectation and eccentricity. Occasionally appears a character who may be said to have a genuine humoral temperament. As we have seen, Macilente was so intended, and Congreve maintains that Morose is a True Humour. But, since the genuine humours are comparatively rare, it is hardly profitable to decide each doubtful case. Even Congreve admitted that “at a distance” affectations may be mistaken for genuine humours. Though there are, and doubtless will continue to be, differences of opinion about certain particular characters like Morose; yet Jonson, Dryden, Shadwell, and Congreve are on the whole consistent with their expressed purpose. They intended their comic humours to be studies, not in humoral psychology, but in the pseudo-humours of affectation and eccentricity. Interpreted thus, the characters with “humours” are not walking embodiments of a trait or artificial exemplifications of a theory, but human beings with the common foibles and mannerisms of the age, characters who are ridiculous in the contemporary sense of the word—absurdly laughable. And, if investigation of the influence of humoral psychology on dramatic characters is to be further pursued, distinctions in terminology will save further confusion. If Hamlet's melancholia is to be called a humour, Sir John Daw's affectation of learning and pretension as a poet should be called a comic humour.

Notes

1. In essence this is the interpretation in the following representative studies: Elisabeth Woodbridge, Studies in Jonson's Comedy (Boston, New York & London, 1898), pp. 35-36; F. E. Schelling, Elizabethan Drama (Boston & New York, 1908), I, 470-471; Maurice Castelain, Ben Jonson, L'homme et L'œuvre (Paris, 1907), p. 84; C. R. Baskervill, English Elements in Jonson's Early Comedy (Austin, Texas, 1911), pp. 34-36; Percy Simpson, ed., Every Man in his Humour (Oxford, 1919), p. liv; G. Gregory Smith, Ben Jonson (London, 1919), pp. 80-84; C. H. Herford & Percy Simpson, Ben Jonson (Oxford, 1925), I, 340-343; John Palmer, Ben Jonson (New York, 1934), pp. 29-30; T. M. Parrott & R. H. Ball, A Short View of Elizabethan Drama (New York, 1943), p. 134.

2. Op. cit., pp. 34-36.

3. Smith, op. cit., pp. 83-84.

4. Parrott & Ball, op. cit., p. 134.

5. Paul Mueschke & Jeannette Fleisher, “Jonsonian Elements in the Comic Underplot of Twelfth Night,” PMLA, XLVIII (1933), 722-740.

6. The latter part is quoted above.

7. Jonson consistently uses ridiculous in this sense; e.g., in Every Man out of his Humour, III, vi, 207-209, Cordatus speaks of comedy as “a thing throughout pleasant, and ridiculous, and accommodated to the correction of manners.” See also Masque of Queenes, Jonson's notes on lines 183 and 249.

8. III, i, 156-158.

9. Cynthia's Revels, V, xi.

10. Every Man out of his Humour, “The Character of the Persons.”

11. Linge's Quarto of 1600, ed. by Bang & Greg (Louvain, 1907), p. 126.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Cf. J. W. Draper, The Humours and Shakespeare's Characters (Durham, N. C., 1945), pp. 106 ff.

15. An Essay of Dramatic Poesy (Essays of John Dryden, ed. by W. P. Ker, I, 85).

16. Another passage in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy confirms this interpretation of Dryden's definition. “[Critics] say, it is not enough to find one man of such a humour [as that of Morose in Epicoene]; it must be common to more, and the more common the more natural. … But to convince these people, I need but tell them, that humour is the ridiculous extravagance of conversation, wherein one man differs from all others. If then it be common, or communicated to many, how differs it from other men's? or what indeed causes it to be ridiculous so much as the singularity of it?” Cf. N. B. Allen, The Sources of John Dryden's Comedies (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1935), p. 11.

17. Preface to Troilus and Cressida.

18. In the Epilogue to The Humorists (Complete Works, ed. by Summers, I, 254).

19. Dedication to The Virtuoso (Works, III, 101-102). A similar statement appears in the Preface to The Humorists (Works, I, 184): The “proper subject of a Satyr” is “the affected vanities, and the artificial fopperies of men, which (sometimes even contrary to their natures) they take pains to acquire.”

20. Ibid., p. 102.