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The Evolution Of The Humours Character In Seventeenth-Century English Comedy

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The Evolution Of The Humours Character In Seventeenth-Century English Comedy

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Content This dissertation has bsan microfilmed exactly as received 66-8796 RIDDELL, James Allen, 1932- THE EVOLUTION OP THE HUMOURS CHARACTER IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH COMEDY. University of Southern California, Ph.D., 1966 Language and Literature, general University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE EVOLUTION OF THE HUMOURS CHARACTER IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH COMEDY by James Allen Riddell A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (English) June 1966 UNIVERSITY O F SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY PARK LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA 0 0 0 0 7 This dissertation, w ritten by under the direction of his Dissertation Com mittee, and approved by all its members, has been presented to and accepted by the Graduate School, in partial fulfillm ent of requirements fo r the degree of laxnejs.. A llen .R id d ell. D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y Dean D ate.... .June,. . . 1.266 DISSERTATION COMMITTEE / ) </ 71 Chairmen TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION............................... 1 II. THE EMERGENCE OF THE HUMOURS CHARACTER ................................. 7 III. BEN JONSON................................. 36 IV. JONSON'S CONTEMPORARIES AND THE "SONS OF BEN"............................. 77 V. THEORIES OF HUMOURS IN THE RESTORATION............................... 122 VI. SHADWELL, DRYDEN, ETHEREGE, AND WYCHERLEY................................. 150 VII. CONGREVE, VANBRUGH, AND FARQUHAR........... 191 VIII. CONCLUSION................................. 224 BIBLIOGRAPHY 235 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION During the seventeenth century, as during no other period of English literature, both playwrights and critics paid special attention to the humours character. In the first part of the century writers shared a revived public interest in humoural psychology, caused by the appearance of a great profusion of medical books explaining how the four humours (blood, phlegm, choler, melancholy) were re sponsible for man's behavior. Although the notion goes as far back as Hippocrates, it did not gain wide popular cir culation through books printed in a vulgar tongue until the latter part of the sixteenth century. In much the same way that Freudian psychology gained popular acceptance and was widely "discovered" by playwrights of the 1920's, humoural psychology was widely "discovered" by playwrights in the « earlier period. Once these playwrights started obviously to acknowledge the humours, popular interest in them increased 1 even more. This interest, beginning just before the start of the seventeenth century, continued in varying degrees throughout the century, until it waned in the early 1700's. Along with the varying degrees of interest in humoural psychology, there were many divergent opinions about the precise effects of humours on behavior. Also, as the century progressed and playwrights and critics more often spoke publicly about the functions of humours characters in the drama, there were increasingly divergent opinions about the ways humours characters should be employed. Because there was a variety of seventeenth-century opinion and practice where humours characters were con cerned, and because the century is divisible (so far as drama is concerned) into two distinct periods, I shall di vide this study into two parts. The first will deal with humours characters in the period 1597-1642, and second with those in the period 1660-1707, which I shall, for conven ience's sake, call the Restoration. The dates 1642 and 1660 need no explanation; the other two dates do. I have expanded the century by ten years to be able to include the first plays in which much concern was shown about humours characters, An Humorous Davs Mirth and Every Man In His Humourr and to include the last play written by George Farquhar, the playwright whose work marked the end of a kind of drama, that generally known as Restoration comedy. Z shall "try to achieve at least a mechanical bal ance between the two periods: Chapters II and V will be devoted to theories dealing with the humours and humours characters; Chapters III and IV, and VI and VII will be de voted to studies of the humours characters as they appeared in contemporary comedies. In Chapter II, I shall reach back before 1597 to try to establish what were the prevalent no tions about humours by that date. In Chapter V, I shall allude to previous theories and practices to try to estab lish the degree of continuity that prevailed between earlier and later seventeenth century interest in the humours. As I have suggested, seventeenth century writers reached no consensus on the nature and function of the humours character, and neither have modern critics. Writers of medical books, those who, presumably, thought that the humours explained men's behavior, did not agree. In their writings, for example, one can find contradictory descrip tions not only of the kinds of behavior likely to be caused by the excess of a given humour, but even contradictory descriptions of the physical characteristics engendered by the excess of a humour. As these humours are applied in a literary context, either in theory or in practice, one finds, of course, additional aims and interests. The de mands of plot and action, for instance, affect the ways dramatists or critics will conceive of the part humour is to play in characterization. Thus one must be wary of find ing specific physical humours where they do not exist, and, at the same time, of overlooking the effects on characteri zation of pervasive notions of humoural psychology. One should also keep in mind changing notions of the signifi cance of the physical humours, both as they were understood to be psychological imperatives, and as they were exploited by playwrights to provide convenient ways of labeling char acters . Because the humours characters are often mentioned both early and late in the seventeenth century, modern critics have often assumed that these characters were similarly viewed throughout the century. Henry L. Snuggs, for in stance, says: The critical comments of three Restoration playwrights, Dryden, Shadwell, and Congreve, make clear that Jonson's conception of the comic humour is carried over with lit tle change into the Restoration.^- lMThe Comic Humours: A New Interpretation," PMIA. LXII (March 1947), 119. 5 Though it should be pointed out that Snuggs is here inter ested in distinguishing between "comic humours" and "temper aments as defined in the 'science' of the time" (p. 121), he does insist on a continuity in the definition of the term. Clifford Leech talks of "the Jonsonian 'comedy of humours,' 2 cultivated particularly by Shadwell." Allardyce Nicoll, on the other hand, points out a difficulty that arises when one tries to deal with a term whose meaning was in a state of flux. He says: in Jonson we find a regular progression from the compara tively genial atmosphere of Every Man in his Humour to the bitterness and the unconcealed contempt of Volpone. As is evident, this lack of humour in the so-called comedy of "humours" marks one of the many anomalies in our lit erary nomenclature, due obviously to the rapid alteration in the significance of the terms employed by critical writers,3 Others, such as Spingarn and Cazamian, also offer warnings about the way the changing meaning of "humour" in the seven teenth century affects "critical nomenclature." Since mod ern critics have differing approaches to seventeenth century definitions of "humour," it is not surprising that they have % O ^"Restoration Comedy, The Earlier Phase," Essays in Criticism. I (1951), 170. 3The Theory of Drama (London, 1931), p. 221. differing views as to the kinds of characters in seventeenth century comedies who should be called "humours." In this study I shall attempt to establish an under standing of the general notions about humours held by writ ers in the late 1590's. I shall then show how these general notions were applied (or misapplied) by contemporary play wrights, and also show to what extent the meaning of the term changed during the seventeenth century, both for play wrights and for critics. The change in meaning of "humour" was accompanied by an evolution in the characters known as "humours characters," and it is the direction and degree of this evolution that is central to this study. I shall limit my discussion to comedy in order to give it some measure of continuity and to help keep it at a manageable size. And, as the present use of the term sug gests, "humour" more often than not has been associated with comedy. CHAPTER II THE EMERGENCE OF THE HUMOURS CHARACTER In the Elizabethan period there was wide popular dis cussion of theories about the effects of the humours on human behavior. Some modern commentators, such as Louis B. Wright, have accurately judged the extent to which the humours were at that time discussed and analyzed. Wright says: [The Elizabethans] were abundantly supplied with theories to account for their reactions. As the modern reader glibly interprets human conduct in terms of Freud, Jung, or whoever may be his pet theorist, so the Tudor and Stuart citizen found satisfactory explanations in Bright, Walkington, Huarte, Charron, and other writ ers who elucidated the always interesting question of the reasons for man's behavior.1 Many more commentators, however, have either underestimated or overestimated contemporary concern with the humours as 1Middle Class Culture in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill, 1935), p. 592. causes for behavior, at least according to the information which may be extracted from sixteenth and early seventeenth century medical texts which deal specifically with humours. Herford and Simpson, for example, in talking about analysis of the organic sources of the humours, say: The only contemporary of Jonson who analyzed the humours is Robert Burton in an introductory subsection to his great work [The Anatomy of Melancholy. 4th ed., 1632, Partition I, Section I, Member 2, subsection 2].^ On the contrary, Lily Bess Campbell contends that: "Every writer of the day was much concerned with [the] excess of humour."^ In this chapter I shall show why I think Wright's view is the most accurate one and then indicate how an under standing of that view is necessary to an understanding of the humours character, especially as he may be distinguished from the type characters who were descended from Roman comedy and from morality plays. In fact, a number of Jonson's contemporaries tried to analyze those humours, though none so extensively as Burton. ^C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson, Ben Jonson. IX (Ox ford, 1950), 393. ^Shakespeare1s Tragic Heroes (Cambridge, 1930), p. 54. Most of those writers seem to have followed a pattern that was introduced into printed English by Thomas Paynell's translation of the Schola Salerni in 1528 and by Sir Thomas Elyot's Castel of Helth in 1539. Because Elyot's discus- sions of humours were some of the most popular of his day, and because they are also rather full and explicit in their descriptions of the characteristics of persons dominated by each of the four humours, I shall quote liberally from them. Complexion is a combynation of two dyuers qualities The Short Title Catalog lists seven editions or print ings of Paynell's translation of the Schola Salerni in the sixteenth century and two more in 1617 and 1634. In addi tion, there were five editions or printings of John Haring- ton's translation of the same work, which appeared from 1607 to 1624. The STC lists fourteen editions or printings of Elyot's work in the sixteenth century and one more in 1610. Louis B. Wright says of Thomas Cogan, the author of Haven of Health (1594): "Like many of his contemporaries he still looked upon Elyot's Castle of Health and the Schola Salerni as sources of the highest wisdom, where health was concerned" (p. 585). In a note on the same page, Wright quotes from Cogan's preface to his book: "Yet one thing I desire of all them that shall reade this booke: If they finde whole sentences taken out of Maister Eliote his Castle of Health, or out of Schola Salerni. or anie other author whatsoeuer, that they will not condemne me of vaine glorie by the olde Prouerbe fCalmus Comatus) as if I meant to set foorth for mine owne workes that which other men haue deuised, for I confesse that I haue taken Verbatim out of others where it serued for my purpose, and especiallie out of Schola Salerni: but I haue so enterlaced it with mine owne, that (as I thinke) it may bee the beter perceiued. And therefore seeing all my trauile tendeth to common com- modotie, I trust euery man will interprete all to the best." 10 of the foure elements in one bodye, as hotte and drye of the Pyre: Hotte and moist of the Ayre, colde and moyste of the Water, colde and dry of the Erth. But although all theese complexions be assembled in euery body of man and woman, yet the body taketh this denomi nation of those qualities, which abounde in hym, more thanne in the other, as hereafter inseweth. 4 The Bodye, where heate and moysture haue souerayntie, is called Sanguine, wherin the Ayre hath preeminence, and it is perceyued and known by these sygnes, whiche do folowe, f Carnositie or flesshynesse. The vaynes plentie and redde. The visage white and ruddy. Sleape moche. Dreames of blouddy thynges, or thinges pleusaunt. Pulse great and full. Digestion perfecte. Angry shortly. Siege, vrine, and sweate abundant. Falling shortly into bledynge. The vrine redde and thicke. 4 Where colde with moysture preuayleth, that body is called Fleumatike, wherein water hath preeminence, and is perceyued by these signes. /Fatnesse, quauving and softe. / Vaynes narrowe. I Heare moche and plaine. 1 Colour white. \ Sleape superfluous. I Dreames of thynges watry or of fylthe. < Slownesse. Dulnesse in lerninge. Smallnesse of courage. Pulse slowe and lyttle. Dygeston weake. Spyttell white, abundant, and thicke. \ Vrine thick, white, and pale. fleumatike 4cholerike is hote and dry, in whome the fyre hath 11 preeminence, and is discerned by these synges folowinge. Leanesse of body. Costyfenesse. Heare blacke or darke aburne curled. Visage and skyn red as fyre or salowe. Hotte thynges noyful to him. Dreames of fyre, fyghtinge, or anger. Wytte sharpe and quycke. Hardy and fyghtynge. Pulse swift and stronge. Vrine highe coloured and cleare. Voice sharpe. Leannesse with hardnesse of skyne. Heare playne and thynne. Colour dusky, or white with leannes. Moche watch. Dremes fearefull. Digestion slowe and yll. Tymerous and fearfull. Anger longe and frettinge. Pulse lyttle. Seldome lawghynge. \Vrine watry and thynne. (Sigs. B 2-B 3) Cholerike Lyttle sleape 4 Melancolyke is colde and drye, ouer whome the erth hath dominion, & is perceyued by these signes. Melancolike Stiffe in opinions. Such ideas, as Wright points out, are repeated by Cogan and others. But Cogan was also, like his contempo raries, inclined to supplement the ideas he borrowed with ornamentations and even variations of his own devising. The analogy that Wright suggests between Elizabethan audiences' reactions to the humours and modern audiences1 reactions to Freud, Jung, etc., might be extended, X think, to point out the parallel between the writers of books on humours and on modern psychology. That is to say, both kinds of writers were/are likely to include in their formulae for analyzing behavior a great deal of their own imaginings. And in both cases one can expect to find, therefore, a great deal of contradiction of theory. Critics who assume that one (or perhaps even several) Elizabethan psychologist(s) can ex plain the behavior of any given character in a drama simply do not realize the great diversity of opinion among Eliza bethan psychologists or else assume that they have dis covered the one (or several) psycho log ist(s) who was/were the particular influence on a particular playwright when he was modeling a particular character. Thus Lily Bess Campbell assigns a particular affliction to Hamlet and produces as witness for her assignment several Elizabethan psychologists. To support the first part of her thesis— that Hamlet's humour is sanguine-adust— she says: "Hamlet seems quite clearly to be of the sanguine humour, which was characteristically described in the Ontick Glass of Humours in 1607," and she quotes as follows: They that are of this complexion are very affable in speach, and have a gracious faculty in their delivery, much addicted to witty conceits, to a scholarlike evTpaneltd,being facetosi. not acetosi: quipping without bitter taunting: hardly taking anything dogeon, except 13 they be greatly moved, with disgrace especially: wisely seeming eyther to take a thing sometimes more offensive ly, or lesse greivously then they do, cloaking their true passion: they bee liberally minded; they carry a constant loving affection to them chiefly unto whom they be endeared, and with whom they are intimate, and chained in the links of true ami tie, never giving over till death such a converst friend, except on a capitall discontent. . . . According to Miss Campbell, "Their weakness is in being somewhat given to 'venery'; otherwise the man of sanguine humour" has these qualities also described in The Ootiok Glass of Humours: [he] is never lightly variable: but beeing proudly har- nest with a steely hart, he will run upon the push of great danger, yea, hazard his life against all the af fronts of death itselfe: if it stand ether with the honour of his soveraigne, the welfare and quiet of his own country, the after fame and renowne of himselfe: else is he chary and wary to lay himselfe open to any daunger, if the final end of his endeavour and toile bee not plausible in his demurring judgement.^ Miss Campbell has said previously that the importance of distinguishing between the natural melancholy humour and the melancholy adust humour can not be overstated. It is the melancholy adust with which such writers as Bright and Burton were primarily ^Page 112. (Thomas Walkington, The Qpfcick Glasse of Humours. foil. 59, 60). But this definition is not a stan dard one; it is merely convenient for Miss Campbell. See Elyot's list of characteristics of a sanguine man, for in stance: not a very good description of Hamlet. I 14 concerned. (p. 75) She then quotes from Elyot, Bright, and Huarte to show that there was indeed such a thing as melancholy adust. What she fails to consider is that while a number of writers agree on there being melancholy adust, they do not agree on its symp toms. Note, for instance, what Bright says of the charac teristics of a person who is suffering from sanguine-adust melancholy: [They are] laughter, fighting, sobbing, lamentation, countenance demisse, and hanging down, blushing and bashful, of pace slow, silent, negligent, refusing the light and frequency of men, delighted more in solitari ness & obscurity.6 Burton, however, says of men who suffer from sanguine-adust melancholy: They are much inclined to laughter, witty and merry, conceited in discourse, plesant if they be not far gone, much given to musick, dancing, and to be in women's company. They meditate wholly on such things, and think they see or hear plavs. dancing and such like sports (free from all fear and sorrow as Hercules de Saxonia supposeth) if they be more strongly possessed with this kind of melancholy, Arnoldus adds, like him of Argos in the Poet, that sat laughing all day long, as if he had been at a Theatre.^ 6Timothy Bright, A Treatise of Melancholy (1586), p. 121. ^Robert Burton, The Anatomy.af Melancholy, ed. Floyd 15 Of the two descriptions, the first more or less fits Hamlet (but him no more than Laertes, who Miss Campbell says "is of the choleric humour" [p. 113]) and the second fits him not at all. What Miss Campbell fails to take into sufficient account are two significant facts: (1) that (as I have already mentioned) there were a number of theories of the humours and their effects; and (2) that several psycholo- gists might have agreed simply because they all borrowed 0 from the same source, but that this falls far short of universal agreement. And, it is important to remember, there was no consistent pattern in the construction of new theories or in the elaboration of old theories— writers in vented or borrowed at their own convenience and without paying any particular attention to the kinds of rules gov erning scientific investigation or plagiarism which we now take for granted. Therefore, the vast majority of theories of humours that were rampant when Shakespeare and Jonson were writing had in common only the most basic of their premises. Dell and Paul Jordan-Smith (New York, 1927), p. 341. (Par tition I, Section 3, Member I, subsection 3.) 8See, for instance, Thomas Cogan's Preface to Haven of Health, quoted in n. 4, p. 9. 16 Mary Isabelle O'Sullivan assumed that she had found the one book that was the key to Hamlet's character, that book being Bright's A Treatise on Melancholy.9 She lists a number of characteristics of the melancholy man, all taken from Bright's treatise and also lists some Shakespearean parallels, principally from Hamlet. She feels that "it is natural to conclude that Shakespeare used the Treatise in his task of fitting a ready-made destiny with a convincing character" (p. 678). There were, however, so many theories of the humours that it would be surprising if one could not be found that pretty much "explains" almost any character in the contemporary drama. The fallacy of assuming that the existence of a theoretical description that fits a particu lar character is evidence that the description was used by the creator of that character is most forcefully stated by E. E. Stoll, whose argument is also applicable to Miss Campbell's contentions. He points out that dramatic con siderations would very likely prevent a playwright from making a serious character merely an index of symptoms.*’ 0 9"Hamlet and Dr. Timothy Bright," PMIA. XLI (Septem ber 1926), 667-679. 10See: Shakespeare Studies (New York, 1927), p. 146n; "Jacques and the Antiquarians," Modern Language Notes. LVI In spite of Stoll's warnings, some critics other than Misses Campbell and O'Sullivan have been misled by their pursuit of the humours as explanations of the actions of characters in the drama. Robert B. Reed, Jr., for instance, in his Bedlam on the Jacobean Stage, sees Aspatia (The. Maid's Tragedy) "as a study in melancholy [who] is poignant ly convincing upon her first entrance," and, he contends, "the sincerity of Aspatia's grief makes her delineation one of the most convincing to be found in Jacobean drama."11 A surprising contention, at least. There is further evidence to indicate that the humours, although widely acknowledged, were probably understood only in the most general terms. This can be seen through a clos er look at some of the Elizabethan psychologists. Since the discussion so far has centered on melancholy, I shall take it as an example for the four humours. There are a number of concrete points on which the writers of the medical treatises disagreed. I have already indicated the (February 1939), 79-85; Shakespeare and Other Masters (Cam bridge, Mass., 1940), pp. 118ff. See also Louise C. Turner Forest, "A Caveat Against Invoking Elizabethan Psychology," PMIAr LXI (September 1946), 651-672. But, because it is overstated, her argument is not so convincing as Stoll's. 11 (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), p. 94. differences in Bright and Burton on certain kinds of adus- tian of melancholy. Further, I should point out, there was no certain agreement on the ways of cataloging the kinds of 12 humour, not even agreement on the number of humours. But even those who thought that melancholy was one of four humours found a number of approaches to the discussion of it. For instance, Simon Harward discussed the differences 13 between black choler and melancholy, while John Fage de vised a system of looking at humours that is analogous to the boxing of a compass (sanguine, sanguine melancholic, melancholic sanguine, melancholy, melancholic choleric, and 14 so on), and Burton, of course, discussed a great variety of melancholy characteristics and causes. This disagreement on the characteristics of melancholy was so fundamental that even physical distinctions were 12William Clever took time to complain about "some which wallowing in their owne wils doe affirme, that bloud is nothing els, but a certaine confounded humour, extracted out of three humours; although the same is utterly false, yet may it manifestly moue a great varietie in the permixion of elements." (The Flower of Physicke [1590], p. 45.) 13Harwards Phlebotomy: Or a Treatise of Letting Q-f Bloud (1601), pp. 58ff. 14Speculum Aerotorum. The Sickmens Glasse (1606), fols. 64v, ff. involved. For instance, Elyot describes a melancholy man's complexion as being "whitish" (sig. B 3) and Bullein de- 15 scribes it as being "whitelie or like to lead." However, Goeurot says that phlegmatic man's complexion is "whyte of 16 coloure" and melancholy man's is "blacke of coloure." 17 Harington and Walkington (Qptick Glasse of Hvmours. fol. 67) agree with Goeurot. Bright allows both colors by saying that a melancholy man's complexion may be whitish "in the beginning" but then becomes black (Treatise of Melancholy, p. 125). Clever says "blacke and yellowe (Flowerjpf Phys- icke. p. 59), Harward says "browne, dusky, and blackish" (Phlebotomy, p. 58), and Burton thinks that black is the color of natural melancholy and that a person suffering from unnatural melancholy may have a complexion of any color (Anatomy of Melancholy. Pt. I, Sect. 3, Memb. 3). Elyot (sig. B 3) and Bullein (sig. C 6) contend that a melancholy man has little pulse, Harward (p. 59) and Harington (sig. 15William Bullein, The Gouernment of Health (1595), fol. 7. 16The Regiment of Lyfe- trans. Thomas Phaer (1544), fol. ii. 17John Harington, trans., The Schoole of Salerne (1607), sig. C 5. 20 C 5) that he has "pulse hard." The only physical character istic that all writers agree upon is the thin urine of the melancholy man. The behavior of the melancholy man commanded a consen sus on about eight or ten basic characteristics. I have arbitrarily chosen characteristics upon which five or more writers (from a list of nineteen who specifically discussed 18 characteristics of the humours ) agreed, and with which I found no particular disagreement. A melancholy man was fearful (and suffering from fearful dreams), suspicious, "stiff in opinions," with "long fretting anger," was somber, solitary, covetous, and more or less (depending upon the authority) witty. Beyond these rather basic characteristics one cannot speak with much certainty, except to say that, as in the case of the physical traits, there was a great vari- 19 ety of opinion about the behavior of melancholy men. ^Indicated by stars placed next to entries in the Bibliography. ^Characteristics of men of the other three humours follow, but because fewer authors touched on choler, phlegm, and sanguine than on melancholy, I have sometimes taken only four agreeing authors (instead of five) as establishing a generally accepted characteristic. Also, for these three humours there was a wider agreement on some physical quali ties, which are included. A choleric man was "yreful," "hasty" (inconstant), 21 I have been speaking as though the humours were inde pendent, if elusive, determiners of character. This, of course, was not the case. The humours were themselves in fluenced or controlled (again, depending upon the authority) by the planets and the stars, and Were sometimes considered to be influenced by the passions. Don Cameron Allen points out the "general celestial influence on man," in which the planets influence the elements and in this way come to the sovereignty of the humors; the resulting complex ion established the character of star-cursed man. The Elizabethan and Jacobean writers were charmed by this idea; it was, of course, their basic psychology. We can find poetic evidences of it almost everywhere, but in Drayton's Endimion and Phoebe we discover the whole phil osophy wound up within the compass of a dozen lines: And that our fleshy frayle complections, Of Elementall natures grounded bee, With which our dispositions most agree, Some of the fire and ayre participate, And some of watry and of earthy state, As hote and moyst, with chilly cold and dry, And unto these the other contrary; And by their influence powerfull on the earth, Predominant in mans fraille mortall bearth, cruel, quickwitted, "foolish" (not reflective), and was lean, with a yellow or red complexion; urine: yellow-red. A phlegmatic man was "drowsie," dull of wit, idle and sluggish, and was fat, with a pale complexion; urine: thick and pale. A sanguine man was "amyyable," liberal, merry, lech erous, and was fleshy (some writers say "fleshy but not fat"), with a ruddy complexion; urine: thick (yellow or red). 22 And that our lives effects and fortunes are, • As is that happy or unlucky Starre, Which reigning in our frayle nativitie Seales up the secrets of our destinie, With frendly Plannets in conjunction set, Or els with other meerely opposet. 0 Dariot had pointed out that "all the influences of the high er bodies passing through [the moon's] Circle, come finally 21 to vs." And from Walkington we hear that anyone of a melancholy disposition is said to bee borne vnder leaden Saturne the most disas trous and malignant planet of all, who in his copulation and coniunction with the best, doth dull and obscure the best influence and happiest constellation. (Qptick Glasse of Hvmours. fol. 65) More modest claims (though hardly modestly stated) for the influence of celestial bodies on the humours were made by John Cotta: Generali causes produce not particular effects, and the heavens are but generall causes, second causes, out ward causes, remote causes, mediate causes, vnto those things which immediately fall out in the bodies of men from inward causes contained within themselues. The in ward causes of diseases are the humours of the body, which can neuer be separated from the body, because in on cuThe Star-Crossed Renaissance (Durham, 1941), pp. 159, 160. (Michael Drayton, Works. ed. W. Hebei [Oxford, 1931], I, 147.) 2Astrological Judgement of the Starres. trans. F. Wither (1598), sig. D. 23 them consisteth the life and being of the body. . . . He therefore that finding the inward disposition, shall for the superstitious feare of starres delay with speed to seeke present remedie, or in hope of forrein supply from constellations, neglect certaine rescue more neare hand, is a foole, a madman, or worse than either. The first is continually acted by common simple deluded people, the other patronaged by obstinate defenders of vaine paradoxes; and the third by our impudent Astro logers prostitute for gaine. The point is that although there was, as Allen pointed out, a "general celestial influence on man," the nature of that influence was probably interpreted in as many ways as there were interpreters. Other influences on the humours were the passions. Although it was generally conceded that the humours con trolled the passions, some writers held that the process could in fact work in both directions. Thomas Wright says: That the heart is the peculiar place where the passions a1lodge. . . . The humours concure to helpe, dispose, and enable the heart to worke such operations [as the passions consist of]. The parts from whence [the] humours come, vse their expulsive vertue, sending the spirites, choler, or blood, to serue the heart in such necessitie, as the hand lifteth vp it self to defend the head: howbeit, I doubt not but the heart also affected a little with the passion, draweth A Short Discoverie of Several Sorts of Ignorant and Vnconsiderate Practisers of Phvsicke in England (1619), pp. 98, 102. 24 more humours and so encreaseth. While generally agreeing with Wright, Coeffeteau places special emphasis on the passions as characteristic of a man who is "out of humour." The word Passion is taken here for a change, which is made in man contrary to his natural constitution and disposition [which are, of course, determined by humours], from the which hee is as it were wrested by this change. In which sense the Phylosophers say, that things suffer, when as they are drawne from their natural disposition, to a course that is contrary to their nature. 4 Compounding uncertainty into confusion, there were differing and sometimes contradictory notions about the origins and locations of the passions. It was generally assumed that man had three souls: the vegetative, the sen sitive, and the rational. I shall not pursue the functions or characteristics of these souls; I wish merely to point out that the passions were assumed to exist in one or more souls. Wright contended that passions could exist in the reasonable soul (D 5), while Coeffeteau claimed that pas sions could exist only in the sensitive soul (B 2) . What ever the merits of the two arguments, they offer one more 23The Passions of the Mind (1601), pp. 59, 65, 67. 24A Table of Humaine Passions (1621), sig. B lOv. - 25 example of the contradiction that could exist in a discus sion of motivations for man's actions, when that discussion was stated in other than the most general terms. My object in pointing out the uncertainties and contra dictions in contemporary discussions of the humours is two fold: (1) I want to show that attempts by modern critics to explain entirely and precisely a character in terms of one or even several writers' discussions of the humours is like ly to be misleading; and (2) I want to suggest that if a playwright did choose to construct a character whose actions were to be determined by a dominant humour, he would have a great variety of symptoms to pick from, and therefore he would have no particular difficulty in reconciling dramatic considerations with psychological ones. Although it will be my contention that the physiologi cal humours were the most important element in the develop ment of character in at least Ben Jonson's early humours comedies, 1 shall not contend that they were the only ele ment. How to divide the amount of influence that each of the other elements exerted is not my interest; I shall mere ly mention them and indicate why I think that they are of less significance than the theory of humours. They can be fitted into four categories: character-sketches; the 26 principle of decorum; classical stock characters; moralities characters. Most critics who have been concerned with the development of the humours character have written about Ben Jonson's characters, and since it will be my contention that some of Jonson's characters were essentially different from those created by his contemporaries, I too shall focus my attention on Jonson's characters. At the end of the sixteenth century there was a con junction of two separate approaches to character-sketches. One approach came from the medieval interest in excesses and abnormalities, the kind of interest that appeared in the paintings of Bosch and Breughel as well as in the writings of men like Brandt. The other came from the Characters of Theophrastus, which was edited by Casaubon and appeared in 1592. Baskervill points out that these were indeed separate 25 approaches, and contends that the humours characters that appear in Jonson are essentially drawn from the English "character" writings of such men as Lyly, Greene, Nashe, and Lodge: Just as the character sketch is an accompaniment of the study of humours in this group of prose writers, the 25C. R. Baskervill, English Elements in Jonson's Earlv Comedies (Austin, Texas [1911]), p. 71. 27 crystalization of Jonson's idea of humours comes along with his highest development of the character sketch; that is both reach their zenith in Every Man out and Cvnthia's Revels. <p. 37) Percy Simpson, however, disagrees with Baskervill and sees a greater reliance' on the "metaphors and allusions derived from [the ] physical idea" of the humours than on the char- acter-sketch in the development of Jonson's humours charac- The principle of decorum has been especially associated with the characters of Jonson. Joel Spingarn, in Literary ■Criticism in the..itenaig.sancfl, pointed out that the "observ ance of decorum necessitated the maintenance of the social distinctions which formed the bases of Renaissance life and literature." Character, therefore, was determined by how a man should behave, according to age, rank, and the like. Spingarn then went on to contend that Jonson's humours characters were entirely indebted for their existence to the 26Ed. Every Man in His Humour (Oxford, 1921), p. xxxvii. I agree with Simpson but will argue for a more lit eral approach to the humours than he does. See below, pp. 60-61, 65. G. S. Gordon also gives Jonson credit for being an innovator in his development of character. "Jonson was the first man in England to produce the set Character on scien tific principles, and he deserves all the credit it may bring him, for he spoilt most of his comedies to do it." ("Theophrastus and His Imitators," in English Literature and the Classics [Oxford, 1912].) 27 principle of decorum. He later modified his opinions somewhat, seeing the Jonsonian humours as in a measure the adaptation of a fashionable phrase of the day to Sidney's theory of comedy [i.e., a neo classical theory], though the genius of Jonson . . . intensified and individualized the portrayal of charac ter beyond the limits of mere Horatian or Renaissance decorum.28 This is essentially the point of view that is taken by Herford and Simpson, although they would give special era- 29 phasis to Jonson's innovation. Similar to the notion that Jonson's humours characters were mainly developed according to the principle of decorum is the notion that those characters were in large measure imitations of the classical stock characters, or perhaps of the later Italian characters, who were themselves largely based on the classical stock characters. The later notion differs from the former as it places emphasis on the 272nd ed. (New York, 1908), p-. 88. 28critical Essavs of the Seventeenth Century. I (New York, 1908), xv. 28" [Jonson] was ... a whole hearted adherent of the doctrine of decorum. . . . [But also] he not only accepted but insisted on the doctrine of 'Humours,' in that straiter sense of the term which made this doctrine a proximate phys iological and psychological counterpart of the aesthetic doctrine of decorum." (I, 339, 342) 29 borrowing of character rather than on the borrowing of theory on which the character is built. In an unpublished dissertation Henry L. Snuggs says that Jonson's comedy of character, or of humours, [was] in many respects, particularly in structure of plot and in characterization, a frank imitation of and borrowing from Plautine and Terentian comedy, which in turn was an adaptation of the comedy of Menander.30 E. E. Stoll would agree with Snuggs about the essential Latinity of Jonson's models (Shakespeare Studies, p. 167), but would go on to argue that Jonson was also indebted to the Comedy of Masks, which relied heavily on repetition for the creation of its comic effects, as did the Commedia dell' Arte, both being improvisational. Stoll offers only tenuous 31 evidence to support this point, and it is said to be at least partly wrong by Percy Simpson, who holds that Jonson 30"The Humorous Character in English Comedy, 1596-1642" (Duke University, 1934). 3^"Moliere . . . drew heavily . . . not only upon the ancients and the Comedy of Masks, but upon his immediate predecessors, and must have come into contact with the spir it of the farce as a tradition on the vulgar stage. Why should not Jonson have come in contact with it too? At least he must have known something of the Comedy of Masks and the Italian drama. . . . According to Drummond ... he had been in the Low Countries and (though so late as 1613) in Paris; and it is unthinkable that he should not have learned the French tongue and both seen and read French plays." (Shakespeare Studies, p. 179) 30 had but little knowledge of the Italian drama (ed. Every Man In. p. xxxix). Exclusive of this particular argument, it will be my contention that Jonson did indeed borrow stock characters from the comedy of Plautus and Terence, especial ly in Every Man In. but that the characters he borrowed were precisely those that were not the humours characters. There has been some argument (none recently that I know of) that the moralities characters were "the fore runners of Ben Jonson's [characters in the] comedy of hu- 32 mours." There was, for example, The Vice, efficient for evil, but in process of evolution into the Inclinations or Humours of a somewhat later [i.e., Renaissance] period of dramatic history: concep tions not immoral but unmoral, artistic impersonations of comic extravagance, where Every Man is in his Vice, and every Vice is but a Humour. (Gayley, pp. 303-304) But this is, I think, an oversimplification, and misses the difference between the Vice and the true humours character. I shall attempt to show what precisely the difference is, and how it is basic to an understanding of the development of the humours characters. If the Vice does appear in the 32Charles Mills Gayley, Plavs of Our Forefathers (New York, 1907), p. 298. See also W. J. Court hope, A History of English Poetry. IV(London, 1903), 272. 31 comedy of humours, he appears as the schemer or manipula- 33 tor, much in the same role as the wily servant in Roman comedy. Downright might be a Vice or a Plautine servant, but he is not a humours character. A brief look at one of Jonson's plays will show the kinds of distinctions I intend to draw between the classical stock characters and the moralities characters and humours characters. In Every Man In His Humour Jonson borrowed one of the most common of classical situations and used it for his own purposes. At the base of the plot there is the son who wishes to avoid his loving but dominating father's grasp and to seek the girl he will eventually marry. Helping the son is the clever servant (slave), who also enjoys causing mischief for its own sake. These are three of the stock characters in the play. I see little difference between the character of the servant (slave) and the Vice from morality plays, at least as far as it is possible to imagine 33 M. Reese sees the Vice in much the same way in some of Shakespeare's plays. Falstaff, for instance, is the "tutor and feeder of the prodigal's riots." Reese also sees Richard III and Iago as being at least partially descended from the Vice. (The Cease of Majesty [London, 1961], pp. 68, 69n.) 32 Vice in a Renaissance comedy. I believe that the Roman stock characters and the moralities characters (1 shall call them both "type characters") are essentially the same in concept, and that both are essentially different from the humours characters with which Jonson (more than his con temporaries) was concerned. I think that there are two distinctions between the type character and the humours character: (1) The type character fits into a category; the humours character need not fit any certain category, he need only be outside the category that might be called "normal." (2) There is no interest in the motivation of the type character, but there is interest in the motivation of the humours character. In the case of the first distinction, type characters from the Roman comedy include the slave (who is often wit tier than his master), the senex (who fruitlessly tries to control his wild but generally admirable son), the son, and the Miles Gloriosus (who is a braggart but cowardly sol dier). Moralities characters include the Vice (who might 34 be confused with the devil) and such characters as 34L. W. Cushman attempts to make clear a distinction that existed between the devil and the Vice—figures in the pre-Renaissance English comedy, a distinction which, he 33 Sensuality, Riot, and Iniquity. These categories were pretty well fixed and their very names tell the way in which they were obliged to behave. The humours characters, on the other hand, might follow any number of the characteristics of their specific humour, which would not necessarily mean that they would be similar characters. Jacques and Hamlet, says, did not exist in the continental drama. "The English . . . used the allegorical figure of the Vice as the repre sentative of the sins and weakness of men, while the German and the French, who had no Vice-figure, used for this pur pose a differentiated devil figure." (The Devil and the Vice in the English Dramatic Literature before Shakespeare [Halle, 1900], p. 52.) He sees, however, some exceptions to this distinction, such as the character Tititillus in Man kind (who is both devil and Vice), and in lat( comedies he sees some characters who are manipulators, like the devil, but who deal with the human characters, like the Vice. (An example is Diccon in Gammar Gurton's Needle.) (pp. 53, 54) From his evidence one gathers that it is in the tra gedies that we must look to find the Vice who is similar to the Roman slave. "The function of the Vice in the tragedies is two-fold; first that of tempter and deceiver. . . . The second function of the Vice is the buffoon of the play, in that he plays jokes, and fights with clowns. . . . He is never stupid; he is full of conscious humor; he perverts and corrupts words and phrases, but always purposely and with satirical intent, but fsicl clownish misunderstanding is not characteristic of the Vice." (pp. 74, 76) Bernard Spivak (Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil [New York, 1958]) generally agrees with Cushman about the distinction to be made between the devil and Vice—figures (pp. 130-131) . About the Vice "deep within Elizabethan comedy," Spivak says: "He appears, under whatever literal name, as an artist in laughable intrigue, whose gratuitous knavery in a subordinate part of the play provides humorous relief to its serious story." (p. 331) 34 for instance, might both be melancholy and bear but little resemblance to each other. Both, however, could be consid ered outside the category "normal," a category in which one would find, for instance, Brutus, in whom "the elements" were "So mix'd . . . that Nature might stand up/ And say to all the world, 'This was a man.'" I Julius Caesarf V.v.74, 75). Since, as has been shown, the humours were if not the only at least a considerable part of the Elizabethan scheme of psychology, it follows that a character based on concepts of the humours reflects the playwright's interest in his motivations. This is not the case, however, with the type character, such as Brainworm. We know what he does in the play, but we never know why he does it. Whatever reasons there might be for his assisting his younger master at the expense of his older master or for his causing mischief are outside the dramatist's range of interest. In the next chapter I shall attempt to show that Cob, for instance, is one of the humours characters in Every Man and that the motives for his actions are revealed by Jonson. The argument is, then, that if a character's physiological-psychological motivations are revealed, the playwright was ipso facto interested in them, and that this was the case for all humours characters. I shall attempt to show, also, that of Elizabethan playwrights, Jonson was the most interested in a literal interpretation of the hu mours and therefore most interested in the psychological reasons for (some) characters' behavior. CHAPTER III BEN JONSON In this chapter I shall pay special attention to the plays of Ben Jonson, but I shall also discuss several plays by his contemporaries. I wish to show: (1) that the idea of humours was widely, if somewhat loosely used by contem porary dramatists, and (2) that Jonson more than any other playwright of his time was concerned with a literal inter pretation of the humours as a basis for explaining the be havior of the characters. I have shown already that the physiological humours were subject to a great variety of interpretations. As the term passed into general use it retained the inconsistencies it had accumulated as a "scien tific" term and acquired a number of new inconsistencies. i A playwright whose work, more than that of Jonson, re flected the term's general use was George Chapman. Although in some early comedies Chapman anticipated Jonson's use of "humour" as a kind of explanation for characters' behavior, 36 Chapman used the term much more loosely than did Jonson, and because he did, his "humours" characters do not have motivations which are clearly based on some kind of recog nizable system.1 Chapman's An Humorous Day's Mirth was first acted in 1597, a year before Every Man In His Humour. In this play "humours" are shown only vaguely to be respon sible for the behavior of the characters. The play is mainly concerned with the mischief-making of Lemot, who plays a role similar to that of the Vice 'in the morality 2 plays. He is responsible for almost all the action in the play, and although the characters he manipulates have more or less distinctive attitudes, only in the case of Dowsecer, who is certainly melancholic, are those attitudes clearly symptoms of one of the humours. For instance, Florilla affects Puritan virtue and strictness of manner, though she is easily led by Lemot to "test" herself by exposing her ■ *-F. E. Schelling, though, argues that "the interest in fAn Humorous Day's Mirth 1 lies in the earlier use by Chapman of the word 'humot' in the famous Jonsonian sense; and in his creation (especially in Florilla, the Puritan wife, and Dowsecer, the young misanthrope) of figures unmistakably of Jonson's later 'humorous' types" (Elizabethan Dramar 1558- 1642 [Boston, 1908], I, 460). ^Cf. T. M. Parrott, The Plavs of George Chapman; The Comedies (New York, 1961), II, 686. 38 virtue to the temptations of the court. She may be de scribed as being hypocritical, but this description tells only her attitude, not the constitutional reasons for it. Likewise, Countess Moren is absurdly jealous of her young husband, but her jealousy, like the jealousy of several other characters (Count Foyes, Count Labervele), is not analyzed; it is merely presented. If these are "humours" characters, then the term as used in Chapman's play has very little to do with humour as it was discussed by Elizabethan psychologists. Chapman's All Fools was performed in the late autumn of 1599. In this play Chapman follows the same practice of assuming that humour means "whim" or temporary "disposition" that he had followed in An Humorous Day's Mirth. The plot is borrowed from Terence (cf. Comedies. II, 702-706), and is the familiar classical story of the father who wishes to control the life of his son, compared with the father who indulges his son. To this plot Chapman has added a sub-plot which deals with the "humour" of a jealous husband. T. M. Parrott sees Valerio (the rakish son of the strict father) as being dominated by a master-pass ion, that of parade. He is as vain of his accomplishments and gentlemanly vices as his father is of his worldly wisdom; and his vanity, like his 39 father's self-conceit, is treated by Chapman as a "hu mour.” . . . [But] it is in the sub-plot of All Fools that Chapman's delight in the comedy of "humours" is most apparent. [in the sub-plot are] the jealous hus band, the amorous courtier, the pedantic notary and doctor. (Comedies. II, 707, 708) This is the same kind of definition of "humour" that we find in An Humourous Day's Mirth, the kind of definition that Chapman relied upon. Valerio, for instance, talks of his father's "covetous humour" (I.i.137), of the railing fool's "railing humour" (II.i.341). Gazetta (the wife of the jealous man) sees humours as an affliction which can be distressing, but which is not necessarily more than an ex aggerated whim. At a point when her husband is being jeal ous, she exclaims to two friends: "Ye see, gentlewomen, what my happiness is,/ These humours reign in marriage; humours, humours!" (I.ii. 52, 53). Perhaps "master passion" and "exaggerated whim" amount to the same thing. In any case, we are not given in this play any psychological rea sons for the behavior of the characters. The "Comedy of Humours" was for Chapman merely a parading of several eccen- 3 trxc characters. Parrott is right, I think, in his ^This is clearly evident in Sir Giles Goosecap (1601- 1603). The only three characters who might be considered to be humourous are Sir Giles Goosecap, Captain Foulweather, 40 contention that [Chapman] wasted little time in psychological analysis of character. ... It is quite in keeping with [his use of] abundant action that Chapman's humour [in the modern sense of the term] should be one of incident and situation rather than of character and dialogue.4 In Henry Porter's Two Anqrv Women of Abinaton (1597)5 the term "humour" is used in the same way Chapman uses it: and Sir Cuthbert Rudesby. All three, however, are merely affected fops and do not have even genuine eccentricities. When they are described by Jack and Will, two pages acting as a sort of chorus (somewhat in the manner of Mitis and Cordatus in Every Man Out), the term "humour" is not men tioned (Act I, scene i). 4T. M. Parrott, ed., All Fooles and The Gentleman Usher (Boston and London, 1907), pp. xxxiii, xxxiv. Paul V. Kreider, however, would disagree. He feels that Chapman made rather full use of the Elizabethan notions of psycholo gy and that his characters reflect Chapman's attention to psychological concepts . fEl i y.afaethan Comic Character Con ventions as Revealed In the Comedies of George Chapman [Ann Arbor, 1935], Chaps. VII and VIII, pp. 117-155, et passim.) He says, for instance, that Blanuel and Dowsecer in Aq. ftumourous Dav's Mirth "are elaborately characterized as studies in humours before they appear, and neither one does anything except to display his peculiarity" (p. 147). He says further (pp. 152, 153) that "Cornelio, the jealous hus band of Gazetta in All Fools, is largely a humourous type. . . . [But] eventually this miserable creature is literally talked out of his humour." I shall show, however, that "peculiarity" is not an adequate description of the term "humour" as Jonson, as well as the Elizabethan psychologists used it, and that a truly humourous character could not be merely "talked out" of his humour. 5Printed for The Nalone Society (Oxford, 1912). 41 to describe a whim or characteristic. For instance, one character says, "Now I am in my quarrelling humour" (1. 2359). Herford and Simpson dismiss the play as having little to do with Jonson's notions of humours because the "humours [of Dick Coomes and Nicholas Proverbes], besides consisting solely of oddities, form merely an episode" (Ben Jonson. I, 344). However insignificant the consideration of humours to the main events of the play, the use of the term at all is significant as it affords one more example of its popular definition at about the time Jonson was composing his first humours comedy. Before Jonson wrote Every Man Inf Shakespeare, too, had used "humour" in a rather loose fashion. The Shake- g speare-Lexicon gives six definitions for "humour" (as a substantive) as Shakespeare used it, only two of which imply a strict use of the term: "1) moisture . . 2) cast of mind, temper, sentiments, spirit. ..." Four of the defi nitions imply a lax use of the term: "3) temporary disposi tion . . .; 4) fancy, conceit, caprice . . .? 5) mirth, merriment . , .; 6) ridiculed as a much misused phrase of ^Alexander Schmidt, rev. G. Sarazin, 5th ed. (Berlin, 1962). 42 7 fashion." Shakespeare, then, used the term as he found it employed both by the Elizabethan psychologists and by men such as Chapman who had perhaps a less literal turn of mind. Although dictionaries as they are known today were not to be found in the sixteenth century, dictionaries of a sort did exist. We can find in at least one of them some addi tional evidence about the popular definition of the term "humour." H. B. Wheatly points out that "apparently no purely g English Dictionary was published until the year 1616"; therefore, he lists before that date the multilingual dic tionaries he was able to discover. For the sixteenth cen tury he lists nine dictionaries, two of which are largely redactions of earlier dictionaries in the same list. From 1570 to 1600 he noticed four distinct dictionaries. He did not include, however, John Florio's A World of Words, which 7For this last definition the great majority of sup porting quotations are from Henrv V and The Merrv Wives of Windsor. both of which were probably written after Every Man Out. There has been some conjecture that in these two plays Shakespeare was in fact enjoying a gentle satire at Jonson's expense (see below, pp. 78-80). Q "Chronological Notices of the Dictionaries of the English Language," Transactions of the Philological Society. 1865, p. 218. 43 was published in 1598. Of these now five dictionaries, one 9 was simply a riming dictionary, two others carried no men tion of "humour,"*0 and one had merely the barest definition of "humour."** In Florio's dictionary, however, there is a relatively full English definition of the Italian term. Florio says: Humore. humor, moisture, liquor, iuice or sap. Also a toy, a humour, a fancie, a conceit. Also sap in a roote or tree. Humorista. humorous, fantasticall, toyish, passionate in his humours. Humor os o. ful of humours, of moisture, of iuice, of sap or liquor. Also humorous, toyish, conceited, fond, vn- constant, new fangled. This is, of course, the rather loose sense of the term that I have tried to show was popular at the end of the sixteenth century. Although Jonson's contemporaries were likely to use the term "humour" in a loose sense, Jonson himself seems, at least in his early Humour comedies, to have been concerned with a literal interpretation of it. And because Jonson's 9Peter Levens, Manioulus Vocabulorum. *°John Baret, An Alvearie. or Quadruple Dictionarie (1580); Simon Peligronius, Svnonvmorum Svlva (1585). L1John Higgins, Hvloets Dictionarie (1572), "Humour, or moistnes of any thenge that is liquid." 44 interpretation was more literal than his contemporaries', he was more consistent in his use of the term, which may help to explain why he was thought of by his contemporaries as the humourist. Giving evidence that Jonson was thus thought of, Herford and Simpson discuss The Whipping of the Satvre (1601), by one "W. I.," in which "The Satirist, Epi- gramist, and Humorist" (sig. A3) are attacked. They feel that there is no doubt who the Humorist is, and they point out that in this attack is found "the earliest recognition of the fact that Jonson had created a new type in comedy" (IX, 332). It is curious to note that in The Whipping of the Satyre. the author feels impelled when talking about a "Humorist" to give the characteristics of men who are domi nated by each of the four humours (sigs F6v, F7). He even takes the time to tell which of those humours dominated 12 Jonson, thus suggesting that in his mind at least Jonson's humours characters had their origin in the physiological- psychological concepts of the day. Two anonymous replies to The Whipping of the Satvre l^The humour was phlegm, and it was responsible for Jonson's "Thirsting reuenge in most mischeeuous thought,/ Til with your pen you had your purpose wrought" (sig. F7). appeared in 1601. The Whipper of the Satvre his penance in a white Sheete is in a vague kind of doggerel? in it there is no special interest in the humours. No Whippingr nor trippinae: but a kinde of friendly Snippince has been 13 attributed to Nicholas Breton. There are two especially interesting aspects of Breton's having written a reply. In the first place he makes in it specific defense of Jonson, with whom he is more generous than with the Satirist and the Epigramist. The following is the first stanza in the book: Tis strange to see the humours of these daies: How first the Satyre bites at imperfections: The Epigramist in his quips displaies A wicked course in shadowes of corrections: The Humorist hee strictly makes collections Of loth'd behauiours both in youthe and age: And makes them plaie their parts vpon a stage. (sig. A4) Curiously, in this tract Breton seems to take the humours both in a rather strict sense and in a rather loose sense. In the second stanza, for instance, he says: "... they that are of cholerick complections,/ Loue not too plain to 13See Herford and Simpson, Ben Jonson. IX, 333. Jean Robertson (Poems bv Nicholas Breton [Liverpool, 1952], p. xcix) says that it definitely was written by Breton. 46 14 reade their imperfection." In the preface, however, as in the first line of the stanza quoted above, he has used the term as though it meant merely a quality of a personal ity rather than a cause of it. There he says: "Now for my selfe, I proteste that humor of Charitie, that I wish to finde at all their handes that see and will reproue my folly" (sig. A2v) . In his poems titled Melancholike Humours (1600), though, Breton includes descriptions of general sufferings that were supposed to be caused by an excess of the humour, but without comic considerations. It is with these poems that we find a second reason for interest in Breton's having written a reply to The Whipping, for appended to them is a commendatory verse by Jonson. That Jonson wrote the verse is interesting in itself: it is another indication of his name having been closely associated with humours (and this within two years of the first production of Every Man In). Beyond that, though, there is to be considered the nature of Jonson's commendation. He says to the reader: l^Sig. A4. This most probably is a counter-charge leveled at W. I., impelled by his insisting that Jonson suffered from an excess of phlegm. 47 Thov, that wouldst finde the habit of true passion, And see a minde attir'd in perfect straines; Not wearing moodes, as gallants doe a fashion, In these pide times, only to shewe their braines, 15 Look here on Bretons worke, the master print. Jonson obviously is concerned with a distinction that is to be made between the humours taken in a literal sense and the humours taken in a loose sense, as by some of his contempo raries . Two additional references to Jonson*s close association with the humours are noted by Her ford and Simpson (IX, 333, 334). In Satiromastix (1601), Dekker's Horace (Jonson) is twice instructed about his use of the humours. Barnaby Riche, in his Faultes. Faults. And nothing else but Faultes (1606), acknowledges Jonson*s having brought humours to the stage. Jonson's interest in a literal definition of the hu mours is reflected more directly, I think, in the first of his Humour plays than in subsequent plays, and to understand what he meant by "humour" in all of his plays one must con sider that his attitude toward the term may have been a changing one. Critics who attempt to discover what Jonson 15Ed. G. B. Harrison (London, 1929), p. 7. 48 intended the term "humour" to mean in his comedies usually refer first to the Induction to Every Man Out of His Humour. Although Jonson does, I feel, give a rather clear statement of what he meant by "humour" in that Induction, we cannot assume with certainty that what he meant for the play which was produced in 1599 was the same thing that he meant for the play which was produced a year earlier. Thus, even though the Induction to Every Man Out may throw considerable light on Jonson's intentions in that play, one must first look at the humours characters in Every Man Inr try to dis cover what Jonson was trying to say through them or about them, and then look at the famous Induction to Every Man Out to see how much it explains about them. Herford and Simpson agree that in Every Man In Jonson took seriously the physiological-psychological sense of "humour," but they do not identify specific humours with specific characters in the play (I, 342-355). As I have mentioned in Chapter I, characters in the play can be divid ed into two categories: those characters from the Roman comedy; those characters who are distinctly humours charac ters, each dominated or pretending to be dominated by one of the four humours. If the characters are thus divided, one can, I think, focus attention on the humours characters and 49 not be misled by trying to see all the characters in the play as having the same kinds of functions. Her ford and Simpson say that Jonson made "the exhibi tion of the Humours the sole function of plot" (I, 343) but the contrary, I think, is the case. The plot in Every Man ia revolves around the characters from Roman comedy and is in fact a plot very much like that of Roman comedy (see above, pp. 31, 32). And the characters involved in this plot are precisely those who cannot be explained in terms of the humours. They are: Elder Kno'well, the senex? Ed. Kno'well, the redeemably wayward son; Brainworm, the cunning servant (slave); and Bobadil, the miles crloriosus. On the other hand, each of the other significant characters is an example of a man acted upon (or claiming to be acted upon) by one of the humours, and each is so identified. Because they are more familiar, I have been using the names of characters from the 1616 Folio edition of Every Man 16 In. However, I wish now to pay special attention to the l®In the 1601 Quarto edition, the play was set in Florence (a rather English Florence, however; it contained the "Meermaid" tavern [v.iii.192]), and the characters had, for the most part, Italian names. Stephen, Mathew, and Bobadil are simply Anglicized forms of names in the Quarto; Well-bred is similar in meaning to Prospero; Justice Clement was Doctor Clement in the Quarto; Tib and Cob are the same 50 1601 Quarto edition of the play to show what Jonson's atti tude toward the humours was when he wrote his first humours 17 comedy. In Thorello (Kitely), say Herford and Simpson, the Humour motive is carried out with no suggestion of ambiguity. He is the best example in the play of its working in Jonson's hands. Neither jealousy nor avarice had yet been painted in English drama so soberly and justly yet wholly within the limits of comedy. (I, 348) They said previously of Jonson that "in the severer accep tation of the term which [he] championed, he stood, so far as we know alone" (I, 343), yet they do not attempt to show how that notion of "severer acceptation" might help explain the characters in Every Man In. In the case of Thorello it is, I think, more useful to consider the humour that makes him both jealous and avaricious than to assume that he has two "humours." It has already been shown that it is probab ly misleading to assume that any single discussion of the humours by an Elizabethan psychologist would explain the behavior of a given character. However, it has also been in both versions; the other names are entirely different in the Folio and Quarto. Cf. Henry H. Carter, ed., Every Man In His Humour (New Haven, 1921), p. 263. 17I shall show below (pp. 65-73) that Jonson probably changed his ideas about literal interpretations of the hu mours by the time he revised Every Man In for the Folio. shown that there were certain general characteristics ex hibited by a man affected by one of the humours. If we look at the characteristics of the melancholy man we can see patterns that could impel Thorello to be both jealous and 18 avaricious. It is this complexity of impulse that Jonson uses to excellent comic effect in the play when Thorello is torn in two directions by his humour. In Act III, scene 19 i, he wants both to go to the market for business and to stay at home to prevent his wife's meeting with possible interlopers, a conflict through which Jonson exploits sev eral of the comic dimensions of the complex melancholic humour. Thorello's humour is alluded to several times in the play, three examples of which follow: (1) When he is talk ing in soliloquy about his jealousy, he says: First it begins Solely to worke vpon the fantasie, Filling her seat with such pestiferous aire, As soone corrupts the iudgement, and from thence, ^■®See pp. 19, 20. Jonson chose to emphasize the traits of being suspicious and being covetous by making them, in this case, to have separate objectives. And because the traits were widely agreed upon only as they were general, he could focus his attention where he wished. 19Act III, scene iii, in the Folio. 52 Sends like contagion to the memorie, Still each of other catching the infection, Which as a searching vapor spreads it selfe Confusedly through euery sensiue part, Till not a thought or motion in the mind Be free from the blacke poison of suspect. (I.iv.208-217) Surely here the connection between jealousy and melancholy is strongly implied. (2) An allusion to Thorello's humour is made by Piso (Cash), who, although he does not identify it, and although he exaggerates in comic proportions, cer tainly acknowledges its physiological basis. Thorello has just been torn between guarding his wife and pursuing money. Piso's comment on Thorello's being so torn suggests that Thorello's jealousy and avarice are the result of the same humour. Piso says: Whence should this flow of passion (trow) take head? ha? Faith ile dreame no longer of this running humor, For feare I sinke, the violence of the streame Alreadie hath transported me so farre, That I can feele no ground at all. (Ill.i. 132-136) (3) After Biancha (Thorello's wife) suggests that harm might have come from a prank of Prospero's, the following exchange occurs: Pros. Might? so might the good warme c loathes your husband weares be poysond for any thing he knowes, or the wholesome wine he drunke euen now at the table. Tho. Mow God forbid: 0 me? now I remember, My wife drunke to me last; and changd the cuppe, And bad me ware this cursed sute to day. 53 See, if God suffer murder vndiscouered? I feele me ill. ... Pros. 0 strange humor, my very breath hath poysond him. (IV.iii.16-28) The emphasis here on the suspicious nature of Thorello is associated with jealousy, but also goes beyond the bounds of jealousy, indicating that jealousy and avarice are not the "humours" of Thorello, but rather manifestations of a humour which causes suspicion in general. The humour of Dr. Clement is probably sanguine. Pros- pero says to Lorenzo junior (Ed. Kno'well) that Dr. Clement is: an excellent rare ciuilian, and a great schollar, but the onely mad merry olde fellow in Europe. - ... I haue heard many of his iests in Padua: they say he will commit a man for taking the wall of his horse. Pros. I or wearing his cloake of one shoulder, or anything indeede, if it come in the way of his humour. (III.ii.48-57) Clement's whimsical behavior (including his admiration for Musca's [Brainworm* s] wit) and his interest in food and drink, which is emphasized in the final scene of the play, indicate the bent of his humour. Her ford and Simpson, how ever , say that 54 the foolish Justice was a stage convention; Clement is an individual figure, who performs an indispensable function in the Humour play, but stands outside the Humour scheme. (I, 355) They place him "outside the Humour scheme" because he pos sesses a measure of sensibility and they do not see him as being dominated by a single trait (see I, 340). The point I wish to make, though, is that to look for a single trait (or, as in the case of Thorello, two traits) is largely to misunderstand the function of the humours in Jonson's come dy. Clement has several traits but only one humour. His traits are those that would generally be associated with the sanguine man. The theory of humours psychology did not attempt to deny individuality to men dominated by the same humour, and Clement (like Falstaff) is simply one example of the sanguine type. Jonson's interest in a literal interpretation of the humours is made more clear when we look at the characters of Cob and Giulliano (Downright). Both suffer from excess of the same humour, choler, and both have their humours alluded to by other characters in the play. Just after Piso has commented on the basis for Thorello's humour (see p. 52), Cob comes along, railing about the foolishness of fasting days. Piso says: 55 Why how now Cob what moues thee to this choller? ha? CoHer sir? swounds I scorne your coller, I sir, <I> am no colliers horse sir, neuer ride me with your coller, and your doe, ile show you a iades tricke. Pis. Oh you'le slip your head out of the coller: why Cob you mistake me. Cob. Nay I haue my rewme, and I be angrie, as well as another, sir. Pis. Thy rewme; thy humor man, thou mistakest. Cob. Humor? macke, I thinke it bee so indeed: what is this humor? it's some rare things I warrant. £ia. 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. Cob. How? must it be fed? Pis. Oh I, humor is nothing if it be not fed, why, didst thou neuer heare of that? it's a common phrase, Feed mv humor. (Ill.i.144-162) The punning on the term might seem to exist for its own sake. The association of "rewme" with it, however, suggests that Jonson was also concerned with a physiological implica tion. Furthermore, Piso's "generally receiued in these daies" anticipates Jonson's condemnation of the popular mis use of "humour" which appears in the Induction to Every Man 20 Out. And finally, Piso's "Feed mv humour" is an echo of the popular cures for excess of humor; regulated diet was the most common, and for many cases considered the most 21 effective, method of controlling excess of humour. And ^°Cf. Herford and Simpson, IX, 338. 21see, for instance, Andrewe Boorde, The Breviary of 56 Cob's railing against fasting days, use of tobacco (Ill.ii. 96-106), and the like, is typical behavior of a choleric man. Lorenzo junior, though he thinks Cob no more than a fool, recognizes that his railing is caused by his humour (III.ii.114, 115). When Giulliano takes offense at the actions of Prospero and his companions and then offers to chastise all of them with his rapier, his behavior is explained by Prospero as 22 being one of "my bothers auncient humors." Hesperida (Mrs. Bridget) then tells Giulliano that he is "to vio lent,/ To sudden in [his] courses" (177, 178). "Courses" is apparently a bawdy pun, referring to actions, to fluxes (or humours), and to menstrual discharge (in which sense it was the only commonly used word in the medical texts of the time). In any case, an implication that there is a close connection between Giulliano's constitution and his behavior is clearly made. Healthe (1552), Cogan, Goeurot, and William Vaughn, Direc tions for Health. 5th ed. (1617). 22III.iv.l66, 167. Choler was the humour of age, as sanguine was the humour of youth. Stephano's rejoinder to Prospero: "I am glad no body was hurt by this auncient hu mor" (168, 169) is cited by the QED for a definition of "ancient" as "Savouring of age, old-fashioned, antique." 57 Herford and Simpson see a similarity in the functions and attitudes of Cob and Giulliano "in lively contrast with the affected fools and knaves with whom [they] have to do" (I, 354, 355). They say, however, that although "Cob is a 'character' of the town, as Downright of the country, . . . his temper is gay, not choleric" (354). Herford and Simpson confuse, I think, the reactions to Cob's railings with the motivations for them. It is possible (as I have pointed out) for a great variety of persons to be dominated by the same humour, and, it seems to me, one reason that Herford and Simpson see both Cob and Giulliano as "characters" is that they are dominated by the same humour. The notion of humour is somewhat confused in the case of the two gulls and Bobadilla because they may seem to 23 have the same kinds of roles, but in fact do not. The three are, however, similar in this respect: almost any time one of them mentions "humour," he misuses the term. In Act II, scene iii, Matheo and Stephano are introduced to ^^Bobadilla, as I mentioned before, is essentially a character from Roman comedy, and he is never involved in the gulls' foolish affecting of melancholy. The only time he is even indirectly connected with one of the humours is when Doctor Clement refers to him as "signior Snow-liuer" (V.iii. 253), which does suggest that his cowardice may have some thing to do with a phlegmatic temperament. 58 Bobadilla, while Lorenzo junior looks on amused. The gulls' notion that a humour can be an affectation is the miscon ception alluded to by Piso (see p. 55). Upon being intro duced, Stephano says: My name is signior Stephano. sir, I am this Gentlemans cousin, sir his father is mine vnkle; sir I am somewhat melancholie, but you shall commaund me sir, in whatsoeuer is incident to a Gentleman. Bob. Signior, I must tell you this, I am no generall man, embrace it as a most high fauour, for (by the host of Egypt) but that I conceiue you, to be a Gentleman of some parts. I loue few words: you haue wit: imagine. Step. I truely sir, I am mightily giuen to melancholy. Mat. Oh lord sir, it's your best humor sir, your true melancholy, breedes your perfect fine wit sir: I am melancholike my self diuers times sir, and then do I no more but take your pen and paper presently, and write you your halfe score or your dozen of sonnets at a sitting. (II.iii.68-81) The puns in Lorenzo junior' s comment on this exchange ("Masse he vtters them by the grosse" [82]) include one on the gross humour, melancholy. The several allusions to wit also indicate that even the gulls have some notion, however confused, about the qualities that are normally engendered by melancholy. It is significant, I think, that only the utterly foolish characters in the play use "humour" to mean "affectation," as Bobadilla does when he talks of a "filthy humor of quarrling" (V.iii.54, 55). When Doctor Clement, on the other hand, mentions "humour" in a metaphorical manner, he is aware of a consistency in the base of the metaphor. He says: Election [to the rank of "true poet"] is now gouernd altogether by the influence of humor, which insteed of those holy flames that should direct and light the soule to eternitie, hurles foorth nothing but smooke and con gested vapours, that stiffle her vp, & bereaue her of al sight & motion. But she must haue store of Ellebore giuen her to purge these grosse obstructions, (V.iii. 344-350) In the Induction to Every Man Out of His Humour. Jonson more explicitly states his contention that the common use of the term "humour" was often wrong. Asper says that his reason for presenting the play is "To giue these ignorant well-spoken dayes,/ Some taste of their abuse of this word 24 Humour" (79, 80). Asper then defines the term: Why, Humour (as 'tis eng) we thus define it To be a quality of aire or water, And in itself holds these two properties, Moisture, and fluxture: As, for demonstration, Powre water on this floore, 'twill wet and runne: Likewise the aire (forc't through a horne, or trumpet) 24Among other abusers of the term, Jonson perhaps had in mind John Florio. (See p. 43 for Florio's definitions of Humore. Humorista. and Humoroso.) Allan H. Gilbert, in "The Italian Names in Every Man out of His Humor." Studies in Philology. XLIV (April 1947), 195-208, takes great pains to show that the Italian names in the play suit their owners almost exactly as the definitions in Florio's dictionary would imply they should. He says: "It seems likely that Jonson consulted the Worlde of Wordes for the names of his characters" (p. 205). 60 Flowes instantly away, and leaues behind A kind of dew; and hence we doe conclude, That what soe're hath fluxture, and humiditie, As wanting power to containe it selfe, Is Humour. So in euery Humane body The choller, melancholy, flegme, and bloud, By reason that they flow continually In some one part, and are not continent, Receiue the name of Humours, Now thus farre It may, by Metaphore. apply it selfe Vnto the generall disposition: As when some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw All his affects, his spirits, and his powers, In their confluctions, all to runne one way, This may be truly said to be a Humour. But that a rooke, in wearing a pyed feather, The cable hat-band, or the Switzers knot On his French garters, should affect a Humour! 0, 'tis more then most ridiculous. CORD. He speakes pure truth now, if an Idiot Haue but an apish, or phantasticke straine, It is his Humour. (88-117) The point is (or should be) clear. Asper says that the literal interpretation of "humour" must be restricted to the fluids of the body. A "humour" metaphorically speaking 25 must at the very least dominate a man1s behavior. Much ^5It was possible that a very strong "peculiar quality" could in fact alter the balance of humours in a man's body, causing "All his affects, his spirits, and his powers,/ In their confluctions, all to runne one way." A number of Elizabethan psychologists made the point. La Primandaye, for instance, says: "We must . . . cal to mind what we heard before of the agreement between the maners and affec tions of the soule, and the temperature of the bodie, and howe the one serueth the other.... and therefore in the corruption of the bodily humours, wee are to consider dili gently of the corruption of manners and of the affections of 61 of the confusion engendered by this passage may be narrowed down, I think, to the term "one peculiar quality." Whether this refers to one of the four literal humours or to any kind of human inclination is not clear, though it is clear that if "any kind of inclination" is meant, that inclination must be so powerful as to be beyond the control of the per son afflicted by it. Some critics have felt, however, that Jonson was specifically referring to something other than 26 the literal humours. Other critics have felt that there the soule. For there is great agreement betweene the one and the other" (The French Academie. trans. T. B[owes], [1594], II, 375, 376). The metaphorical sense may be "psychological," though Jonson is not explicit here, and "psychological" implies distinctions that Jonson is apparently not interested in making. Those distinctions are discussed below; see Chap. V. 26J. B. Moore, The Comic and the Realistic in English Drama (New York, 1925), p. 207, says: "one must not forget that [Jonson] had keenness enough to burlesque his own 'hu mours ' in Bartholomew Fair by continually insisting that his characters have a 'vapour' (i.e. a 'humour') for eating roast pig, or for picking purses— or whatever the case may require." Both Moore's statement, "whatever the case may require," and his assumption that "humour" and "vapour" were synonyms (see below, note 39), would be impossible if he had in mind a literal definition of "humour." J. D. Redwine, "Beyond Pscyhology: The Moral Basis of Jonson's Theory of Humour Characterization," ELH. XXVIII (December 1961), 319, finds moral implications central to the humours. For him, Asper is not a psychologist, not even a sixteenth-century one: he is a moralist. C. G. Thayer, Ben Jonson: Studies in the Plays (Norman, Okla., 1963), p. 21, says that "what humours finally means for Jonson is manners." 62 were perhaps two or three different kinds of humour that 27 Jonson recognized. And still others, not making cate gories, see "humour" as meaning almost any kind of inclina- 28 tion. The soundest approach, it seems to me, is that of H. L. Snuggs, who sees in the Induction to Every Man Out an attempt on the part of Jonson to distinguish between what humours really mean and what they were misconstrued to mean 29 by Jonson's contemporaries. As far as Every Man Out is ^7Paul Mueschke and Jannette Fleischer say that "the discerning critic can distinguish three distinct types of humour: the psychological humour, which seems to be rooted in the nature of the individual . . .; the humour of caprice or eccentricity . . .; and the social humour [or affecta tion]." ("Jonsonian Elements in the Comic Underplot of Twelfth Niaht." PMIA. XLVIII [September 1933], 723.) John J. Enck says that "Humours, as Jonson fully expanded the term, have two extended meanings, in addition to the nearly lit eral one [my italics] of a fluid in the body. In its first enlargement a humour propels, helter-skelter, all one's endeavors in a single and vain direction. . . . The second effect of humours is the affectation of a humour in speech." (Jonson and the Comic Truth [Madison, 1957], pp. 47, 48.) Jonas A. Barish sees "humour" much the same way Enck does. (Ben Jonson and the Language of Prose Comedy [Cambridge, Mass., 1960], p. 217.) 28c. R. Baskervill says: "As Jonson defines the term, it is fairly inclusive and may represent almost any decided moral inclination or mental attitude" (English Elements, p. 34), which opinion is shared by Louis Cazamian (The Develop ment of English Humor [Durham, 1952], p. 314). 29"The Comic Humours: A New Interpretation," PMLA. LXII (March 1947), 114-122. 63 concerned, I think the following is mostly an accurate statement: [Humours characters] were 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 exemplification 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— absolutely laughable. (p. 122) Snuggs, however, intends this to explain all the humours characters in Jonson, and the humours characters in Dryden, Shadwell, and Congreve as well. But, as I have pointed out, the Induction to Every Man Out does not necessarily explain the characters in Every Man In (much less those in the other plays to which Snuggs alludes). When Asper goes on (after his definition of "humour") to tell the purpose of his play, he says: I will scourge those apes; And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror, As large as is the stage, where on we act: Where they shall see the times deformitie Anatomiz'd in euery nerue, and sinew, With constant courage, and contempt of feare. (117-122) This explains Jonson's intention of showing how "humour" is 30 misused, but it does not necessarily have anything to do 30The play abounds in examples. A number can be found 64 with the plays that preceded it, or even with those that in a few lines of Act II, scene i, when the fools Fastidius, Briske and Sogliardo take "humour" to mean: "the ’gingle' of a spur" (37-39); "ability" (48); "whim" (54); "inclina tion" (61); "acoutrements" (67); and, apparently, "nature" or "demeanor" (80). Samuel Rowlands satirized the use of the term in a similar manner in The Letting of Humours Bloud in the Head- vaine (1600). In one preface, "To the Gentleman Readers," he said, "Hvmours, is late crowned Kina of Caualeeres./ Fantastique-follies, grac'd with common favor"? and in an other preface, "To Poets," he made clear that he was not talking of legitimate humours: Good honest Poets, let me craue a boone, That you would write, I doe not care how soone Against the bastard Hvmors howerly bred In euery mad-brained wit-worne giddy head. In Epigram 27 he gives satirical examples similar to Jon- son's showing how the term "humour" was misused: Aske Humours why a Fether he doth weare? It is his humour (by the Lord) hee'le sweare. Or, what he doth with such a Horse-taile Locke? Or, why vpon a Whore he spends his stocke? He hath a Humour doth determine so. Why in the stop-throat fashion doth he go, With Scarfe about his necke, Hat without band? It is his Humour, sweet sir vnderstand. What cause his Purse is so extreame distrest, That often times t'is scarcely penny blest? Onely a Humour: If you question why; His tongue is nere vnfurmish'd rsicl with a lye: It is his Humour too, he doth protest. Or, why with Sergiants he is so opprest, That like to Ghostes they haunt him ery day? A rascall Humour, doth not loue to pay. Obiect, why Bootes and Spurres are still in season? His Humour answer1s, Humour is his reason. If you perceiue his witt's in wetting shrunke: It commeth of a Humour to be drunke. When you behold his lookes pale, thin, & poore, Th' occasion is, his Humour, and a Whore. And euery thing that he doth vndertake, 65 came later. Jonson was merely satirizing his contemporar ies' misuse of the term ("how the poore innocent word/ Is ract and tortur'd" [induction, 84, 85]). It is my conten tion, then, that in the two Humour plays there are clear examples of "humour's" use and misuse, as Jonson saw it at the end of the sixteenth century. What Jonson saw at the end of the sixteenth century, however, is probably not what he saw at a later date. I think that he increasingly paid less attention to distinc tions between true and false humours, and paid more atten tion to dramatic considerations in his plays. In illustrat ing this I shall look mainly at the changes he made in the two Humours plays when he prepared them for publication in the Folio of 1616, and at the Induction to The Magnetic Ladv (1632) as it compares with the Induction to Every Man Out. Herford and Simpson show that Jonson's Folio, published in 1616, was prepared in 1612 "or at the latest 1613" (IX, 14) . A comparison of the Quarto of Every Man In with the Folio of twelve or thirteen years later reveals a number of It is his veine, for sencelesse Humours sake. In only slightly later works, however, Rowlands was himself using the term in a very loose fashion. See, e.g.: Tis Merrie when Gossips Meete (1602); Looke to It: Ile Stabbe Ye (1604); Hvmors Looking Glasse (1608). changes in de-bails, some of bhem dealing with the treatment of humours in the play. In two instances humour is more directly referred to in the Folio. First, as the gulls are talking about their "melancholy" natures, in the Quarto, Stephano asks Matheo, "Haue you a close stoole there [in your room]?1 1 (II.iii.88). In the Folio, Stephen asks Matheo, "Haue you a stoole there, to be melancholy vpon?" (III.i.100). Second, when Thorello is being chided for his rash behavior, in the Quarto, Hesperida says, "Brother in- deede you cure to violent,/ To sudden your courses" (Ill.iv. 177, 178). In the Folio Mrs. Bridgit says, "Brother, in deed, you are too violent,/ To sudden in your humour" (IV. iii. 18, 19). Jonson may have made the changes, however, for a reason other than that of emphasizing the humours. In each case he substitutes for a bawdy line one that is not 31 bawdy. This is parallel with a number of changes in oaths, made perhaps to conform with a statute of 1605-1606 32 restraining the players' abuses of the name of the deity, 31 "Close-stool" meant "a chamber-pot stool-mounted and covered." (Eric Partridge, Shakespeare's Bawdy [London, 1947].) "Courses" is explained on p. 56. 32See Herford and Simpson, Ben Jonson. I, 332; Carter, pp. lii-lv. 67 and conforms with Jonson*s rather extensive effort to "clean 33 up" the play generally. There are at least seven changes which indicate that Jonson was less interested in humours elements (strictly 34 speaking) in the Folio edition of Every Man Out. When Lorenzo junior (Quarto) is ridiculing Stephano*s affected humour of melancholy, he alludes to it specifically: "Not that you haue a leaden constitution, couze" (I.ii.99, 101). Ed. Kno'well (Folio) does not make such an allusion (I.iii). Stephano*s reply in the Quarto includes: "I will be more melancholie, and gentleman like" (113-114); but Stephen's reply in the Folio includes: "I will be more prowd, and melancholy, and gentleman-like" (130). The addition of ^For instance, some of the oaths changed did not in volve the deity. Two examples are: "a poxe on the hangman" (Quarto, I.iii.84) becomes "a louse for the hangman" (Folio, X.iv.92); "the least regard vpon such a dunghill of flesh" (Quarto, II.iii.9, 10) becomes "the least reguard vpon such a— [interruption]" (Folio, III.i.12). 34j. a . Bryant, Jr.’s contention that the Folio version more clearly emphasizes the humours seems to be a result of his misunderstanding of "humours." He says, for instance: "In neither [version of the] play is Kitely's humor the prime mover; Kitely is a genuine humor character but one principally on exhibition, more moved than moving. In the Folio it is [Ed.] Knowell's humor that sets the whole action in motion." ("Jonson*s Revisions of Every Man in His Hu mor ." Studies in Philology. LIX [October 1962], 648.) 68 "prowd" undermines, if only slightly, the emphasis on the notion of melancholy. In the Quarto, Lorenzo senior says of his plans to control his son: Nor will I practise any violent meane, To stay the hot and lustie course of youth. For youth restrainde straight grows impatient, And (in condition) like an eager dogge, Who (ne're so little from his game withheld) Turnes head and leapes vp at his masters throat. (I.i.207-212) The "hot and lustie course of youth" echoes the common no tion that sanguine was the normal temperament of young men. In the Folio that passage reads: Nor [will I] practise any violent meane, to stay The vribridled course of youth in him: for that, Restrain'd, growes more impatient: and, in kind, Like to the eager, but the generous grey-hound, Who ne're so little from his game with-held, Turnes head, and leapes vp at his holders throat. (I.ii.123-128) The specific allusion to humours is omitted, to the advan tage of the image, in which "vnbridled" is certainly more consistent. In one other case Jonson omitted an allusion to hu mours, with an improvement in an image. In the Quarto Thorello says: 69 [Beauty] will infuse true motion in a stone, Put glowing fire in an Icie soule, Stuffe peasants bosoms with proud Caesars spleene. (III.i.24-26) In the Folio Kitely, addressing Beauty directly, says: Your lustre too'11 enflame, at any distance, Draw courtship to you, as a iet doth strawes, Put motion in a stone, strike fire from ice, Nay, make a porter leape you, with his burden! (III. iii.24-27) Again, although the change is not of itself especially sig nificant, it does suggest that when he was revising the play in 1612-1613, Jonson may have been less concerned with the physiological humours, or at least was willing to sacrifice attention to the humours for literary and dramatic consid erations . There is less emphasis on Clement's sanguine tempera ment in the Folio. When Clement is dispensing justice at the end of the play, twice in the Quarto he drinks to Musca, and provides that Musca's bowl be filled (V.iii. 151-155, 187-188). His interest in drink is typical of the sanguine man. In the Folio, however, Clement is not so clearly a reveler, and both of these incidents involving drink are omitted, as is Musca's reference to Clement in the Quarto 70 35 as "the onely mad merry olde fellow in Europe." There is other evidence that the Clement of the Folio is different from the Clement of the Quarto. Herford and Simpson mention that Clement's "hearty joy in poetry" is "more glowingly expressed in the Quarto," and that his punishments are more 36 severe (more "mad merry") in the Quarto. One additional change which bears on Clement's charac ter and his "hearty joy in poetry" is in his long speech that begins with the metaphor about humours (quoted on p. 59). This speech is additionally interesting because of Clement's attention to the literal humours in it. Herford and Simpson say that it is omitted in the Folio because it is too sententious (I, 365). They are right, I think; and the alteration fits into the pattern I have suggested: less attention to the literal humours and more attention to dramatic considerations by Jonson in the Folio. 35III .ii .49, 50. (Quoted on p. 53l) 36I, 355. In his edition of Every Man In in 1919, Percy Simpson says that "right on to the close of the play, in the Quarto, Guiliano rsicl (Downright) kept his bluntness and Thorello (Kitely) his insane suspicions of his wife" (p. xix). This parallels, I think, Clement's behavior in the Quarto. The characters act as they must under the domi nation of a humour— and each is dominated by his humour from the beginning of the play to the end. 71 Jonson's treatment of a parenthetic qualification in Piso's speech on humours (full passage quoted on p. 55) points clearly, I think, to Jonson*s altered interests and/ or intentions in the Folio. In the speech in the Quarto, Piso says: "Marie [Cob] ile tell thee what [humour] is (as t'is generally receiued these daies) it is a monster bread in man by selfe loue, and affectation, and fed by folly" (III .i. 156-158) . In the speech in the Folio, however, Cash says: "Mary Ile tell thee, COB: It is a gentleman-like monster, bred in, in the speciall ga lien trie of our time, by affectation; and fed by folly" (III.iv.20-22) . By no longer emphasizing a concern with the misuse of the term, Jonson seems tacitly to accept its common use. There were several changes made in the ending of Every Man Out of His Humour. When the play was first produced the queen was impersonated by an actor, the sight of whom was enough to shake Macilente out of his genuine humour. The original ending, along with the reasons for its being omit ted from the published text, was printed as a kind of appen- I dix in the Quarto. Jonson said of the play: "It had another Catastrophe or conclusion, at the first Playing: which . . . many seemed not to relish it; and therefore was since altered" (Ben Jonsonr III, 603). Jonson explained 72 why such a personation was necessary: It is to be conciu'd, that Macilente being so strongly possest with Enuie, (as the Poet heere makes him) it must bee no sleight or common Object. that should effect so suddaine and straunge a cure vpon him, as the putting him cleane Out of his Humor. (Ill, 602) Herford and Simpson say of this: "Dramatically, this is a dangerous approach to the deus ex machina: but it at least avoided the blank unreason of Macilente's conversion in the present [Folio] text" (I, 388). The point is that when Jonson first wrote the play, and apparently when in 1600 the play was first published, he felt that it would take an extraordinary, not to say divine, influence to put a man "cleane Out of his Humor." However, in the Folio there was 37 simply appended the speech which Macilente gave when the play was performed before Queen Elizabeth, about Christmas, 1599, and Jonson's defense of the original ending was omit ted. He apparently no longer felt impelled to explain the difference between a character being put out of a genuine humour and one being put out of a false one. In the Induction to The Magnetic Ladv. "his last Humour play" as Herford and Simpson point out (IX, 418), a 37 Essentially the speech made to the actor impersonat ing the Queen in the original ending. 73 character speaking for Jonson explains the subtitle of the play, Humours reconcil'd: The Author. beginning his studies of this kind, with every man in his Humour? and after, every man out of his Humour; and since, continuing in all his Plaves. especially those of the Comick thred, whereof the New- Inne was the last, some recent humours still, or manners of men, that went along with the times, finding himselfe now neare the close, or shutting up of his Circle, hath phant'sied to himselfe, in Idea, this Magnetick Mistris. A Lady, a brave bountifull Housekeeper, and a vertuous Widow: who having a young Neice, ripe for a man and marriageable, hee makes that his Center attractive, to draw thither a diversity of Guests, all persons of different humours to make up his Perimeter. (99-110) This passage, from a late play of Jonson*s, gives an indica tion of Jonson1s abandonment of his earlier definition of "humour." The very kind of loose definition of the term that he had depreciated in the Induction to Every Man Out and in the words of Piso in Every Man I r j , . was the kind of definition that he seemed to rely upon in The Magnetic Ladv. If, as I have tried to show, Jonson pretty well changed his ideas of what "humour" should mean in the twelve to fifteen years between the two original Humour plays and their revisions for the Folio, he probably did not treat humours consistently in the plays written during that period. The earlv Cynthia's Revels (1600), as Snuggs points out (p. 117), is much the same in approach as Every 74 Man Out. Thai: is, the characters in Cvnthia' s Re ve Is are really no more than satirical comments on the popular mis conception of "humour." In the plays that came after Cvnthia's Revels, however, there are no clear patterns of 38 humours. In Epicoene. for example, there is some attempt, if mostly in a jocular and sometimes foolish vein, to asso ciate the absurd notions of Morose with melancholy. Epi coene Says: Doe you see what blue spots he has? CI£[rimont]. I, it's melancholy. DAW. The disease in Greeke is called Mavta, in Latine. Insania. Furor, vel Ecstasis melancholia, that is, Earessio. when a man ex melancholio. auadit fanaaticus. (IV.iv.59-70) In the rest of the play "humour" is employed mostly by the fools and can mean almost anything, as was the case when the fools employed it in Every Man Out. Unlike Every Man 38Epjgop ne (1609) was the first of Jonson's plays to be set in London, the setting for the later comedies and for the revised edition of Every Man In. Jonson's apparent abandoning of the literal humours seems to have come at about the same time as his setting the comedies in London. Cf. the Prologue to The Alchemist (1610): Our Scene is London. 'cause we would make knowne, No countries mirth is better then our owne. No clime breeds better matter, for your whore, Bawd, squire, imposter, many persons more, Whose manners, now call'd humours, feed the stage. (5-9) Out. however, in Epicoene a character who is anything but a fool, True-wit, uses the term in a very loose fashion. He tells Morose that the "delights [of the wedding night] are to be steep'd in the humor, and silence of the night" (III. v.48, 49). Speaking of Otter's disposition for raillery, True-wit says: "His humour is as tedious at last, as it was ridiculous at first" (IV.ii.149, 150). And Clerimont, also not a fool, uses "humour" in a loose sense. When True- wit complains of Daw and La-Foole, "How these swabbers talk'." (IV.iv.167), Clerimont answers, "I, OTTERS wine has swell'd their humours aboue a spring-tide" (168, 169). The term "humour," inconsistently applied both by fools and by clever characters, is echoed in the inconsistent 39 application of "vapour" in Bartholomew Fair. In Bartholo mew Fair there is no "true" vapours character, as Thorello and Macilente are "true" humours characters. Because Jonson does not attempt to distinguish between characters who have true and false vapours, the characters in Bartholomew Fair ^"Vapour" only echoes "humour"? it is not synonymous with it, a point made by a number of modern critics. See, for instance, Herford and Simpson, II, 139-142; James E. Robinson, "Bartholomew Fair: Comedy of Vapors," Studies -in English Literature. I (Spring 1961), 66; Jonas A. Barish, Ben Jonson and the Language of Prose Comedy. pp. 217-219. 76 are not warped or eccentric individuals, like the "Hu mours," more or less at odds with their own milieu. but the very growth of the soil, impregnated with the rank ness of the world they thrive in. (Herford and Simpson, II, 139) This, I think, is consistent with my contention that Jonson had a waning interest in the distinctions between true and false humours and a growing willingness to accept the popu lar use of the term. CHAPTER IV JONSON'S CONTEMPORARIES AND THE "SONS OF BEN" As Jonson became increasingly less concerned with a literal definition of "humour" many of his contemporaries were using the term, in part, it seems, to cash in on its popularity, for which Jonson was largely responsible. In addition to those writers who may have used the term in a literal sense and those who used it in the more popular loose sense, Shakespeare apparently used it deliberately to parody Jonson. Shakespeare's Corporal Nym, sometimes con sidered to be a satire of Jonson himself, appears both in King Hency V and The Merrv Wives of Windsor. Most scholars agree that Henrv V was written about 1599, though all do not agree whether it or The Merrv Wives came first. Even if The Merrv Wives preceded Henrv V there is no certainty that it preceded Every Man In: some scholars, however, date it as early as 1597. The evidence that The Merrv Wives did pre- 77 78 cede Rwrv Man In is so tenuous that William Bracy, for instance, feels impelled to support it by sayings Is it possible that Shakespeare could have lost his self-assurance to the point of imitating a style which Jonson had established as his own and this at the height of his dramatic success? Clearly the influence is the other way around.1 But Nym's use of "humour" is not like that of any of the characters in Every Man In. even of the gulls, who have at least a foggy notion of what the term should mean, and so "imitating a style which Jonson had established" is point less . The recent conjecture that The Merrv Wives was writ ten before Every Man In seems mostly to be based on Leslie Hotson's ingenious notions set down in Shakespeare versus p Shallow- Conjecture about the initial performance of the *The Merrv Wives of Windsor: The History and Transmis sion of Shakespeare's Text (Columbia, Missouri, 1952), p. 119. Bracy fails to consider that Shakespeare was perhaps satirizing, not imitating Jonson's "style." ^Boston, 1931. Besides Bracy, William Green (Shake speare's Merrv Wives of Windsor [Princeton, 1962]) also bases his dating of The Merrv Wives on Hotson. W. W. Greg, however, in his review of Shakespeare versus Shallow finds Hotson's conjecture about William Gardiner, who died in November, 1597, as being the model for Justice Shallow less than convincing. "There is [he says] ... no evidence that [Shakespeare] ever met, knew, or cared two straws about Jus tice Gardiner." Modern T^nr-mane Review. XXVII (April 1932), 218. 79 play is best tempered by the kind of reservation James McManaway makes in his article "Present Studies in Shake speare 's Chronology": Until new evidence is discovered, it seems best to admit that many of the questions about Merrv Wives are unans werable . Inasmuch as there were both private and public performances, it is likely that many alterations were made in the text to introduce or remove topical hits. The process may have continued for a period of years, beginning as early as 1597 (but if so, why did Meres fail to name the play in 1598?) and continuing as late as 1601.3 4 If Nym is modeled on Jonson, as many critics feel, Shakespeare's gentle satire may have helped to extend the number of vague definitions, sometimes frivolously con ceived, of "humour. Humour,'" says Kittredge, "is Nym's pet word, which he uses in all sorts of vague ways."5 Some ^Shakespeare Studies. Ill (1950), 29. ^ S e e , for instance: G . Sarazin, "Nym und Ben Jonson," Shakespeare Jahrbuch. XL (1904), 213-222; A. Quiller-Couch, ed., The Merrv Wives of Windsor (Cambridge, 1921), pp. xxxi, xxxii; E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare (Oxford, 1930), I, 72; J. Dover Wilson, Shakespeare's Happy Comedies (Lon don, 1962), p. 92. Wilson, echoing Quiller-Couch, goes so far as to say: "Nym , . . may have been the 'purge' which Shakespeare was reputed to have administered to Ben Jonson himself" (p. 92n.). ^Sixteen Plavs of Shakespeare, ed. G. L. Kittredge (Boston, 1946), p. 642 (note to Henrv V. II.i. 127, 128). References to act, scene, and line numbers are from Hardin Craig, ed., The Complete Works pf Shakespeare (Chicago, 80 of the "vague ways" in Henrv V are Nym's use of "humour" to mean: "inclination" (II.i.58); "solution" or "essence" (II. i.63, 74, 101, 121; II.iii.63); "prank" or "jest" (II.i. 132); "temperature" (III.ii.5); and "bodily fluids," but with the implication that they could be bestowed on someone (II.i.127). Nym's treatment of "humour" is even more varied in The Merrv Wives. In that play he takes the term to mean: "nature" (I.iii.104, 113); "notion" (I.iii.63); "prank" or "jest" (I.iii.24, 71); "errand" (I.iii.85); "instrument" (I.iii.98); "temper" (I.iii.110); "practice," n. (II.i.140); "essence" (II.i.141); and a number of unspecified ideas (I. i.135, 169, 171; I.iii.30, 63, 86, 103; II.i.134). This foolishness prompts a page in The Merrv Wives to say of Nym: "Here's a fellow frights English out of his wits" (Il.i. 142, 143). Shakespeare may have been interested in Jonson*s treat ment of "humour" after Henrv V and The Merrv Wives. W. J. Lawrence sees an allusion to Every Man Out in Hamlet. He contends, without reservation, that the "humourous man" statement in Hamlet's admonition to the traveling players ("The humorous man shall end his part in peace," [il.ii. 1951), which follows the Globe edition. 81 g 335]) refers to Macilente*s speech before the queen. E. K. Chambers says simply that Lawrence may be right, but Herford and Simpson can see no foundation for Lawrence's assumption (IX, 481). Whether Hamlet was specifically re ferring to Every Man Out, however, is not significant to this study; that Shakespeare was concerned with players performing as humours characters is. If the number of times he uses the term "humour" indicates the degree of his con cern, it seems to have been greatest at about the time of Jonson*s Humour plays, which gives additional weight to the notion that Shakespeare was concerned with The Humourist1s plays. "Humour" or a variant of it appears no fewer than sixty-nine times in seven consecutive plays from 1 Henrv IV Q to As You Like It. written in the period 1597-1600. Before 1 Henrv IV the term had appeared forty-seven times in ^Shakespeare1s Workshop (Oxford, 1928), pp. 101-104. 7William Shakespeare. I, 427. 81 Henry IV, g-Benry IV, Much Ado About Nothing. Henrv 2 , The Merry Wives of Windsor, Julius caesar. as you Like So listed by Hardin Craig, ed., The Complete Works. Introd., p. 38. E. K. Chambers (The Elizabethan Stage [Ox ford, 1923], III, 485, 486) also lists the plays consecu tively, though he puts The Merrv Wives between Caesar and As You Like It. 82 fourteen plays, and after As You Like It it appeared seven teen times in sixteen plays. If Shakespeare' s interest in humours diminished after 1600, other playwrights' apparently did not. They were perhaps interested in cashing in on a certain vogue of 1597- 9 1600. It is impossible to say how much Jonson was respon sible for that vogue; his part in it, however, is reflected in a number of places. Aside from the works referring to him quoted on pp. 44-47, one may list as certainly influ enced by Jonson the anonymous play Every Woman in Her Hu mour. published in 1609, but most probably produced somewhat before that time.10 Every Woman In is an insubstantial piece, the characters and plot of which have virtually nothing to do with the title, chosen rather clearly to take ^Shakespeare's printer, too, seems to have been in terested in taking advantage of the vogue. The entry in the Stationer's Register (Arber's transcript) for 25 February 1597/8 is: "The historye of Henry the IlIJth with his bat- taile of Shrewsburye against Henry Hottspurre of the Nor the with the conceipted mirth of Sir John ffalstoff." When the play was printed later the same year, the title was essen tially the same except for the last clause, which reads: "With the humourous conceits of Sir Iohn Falstaffe." ^The CHEL- for instance, dates it c. 1600 (VI, 514); J. Q. Adams, 1607 ("Every Woman in Her Humor and The Dumb Knight." Modern Philology. X [January 1913], 424); E. K. Chambers, 1607-8 (The Elizabethan Stage. IV, 11). 83 advantage of whatever popularity Jonson's Humour plays en joyed. Like both of Jonson's plays (at least before the Folio revisions), this one is in Italy. Moreover, the character Accutus is apparently an imitation of Macilente, both in name and in function. "Vice to him is a foule eye sore,"11 says another character, Tully, and throughout the play Accutus takes special pleasure in exposing the vanities of the gulls. Beyond several rather superficial similari ties, however, there is nothing to justify a comparison of this play with Jonson's Humour plays; in it there is no attempt to develop characters according to a theory of hu mours, and no persistent use of the term. Though no other play of the period is so obviously an attempt to ride the coattails of Jonson's Humour plays, many plays reflect the popularity of the term "humour," and much of the concern of this chapter will be with the term itself. A discussion of "humours characters" who neither clearly exhibit symptoms of one of the four humours nor are connect ed with the term "humour" would have too many ramifications to be manageable; I shall, therefore, restrict my attention ^■1(V.i[p. 372]). The page reference is to A. H. Bullen, ed., Old English Plavs. N.S., IV (London, 1885). 84 to these two implied categories. Not to do so could lead to the kinds of arguments advanced by two critics dealing, 12 as it happens, with Marston and Middleton. Paul Zall argues that Marston is a moralist, using "faculty psycholo gy" to resolve the conflict between "natural and 'acquired' passions in his characters" (p. 192). The humours, in other words, might impel a man to love (lust) and social stric tures might inhibit him. Thus, the gulls and their female counterparts revel in "ac quired" lust. "What old times held as crimes, are now but fashions" ... is an often repeated sentiment in Marston's plays. (p. 189)13 Zall argues that for Marston the humours were the genuine basis of character, and that he used "faculty psychology as a device for characterization" (p. 192). If this is indeed the case, we are led beyond what could possibly be the scope of this study because we have no evidence that Marston's presumed use of the humours is other than subconscious, and thus any character could be a humours character. John Marston, Moralist," ELH. XX (September 1953), 186-193. ^3It should be pointed out, however, that the line Zall quotes (from The Dutch Courtezan. III.i.284) does not in context apply to gulls, but rather to a "serious" charac ter's passion. 85 14 Such a critic as Kathleen Lynch is also, I think, talking beside the point when she says that [Thomas] Middleton often avails himself of Jonsonian humours, as a convenient expedient in rapidly defining character or blocking out action. He sets forth in true Jonsonian style such types as the wrangler in law suits, the jealous husband, the credulous astrologer, the prodigal host. (p. 24) These characters, strictly speaking, are not so much Jon sonian as Theophrastan, and it is only as there is a dis tinction allowed between the two that Jonson's contribution to the evolution of the humours character becomes clear. For plays in which we can assume, for one reason or another, that the humours are plainly intended to have some kind of effect on the characters, there are such examples as: The Honest Whore, parts i (1604) and li (c. 1608); Humour Out of Breath (1607-8); and, at a later date, though still by a playwright roughly a contemporary of Jonson, The Humorous T . i antenant (1619?). The subtitle to the first part of The Honest Whore is With the Humours of the Patient Man and the Longing Wife, and to the second part is With the Humours of the Patient Man. The Impatient Wife._. . ^ The 14The Social Mode of Restoration Comedy (New York, 1926). patient man in the two parts of the play, however, is a humours character partly in the loose sense of the term. Dekker probably owes something to Jonson for "humour,'' and he perhaps owes something to Jonson for the characterization of the patient man, if not for the two wives, who seem also to be described as "humours." Candido, the patient man, is a "true" humours character in that his behavior is not caused by affectation. He thus fits Jonson's definition from Every Man Outs As when some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw All his affects, his spirits, and his powers, In their confluctions, all to runne one way. (Induction, 105-108) Furthermore, there are at least three allusions to the possible psychological cause for Candido's behavior. In Act I, scene iv. a courtier says of him: "[one] maist sooner raise a spleene in an/ Angel, than rough humour in 15 him." In the next scene another courtier says: "sure hees a pigeon, for he has no gall" (109). And, finally, his wife says of him: "Sure hees vext now, this trick has mou'd his spleene" (IV.iii.37). In all these cases, however, the 1S(23, 24). The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker. ed. Fredson Bowers, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1953-54). "humour" of the character, we are told, is caused not by an excess of one of the four humours, but, rather, by the de ficiency of one of them. It is Candido's lack of yellow bile, or choler, which makes him distinctive. It is curious that Candido could not really be "put out of his humour," except in an inside-out fashion. In part XL of the play, when he feigns that he will be patient no more, in order to cross his wife's "humour" (which is in fact the "affecta tion" of dominating her husband), one must assume that he will be less eccentric by being more choleric. Candido says: "0 curst Cowes milke I ha drunke once before,/ And 'twas so ranke in taste, lie drinke no more" (II.ii.72, 73). It is this kind of a confusion of the Elizabethan psycholo gists' theories that makes difficult the identification of specific humours. In Every Man In Jonson avoided, perhaps intentionally, the difficulty of accounting for the one character (Bobadil) who might have lacked sufficient humour (also choler; see pp. 49, 58n.) by making him rather clearly not a humours character at all, but a type-character from the Roman comedy. Dekker, who was, it seems, not so much interested in a theory of humours as Jonson, often used "humour" to mean "affectation." Candido's brother-in-law, for instance, says (with apparently no irony intended by the playwright) that he has "castoff all [his] olde swaggering humours" (I.ii. 46). And when Candido's sensible servant, George, admonish es Candido*s not-so-respectable wife to "throw away this fashion of your humour, be not so phantasticall in wearing it" (V.i.50, 51), we are left uncertain if the humour is a literal one with a fantastic (i.e., influenced by affecta tion) manifestation, or is simply pure affectation. That the uncertainty does not substantially affect the sense of George's statement is due to Dekker*s ambivalent attitude (if he had an attitude) toward the usefulness of taking the humours literally for purposes of characterization. His debt to Jonson seems not to be to Jonson's theory of hu- nours, but rather to the results of that theory; not to a method of characterization, but to the presence in the drama of varieties of eccentric characters. And this, I suggest, is the case with most of Jonson's contemporaries who wrote either directly (sometimes in conscious imitation of Jonson) or obliquely about humours. In Humour Out of Breath John Day wrote partly in imi tation of Jonson, but also partly in imitation of Lyly and 89 16 Shakespeare too. The play is in fact largely a pastiche. In his borrowing from Jonson he seems to have acquired not only the term "humour," but also some notion of the Jonson ian use of the term. For instance, when Octavio, the Duke of Milan, disguises himself to spy on his sons, his language suggests a certain interest the playwright must have had in the literal sense of "humour." Octavio says: I haue a strange habit, and I must cut out an humour sutable to it, and humours are pickt so neere the bone, a man can scarce get humour ynough to giue a flea his breakfast: but I sun a stale ruffian, my habit is braue, and so shall my humor be. But Day also takes "humour" to be a synonym for "whim" or "temporary disposition." Exsunples of both senses are in the following passage (spoken by a witty page counseling his master, a distraught lover): Is your proud humour come downe ifaith; your high humor that would not stoop an ynch of the knees? ile help't vp againe, and't be but to vphold the jest. I must bring her as low ere I haue done. O base, I woulde rather lay my necke vnder the axe of her hate, then my sporte vnder the feete of hir humor; but be counselld, ile teach you to preuent both; and perchance make her vpstart humour stoope gallant, too. (III.iii[p. 46]) 16See: CHEL. VI, 215; Schelling, II, 414, 415. 17(I.i.[p. 20]). Page references are to Humour Out of Breath (paged separately) in The Works of John Dav. ed. A. H. Bullen (London, 1881), I. 90 The title of the play, as Day uses it, seems to be in imi- 18 tation of Jonson. That is, "humour out of breath" is used by Day to mean something like "every man out of his humour." One of the characters (Hippolito) who finds his inclination changed during the period of time the play covers says: "I that now was all for war and death/ Am made all loue; wars humour's out of breath" (V.iii[p. 77]). And it is the changing of characters' inclinations that seems to be cen tral to the play. Aside from the change suggested by Hip polito 's statement, change is found in such a character as Aspero (an echo of Jonson's Asper), who intends to be re venged on Octavio, the conqueror of his father's dukedom. Revenge, however, is forgotten when Aspero falls in love with Octavio's daughter (Florimell), and her two brothers, one of whom is Hippolito, fall in love with Aspero's sis ters. Florimell's "humour" of being disdainful also is put "out of breath." She says to Aspero: "Thou hast driven me cleane out of conceite with my humour, X loue thee, I con- 18Bullen suggests (p. 1): "Possibly Day took the title of his play from a line in the 'Comedy of Errors' (act i, sc. I, 1. 57):— 'Fie, now you run this humour out of breath.'" If he did, he did not pay much attention to the context. Shakespeare uses the phrase to mean "patience," as in "you try my patience." 91 fesse it" (III.iv[p. 49]). Though Day intended "humour" to have something to do with characterization, his intention seems not to have been a very precise one. This is not surprising; Day simply was not a very good playwright. It is interesting to note Jon son 's low estimate of him. Gerald Eades Bentley points out reference to Day in Drummond's notes of his conversations with Jonson: that Sharpham, Day, Dicker were all Rogues and that Minshew was one. . . . that Markham (who added his English Arcadia) was not of the number of the Faithful.j. Poets and but a base fellow that such were Day and Midleton. . . . (Herford and Simpson, Ben Jonsonr i.133, 137) And Bentley goes on to say: "This is the opinion one would expect Jonson to have of an irregular hand-to-mouth play wright like John Day."19 The title of John Fletcher's The Humorous Lieutenant describes the main character of the sub-plot of the play; the main plot has nothing to do with humours. The Lieuten ant is brave only when he feels so sick that he does not especially care whether he is killed in battle. During one 19The Jacobean and Caroline Stage. Ill (Oxford, 1956), 239. 92 encounter, however, he is nicked in the side and the pain vanishes, taking with it his bravery. The Humorous Lieu tenant is literally humorous in so far as physiological elements sure at least implied to help explain his behavior. When Leontius, "a brave old merry soldier," tricks the Lieutenant into thinking he is once more sick, a physician, to help convince the Lieutenant, says of the imaginary malignancy: "The imposthume,/ Fed with a new malignant humour now,/ Will grow to such a bigness, 'tis incred- 20 ible." But this is only a superficial embellishment, at least as far as humours are concerned. The Lieutenant has neither an excess of humour, as do some of the characters in Every Man Inr nor a deficiency of humour, as does Candido in The Honest Whore. The "imposthume" that makes the Lieuten ant so uncomfortable that he is indifferent to his fate seems to be in imitation of an anecdote told by Plutarch and 21 repeated by Montaigne. And the character of the Lieuten ant is anecdotal merely, having nothing to do with 20(III.v.57-59). The Humorous Lieutenant, ed. R. W. Bond, in The wprKs_9.f Eraneig Beaumont and. John Fletcher, Variorum Edition. II (Iondon, 1905). 21See R. W. Bond, Introd. to The Humorous Lieutenant. II, 458, 459. 93 Elizabethan psychology, or even with any consistent meta phorical extension of it. Many of the playwrights who followed Jonson in time are also considered to have followed him in theory and/or practice. Since almost any playwright who used humours characters of one kind or another has been considered by Mina Kerr (Influence of Ben Jonson on English Comedy. 1598- 22 1642) to be a follower of Jonson, I shall use her book as a guide to the work of these writers. Miss Kerr divides the followers of Jonson into two groups: the first is composed of Nathan Field and Richard Brome; the second is composed of those writers she calls the "other Sons of Ben." I shall follow her pattern, considering in addition to those plays she includes a play by James Shirley and one by Thomas Jordan. Although Nathan Field was referred to in the Conversa tions with Drummond as being Jonson*s "Schollar" (Ben Jon son, . I, 137), and although Miss Kerr calls Field one of those who were distinctly "Sons of Ben," who consciously and definitely took the attitude of disciples toward the ^Philadelphia, 1912. 94 master of the comedy of humors, fully acknowledged his authority and sought to follow closely in the paths marked out by him (p. 52), I must agree with Field's most recent editor, William Peery, that, among other things, "Field's humour characterization is neither . . . necessarily Jonsonian, nor very similar to Jonson's." Peery sees Chapman as having influenced Field 23 "perhaps as much as, or more than, did Jonson," and I think the "humours" characters that can be found in Field's plays are certainly more consistent with Chapman's than with Jonson*s. That is to say, they are not humours characters at all in the earlier Jonsonian sense of the term, and scarcely humours characters in the sense of the term as he used it in The Magnetic Ladv. Two of Nathan Field's comedies are extant, A Woman is a 23Introd., The Plavs of Nathan Field (Austin, Texas, 1950), p. 27. See, however, for the earlier view, generally agreeing with Miss Kerr, Schelling, I, 520, and Roberta Florence Brinkley, Nathan Field. The Actor-Plavwriaht (New Haven, 1928), p. 74. After saying that "Jonson's influence is most readily seen through Field's use of humours to designate the characters," Miss Brinkley says: "[Field's] characters act from objective rather than subjective neces sity, and the name of each fits into the role that he is to play." In this later statement, she (inadvertently, I cun sure) makes almost precisely the distinction I try to make between Field's (and others') characters' "objective neces sity" and Jonson's characters' "subjective necessity." 95 Weather-cocke and Amends for Ladies. In this study I shall discuss the former, which is generally acknowledged to be 24 the more original creation. Mina Kerr says of the charac ters in A Woman is a Weather-cocke: A number of [them] are conceived and executed on the basis of humors, and given names to indicate the ruling quality. In [this play] we have Pendant, a sycophant who lives "upon commending" Count Frederick, and whom men call his lord's "commendations"; Sir John Worldly, whose one great desire is for money and who assures us "Worldly1s my name, worldly must be my deeds"; Pouts, the irascible and vindictive captain; and above all, the Minnies, Sir Innocent Ninny, Lady Ninny and Sir Abraham Ninny. County Frederick asks: "What country men were your ancestors, Sir Abraham?" and that brain less youth replies: "Countrymeni they were no country men: I scorn it. They were gentlemen all: my father is a Ninny and my mother was a Hammer" [i.ii]. Like Jonson's Mathew, Sir Abraham prides himself on his verses of passionate love, but to unprejudiced critics he is "like a hard-bound poet whose brains had a frost in 'em." (p. 56) There is, however, a considerable difference between Mathew and Sir Abraham, and that difference is indicative of the difference between the theory which was responsible for Jonson's characters in the Humour plays and Field's charac ters. Mathew affects a specific humour, melancholy, and his verses are directly associated by him with the behavior that ^For a discussion of this point see Peery, pp. 145- 151. he thinks is appropriate to a melancholic man. There is no physiological humour associated with Sir Abraham; he is merely a fool, as sire his father and mother. To call a fool a humours character is to ignore the distinctions the term makes. Pendant also is not a humours character; he is simply a sponge, a type common in Roman comedy. In fact the only character who even comes close to having his behavior dominated by "one peculiar quality" is Captain Pouts. But even he does not fit very neatly into the category. His disposition for being morose is tempered by his cowardice, which is itself not consistent. Though the Captain is ac cused by one character of having a "melancholy and dull 25 disposition," his behavior is too erratic to fit that category, even as it was loosely interpreted by the Eliza bethan psychologists. In addition, Field uses "humour" to mean a variety of things, but without a pattern for the use i of the term. For instance, Lucida (a relatively sensible character) uses it to mean "resolution" (I.ii.356), and Sir Abraham uses it to mean, roughly, "satisfaction" (V.ii.197- 199) and, once, "disposition" (I.ii.356), though-no other character even accidentally comes close to using the term in 25(1.ii.306). Peery, ed., The Plavs of Nathan Field. 97 its literal sense. As far as the employment of humours characters is concerned, then, if Field was Jonson's "Schollar" he was not an apt one. The playwright who, with Field, is commonly associated with Jonson as being one "to whom Jonson stood in the direct relation of teacher to pupil" (Kerr, p. 52) is Richard 26 Brome. And of the two Brome is probably the more closely related to Jonson. As Peery says: "Certainly Field is not in comedy the derivative of Jonson that Brome is in The Weeding of Covent Garden and The Soaraaus Garden" (p. 28). 27 I shall look at these two plays to examine the nature of Brome1s debt to Jonson as far as the use of humours charac ters is concerned. In both plays humours cure mentioned ex tensively, and in both there is some effort to effect a pattern of humours. In The Weeding of Covent Garden (1632) Crosswill clearly is intended to be a humours character in the Jonson tradition. His decision at the end of the play to abandon his humour because it is inconvenient is 26See also: CHEL. VI, 224, 225; Schelling, II, 269. ^Besides -the significance of these two plays one can infer from Peery's comment, see R. J. Kaufman (Richard Brome. Caroline Playwright [New York, 1961], p. 181): "After Covent Garden Weeded. l~The Soaragus Garden 1 is perhaps the most thoroughly typical of Brome's plays." 98 inconsistent with Jonson's early use of the term but not with his late use of it. Perhaps in Crosswill one can most clearly see the direction the handling of humours was to take not only in the hands of those who professed to follow Jonson, but also in the hands of those who followed him without being conscious of, or at least not admitting, their debt. In the first scene of the play Crosswill is said to have the oddest touchy, wrangling humour.— But in a harmlesse way; for he hurts no body, and pleases himself in it. His children have all the trouble of it, that do anger him in obeying him sometimes.^8 Crosswill's "humour" is, in other words, to wish for people (his children especially) to do the opposite of what he thinks they ought to do or what he tells them to do, and he takes a perverse pleasure in having his will flouted. The "humour" is impossible to present consistently because Crosswill must eventually consent to his children wanting to obey him, which of course makes him unhappy. This particu lar defect in the conception of the "humour" is sometimes oo Page 3. Page references are to the edition of this play (paged separately) in The Dramatic Works of Richard Brome (London, 1873), II. The plays in Vol. Ill, which in cludes The Soaraqus Garden, are not paged separately. 99 responsible for a certain amount of tedium as Brome presents many incidents to show a variety of ways in which Cross will's will can be crossed, always with the expectation that he must consent at last not to have it crossed. Brome per haps attempts to make some kind of a connection between Crosswill's "humour" and a physiological impulse for it. At one point in the play (II.ii[p. 30]) Crosswill, somewhat pleased with being crossed, says: "So now my spleen is a little palliated." The best connection with Jonson, though, is through the notion that Crosswill is one of those so possessed by "one peculiar quality" that "all his affects, his spirits, and his powers . . . runne one way." (That Crosswill's "humour" is never to let his humour run one way is a paradox that is responsible for a measure of dramatic confusion in the play.) The characters of The Weeding use the term "humour" in several different ways. Crosswill alludes to the elements when he compares one of his sons (Gabriel) who affects Puri tan clothes and speech with Rookbill's son, who is a rake; he says: I would their extream qualities could meet each other at half-way, and so mingle their superfluities of humour unto a mean betwixt 'hem. It might render them both allowable subjects, where now the one's a firedrake in the aire, and t'other a mandrake in the earth, both 100 mischievous, see how [Gabriel] stands like a mole- catcher. (II.ii[p. 29]) "Humour" means simply "disposition" when Gabriel's brother refers to him thus: "He [had] as brave a warlike spirit, man, before his precise humour tainted it, as ever breathed in Hector" (IV.ii[p. 72]). Characters also use the term to mean "mood," as in "0 Nick. I am not in the humour" (I.i [p. 13]), or "distemper," as in "this were a humour and 'twould last" (I.i[p. 16]). Here "humour" is used in the very loose, un-Jonsonian sense, but without any implication that the characters using it are being ridiculed, as was the case in Every Man Out. In other words, the distinctions that Jonson at one time made between the proper and improper uses of the term are not distinctions that Brome seems to be aware of, though he does, unlike Fletcher and Field, follow a Jonsonian method of characterization in Crosswill. Thus in The.Weeding of Covent Garden. Brome provides a kind of amalgam of the Jonsonian and other uses of the term "hu mour ." In The Sparagus Garden (1635) several characters may be classified as humours characters, depending upon the breadth of definition one is willing to accept. I shall focus my attention on two of them, one rather clearly in the tradi- 101 tion of the Jonson Humour plays and one not at all in that tradition, but rather a character whose motivations are never disclosed, who is perhaps a newly invented type- character. The first is Striker, an old Justice, whose motives for fighting with his adversary, Touchwood, though complicated, sure shown to be at least partly determined by a physiological humour. Although the reasons for his be havior are perhaps not consistent with the general trend of Elizabethan psychology, there is some attempt to explain his behavior rather than merely to present it. The anger he feels toward Touchwood, he says, offers a useful, indeed necessary, purgative, without which his health would fail. After one encounter with Touchwood, he says: I was heart-sicke with a conceit which lay so mingled with my Fleagme that I had perished, if I had not broke it, and made me spit it out; hemh, 'tis gone. . . . His malice works upon me, Past all the drugs and all the Doctors Counsells, That ere I cop'd with: he has been my vexation These thirty ye ares; nor have I had another Ere since my wife dy'd. (II.v[p. 150]) Sir Arnold Cautious, on the other hand, is described as "a stale Batchelor, and a ridiculous lover of women" in the list of Dramatis Personae, but is never explained in terms 102 of humours psychology. He. is really a type-character, seen again most notably in Congreve’s The Old Batchelor. Al though some characters who intend to dupe him talk of his humours, they neither say what the humours are nor how his behavior is affected by them. They say merely: As in every instrument are all tunes to him that has skill to find out the stops, so in every man there are all humours to him that can find their faussets, and draw 'hem out to his purpose. (II.iv[p. 160]) If the notion of the physiological humours is somewhat con fused in the case of Striker, it is lost altogether in the case of Sir Arnold. This dissociation of the term "humour" from its literal sense is as common in The Sparaaus Garden as it is in The Weeding of Covent Garden. For instance, when Money-lacke, "a needy Knight that lives by shifts," has been bleeding (literally and figuratively) the country clown Tim Hoyden, he says to Tim: "How doe you feele . . . after . . . the killing of your grosse humours?" (Ill.vii [p. 167]). Clearly the term "grosse" refers to Hoyden's rustic manner rather than to melancholy, and there is no hint of a pun; the term is simply misapplied. Three comments, one contemporary, two modern, suggest traditional attitudes toward the humours in The Sparaaus Garden. In one of the two commendatory verses attached to 103 29 the play C. G., addressing himself to Brome, says: Nor is thy Laborinth confus'd, but wee In that disorder may proportion see: Thy Hearbs are physicall, and do more good In purging Humors, then some's letting blood. (Dramatic Works, h i , 113) For C. G., then, the question of humours characterization is not a serious one. Perhaps inspired by the incident of Tim Hoyden's blood being let, he felt impelled to draw a paral lel between it and the salutary effect the play might have on an audience. Mina Kerr, more interested in literary heritage and in critical evaluation of the playwright's methods of characterization, says: In choice and execution of comic types Brome shows constantly strong evidence of Jonson's influence. Often we do get tricks and humors rather than persons, but that is true also of Jonson, and some of Brome's humorous characters are original, interesting and distinctive. The finer powers of Jonson in bringing out the subtle individuality of the representative of a type Brome does not possess. (p. 71) In the same vein, C. E. Andrews says: Brome has much more interest in plot itself, in devising and solving intricate situations, than his master, . g . is identified, with some reservations, by C. E. Andrews (Richard Brome [New York, 1913], p. 21) as Charles Gerbier, which identification is accepted, with apparently more reservations, by G. E. Bentley (III, 89). 104 Jonson. He tries to carry out Jonson's principle in characterization, but he never allows his interest in humors to create a play of the type of Every Man in his Humor or Every Man out of his Humor. In fact none of the "Sons of Ben" attempted anything of the sort. . . . Brome cared more for humor-study than any other of the Jonsonian imitators, and succeeded best in it. But his humors are nearly all imitations--stock characters of London life repeated over and over in this late period of the drama. (p. 64) Both Miss Kerr and Andrews would classify Striker and Sir Arnold Cautious as humours characters. Both of them talk of humours characters without making a distinction between kinds. I think that although the distinction becomes some what blurred between the time of Jonson*s Humour plays and the time of Brome, it can still be made, and that to make it is useful as one traces the evolution of the humours charac ter through the seventeenth century. The "other Sons of Ben" sure discussed by Miss Kerr in Chapter IV (pp. 76-119) of her book. I shall discuss only those "Sons" who seem to have been especially indebted to Jonson, and omit such "Sons" as Thomas May, "better known as an historian of the Long Parliament than as a dramatist" (p. 77), and Robert Davenport, who "can hardly be called a 'Son 30 of Ben'" (p. 79). In order to look at one of the "other 30I have also omitted from Miss Kerr * s list of the 105 Sons" with some thoroughness, I shall discuss the three of Thomas Randolph's comedies which are written more or less in the Jonsonian manner (as distinguished from his Hav for Honesty. "a readaptation of Aristophanes' Plutus" [Kerr, p. 80]). Randolph holds, in Miss Kerr's words, "a high place among the 'Sons of Ben'" (p. 80). She goes on to say that "the testimony of contemporaries and the full recognition of debt [to Jonson] from Randolph himself would make us expect to find in his work many evidences of Jonson *s influence" (p. 83). And, furthermore, "It is in the characters with their descriptive names, allegorical significance, and dis tinguishing humors that we trace most surely the influence of Jonson" (pp. 87, 88). She discusses two of Randolph's comedies, the Jealous lovers and The Muses Looking-Glasse. Since her treatise was "Sons": William Cartwright and Jasper Mayne, who wrote imi tations of plays by Jonson rather than plays in the manner of Jonson (pp. 93-103); Henry Glapthorne, whose two comedies consist of elements no better than "a long way from Jonson's vigorous characters, skillfully executed plots and trenchant satire" (p. 106); Sir Aston Cockayne, who had no particular debt to Jonson or his theories (p. 110); William Cavendish, who is usually remembered not as a dramatist, "but as a loyal adherent of the Stuart kings in the Civil War and as a munificent patron of contemporary men of letters" (p. 112); and Sir William Davenant, who is "chiefly known for his part in the development of the Restoration heroic play out of the Fletcherian tragicomedy" (pp. 117-118). 106 written, however, a comedy called The Drinking Academy has been almost certainly identified as being another, and per- 31 haps the first of Randolph's comedies in the Jonsonian manner, though the precise dating is not significant to the concerns of this study. Hyder E. Rollins and Samuel A. Tannenbaum, whose edition of The Drinking Academy appeared in 1930, say: In all his plays Randolph borrowed liberally from Jonson, but in The Drinking Academy his indebtedness is especial ly heavy. His characters "Chaualero" Whiffe and Bidstand derive their names from Every Man out of his Humour (1616 edition, II.vi, IV.v).32 The play, however, is very weak. It is really no more than an anecdote set as a short play (901 lines), and in it there is no real attempt at characterization. Those characters who might be considered the "humours" are a usurious father, who has decided, for no reason that is given in the play, to dote on his foolish son to the extent that the son is in dulged in all of his simple-minded pursuits, one of which is to learn to affect the gentlemanly manners of drinking, 31For a comprehensive discussion of the identification and the dating see Bentley, IV, 977, 978. 32(Cambridge, Mass.), p. xv. Line references sure to this edition. 107 roaring, and wenching. In the last scene of the play (or anecdote) the father and son sore cozened out of their money and clothes by some cony-catchers who are disguised as ghosts, devils, etc. Other than one character's mentioning the "ridiculous doings between a doting father and his hu morous sone" (333, 334), there is nothing in the text to suggest that the play is to be seen as a comedy of humours; in fact the "humours" character, even in the loose sense of the term, would more likely be the father than the son, who has not even yet learned to affect a manner. At the center of the plot of The Jealous Trtvers (1632) are two mis-matched couples. Although one of the young men is said to have a humour of rapidly changing from violent jealousy to abject devotion, the characters who are appar ently most intended to be humours are a doting father and his spendthrift son. These, of course, are lifted from The Drinking Academy. In almost the same language that is used to describe them in that play, a character in The Jealous Lovers says: What incomparable mirth Would such a dotard and his humorous son Make in a comedy, if a learned pen 33 Had the expression! 108 These two characters, though, are merely incidental to the play, introduced not to advance or even to affect the cen tral action, but simply to provide extraneous "incompared)le mirth," and are no more Jonsonian humours in this play than they were in The Drinking Academy. In the third of Randolph's comedies supposed to have been written in the Jonson manner there is a more thorough treatment of humours. The Muses Lookina-Glasse (1630) is largely a parading of pairs of characters who are intended to represent extremes of behavior. There are, for instance, Acolastus, "a voluptuous epicure," and Anaisthetus, "a mere anchorite." The former compares the latter with himself: He cannot see a stock or stone but presently He wishes to be turn'd to one of those. I have another humour: I cannot see A fat, voluptuous sow with full delight Wallow in dirt, but I so wish myself Transformed into that blessed epicure. (II.iii[p. 208]) The framework for this parading of characters is Roscius' Page 161. Page references are to Poetical and Drama tic Works of Thomas Randolph, ed. W. Carew Hazlitt (London, 1875), I. References to The Muses Lookinq-Glasse also are to this edition. 109 explanation of the value of plays to two Puritans. Roscius argues (perhaps sincerely) that plays can teach morality. The Puritans (who, by the way, are shown to be hypocrites who sell feathers and pins to theater patrons) have been complaining about actors making their living by portraying vice, when Roscius replies to them: We live by vice. Indeed 'tis true, As the physicians by diseases do, Only to cure them. . . . . . . Boldly, I dare say, There has been more by us in some one play Laughed into wit and virtue, than hath been By twenty tedious lectures drawn from sin And fopish humours. (I.ii[p. 183]) The pairs of characters then present themselves, explaining through their actions their various dispositions ("humours"). After each pair have spoken they go to look into the Muses Ldoking-Glasse, which shows each in his particular disposi tion, and frightens him out of it. Near the end of the play Roscius explains the origin and the function of the Looking- Glasse: [Apollo] finding every place Fruitful in nothing but fantastic follies And most ridiculous humours, as he is The god of physic, thought it appertain'd To him to find a cure to purge the earth Of ignorance and sin, two grand diseases And now grown epidemical; many receipts 110 He thought upon, as to have planted hellebore In every garden: but none pleas’d like this. He takes out water from the muses' spring, And sends it to the north, there to be freez'd Into a crystal; that being done, he makes A mirror with it, and instils this virtue; That it should by reflection show each man All his deformities, both of soul and body, And cure 'em both— (V.iii[pp. 264, 265]) Terms such as "god of physic," "purge," and "hellebore" certainly imply that "fantastic follies/ And most ridiculous humours" (which may be a tautology) have a physiological basis. My concern here is not whether Randolph takes the implication seriously, but that, like Jonson, in Every Man Out, he provides a divine intervention to cure the "humours" characters, who would otherwise be cured only by physic. Randolph, though, leaves out one significant aspect of characterization that Jonson indicates clearly in Every Man la, and hints at in Every Man Out: that is, the nature of the imbalance of humour of each of the humours characters. Even so, at this late date (1630), Randolph seems, in this play at least, to be closer to the early Jonsonian concept of the humours than is Jonson himself. This, however, is the only play in which Randolph treats the humours characters in (roughly) a Jonsonian man ner, which is just as well. The Muses looking-Glasse is a Ill play with very little dramatic merit. It is episodic, with no particular connections between the episodes. And there is not even any dramatic development within the episodes; they are merely superficial expositions of character, the only conflict being a very mechanical one as pairs of char acters state their opposing points of view. These "humours" characters are, finally, in a sense doubly ineffective: first, because they merely talk about their dispositions and do not exhibit them in action; and second, because they do not utilize the special advantage that humours characters should have— the (Elizabethan) psychological construct which would account for their dispositions. Among the plays of Thomas Nabbes, "the theory of hu mours," says Mina Kerr, "is applied most fully in the char acters of Co vent Garden" (p. 108). This play is indebted to 34 Brome's play of almost the same title, though in the Pro logue, Nabbes protests that " 'tis no borrow'd Straine/ From 35 the invention of anothers braine." Unlike Brome in The Weeding of Covent Garden, however, Nabbes has chosen in this 34See Bentley, IV, 932, 933. 35Page 5. Page references are to The Works of Thomas Nafrfrgg, ed- A- H- Sullen, Old English Plavs. N.S. (London, 1887), I. 112 play to make virtually all of the characters "humours." He does this not by providing a series of characters who pre sent their "humours" (as Randolph does in The Mus*» b Turtleincr- Glasse). but rather by taking "humour" to mean almost any kind of whim or inclination. Throughout the play the char acters refer to the "humours," both of themselves and of others. Some of these follow: (1) Sir Generous Worthy, who has the "humour" of sexual jealousy, is unconvincingly purged of it by being shown his wife pretending to be caught encouraging the advances of another man. Sir Generous then decides to avoid groundless jealousy, and says: "Hence, yee vain jealousies, that in love diseas'd/ Are peccant humours, therefore must be purg'd" (V.ivfp. 83]). (2) Littieword has the "humour" of not talking, saying only one word, "No" (IV.vi[p. 74]), in the entire play. (3) Littleword's anti thesis is Mrs. Tongall, who forever chatters, particularly about her daughter. At one point she notices Littleword writing while she is talking, and says: "Hee is taking a humour for a Play: perhaps my talking of my daughter Iinny" (IV.v[p. 71]). (4) Dorothy, Sir Generous's daughter, has the "humour" of contrariety. (5) Hugh Jerker and his cousin Jeffery are described in the list "The Persons" as, respec tively, "a wilde Gallant" and "a lad of the same humour" 113 [p. 6], (6) Susan, the waiting woman to Sir Generous's wife, has the "humour" of falling in love with the nearest male whenever she has been drinking sack, which is often. Because Nabbes, like Corporal Nym, seems to have no particu lar theory of humours (to contradict Miss Kerr), he is use ful to this study as an example of a playwright whose rather negative contribution to the evolution of the humours is to help confuse the definition of the term. The last of the "other Sons of Ben" I shall discuss is Shaker ly Marmion. In his play The Antiquary (1634-1636), Veterano, the character for whom the play is named, is, as Miss Kerr points out, The most novel of the personages created by Marmion. . . . Veterano has directed all his powers in one direction toward the collection of old manuscripts, and articles of various kinds. This direction of powers is, as one might expect, referred to in the play as Veterano's "humour," though the term is used loosely (one might say indiscriminately) to refer to several characters throughout the first three acts of the 36Pages 92, 93. She notes (p. 92, n. 38) that A. W. Ward (A History of English Dramatic Literature [London, 1899], III, 148) and Schelling (II, 276) make the same ob servation. play. For instance, the doting father and his foolish son (Petrutio) from The Je?in»s Tnyers appear in this play in tact, the father considering his son's attempt to affect a 37 fashion a "humour." Moccinigio, "an old Gentleman that would appear young" ("The Actors Names" [p. 200]), is appar ently intended to be a humours character; he talks of his own "humour," meaning "disposition" (I.[p. 213]). Lionell, the Antiquary's clever nephew, indicates the meaning Marmion probably intended for "humour" when he talks of going dis guised to observe "strange behaviors," especially those of the Antiquary and Petrutio. He says that these two "and indeed, divers others, . . . verify the proverb, So many men, so many humours" (I. [p. 216]). But Marmion is not consistent in this approach; for instance, the literal mean ing of the term creeps in when a lover (Aurelio) talks to his beloved of "nature," Which form'd you of a temper soft as silk: And to the sweet composure of your body, Took not a drop of gall or corrupt humour, But all your blood was clear and purified. (II.[p. 218]) 37I.(p. 205). Page references are to The Dramatic Works of Shakerlv Marmion. ed. James Maidmont and W. H. Logan (Edinburgh, 1875). 115 In addition, Marmion's inconsistent treatment of humours is indicated both by his using the term often in the first three acts and omitting it entirely in the last two, and by his handling of the Antiquary himself. Like parts of the rest of the play, the sub-plot involving Veterano is largely anecdotal. The first of the Veterano anecdotes takes place in the first three acts, and amounts to Lionell (disguised) selling the old man a number of bogus documents, purportedly very old. Much is made of Veterano's fondness beyond all reason for antiquities. At the end of Act III, the Anti quary is told that the Duke intends to appropriate his treasures for the state. He becomes, of course, inconsol ably distressed. In the last two acts, there are two more anecdotes (or, by this time, more precisely jests) with the Antiquary at their center. In the first one his "humour" is related to the jest, but is not central; in the second his "humour" is irrelevant. In the first jest, upon being told that the Duke has decided not to appropriate his goods, he becomes drunk and claims that he is wearing Pompey's breeches, Caesar's hat, and Hannibal's spectacles. The jest depends, mainly, not upon Veterano*s "humour," but upon his ignorance of anachronism. In the second jest, after he has succumbed 116 to drink, he is dressed as a fool. When he awakes, he witlessly demands to be taken before the Duke dressed in the fool's clothing so the Duke can see how badly he has been treated. The shift from presentation of Veterano's humour to mere jest at the end of Act III coincides with the disappearance of the term "humour" from the text. If Marmion was much interested in humours characters, he, like Nabbes, seems not to have been aware of a theory of humours, Jonsonian or otherwise. In addition to the works of those playwrights listed by Mina Kerr as "Sons of Ben," I wish to discuss the treat ment of humours in a play by Shirley and in a play by Jor dan. Miss Kerr includes Shirley in her book (pp. 44-51), but as an "immediate contemporary" of Jonson. Shirley was, however, some six years younger than Richard Brome, and the play of his which I wish to discuss, The Humorous Courtier (1631), is from the same period as the plays by Brome and the other "Sons." Though Miss Kerr does not mention Thomas Jordan, he was interested in humours, and his play The Walks of Islington and Hoasdon (1641) affords an example of a late treatment of humours before the Interregnum. Miss Kerr says of The Humorous Courtier only that Orseolo, "wh'cr gives name to [the play, is] . . . conceived 117 in Jonson's manner" (p. 51). R. W. Forsythe goes farther: In material* structure, and characters [he says] The Humorous Courtier shows the influence of the comedy of humours of thirty years earlier. The central point of The Humorous Courtier is the exposure of folly in vari ous characters, which in one case is absolutely crimi nal.38 The one case that Forsythe is talking about involves the attempt by one character to have a supposed rival killed. In this instance, both the characteristic revealed, and the circumstance in which it is revealed, are not even vaguely Jonsonian. There is, however, no evidence that Shirley in tended them to be. Although many characters in the play use "humour" in a loose sense, there is reason to believe that Shirley had some concern for the literal implications of the term. For instance, one character, in describing Orseolo, says that he is as pleasant As his gall will suffer him; He has been casting of it up this half hour, Yet there is some behind still. If you name A woman, he takes fire like touchwood.38 38The Relations of Shirley's Plavs to the Elizabethan Drama (New York, 1914), p. 279. 38I.i(p. 534). Page references are to Shirley's Drama tic Works, ed. William Gifford, rev. Alexander Dyce (London, 1833), IV. 118 Later in the play, the Duchess of Mantua, talking of some foolish courtiers surrounding her, says: "They are my hu- 40 mours,/ And I must physic them." The Duchess subsequently tells her fiance: "I made secret promise, to bring you/ To a court, purged, and in clear health. Your lords/ Have all ta'en physic from my prescription" (V.iii[p. 609]). The metaphor is consistent. Shirley, like Brome, seems to have taken humour both in a strict and in a loose sense. But, unlike Brome's Striker (The Soaragus Garden), the Humorous Courtier does not have a consistent character. The inconsistency, however, does not necessarily reflect on Shirley's concern with a literal definition of "humour." As it happens, Orseolo's humour is merely a ruse; his seeming abhorrence of women (excess of gall implied) is assumed only to disguise that he is in fact a prodigious lecher. Any extended presentation of the Courtier's humour would, therefore, be pointless. The sig nificant aspect of Shirley's use of "humour," then, is his acknowledgement, however oblique, that humour could determine character. 4®V.iii(p. 600). Gifford mistakenly substitutes "mad" for "my," thereby missing the point of the metaphor. See his note, p. 600. The sub-title of Jordan's The Walks of Islington and Hogs don is With the Humours of Woodstreet-Compter. "Hu mours" in this case refers simply to some people who are locked up in the "Hole," a section of the Compter. The portion of the play these inmates appear in is, however, very small; they are onstage for only one part of the second 41 scene of Act IV. Their "humours" seem to be that they drink and revel, which is to say that they are not humours characters at all. This lax use of the term recurs in the Dramatis Personae, in which the character Flylove is de scribed as "A Humorist" (sig. A2v), though the nature of his humour is never made clear. He would be more accurately described as a "wild gallant." The term "humour" as Jordan uses it, both here and in referring to action in the play, has no precise meaning: it can apparently refer to any character or characteristic. Two lines in the Epilogue suggest the same thing. The character who speaks the Epi logue says to the audience: "If [the poet's] dull Humours please not, we implore,/ That you'l go all toth1 Compter and see more" (sig. H4). Jordan, like Marmion and Nabbes (who 4^(1657). The play has not been reprinted since the seventeenth century. 120 also would call a wild gallant a "humourist"), seems to have been either ignorant of or unconcerned with a theory of humours, though like both of them he uses the term often. Though there is apparently no theory of humours opera tive in the works of these three playwrights, theories more or less Jonsonian did affect plays of the other writers considered in this chapter, whether they were satirized, as in Shakespeare, imitated with little intelligence and less success, as in Every Woman in Her Humour, or merely modified to suit the playwright's convenience, as seems generally to have been the case. Thus the evolution of the humours char acter before the Interregnum was largely a haphazard affair. Jonson's interest in a literal interpretation of humours seems to have been pedantic and transitory. Jonson sought to show what humours really were, drew a good deal of atten tion to his argument, and then, along with virtually every playwright who mentioned humours, abandoned or ignored what he had set out to prove in the first place. The literal use of "humour" in his first plays is not to be found in his later plays. Thus in The Magnetic Ladv Jonson uses "humour" to mean "manner" or "character," exactly the loose meaning of the term he depreciated in satirical passages in Every Man In and in the Induction to Every Man Out. The "Sons of Ben" and others who followed him used the term in even a looser sense. Randolph, for instance, took it to mean almost any kind of whim or inclination; Jordan seems not to have had a definition in mind. Jonson's contempor aries and followers seem mostly to have benefited from his introduction into comedy of eccentric characters which, because they were not "types" in the classical sense, seemed to offer the possibility of almost endless varia tion. It is ironic that often, as distinctions became blurred, the characters who acted from "subjective necessi ty" (in the words of Miss Brinkley [see note 23]) were re placed by those who acted from "objective necessity." Many humours characters became in fact type characters. By the time of the Interregnum, humours characters, in the early Jonsonian sense, were almost nowhere to be found. CHAPTER V THEORIES OF HUMOURS IN THE RESTORATION Shortly after the reopening of the theaters in 1660 there was a rush of literary criticism, much of it concerned with the drama. Playwrights who might in the 1590's have followed, but not elaborated on, theories which Jonson, for example, had posited, began themselves to explain what they were doing and what others had done before them,1 and, as never before in the English drama, gave critical evaluations 1J. W. H. Atkins (English _Li ter arv Criticism-. 17th and 18th Centuries [London, 1951], pp. 48-49) points out that "The drama . . . gave rise to much critical discussion . . . as a result of the reopening of the theatres in 1660 after a break of some eighteen years. In the conviction that a new era had dawned for the stage, which, so it was stated, had 'stood at a stand this many years,' more than one of the contemporary dramatists raised urgent questions relating to the dramatic art. Were English or French traditions, for instance, to be followed under the new conditions? Was blank verse or rhyme the more appropriate medium for dramat ic expression? Or again, what about comedy, and what was to be said for the recent introduction of scenery on to the stage? ... A new phase of dramatic criticism was inaugur ated ." See also £HEL, VII, Chap. 11 (pp. 259-275). 122 123 of their own works and acknowledgment of their literary heritage. In their discussion of characterization, these playwrights (and a few other critics as well) had much to say about the role of the humours character. Generally speaking, the commentators on humours characters belong to two schools: those who used the term in a strict sense, associating humours with kinds of compulsive behavior; and those who used it in a loose sense, allowing that humours included affectations. The latter sense is, of course, much the same as the one Jonson satirized in Every Man Out. The strict sense differs from Jonson's in that it contains dis tinguishable categories, which Jonson did not explicitly acknowledge, and which cannot be imposed upon his notions. However, they^can be imposed upon the notions of later critics, who saw in humour some measure of physiological- psychological development of character. For purposes of this chapter, I shall need to make a distinction between these two terms. What the Elizabethan psychologists would have considered a basis of character, the four humours of the body, I shall call "physiological"; I shall use "psycho logical" to describe basis for behavior which is neither affectation nor a product of physiological humours, a kind of "bias of mind." In addition, there were critics who used 124 "humour" to mean the equivalent of "character," having either or both (the distinction not being important) psycho logical or physiological bases. Pervading almost all discussions of the nature of hu mour there is an interest in humour as opposed to wit, which is generally considered to be superficial, at least as far as characterization is concerned. John Dennis's distinction between the two terms is typical of those holding that hu mour is superior to wit in coiqedy. He feels that humour is a part of character because it is "a sort of Passion." Wit is a function of reason, not of character; therefore, he says, "the more education a man has, the more he is capable of subduing, or at least 'of hiding his Passion and his Hu mours." Dennis is willing, though, to admit the possibili ty, however remote, of humour being shown in characters of high station (high education implied): "[Wycherley must] be allowed to be almost the only person who has given the World a Masterpiece, in which a great deal of Humour is shown in 2 high Characters." Contemporary critics who disagreed with Dennis would, for the most part, not question his assigning 2A Large Account of the Taste in Poetry (1702), in Critical Works of John Dennis r ed. E. N. Hooker (Baltimore, 1939), I, 283. 125 3 humour to "low characters" and wit to "high characters," but rather to his choice of characters appropriate to the stage. Dryden, for instance, contends: For humour itself, the poets of this age will be more wary than to imitate the meanness of [Jonson1 s] persons. Gentlemen will now be entertained with the follies of each other; and, though they allow Cobb and Tib to speak properly, yet they are not much pleased with their tank ard or with their rags. And surely their conversation can be no jest to them in the theatre, when they would avoid it in the street.4 Those who thought that, for comedy, humour is more appropri ate than wit gradually took "humour" to be the equivalent of "character." They lost interest in the term as distinguish ing a cause of eccentricity and finally even as a descrip tion of eccentricity. This will be noticed somewhat in the way the term is defined in contemporary dictionaries, but more clearly in the way it comes generally to be associated with particularly British behavior. An exception to the humour versus wit mode of argument A concise discussion of the distinctions between hu mour and wit may be found in Hooker' s explanatory notes to Dennis's Critical Works. I, 493-494. See also B. M. Haz- zard, "The Theory of Comedy in the Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century," unpub. diss. (Northwestern Univ., 1957), pp. 148-150. 4"Defence of the Epilogue" (1672) in Essavs of John Drvden. ed. W. P. Ker (Oxford, 1900), I, 177. 126 is found in Congreve's letter to John Dennis, "Concerning Humour in Comedy" (1695). Congreve states a literal defi nition of humour, and finds that it is not incompatible with wit. Because each character has some kind of humour, he says, The manner of Wit should be adapted to the Humour. As, for Instance, a Character of a Splenetick and Peevish Humour should have a Satyrical Wit. A Jolly and San guine Humour should have a Facetious Wit. The Former should speak Positively; the Latter, Carelessly: For the former Observes and shews things as they are; the latter rather overlooks Nature, and speaks things as he would have them, and his Wit and Humour have both of them a less Alloy of Judgment than the others.5 The humour-vs.-wit controversy, except in Congreve's contribution to it, has little to do with definitions of what a humours character should be; I shall, therefore, not pursue it. My attention will be focused rather on defini tions of "humour" and, in the following chapters, on the roles humours characters played in the Restoration comedy. One additional consideration, however, should be kept in mind. J. E. Spingarn notices the effects of the arguments about humour and wit on the definition of the former. He says that "Restoration wit, in [the] form especially of 5In Critical Essavs of the Seventeenth Century, ed. J. E. Spingarn, III (1909), 243-244. 127 'sheer wit' or 'repartee,' clashed with the tradition of the g Jonsonian 'humours.'" He then describes the evolution of the term from its literal sense to the sense of "singularity of character," and finally to the sense of "the keen per ception, or the unconscious expression, of the odd and in congruous" (p. lxii), in Spingarn*s view, the modern defi nition of the term. Contemporary dictionaries, though far from confirming Spingarn*s notions, reflect to some extent the shifting definitions of the term. Wheatley lists eleven dictionaries between 1656 (the first dictionary since 1623) and 1708 7 (with no others listed until 1721) . One of these (A New English Dictionary [1691]) is merely a revision of an ear lier dictionary (Gazophvlacium Anqlicanum [1689]). Both of these, by anonymous compilers, offer a definition of "hu mour" which is simply a translation from the Latin of Stephen Skinner's Etvmoloqicon Linguae Analicanae (1669), though Wheatley gives no indication that all their defini tions were translations from Skinner (p. 239). Two of the ^Xntrod., Critical Essavs of the Seventeenth Century. I (1908), lviii. 7"Chronological Notices," p. 288. 128 dictionaries I have not been able to examine: J. K.'s & New English Dictionary (1702), and John Kersey's Dictionar- ium Anglo-Britanium (1708) (neither is listed in Wing, al though both are in The British Museum Catalog). In his Glossographia (1656), Thomas Blount says merely that "humour" is "moisture, water, juice or sap." Edward Cocker's English Dictionary (1704) does not have an entry for "humour" itself, but does have one for "humours in the body," the definition of which is merely "sanguine, choler- ick, phlegmatick, and melancholy." Going somewhat beyond Blount and Cocker are three dictionaries which have roughly the same definition for "humour"; it is: "Moisture, also a mans phansy or disposition. The Pour predominate humours in 8 a mans body are blood, choler, flegme, and melancholy." William Lloyd's dictionary, in Wheatley's words (p. 236), "a kind of Index" to Bishop John Wilkins' An Essav Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (1668), offers this laconic (and somewhat obscure) definition. Humor Liquor, [Adj. a. Moistness (thing] Q °This is from Edward Phillips's The New World of Eng lish Words (1658). The other two dictionaries are Elisha Coles's An English Dictionary (1676) and, by an anonymous compiler, Glossographia Anglicana Nova (1707). 129 Temper of mind. [a. Complacence (end.] [a. Conceitedness] With the exception of Skinner's dictionary (and the two which follow his definition for "humour"), all that list the word "humourist" give almost precisely the same definition 9 for it. The following are Cocker's words: "Humorist or Humersome, fantastick, full of odd Fancies, obstinate, that will have his own way or humour, right or wrong." Because it represents by feu: the most complete defini tion of "humour" to be found in the contemporary diction aries, I shall include here the translation from Skinner. Humour, from the Fr. G. Humeur. or the Ital. Humore: by interpretation, the natural inclination, or temper of mind; but it rather signifies an habit of acting according to the appetite, or some irregular affecta tion, than according to reason; all from the Lat. Humor, an humour in the body; because such an habit is thought to proceed from the predominacy of some corporeal humour: From hence the Ital. Humorista. an Humourist; he that acteth wholly according to his own passions. Although Skinner is apparently reluctant to do so, he does acknowledge a kind of "psychological" sense of "humour", as well as the "physiological" sense. Thus this excellent 9The dictionaries are those of Phillips, Lloyd, Coles, Cocker, and the anonymous compiler of Glossoaraphia (1707). 130 definition suggests clearly much of the change that "humour1 ' had undergone by 1669; it does not, of course, include the change to which Spingarn alludes. That later change is the object of rather lengthy discussions by Louis Cazamian in his The Development of English Humor.10 He points out that "before 1660 no single use of the word humor is to be found in which the modern sense can be safely read" (p. 393). Cazamian's distinction between the older and the newer uses of the term is a useful one. He says: One may apply the epithets "objective" or "passive" to the Jonsonian use of "humor," as the word denoted a mode of being which is unconscious of itself, and is perceived as a fact by persons other than the one who harbors it. Conversely, it seems legitimate to call the modern sense "subjective," as everything here hangs upon the sly in tention of a conscious mind; and as the perception and enjoyment of that intent by other persons actualizes a virtual energy of significance, raising it to its full value. If as much is granted, the whole process can be summed up by saying that the objective sense gradually shaded off into the subjective one.^ 10Pages 318-330, 387-407. ^Pages 320-321. Miss Brinkley's "subjective neces sity" and "objective necessity" (see p. 94, n. 23) are noth ing like Cazamian1s terms. For her "subjective necessity" suggests that a character is "round," that he acts for rea sons inherent in his temperament. "Objective necessity" suggests that he is "flat," that there are no implications in his character not determined by his role in the play. 131 He sees the distinction between the two being made clearer only as late as 1744, by Corbyn Morris, in his Essav towards fixing the true standards of Wit. Humour. Railerv. Satire and Ridicule. That is to say, during the period considered in this study, though the modern sense of the term was be- 12 ginnning to appear, the older sense, however modified, was predominant. Both the greatest critic of the Restoration and, curi ously enough, the playwright who claimed more than any other to be a follower of Ben Jonson, relied upon a very loose definition of "humour," a definition that was virtually the same as the one Jonson was satirizing in Every Man Out. Dryden, in 1668, says that "humour is the ridiculous extra vagance of conversation, wherein one man differs from all 13 others." And Shadwell, three years later, implies that humours are "the affected vanities and artificial fopperies 14 of men." These were not the only definitions that Dryden and Shadwell used; however, they do indicate the breadth of definition both men were willing to accept. ^The OED lists the first use of it in 1682. l3"An Essay of Dramatic Poesy," Ker, I, 84. 14Preface to The Humorists, in Spingarn, 11(1908), 154. 132 As Dryden expands on the definition just quoted, he says: Among the English . . . by humour is meant some extra vagant habit, passion, or affection, particular . . . to some one person, by the oddness of which, he is im mediately distinguished from the rest of men; which being lively and naturally represented, most frequently begets that malicious pleasure in the audience which is testified by laughter; as all things which are deviations from common customs are ever the aptest to produce it: though by the way this laughter is only accidental, as the person represented is fantastic or bizarre; but pleasure is essential to it, as the imitation of what is natural. The description of these humours, drawn from the knowledge and observation of particular persons, was the peculiar genius and talent of Ben Jonson. (Ker, I, 85-86) In this larger treatment Dryden seems to acknowledge that humour is caused by something deeper than a "ridiculous extravagance of conversation," but he seems never to have concerned himself with distinctions for the term that Jonson at one time made, or even with the distinctions that some of his fellow critics made. When three years after the Essav. Dryden argues the respective values of comedy and farce, he uses "humour" to mean either natural characteristics "to be found and met with in the world" (in comedy), or unnatural characteristics (in farce). "Comedy," he says, "presents us with the imperfections of human nature: Farce entertains us 133 15 with what is monstrous and chimerical." And "humours" would be used to describe the characters in either, though "natural" would modify it in the first case, and "forced" modify it in the second. Roughly the same definition is implied in his "Defence of the Epilogue" when he warns con temporary playwrights about Jonson's place as an innovator: "for humour itself, the poets of this age will be more wary than to imitate the meanness of his persons" (Ker, I, 177). In the Preface to Troilus and Cressida (1679), his casual definition of "humour (which is an inclination to this or that particular folly)" (Ker, I, 215), is almost precisely the definition that Jonson was satirizing in Every Man Out. Shadwell in his preface to The Sullen tovars (1668) first presents his notion that "in plays of Humour, where there are so many Characters as there sore in (The Sullen tflwrs 1 1 1 it is more important to expose the humours than to construct an intricate plot. Indeed, he contends, the two considerations are naturally exclusive, and he commends him self for not taking the easier of two routes: "it would have been easier to me to have made a Plott then to hold up the Humour" (Spingarn, II, 149). When in the Preface to 15Preface to An Evening's Love, in Ker, I, 135, 136. 134 The Humorists. two years later, he says, "my design was in it to reprehend some of the Vices and Follies of the Age" (Spingarn, II, 153), one can imagine that Shadwell in his harking back to Jonson was not unaware of those "Sons of Ben" who, like Randolph especially, made an entire play from the parading of the "Vices and Follies of the Age." Shadwell*s implication that "humour" amounts to the "affect ed vanities and artificial fopperies of men" is later modi fied in this Preface when he says that "humors [are] . . . not onely the follies but vices and subtleties of men" (p. 159), and at the end of the Preface he says: in all the Play I have gone according to that definition of humor which I have given . . . in my Eoiloque. in these words: A Humor is the Biasse of the Mind. Bv whichr with violencer 1tis one wav inclin'd: It makes our actions lean on one side still. And, in all Changes, that wav bends the Will. (p. 162) This, of course, is virtually a paraphrase of part of Jon- son's dictum in the Induction to Every Man Out. Shadwell apparently saw no conflict between this and the other part of that dictum, which Asper voiced, saying: A rooke, in wearing a pyed feather, The cable hat-band, or in the Switzers knot On his French garters, should affect a Humour! 0, 'tis more then most ridiculous. CORD[atus]. He speaks pure truth now, if an Idiot 135 Haue but an apish, or a phantasticke straine, It is his Humor. (111-117) Thus, the fundamental distinction that Jonson made seems to have been lost on Shadwell. He was more interested in creating original "humours characters," whatever their moti vations might be, than in being precise about the nature of those motivations. Though he says that "a humour, being the representative of some extravagance of Mankind, cannot but in some thing resemble some man or other" (p. 157), this nod to verisimilitude is not founded on an attempt to understand the psychology of the character. And thus his proudest boast for The Humorist does not have to do with the convincing nature of the characters but with their originality in the play, which he says, is wholly my own, without borrowing a tittle from any man; which I confess is too bold an attempt for so young a Writer; for let it seem what it will, a Comedy of hu mor that is not borrowed is the hardest thing to write well, and a way of writing of which a man can never be certain. (p. 161) Five years later, talking of his comedy The Virtuoso, Shadwell seems to have embraced entirely "bias of mind" as a basis of humours characterization, to the exclusion of "affected vanities and artificial fopperies of men," though the originality of the "humour" is still foremost in his mind. In the dedication to that play he says: 136 Four of the Humors are entirely new; and (without vanity) I may say, I ne'er produc'd a Comedy that had not some natural Humour in it not represented before, nor I hope ever shall. Nor do I count those Humours as great many do, that is to say, such as consist in using one or two By words; or in having a fantastick, extravagant Dress, as many pretended Humours have; nor in the affectation of some French words, which several Plays have shown us. I say nothing of impossible, unnatural Farce Fools, which some intend for Comical, who think it the easiest thing in the World to write a Comedy, and yet will sooner grow rich upon their ill Plays, than write a good one: Nor is downright silly folly a Humour, as some take it to be, for 'tis a meer natural Imperfection; and they might as well call it a humour of Blindness in a blind man, or lameness in a lame one: or, as a celebrated French Farce has the humour of one who speaks very fast, and of an other who speaks very slow: But Natural imperfections are not fit Subjects for Comedy, since they are not to be laugh'd at, but pitied. But the Artificial folly of those, who are not Coxcombs by nature, but with great Art and Industry make themselves so, is a proper object of Comedy, as I have discoursed at large in the Preface to the Humorists, written five years since. Those slight circumstantial things mentioned before, are not enough to make a good Comical Humour; which ought to be such an affectation, as misguides men in Knowledge, Art, or Sci ence, or that causes defection in Manners, and Morality, or perverts their minds in the main Actions of their Lives. And this kind of Humour, I think, I have not im properly described in the Epilogue to the Humorists.16 Shadwell apparently thinks that certain affectation in a character should be construed as humours; it is where the affectation seems artificially to be supplied by the 16In The Complete Works of Thomas Shadwell. ed. Monta gue Summers (London, 1927), III, 101-102. 137 playwright (of which Shadwell would be judge) or where the natural bent of the character admits of no affectation 17 ("downright silly folly") that humour is excluded. This argument is sufficiently confused that E. N. Hooker, divid ing the Restoration notions of humour into two schools, feels impelled to put Shadwell in both of them, based on his 18 comments in the Preface to The Humorists. Hooker's two schools are the same as those 1 suggested on pp. 123-124, the one using "humour" in a strict sense (implying a physiological-psychological basis for behavior), ^ S h a d w e l l continues this line of reasoning as late as 1689, in the Prologue to Burv Fair (Works. IV, 296). Lang- baine, who was much interested in discovering all kinds of borrowings and plagiarism, says of Bury Fairs "How diffi cult it is for Poets to find a continual Supply of new Hu mour, this Poet has sufficiently shew'd in his Prologue. . . . Thus the character of La Roche, tho' first drawn by HallifiCfi., in Les Precieuses ridicules, and afterwards copy'd by Sir W. D'Avenant. Mr. Betterton, and Mrs. Behn. yet in this Play has more taking Air than in any other Play, and there is something in his Jargon, more diverting than in the Original it self." (Gerard Langbaine, An Account of the English Dramati.ck Poets [Oxford, 1691], p. 445.) Langbaine, like Shadwell, seems to be either not able or not interested in distinguishing between type and humours characters. ^Explanatory Notes, The Critical Works of John Dennis. I, 495. Shadwell is not, of course, the only one to ignore distinctions that would be convenient for the modern critic. As Hooker says, "The schools are not sharply distinguished; few critics thought clearly enough about the matter to make a final and conclusive decision." 138 the other in a loose sense (implying, perhaps, no more than an affectation). No other writer seems to have adopted his own distinct definition of "humour" as did Shadwell, and it is largely to account for him that I divided the term, as used in the strict sense, into those three categories: (1) a "subordinate passion" (physiological basis); (2) a "bias of mind" (psychological basis); (3) the equivalent of "character" (either or both physiological or psychological bases) . Hooker seems impelled to put Shadwell in both "schools" because of the apparently arbitrary way Shadwell uses the phrase "bias of mind." The notion that this implies has little currency during the Restoration; the most important reason for distinguishing psychological from physiological bases for humour is to explain Shadwell's unique position. Although several writers come close to agreeing with Shad well about the significance of "bias of mind," their con cern is not with the relation of psychological impulse to affectation, but with a general English predilection for eccentricity. Because this concern is examined in some detail below, I shall give at this point merely one illus- 139 19 tration of the position. In Guardian number 144, Steele provides a clear, succinct summary: There is scarce an Englishman of any life and Spirit that has not some odd Cast of thought, some Original Humour, that distinguishes him from his Neighbor. Hence it is that our Comedies are enriched with such a diversity of Characters, as is not to be seen upon an other theatre in Europe. Congreve discounts Shadwell's position, but stands apart from others who see a physiological basis for humours. More than any other Restoration commentator, Congreve, in his letter to Dennis, defined humours from a medical point of view, much as Jonson had done in his strictest definition 20 of the term. Congreve is careful to point out the direct connection between traits and their causes: Characters of Humour [are] distinguish'd by the Particu lar and Different Humours appropriated to the several Persons represented, and which naturally arise from the different Constitutions, Complexions, and Dispositions of Men. The saying of Humorous things does not distin guish Characters. (p. 243) He discusses how humour is different not only from wit, but also from folly, personal defect, external habit of body, ^Wednesday, August 26, 1713. 20e . N. Hooker says of this letter: "I know of no other comment on the subject in Dennis' time [which is ] so clear" (I, 495). 140 and affectation. To the last two of this list he gives special attention, because their "distinctions are the Nicest" (p. 246). Of external habit he says: I cannot think that a Humour which is only a Habit or Disposition contracted by Use of Custom; for by Disuse, or Complyance with other Customs, it may be worn off or diversify'd. (p. 245) And he says that affectation and humour 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; and nothing is more common than for some to affect particular ways of say ing and doing things, peculiar to others whom they admire and would imitate. Humour is the Life, Affec tation the Picture. He that draws a Character of Af fectation shews Humour at the Second Hand; he at best publishes a Translation, and his Pictures are but Copies. (pp. 245-246) In summary, the distinctions he makes are these: Humour is from Nature, Habit from Custom, and Affecta tion from Industry Humour shews us as we are. Habit shews us as we appear under a forcible Impres sion. Affectation shews what we would be under a Voluntary Disguise. An example of one he takes to be a genuine "Character of Humour" is Morose, who is "a Man Naturally Splenetick and Melancholy" (p. 246). Later, pursuing the same literal concept of the humours, he says: 141 Mens Humours may be opposed when there is really no specific Difference between them, only a greater pro portion of the same in one than t’other, occasion'd by his having more Flegm, or Choller, or whatever the Constitution is from whence their Humours derive their Source. (p. 251) This, so far as I have been able to discover, is the only Restoration treatise in which the humours are treated lit- 21 erally, though several other critics do acknowledge a physiological basis for humour, calling it a "subordinate passion." This position is most clearly stated by Dennis in his A Large Account of the Taste in Poetry. Although the main thrust of his argument is toward showing that humour is to / be preferred to wit in comedy, he does give a rather full explanation of what he considers humour in a character to mean. By way of introduction, he says "that which is truly ridiculous in any man is chiefly Humour, or the effect of Humour," and "Humour is Passion" or "subordinate Passion," or "a sort of Passion" (I, 282, 283). Dennis then expands upon this thesis, explaining more fully the definitions he 21in his "character" of "A Humourist," Samuel Butler, merely in passing, states: "Humour is but a Crookedness of the Mind, a disproportioned Swelling of the Brain, that draws the Nourishment from the other Parts, to stuff an ugly and deformed Crup-Shoulder." (The Genuine Remains [London, 1759], II, 325.) 142 sees for the terms: To every Passion there is a Humour which answers to it, which Humour is nothing but a less degree of that Pas sion. As for example, Anger is a Passion, Peevishness and Moroseness are Humours, Joy when it is great is a Passion, Jollity and Gayety perhaps may be said to be Humours, so that if any man asks for a description of Humour, I answer that 'tis the expression of some sub ordinate Passion. But if he asks for a full definition of it, by which we may distinguish Humour in one man from Humour in another man: I answer that Humour is subordinate Passion expressed in a particular manner. Fear is a Passion, Timorousness is a Humour. Now since Humour comprehends all Passions, it must have infinite ly more variety than a single Passion, (p. 284) That he intends "passion" and "humour" to have some kind of connection with physiological impulse is evident from his statement that reason is a calm and quiet thing, and has nothing to do with the Body, only passion and Humour can reach the Body, and by the influence which they have upon the voice, and the Gestures, sensibly distinguish one char acter from another. (p. 283) This, of course, comes very close to being the kind of dis tinction that Jonson suggested for the humours in the In- 22 duction to Every Man Out. Although he is writing at a somewhat later date, 22This point is implied by C. B. Graham, "The Jonsonian Tradition in the Comedies of John Dennis," Modern Language Notes. LVI (May 1941), 371. 143 Charles Gildon's remarks on the nature of humour are based largely on those of critics of the last part of the seven teenth century. He says, for instance: "humour is the main thing in Comedy, especially English comedy. Mr. Congreve 23 and Sir William Temple make it of English growth." Gil- don, like Dennis, considers humour to be a subordinate pas sion. But unlike Dennis he chooses to interpret subordinate as meaning "inferior." Thus, in his view, the most valuable and entertaining humour is not without a mixture of some of the pass ions: every passion (as I have elsewhere observed) has two faces, one serious and the other ridiculous; the serious is appropriated to Tragedy, the ridiculous to Comedy. An example will make this plainer: . . . Let any one read but the first scene of the Alchvmist. and he will find that the anger [which would be "terrible" in tragedy] between Face and Subtle is perfectly ridiculous; the same may be said of joy and the other passions.24 He does distinguish humour from affectation, which "is like wise thought to be fit for Comedy. as having a great deal of the Ridiculous in it" fComplete Art. I, 265). It must be admitted, however, that Gildon's statements are not especi ally clear and that he is sometimes confused about the very 23The Laws of Poetry (London, 1721), p. 251. ^4Page 252. The "elsewhere observed" refers to The Complete Art of Poetry (London, 1718), I, 265. 144 works on which he bases his arguments. He says, for in stance: so great a master of the comic genius, as Mr. Congreve. will not, in his letter to Mr. Dennis on [humour] pre tend to give any definition of it, but on the contrary declares all such definitions to be impracticable. (Laws of Poetrv. p. 251) Whatever Congreve will or will not pretend, however, his is the only thorough discussion of "humour," and the only sub stantial definition of it by an essayist of the period, which Gildon overlooks. Gildon does reflect the rather complete change of definition "humour" had undergone by the first generation after Congreve's letter to Dennis. E. N. Hooker points out that the new comedy [after Congreve] was no longer to cackle or sneer at the defects, follies, or vices of human beings. . . . During the Age of Pope the word humour came to be used frequently as a synonym for prevailing taste or fashion. ... That humour as imitation and affectation should be ridiculous, while humour as particular inclination, in dividual uniqueness, or even individual eccentricity should be held above ridicule, will surprise nobody who has read widely in the age of Pope. There were several strong forces at work to strengthen belief in the 145 25 sacredness of Everyman's natural bent and temper. The change in attitude that Hooker is concerned with is adumbrated in an essay by Sir William Temple in 1690. Temple acknowledges the presence of physiological causes for humour, but he also sets forth a theory in which humour is seen both as a bias of the mind and as a result of a com-* bination of climatic and racial conditions. His notions thus fit, to some extent, into all three categories which I arbitrarily designated on p. 138. The following excerpt is from his "Of Poetry": Our country must be contest to be what a great Foreign Physition called it, The Region of Spleen, which may arise a good deal from the great uncertainty and many suddain Changes in our Weather in all Seasons of the Year. And how much these Affect Heads and Hearts, es pecially of the finest Tempers, is hard to be Believed by Men whose Thoughts are not turned to such Specula tions. This makes us unequal in our Humours, inconstant in our Passions, uncertain in our Ends, and even in our Desires. . . . What Effect soever such a Composition or Medly of Humours among us may have upon our Lives or our Government, it must needs have a good one upon our Stage, and had given admirable Play to our Comical Wits: So that in my Opinion there is no Vein of that sort, either Antient or Modern, which Excels or Equals the Humour of our Plays.26 25"Humour in the Age of Pope," Huntington Library Quarterly. XX (August 1948), 368, 371-373. 26ln Spingarn, III, 105-106. 146 Thus Temple suggests a kind of synthesis of the physiologi cal and psychological concepts of humour, and provides a background for the considering of "humour" as being equiva lent to "character/1 English character in particular. Two of the major comic writers of the Restoration, Vanbrugh and Farquhar, apparently base their notions of humour on this premise. Vanbrugh alludes to humours only briefly. In his "A Short Vindication of the Relapse and the Provok'd Wife" (1698), he argues that some of the minor characters in the former play were designed more to divert the Audience, by something particular and whimsical in their Humours, than to instruct 'em in any thing that may be drawn from their Morals; though several useful things may in passing be pickt up from 'em too.27 This suggests that "humours" means nothing more specific than "natures," or perhaps "morals," of characters, which also is what Vanbrugh's characters mean by the term when they use it in the play. In his "A Discourse upon Comedy" (1702), George Farqu- har is primarily interested in showing why English comedy must spring from the English soil and from the present time. 27In The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh, ed. Bonamy Dobree and Geoffrey Webb (London, 1927), I, 210. 147 As he touches upon humour in this essay, he acknowledges the physiological sense of the term, but mostly he takes it in the manner Hooker has suggested, of being a synonym for character, not only as applied to the persons in the play, but to those in the audience as well. The Forms of Eloquence are divers [he says], and ought to be suited to the different Humour and Capacities of an Audience; . . . the fiery Cholerick Humour of one Nation must be entertain'd and mov'd by other Means than the heavy flegmatick Complexion of another.^8 Like Temple, Farquhar argues for the great diversity of English humours. We have the most unaccountable Medlev of Humours among us of anv Nation upon Earth. ... We shall find a Wildair in one Corner, and a Morose in another; nay, the space of an Hour or two shall create such Vicissi tudes of Temper in the same Person, that he can hardly be taken for the same Man. We shall have a Fellow be stir his Stumps from Chocolate to Coffee-House with all the Joy and Gayety imaginable, tho he want a Shilling to pay for a Hack; whilst another drawn about in a Coach and Six, is eaten up with the Spleen, and shall loll in State, with as much Melancholy, Vexation, and Discontent, as if he were making the Tour of Tvburn. Then what sort of DuIcer (which I take for the Pleasantry of the Tale; or the Plot of the Play) must a Man make use of to en gage the Attention of so many different Humours and In clinations? (pp. 337-338) The purpose of Farquhar's apparent distinction between 28In The Complete Works of George Farouhar. ed. Charles Stonehill (London, 1930), II, 333. 148 "humours" and "inclinations" is not clear, but the tenor of his statement is. He suggests that humour . i s . character, and therefore focuses attention on the differences in persons and ignores almost entirely the reasons for those differen ces . By 1727 humour was so much identified with character in general that Leonard Welsted could say in the Prologue to The Dissembled Wantons In Britain, not 'till fam'd Eliza's Age, The humorous Muse adventure'd on the Stage, By Shakespeare's Master-hand adopted there, (So much the Poet borrow'd of the Player.) Fluellin. Shallow, how they touch the Soul And Falstaff'. that inimitable Droll'. Shadwell, at Distance, the great Model views, And with unequal Steps his Sire pursues.*^ The very curious mistake that Welsted seems to make might be explained by assuming that Jonson was universally known to be Shadwell's model. Whether or not this is the case, for Welsted "humours" seems clearly to imply the "natural" pre sentation of a "natural" character, and as Temple suggested almost forty years earlier, almost certainly a British char acter. This is the notion that continued through the eighteenth century. A statement that Stuart M. Tave makes ^(London), sig. A4. v 149 about Falstaff indicates the way the concept of humour changed: Falstaff entered the eighteenth century a fat parcel of gross humors--a cowardly, lying, gluttonous buffoon --and departed an entirely lovable old rogue— a coura geous, honest, trim-figured philosopher.3° Tave sees this change in concept as a function of the English tradition that developed rapidly and with great strength from the end of the seventeenth century, a tradition complex in origin and expression but one that may be described in outline as empirical, liberal and expansive, scientific, democratic and commercial, one that emphasized variety and the individual rather than conformity and the class. . . . The wilful singu larity of the humorist, which throughout the seventeenth century, from Jonson to Shadwell, had been a target for the satirist, offensive aberration that called for whips of steel, became the recognized birthright of every Englishman. (p. 103) The Jonsonian humours, that is, became lost entirely. 30"Corbyn Morris: Falstaff, Humor, and Comic Theory in the Eighteenth Century," Modern Philology. L (November 1952), 102. CHAPTER VI SHADWELL, DRYDEN, ETHEREGE, AND WYCHERLEY In this and the following chapter I shall consider all of the original comedies of the five major comic playwrights of the period 1660-1707,^ those discussed by John Palmer in 2 his seminal work The Comedy of Manners. Palmer intends his title to describe the essence of an entire period of comedy rather than simply a kind of comedy which happened to have appeared during a conveniently definable period. He says: All that is of permanent importance in this story of ^That is, from the reopening of the theaters to The Beaux * Stratagem. Farquhar’s last comedy. Though the cri teria for choosing plays to be discussed are subject to slight variation with different playwrights, generally I shall discuss only those plays that are comedies (as dis tinguished from farces), and those that are original compo sitions (as distinguished from adaptations). ^London, 1913. As Thomas Fujimura says: "Following the publication of Palmer's Comedy of Mannersr . . . there developed a fairly consistent position which is now the mainstay of apologists for Restoration Comedy." (The Res toration Comedy of Wit [Princeton, 1952], p. 3.) 150 151 the rise and fall of English Comedy may be studied in the lives and plays of . . . five principal dramatists. (P. 3) Whether this is entirely accurate does not concern me here; I shall, however, by way of introduction, discuss two play wrights he omits: Dryden and Shadwell. Both are associated with humours characters because of their rather extended discussions of humours, and Shadwell, in addition, is gen erally considered more than any other playwright to have been writing in the tradition of Jonson. In this chapter, then, I shall discuss Dryden and Shadwell, along with Etherege and Wycherley, of Palmer's five comic writers the only two who can "be said to belong to the period of the Restoration" (p. 3), the two, that is, who were active be fore 1668. Chapter VI will be devoted to the remaining three playwrights Palmer discusses, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar. Dryden's The Wild Gallant (1662/3) appeared six years before he explained the nature of humours characters in An Essav of Dramatick Poesv. The play was not successful, either in its original production or as altered for a re- 3 vival in 1667. Allardyce Nicoll feels that a main reason 3Montague Summers (ed., John Dryden: The Dramatic 152 for the play's poor reception was Dryden*s faulty use of humours characters. He says: The characters, too plainly borrowed from Jonson and from the followers of Jonson, are dull and monotonous. Surely no more tedious and clownish humor has ever been invented than that of the incessant jest-loving quali ties of Bibber, the tailor.4 Dryden thought that the main fault of the play lay in its being "uncorrect," the error of a young playwright. In his Preface to the printed edition of 1669, he says: It was the first attempt I made in Dramatioue Poetry; and, I find since, a very bold one, to begin with Comedv: which is the most difficult part of it. The Plot was not Originally my own: but so alter'd, by me (whether for the better or worse, I know not) that, whoever the Author was, he could not have challeng'd a Scene of it.^ Works [London, 1931], I, 62-63) discusses the play's recep tion, and quotes Pepys, who saw a performance of the first production at court on February 23: "'The Wilde Gallant* . . . was ill acted, and ... so poor a thing as I never saw in my life almost" (p. 62). The play does have special significance, however. J. W. Krutch says: "One hesitates to give special importance to a play as universally neglect ed as 'The Wild Gallant,1 but it seems clear that if the earlier form was substantially the same as the latter, then Dryden wrote the first real Restoration comedy." (Comedv and Conscience after the Restoration [New York, 1924], p. 17.) 4A History of Restoration Drama. 1660-1700 (Cambridge, 1923), p. 215. 5The Dramatic!, Works. I, 64. 153 This original plot has sometimes been thought to be g from an unknown intrigue play of Spanish origin, a notion which Ned B. Allen thoroughly disposes of in The Sources of 7 Drvden1s Comedies. Allen says of Dryden's statement in the Preface: Dryden does not necessarily mean by this that he had any one source for the whole play. If he does refer to any one previous work, it is probably to the Deca meron r to Shirley's Lady of Pleasure, or to Brome's Sparaaus Garden, from each of which, it will be shown, he got a definite suggestion. (p. 9n) In his subsequent discussion of the play Allen spends considerable time analyzing the Jonsonian humours elements in it. That these humours did not come directly from Jonson is a possibility convincingly presented by Alfred Harbage in g his essay "Elizabethan-Restoration,Palimpsest," the thesis of which is: Certain playwrights after 1660 secured, in manuscript, 6See, e.g., Nicoll, p. 215; Summers, I, 61? in the 4th ed. of Restoration Drama (issued as Vol. I of A History of English Drama. 1660-1900 [Cambridge, 1955]), Nicoll acknow ledges that it may not have been of Spanish origin and that Harbage*s notion (see below) may be right (p. 227). 7(Ann Arbor, 1935), ch. I, pp. 1-49, passim. ^Modern Language Review. XXXV (July 1940), 307-309. 154 unprinted plays written before 1642, modernized them, and had them produced and published as their own; hence a number of Restoration plays hitherto considered ori ginal are actually adaptations of "lost" Elizabethan plays. (p. 287) Harbage contends that "The Wild Gallant . . . follows the Brome formula" (p. 307), and that in it "the hand of Brome is definitely traceable" (p. 308). Harbage does not identi fy a specific Brome play as the source, but says, rather, that it was probably in manuscript, not identified by au thor, when it came into the hands of Dryden. This is not incompatible with Allen's discussion of the humours characters in The Wild Gallant. Though Allen says that "it is surprising to find out that Dryden was very little influenced by the dramatic 'sons of Ben'" (p. 20), the substance of his argument does not necessarily support his conclusion. He says, for instance, that Jonson's chief influence is seen in the large number of humours in the play; Lord Nonsuch, Sir Timorous, Justice Trice, Bibber, Mrs. Bibber, Burr, and Failer, all but the first two of whom have almost no function in the play — they merely exhibit their humours.... What [Dryden] has taken from Jonson is his personifi cations of caprices or whims, characters who are laugh able because they carry an eccentricity to absurd lengths. (pp. 10-11) This is fully as accurate a description of characters found 155 in plays by the "Sons of Ben" as in plays by Ben himself. As far as exhibiting humours to the exclusion of plot, The Muses looking-Glasse. for instance, exceeds any play of Jonson's, and "personification of caprices or whims" are certainly characteristic of a number of playwrights of the 1630's. Whether Dryden's particular debt was to Jonson or to his followers is not, however, the most important point raised by Allen. His comments on the presentation of the humours characters in The Wild Gallant apply generally to the presentation of humours characters throughout Restora tion comedy. When he talks of "the action of the play ceas ing while they display their humours" (p. 11), he suggests the essential conflict, so .rarely resolved, between the exhibiting of humours and the advancing of plot. This con flict, I suggest, becomes increasingly acute in the Restora tion as the (broadly speaking) psychological impulses for humours characters become confused and even ignored. As long as there is even a vestigial interest in the reasons for a character's behavior, however absurd, dramatic ad vancement based on that character is possible. When that interest vanishes entirely, and there is ridiculous behavior without concern for its cause, comedy has deteriorated into 156 farce. In Dryden's words: "Comedy presents us with the imperfection of human nature: Farce entertains us with what 9 is monstrous and chimerical." A major flaw of The Wild Gallant is the result, it would seem, of Dryden's use of "humours characters" who are not in fact humours. For instance, Failer, advising his friend Burr, who has no money, on how to get a suit of clothes from Bibber, a tailor, says: Do you not know Will. Bibbers humor? Burr. Prethee, What have I to do with his humor? Kail. Break but a Jest, and he'll beg to trust thee for a Suit? nay, he will contribute to his own destruc tion; and give thee occasions to make one: he has been my Artificer these three years; and all the while I have liv'd upon his favorable apprehension.^-^ Later in the same scene, the "humour" of Sir Timorous, "a bashful knight,"** is explained in a like manner. Burr. ... He keeps up his old humour still? Fail. Yes certain; he admires eating and drinking well, as much ever, and measures every Man's wit by the goodness of his Pallat. (p. 71) ^Preface to An Evening‘s T*iw>r in Ker, I, 136. ^•®I.i(p. 70). Page numbers refer to Summers' edition of Dryden's plays, Vol. I. l^Here and throughout, descriptions of characters, un less otherwise attributed, are from the Dramatis Personae of the play under discussion. 157 And yet later in the scene, Failer describes Lord Nonsuch: "He has been a great Fanatick formerly, and now has got a habit of Swearing, that he may be thought a Cavalier" (pp. 78-79). The artificiality of these kinds of "humours" was the point of Shadwell's statement in his dedication to The Virtuoso: Nor do I count those humors . . . such as consist in using one or two By Words, or in having a fantastick, extravagant Dress, . . . I say nothing of impossible, unnatural Farce Fools. . . . Nor is downright silly folly a Humour. Though the describing of one character by another is in the Jonsonian humours tradition (e.g., the description of Justice Clement in Every Man In. see p. 53), the characters themselves are not. They have not the dimension of Jonson's characters, whose causes for eccentric behavior are at least suggested. In his Epilogue to The Wild Gallant Reviv'd, Dryden seems almost to apologize for the artificiality of the "humours characters" in the play: Humour is that which every day we meet, And therefore known as every publick street; In which, if e'r the Poet go astray, You all can point, 'twas there he lost his way. (p. 126) l^The passage is quoted in full on p. 136. 158 And later in his Essav on Dramatic Poesv he virtually re nounces his practice in this his "first attempt . . . in 13 Dramatique Poetry." In Shadwell1 s works there is not the disparity between theory and practice that there is in Dryden's. Shadwell*s definition of "humour" is, in fact, more than anything else a justification of the characters in his plays. The concern of this study, though, is with the extent to which Shad- well' s characters fit in the Jonson tradition or in the tradition of the "Sons of Ben." I shall look for evidence in The Humorists (1670) and The Virtuoso (1676), the plays to which Shadwell attached his most lengthy discussions of humours. The Humorists was not well received when it was first presented. In his Preface to the printed edition, Shadwell 3*3ln Allen's words: "Dryden seems to have learned a lesson from fThe Wild Gallant's ] failure and never to have imitated Jonson's humours extensively again until Mr. Lim- herham [1678]" (p. 48). Allen contends that Mr. Limberham is written in a totally different genre from Dryden's other comedies (p. 192), being "a lower kind than he had produced before" (p. 197). He points out that Dryden in his Pro logue to the play says "he realizes that this comedy of 'trick and pun' is an inferior kind of comedy, but that he dares not risk displeasing the audience by attempting to bring back the witty comedy he had once written" (p. 198). 159 attributes this failure to the defects of the audience. The rabble of little People are more pleas'd with Jack-Puddings being soundly kick'd, or having a Custard handsomely thrown in his face, than with all the wit in Plays; and the higher sort of Rabble (as there may be a rabble of very fine people in this illiterate Age) are more pleased with the extravagant and unnatural actions the trifles, and fripperies of a Play, or the trappings and ornaments of Nonsense, than with all the wit in the world. (Works. I, 185) In point of fact, The Humorists is not without its share of slapstick. Act IV, for instance, is devoted almost entirely to the misadventures of two fools, Crazy and Drybob. And often such business as the fools' locking themselves in a cellar or being beaten by clever characters is the essence of the play. The advancement of plot is often sacrificed for the presentation of anecdote or "character." As Summers says, "the play depends far more upon juxtaposition of char acters, or rather humours, than upon intrigue" (I, 177). This is apparently what Shadwell intends, though the "hu mours" are scarcely humours at all. Shadwell seems to have in mind Jonson's Humour plays, judging by the Dramatis Per sonae . which is something like that of Every Man Out, and by the way the intrigue is managed. As in Every Man In. the intrigue is largely in the hands of a witty servant, in this case Bridget, a waiting woman. In this respect, The 160 Humorists is much more in the Jonsonian mode than in the Restoration mode. In the latter, almost always the intri guer is also the central figure in the play, and his in trigues are mainly for his own benefit. This is true wherever a play does have an intriguer, from Mr. Loveby (The Wild Gallant) to Dorimant to Mirabel.'*'4 Descriptions in the Dramatis Personae not only reveal how Shadwell echoes Jonson*s manner of describing charac ters, but also suggest how he fails to create characters that are substantially Jonsonian (creating instead, ironi cally, characters of the kind he proscribes five years later in his dedication to The Virtuoso). Crazv. One that is in Pox, in Debt, and all the Mis fortunes that can be, and in the midst of all, in love with most Women, and thinks most Women in love with him. Drvbob. A Fantastick Coxcomb, that makes it his busi ness to speak fine things and wit as he thinks; and al ways takes notice, or makes others take notice of any thing he thinks well said. Brisk. A Brisk ayery, fantastick, singing, dancing Coxcomb, that sets up for a well-bred Man and a Man of honour, but mistakes in every thing, and values himself only upon the vanity and foppery of Gentlemen. Sneake. A young Parson, Fellow of a CoHedge, ^Many plays have more than one intriguer; I am talking here of the chief one. The schemes of Lucy in The Country Wife, for instance, are far less significant than those of Horner. 161 Chaplain to the Lady Lovevouth. one that speaks nothing but Fustian with Greek and Latine, in love with Bridget. Lady Lovevouth. A vain amorous Lady, mad for a Hus band, jealous of Theodosia [her niece], in love with Ravmund. (p. 191) These "humours" require some comment. Drybob and Brisk are merely fops of the most common sort, characters of "down right silly folly." Sneake appears but rarely in the play, and when he does appear, says such things as the following (to Bridget): Your Eyes, I say, are like the Birds in the Hvrcinian Groves. which by the refulgency of their Wings did guide the wandring Traveller, and enlighten the most Opacous tenebros ity. (I.[p. 218]) Whether a particular way of speaking can be considered a 15 humour, even within the loosest of definitions, is not clear. In his Epilogue to the play Shadwell says that "hu- X6 mour" is the "bias of mind." Presumably Sneake's bias of mind is ipso facto to be inferred from his speech. The difficulty here, of course, is that the audience has no way i e ■^Perhaps indicative of Shadwell's indifference to a precise definition of the term is the fact that the most sensible character in the play, Raymund ("a gentleman of wit and honour"), uses "humour" to mean both "inclination" (III. [p. 224]) and "jest" (IV.[p. 232]). See passage quoted on p. 134. 162 of knowing what humour is supposed to have caused his odd speech. And this difficulty recurs in Shadwell's plays; the quality Shadwell often adduces to indicate a "humour" may never be clearly related to a character's motivation, or even to his action. This point will become clearer, I think, as the "hu mours" of Crazy and Lady Loveyouth (the central "humours characters") are examined. Though there is a clear enough connection between Crazy's being "in love with most women" and also being "in Pox" and "in Debt," the connection is one of misfortune rather than of psychological imperative. Because the connection is more accidental than necessary, and because we are told that Crazy's loving most women . i s . 17 his "humour," we are faced with a double confusion of motive and behavior. Shadwell's apparent assumption that the symptom is the humour is not in itself unusual, as wit ness the plays of many of the "Sons of Ben." However, by introducing pox and debt as though they were symptoms of Crazy's "humour," Shadwell obscures more than did any of the "Sons of Ben" "psychological" reasons for action. 17Raymund says to him: "Ah brave CrazyI do'st thou hold up thy humor still? Art thou still in love with all Women?" (I.[p. 194]) 163 If a distinction between humours and type characters is to be preserved, Lady Loveyouth must be considered a type. She is simply one of a long list of lascivious old ladies, the most famous of whom is Lady Wishfort in The Wav of the World. N. B. Allen (p. 205n) lists nine examples of the type, from the Widdow Love-All of Killigrew's The Parson's Wedding (1664) to Lady Wishfort (though he includes Lady Gimcrack of The Virtuoso, he omits Lady Loveyouth). Whether Shadwell considered Lady Loveyouth an "original humour" is not clear. In addition to the Widdow Love-All, she was anticipated, as Allen's list shows, by Shadwell's own Lady Vaine of The Sullen Lovers (1668). Though Lady Loveyouth, as well as Crazy, might be said to be affected by a bias of the mind, the term as Shadwell seems to use it is so vague that it could be applied to almost any character. There is, in fact, no explanation of Lady Loveyouth's behavior beyond that implicit in her name. Thus Shadwell's practice in The Humorists indicates that his theory of humours characters led him to neglect plot, with only a superficial examination of character to justify that neglect. The Virtuoso, as Allardyce Nicoll points out, is "di vided sharply into two atmospheres almost independent the one of the other" (Restoration Dramar p. 194) . The 164 atmospheres surround, respectively, two pairs of young lovers, and the Virtuoso and his fellow "humorists." Of the latter Shadwell says in his dedication, "Four of the humors are entirely new" (Works. Ill, 101). Langbaine ap parently agrees, for he never seems to have a kind word for something that is not original, and of Shadwell's effort in The Virtuoso he says: "None since Mr. Johnson's Time, ever drew so many different Characters of Humours, and with such success" (p. 452) . The four Shadwell refers to are: The Virtuoso. The Orator, a florid Coxcomb. An Old pettish Fellow, a great Admirer of the last Age, and a Declaimer against the Vices of this, and privately very vicious himself. A brisk; amorous, adventurous, unfortunate Coxcomb; one that, by the help of humor ous, nonsensical By-Words, takes himself to be a Wit. (p. 104) Sir Samuel and Sir Formal are both fops. Shadwell presum ably does not consider Sir Samuel's use of bywords to be the indication of a false humour because Sir Samuel has other characteristics to distinguish him as a humour. In the first scene of the play, Bruce and Longvil ("Gentlemen Sir Nicholas Gimcrack Sir Formal Triile. Snarl. Sir Samuel Hearty. 165 of wit and sense") describe several characters. After Bruce mentions Sir Samuel's addiction to bywords, Longvil says: But the best part of his Character is behind; he is the most amorous Coxcomb, the most designing and adventurous Knight alive; a great Masquerader, and has forty several disguises to make love in; and has been the most unlucky Fellow breathing, in that and all other adventures. He has never made Love where he was not refus'd, nor wag'd War where he was not beaten. (p. 108) Perhaps "the forty several disguises to make love in" would distinguish Sir Samuel from countless other fops, but none of his other characteristics would. His "humour," then, is really nothing more than an essentially farcical affection for disguise. Sir Formal's "humour" is no more substantial. He also is described by Longvil in the first scene. [He is] so conceited of his own parts, that he can never be jealous of anothers. He is indeed a very choice Spirit; the greatest Master of Tropes and Figures: The most Ciceronian Coxcomb: the noblest Orator breathing; he never speaks without Flowers of Rhetorick: In short, he is very much abounding in words, and very much defec tive in sense. (p. 107) There is, however, no reason given in the play for Sir For mal 's speech. The speech, apparently, is. his "humour." Snarl and Sir Nicholas are both in the manner of Mar- mion's Antiquary, the former through his admiration for a past age and the latter through his single-minded devotion to collecting. The parallel with Marmion's play extends beyond the conception of characters to their presentation. As The Antiquary deteriorated into anecdote at the expense of the advancing of plot (and sometimes without expanding on the "humour" of the character), so does The virtuoso. For instance, the fact that Snarl has a whore does show that he is a hypocrite, but his keeping her merely to have her beat him is gratuitous as far as advancing character is con cerned. (Though it may be argued that the caning reminds him of his past and is therefore a result of his admiration for the last age, this argument largely invalidates the "viciousness" of his keeping a whore while declaiming against other men's interest in women.) Like Jonson in Every Man In and his "Sons" in most of their plays, Shadwell has simply appended humours characters to a plot. Because many of the "Sons of Ben" did not really expose the humours of their characters, but merely told anecdotes about them, their plays often lacked dramatic unity. The "two atmos pheres" that Nicoll sees in The Virtuoso are a result of the same kind of treatment. If character is baseless it cannot substantially affect plot, and at the end of The Virtuoso. when plot must be advanced to provide a conclusion to the play, the "humours" with which Shadwell was so much concerned in the dedication to the play and in the first 167 four acts, are virtually ignored, though Snarl still uses the catch phrase "in sadness" and Sir Samuel still uses "'tis well it's no worse," "I aun the son of a tinderbox," and "whip stitch, your nose in my breech." But as Shadwell himself points out, bywords are not humours. A fault of Shadwell*s plays is much the same as one in the plays of the pre-Restoration "Sons of Ben." At the expense of dramatic integrity Shadwell has tried to expose "humours," which be cause they are not really humours, but only aspects of hu mours, lack sufficient depth to help account for action in the plays. In the plays of Sir George Etherege, though the term 18 "humour" is used often, there are no humours characters, even in the loose sense of the term. That is to say, unlike Shadwell, who dwells on certain aspects of some characters with the intention of showing how those character have a "bias of mind," Etherege simply presents such aspects of each character as are necessary to advance the action of the play. In each of his three plays there is at least one fool 18It or an alternative form is used no fewer than eight times in The Comical Revenae, fifteen times in She Wou'd if She Cou'd. and seventeen times in The Man of Mode. Referen ces are to The Dramatic Works of Sir George Etherege. ed. H. F. B. Brett-Smith, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1927). 168 who, if a comparison can be drawn, would be the counterpart of Crazy, Drybob, or Brisk, or of Sir Formal Trifle or Sir Samuel Hearty. An examination of the "counterparts" will indicate how much Etherege gained from making them inciden tal to the action of the play rather than interrupting the play to expose their "humours." Sir Nicholas Cully ("knighted by Oliver") and Dufoy (servant to the witty Sir Frederick Frollick) are each the center of one of four plots in The Comical Revenge (1664), Etherege's first play. One plot concerns the young lovers, Beaufort and Graciana, Bruce and Aurelia; and another con cerns Sir Frederick Frollick and his adventures with a rich 19 widow. All four plots, as Dale Underwood points out, have 20 a thematic connection. All involve, to some extent, the ^John Wi lcox (The Relation of Mo liar a to Restoration Comedv [New York, 1939], p. 73, n. 10) demonstrates how this is the main plot of the play. Sir Frederick's adventures are the center of a "realistic" plot, Sir Frederick being the "gay gentleman, accomplished in the fashionable arts of Restoration society" (p. 73). The plot involving the young lovers is conventionally romantic (or tragicomic), presented in heroic couplets. 20He says: "A central set of attitudes and mode of behavior are to be contrasted with, on the one hand, an at tempted imitation and, on the other, attitudes and behavior diametrically opposed. And the play's serio-comic division in tone and treatment reduces this tripartite interest to the still more fundamental opposition of two contrasting 169 pursuit of women and the eventual marriage of the central characters in each plot. If Sir Nicholas spends most of his time being duped, and if he ends - up married (through misapprehension) to a wench formerly kept by Sir Frederick, it is because in the nature of things a fop must lead such an existence. The misadventures of Dufoy (who tries to imitate his master, but with the predictable ineptness of a French valet) are explained in the same manner. These two, Sir Nicholas and Dufoy, are the two characters in the play who occupy roles Shadwell most probably would fill with "humours characters." They, however, have no "humours," their only particular inclinations being generally toward foolishness. For this reason the action does not stop as their characters sure exposed; what would be "exposure" is in fact a part of the action, an advancing of the pattern of the play in which four separable plots show four differ ent approaches to the pursuing of women. In She Wou'd if She Cou'd (1668), Sir Nicholas' role is occupied jointly by Sir Joslin Jolly and Sir Oliver worlds of values, attitudes, and action." (Etherege and the Seventeent h-Centurv Comedv of Manners [New Haven, 1957], pp. 45-46. See also pp. 55-56.) 170 21 Cockwood. Though Underwood says that "Sir Joslin's 'hu mour' whenever he became drunk was to bring a pair of 'ser vants' to visit his nieces, the heroines" (p. 70 n.), this occurs only twice in the play, and there is no comment by any of the characters to associate it with a "humour." Nor can Sir Oliver's penchant for roaring be considered a hu mour. Sir Joslin is simply an old rake; Sir Oliver affects being one, but is incompetent. As one of the heroes, Free man, says of them, "They are Harp and Violin, Nature has so tun'd 'em as if she intended they should always play the Fool in Consort" (II.i.3-5). They are, that is, mere fops, 22 Sir Nicholas Cully in two roles, and their characters are never exposed for the sake of exposure, but only to advance the action of the play. As the characters of The Man of Mode (1676) use the term "humour," it generally means "natural inclination" or "disposition," and sometimes "mood" or "temper." This defi nition is roughly equivalent to the one that became preva lent through the distinctions that were made between wit and p 1 cxIn addition, there appears a Lady Cockwood, another of the lascivious old ladies of Restoration comedy. See discussion of Lady Loveyouth, p. 163. ^Underwood makes the same point (pp. 59, 62). 171 humour, the definition of Gildon, Temple, Farquhar, and Welsted (see pp. 143-149). That "humour" is used to mean the opposite of "affectation" is clear in the following ex change. Young Bellair is recounting Dorimant's virtues to Harriet: Lord, Madam, all he does and says is so easie, and so natural. aat. Some Mens Verses seem so to the unskilful, but labour i' the one and affectation in the other to the Judicious plainly appear. Y. Bell. I never heard him accus1d of affectation before. iiac.. It passes on the easie Town, who are favourably pleas'd in him to call it humour. (Ill.iii.26-33) In this sense every character would have his own "humour," or natural bent, and only those who affected humours not their own would be unusual. But whether a humour is affect ed or real would not be the basis for determining if a char acter is ridiculous. For instance, both Sir Fopling and Lady Woodvil seem ridiculous, the one for affecting the manners of a man of mode, the other for not conforming to contemporary standards. Neither of these two has more of a "bias of mind" than does, say, Dorimant, who, in the words of Medley, "has more mistresses now depending than the most eminent Lawyer in England has Causes" (II.i.122-123), and who himself affirms his interest in a variety of women: 172 "'Tis not likely a man should be fond of seeing a damn'd old Play when there is a new one acted" (IV.ii. 33-34) . This, of course, renders irrelevant any distinction based on humours such as Shadwell would make. That Etherege's basis for ridiculing characters, though sometimes similar in practice, was different in conception from that of the "Sons of Ben" 23 is illustrated in a curious echo of Randolph that appears in the Prologue to The Man of Mode. In the first part of 24 The Muses Lookina-Glasse. Roscius says of actors: We live by vice. Indeed 'tis true, As the physicians by diseases do, Only to cure them. . . . (I.ii[p. 183]) And near the end of the play he says: [Apollo] finding every place Fruitful in nothing but fantastic follies And most ridiculous humours, as he is The god of physic, thought it appertain'd To him to find a cure to purge the earth Of ignorance and sin. . . . He takes out water from the muses' spring, And sends it to the north, there to be freez'd ^3The "echo" may be due purely to a conventional manner of expression. Whether or not this is the case, the simi larity of expression focuses attention on the difference of intention. ^This play, with its reflection of Randolph's interest in the humours, is discussed on pp. 108-111. 173 Into a crystal; that being done, he makes A mirror with it, and instils this virtue; That it should be reflection show each man All his deformities, both of soul and body, And cure 'em both-- (V.iii[pp. 264-265]) Etherege, however, does not place emphasis either on curing deformities or on there being humours which cause the de formities. He says: 'Tis by your Follies that we Players thrive, As the Physicians by Diseases live. And as each year some new distemper Reigns, Whose friendly poison helps to increase their gains: So among you, there starts up every day, Some new unheard of Fool for us to Play. Then for your own sakes be not too severe, Nor what you all admire at home, Damn here. Since each is fond of his own ugly Face, Why shou'd you, when we hold it, break the Glass? (Works. II, 186) Etherege is interested only in the beau monde and how people fit or do not fit into it. He is not interested in why. Much less is he interested in exposing for their own sakes, perhaps at the expense of dramatic progression, the "hu mours" of eccentric characters. Often critics have seen Jonsonian humours in some 25 of Wycherley's plays, though not always, as I intend to Especially Don Diego of The Gentleman Dancina-Master. Pinchwife of The Country Wife, and Manly and the Widdow Blackacre of The Plain Dealer. See, for instance, Wilcox, pp. 86, 91, 102; Clifford Leech, "Restoration Comedy, The 174 show, for the right reasons. Touching this point, John Palmer's caveat to those who would too readily find parti cular influences in Wycherley's plays is useful to keep in mind. We are . . . far . . . from any deliberate naturalising of French comedy upon English soil, or from connexion with the satirical categories of Jonson. Wycherley comes more nearly in contact with these men than any other dramatist of the period; but, even so, the dis tance between them is still greater than the distance between any two authors of the Restoration.26 The "satirical categories of Jonson" suggests not only the subject matter of his plays, but also his mode of character ization, humours characterization in particular. And even if Palmer is right in insisting that Wycherley is closer to Restoration authors than to Jonson, Wycherley does, perhaps inadvertently, create in Don Diego and Manly two of the very rare post-Jonsonian humours characters that are much in the Jonson manner. They are in the Jonson manner in the sense Earlier Phase," Essays in Criticism. I (1951), 171; Allar- dyce Nicoll, The Theory of Drama (London, 1931), p. 222; Snuggs, "The Humours Character in English Comedy," p. 348; Bonamy Dobree, Restoration Comedy. 1660-1720 (Oxford, 1924), pp. 84, 88. 26The Comedy of Manners (London, 1913), p. 120. Wy cherley's rather extensive debt to Moliere is not, of course, directly relevant to this study. It is covered fully by Wilcox, pp. 82-104. 175 that they are so consistent in their eccentric thoughts and behavior that they seem to have some kind of profound psy chological imbalance. Unlike, say, Shadwell's "humours" characters, they are sufficiently dominated by this imbal ance to affect significantly the plots of the plays in which they appear. They do not exist simply to "expose" their humours, though in each case such exposure is a part of the plays, a condition which partially masks the qualities of their humours, and in the case of Don Diego, at least, helps to make a genuine bent of character seem to be a mere affec tation . Wycherley's first play, Love in a Wood (1671), is some- 27 times criticized for its lack of unity of style or mis- 28 handling of "humours"; however, like Etherege's first play, it has a redeeming unity of theme. Indeed the theme is the same as that of The Comical Revenge, though the variations on it are not so diverse as those of Etherege's play. There are three plots, all of which involve the pur suit of women and the marriage of the central characters. 07 c'Palmer, p. 81; Fujimura, p. 128. 28Dobree, p. 81; Lynch, The Social Mode of Restoration Comedy. p. 165. One plot concerns two pairs of young lovers; another con cerns two fops and two foolish women; the third, which is essentially anecdotal and farcical, concerns a "covetous, lecherous, old Userer of the City" and a whore. In the first plot, although two of the four lovers are somewhat jealous, they are too traditionally romantic even to be considered as humours. The two fops of the second plot sure: Sir Simon Adleplot, "a Coxcomb always in pursuit of Women of great Fortunes," a pretender toward the kind of wit Freeman shows in The Plain Dealer; and Mr. Dapperwit, "a brisk conceited, half-witted Fellow of the Town." Sir Simon is simply incompetent in all of his plots, and even his by word, "faith and troth," is not distinguishing. Dapperwit does have the habits of detracting and of betraying his friends. These habits, however, are merely a fool's confu sion of an approach to conventional raillery and do not re flect a humoral bent of his nature. Like Sir Simon's, his byword of " let me perish" is so common as not to be distin guishing. Of the two foolish women, Martha appears infre quently, her major claim to foolishness being her attraction to Dapperwit. The Widdow Flippant, who eventually marries Sir Simon, has the distinction of continually railing against marriage, though she is looking desperately for a 177 husband. The reason for her pretended aversion to marriage is not clear, and her explanation of it leaves in doubt whether she misunderstands a convention or simply reflects it. She says: "I always rail against Marriage/ Which is 29 the Widdows way to it certainly.” The one character in Love in a Wood who might be con sidered a humours character is Alderman Gripe. Like Snarl of The Virtuoso. Gripe publicly declaims the vices of the age while privately indulging his own prurient interests. He is, however, more fully, if not more consistently, de veloped than Snarl. In addition to being hypocritical and lecherous, he is shown to be a miser and particularly sus ceptible to flattery. To each of these characteristics is attached an anecdote, during the course of which Gripe's "humour” is exposed. (For the sake of convenience, I have, rather loosely, called the anecdotes attached to Gripe a "plot.” They occasionally expand the theme of the play as they give additional variations on it; they do not, however, advance the action.) The "humour” in this case, though it 29I(p. 74). Page numbers are to The Complete Works of William Wvcherleyr ed. Montague Summers (London, 1924). Love., in,.a Wood and The Gentleman Dancing-Master are in Vol. I, The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer in Vol. II. does have a thematic function, is less consistent than some "humours" presented by the "Sons of Ben" and by Shadwell, and has the same delaying effect on the play's action, which is stopped each time the "humour" is exposed. To this ex tent Gripe is much like many of the characters of the "Sons of Ben" or of Shadwell, characters who exist simply for their own "originality." Gripe does not, however, have a single "bias of mind," much less a singular and clearly de fined temperament. To call him a humours character is en tirely to ignore the Jonsonian sense of the term. Don Diego of The Gentleman Dancing-Master (1672) is described by Wilcox as having a "'humor' of contrariety" (p. 86). Dobree would see Don Diego as having a "Spanish 'hu mour'" and Monsieur de Paris as having a "French 'humour,'" with the former "more than any other of Wycherley's charac ters in the right tradition of Jonson" (p. 84). Dobree seems to mean that Don Diego's wish never to be controverted in anything is particularly appropriate to his affectation, for this is the only substantial difference between his and Monsieur's affectations. Wycherley describes the two men thus: 179 [A vain Coxcomb, and rich City- Mr. Parris, or Monsieur [Heir, newly returned from France. De Parris. [and mightily affected with the [French Language and Fashions. [An old rich Spanish Merchant M*. «r. [newly returned home, as much . James Formal, [affected with the Habit and Cus- n °’ [toms of Spain, and Uncle to De fParis. (p. 156) There is no causal connection between each man's character and his affectation (indeed in the first three acts Monsieur seems to have no character other than his affectation); Don Diego happened to go to Spain and Monsieur to France. The connection between Don Diego's character and his affectation seems merely to be coincidental, though much is made of it in the play, especially by Don Diego himself. The plot affords many opportunities for him to expose his humour. He has arranged for his daughter, Hippolita, to marry her cousin, Monsieur de Paris. Being a reasonably clever girl, however, she wants nothing to do with Monsieur and she ar ranges to meet, through Monsieur himself, a young gentleman of the town, Gerard. To get past her jealous father, Gerard poses as a dancing-master. Though Don Diego's sister soon sees through Gerard's masquerade, the old man insists on admitting Gerard because he will not allow his sister to be wiser than he is, thus defeating his own will. This bent of 180 his character, which may be truly the kind of humour Jonson described in the Induction to Every Man Outr is somewhat confused by Don Diego's affectation. For instance, talking to his sister, he says: In Spain, he is wise enough that is grave; politick enough, that says little; and honourable enough that is jealous; and though I say it, that shou'd not say it, I am as grave, grum and jealous, as any Spaniard breathing. And I will be a Spaniard in every thing still, and will not conform, not I, to their ill-favour'd English Customs, for I will wear my Spanish habit still, I will stroke my Spanish Whiskers still, and I will eat my Spanish Olio still; and my Daughter shall go a Maid to her Husbands Bed, let the English Custom be what 'twill. (Il[p. 173]) The mask of affectation hides the actual inclination of character. This also is the case at the end of the play, where, in one of its best scenes, he gives away most of his fortune as a dowry for his daughter, who has just been sec retly married to Gerard. Here there is still allusion to Spanish "principle." He says: Oh my dear Honour! nothing vexes me but that the World should say, I had not Spanish Policy enough to keep my Daughter from being debauch'd from me; but methinks my Spanish Policy might help me yet: I have it so— (V[p. 230]) Then, having resolved his plot, he announces the following to Gerard: 181 That you may see I deceiv'd you all a long, and you not me; ay, and am able to deceive you still; for, I know now you think that I will give you little or nothing with my Daughter (like other Fathers) since you have marry'd her without my consent; but, I say, I'le deceive you now, for you shall have the most part of my Estate in present, and the rest at my death; there's for you, I think I have deceiv'd you now, look you. (p. 231) This rather drastic move is caused by more than mere affec tation. Affectation is subject to being discarded when it becomes inconvenient, as can be seen in an incident in the same play. Monsieur casts off his French manner when Don Diego makes clear to him that he must if he wishes to marry - Hippolita. Upon seeing the change, Gerard is impelled to say: Monsieur, what strange Metamorphosis is this? you look like a Spaniard, and talk like an Enalish-man again, which I thought had been impossible. (IV[p. 206]) Don Diego is one of the rare, utterly biased characters in Restoration comedy. Because his genuine bias so neatly fits his affectation, however, he is usually not distinguished from other characters who, like Lady Loveyouth, are simply types, or who, like Snarl, have characters so baseless that when they appear in plays are merely "exposed" and are not substantial enough to affect plot. Dobree, then, misleads, I feel, when he talks of Monsieur having a French "humour" and of Don Diego having a Spanish "humour," but is in the 182 main right when he puts the latter in the Jonsonian tradi tion. In The Country Wife (1676) there are no true humours characters. The lascivious old woman, Lady Pidgit, is pre sented as a character who is not even unusual. She repre sents, along with two others, a good portion of society, the portion Horner had specifically in mind when he conceived the ruse which is at the base of the plot. Nor is Margery Pinchwife a humour. Her inclinations are the same as those of Lady Fidgit; she needs only to discover them, which she does as she follows the advice of her maid, Lucy. Sparkish, the fop, "can no more think the Men laugh at him, than that 30 Women jilt him, his opinion of himself is so good." But this is the common condition for fops, and has nothing ne cessarily to do with humours. Somewhat different from those listed above is Pinch wife, whom Wilcox calls "an unrealistic Jonsonian 'humour'" (p. 91). Wilcox apparently bases this consideration on his feeling that Pinchwife is not very "human and normal in his emotions," but is instead "a butt for whom no one can feel 30 The words are those of Dorilant, a young gentleman of the town. (I[p. 16]) a twinge of concern" (p. 91). These statements suggest the outlines for a useful distinction between the Jonsonian hu- mours characters and many of their counterparts in Restora tion comedy. An additional consideration is that Pinchwife is created in a different mode and has a different function from, say, a Shadwell humours character. With the aim of making these distinctions clearer, I shall compare Pinchwife with Thorello (Kitely) of Every Man In and, less directly, with Snarl of The Virtuoso. Thorello's humour of melancholy (see pp. 50-53) is responsible not only for his jealousy, but also for his avarice, and he attracts some interest in the reasons for his behavior as well as interest in the behavior itself. The psychology may be primitive, but it exists. Though Thorello's humour does not have much effect on the plot of the play, it is an integral part in a pattern of characterization. The concept of presenting the four accepted psychological types in comedy is, of course, very limiting; it is not only insufficient in itself to engender a plot, but because it is comprehensive it is not subject to variation in subsequent plays. Thus in this necessarily unique play, Thorello's humour is required to fill out the pattern, and we know that he is a genuine humours character because we are told he is, and his actions are consistent 184 with his humour. Pinchwife's entire character, on the other hand, is insignificant in The Country Wife, though one as pect of his character is very important. His jealousy is necessary to the advancement of plot, as a good portion of the play is concerned with Horner's seduction of Margery Pinchwife in spite of (almost because of) her husband's guarding her. Psychological reasons for that jealousy are irrelevant, and are not given. The reason that Horner gives for Pinchwife's jealousy, as shown both by its tone and by its substance, is not to be taken seriously. Why, 'tis as hard to find an old Whoremaster without Jealousie and the Gout, as a young one with Fear or the Pox. As Gout in Age, from Pox in youth proceeds; So Wenching past, then Jealousie succeeds: The worst Disease that love and Wenching breeds. (I[p. 21]) Pinchwife is also much different from the humours characters of Shadwell's plays. Pinchwife's contemporary (on the stage), Snarl, is introduced not because his pres ence is necessary for the advancement of the plot, but, quite to the contrary, merely to expose his character at the expense of the plot. Several of Snarl's characteristics are shown; judging by their nature, they could be almost infinite in number. For example, the caning which Snarl 185 solicits from his whore has little to do with his predilec tion for the past, and nothing to do with his hypocrisy— presumably the two significant facets of his humour. There fore, the conception of Snarl's "humour" is considerably different from the conception of Pinchwife's, which is of no interest except as it advances the plot of the play; nothing is made of it for its own sake (as in the case of Snarl) or for the sake of rounding out a pattern of charac terization (as in the case of Thorello). What might have been a humours character in the hands of Shadwell is not at all a humours character in the hands of Wycherley, much to the advantage of the unity of Wycherley's play. In The Plain Dealer (1676) two of the main characters are commonly designated "humours characters." Snuggs calls Manly a "psychological humour" ("The Humours Character. . ." p. 348), and Dobree goes so far as to say: "The Widdow 31 Blackacre [is] a 'humour' if there ever was one" (p. 88). 31Nicoll, taking quite another tack, sees as the hu mours of The Plain Dealer Novel and Lord Plausible. "Hu mours," says Nicoll, "if we retain the old term, cure derived from the conventions, follies, and usages of social life" (The Theory of Drama, p. 222). In the same category he puts Lord Froth and Sir Paul Plyant of The Double Dealer, and Witwoud and Petulant of The Wav of the World. He has, of course, changed the definition of "humours" almost entirely. He contends that Restoration humours characters "are figures 186 This is, of course, "humour" in the looser sense of the term. There is no suggestion in the play that Manly's sur- 32 liness (or misanthropy) is caused by one of the physio logical humours. Wycherley seems rather to take the term as the equivalent of "temperament," as is made clear by his description of Manly. Of an honest, surly, nice humour, suppos'd first in the time of the Dutch War, to have procur'd the Command of a Ship, out of Honour, not Interest; and chusing a Sea- life, only to avoid the World. (p. 104) Three times the word is used by characters in the play to 33 mean "temperament," and it, along with "wit," is the sub ject of a debate among Novel, Freeman, Manly, and Major Oldfox. There is no disagreement on the definition of the who take their humorous complexion from the social follies of their day, not from the innate follies of mankind" (p. 222). Since, however, people like Shadwell did try to draw Jonsonian humours in their comedies, and others, like Con greve, were much aware of Jonsonian implications of the term, I think it is best not to alter so drastically the term's definition, but rather to see how in the latter part of the seventeenth century it was undergoing an evolution. 32wycherley's debt to Moliere's Le Misanthrope is uni versally acknowledged. For a succinct discussion of the re lation between Manly and Alceste, see Wilcox, pp. 94-97. 33By Olivia twice (II[p. 125], [p. 132]) and by the Widdow Blackacre (III[p. 147]). 187 term, only on its application. When Novel contends that "Roaring, and making a noise (v[p. 185]) are a humour, he means that they are natural inclinations, thus confusing symptoms with cause. He thinks also that there are both "wit" and "humour" in "making a noise, and breaking Windows" (p. 186). Manly and Freeman naturally disagree with him. Novel's foolishness in misapplying "wit" is the same as in his misapplying "humour." He is wrong not because he does not understand what the words mean, but because he sees the manifestations of natural inclination (humour) and of reason (wit) equally in the most trivial of incidents. Wycherley, in satirizing Novel, therefore, indicates what he thinks the definition of "humour" should be. In one sense, then, Manly and the Widdow Blackacre are no more "humours" than are other characters in the play who follow their natural inclinations. Because, however, Man ly' s and the Widdow Blackacre's inclinations tend so obvi ously to .run all in one direction, they especially invite comparison with Jonson's humours characters. Dennis, for instance, felt impelled to compliment Wycherley as being "almost the only person, who has given the World a Master piece, in which a great deal of Humour is shewn in high Characters" (Works, I, 283). Judging from Dennis's great 34 sympathy for this play, and particularly for the "humours in it, one may assume that he thought that Wycherley's no tions of humour were compatible with, if not the same as, his own. And for Dennis "humour" certainly meant "natural" (as opposed to "affected”) characters. In The Plain Dealer, however, there is a new complica tion to confuse the distinctions between kinds of "humours characters." Manly and the Widdow Blackacre both seem con ceived in the same manner; nothing more is said of Manly's motivations than of the Widdow's, and the humour of each is an essential part of his character (neither is "cured" of his humour by the end of the play, nor is there any sugges tion that either could be) . And sometimes Manly and the Widdow Blackacre are presented in similar fashion. During the greater part of Act III, as Manly and the Widdow expose their humours, there is no advance in the plot of the play. The Widdow's overriding love of litigation is presented through a series of encounters she has with various lawyers representing her in cases depending, and Manly's contempt for sham and pretense is presented as he recounts getting 34See Hooker, The Critical Works of John Dennis. Ex- planatory Notes, I, 494. involved in three quarrels and two law suits for speaking the truth, and then as he rebukes a series of impertinent advances made by Novel, Major Oldfox, a lawyer, and an alderman. Manly is different from the Widdow Blackacre, however. Not only does he expose his humour, he also is responsible for a large part of the action of the rest of the play as he follows the dictates of his humour. The Widdow Blackacre's character is irrelevant to the main plot of the play, and not even responsible for much progress of action in the sub-plot, which is carried forward by Freeman. Wilcox, implying the same connection between mere exposure of "humours" and farce that I attempted to make on pages 155—156, talks of "the needless distraction of the broadly farcical subplot of Freeman and Widdow Blackacre" (p. 102). She has the function, in other words, of the kind of humours character commonly found in Restoration comedy, though her humour, like Manly's, is not an affectation. We have, then, in The Gentleman Dancing-Master and The Plain Dealer; (1) Don Diego, whose genuine bent of character is masked by an affectation; (2) the Widdow Blackacre, whose genuine bent of character is treated as though it were an affectation; and (3) Manly, who because he is not associated with a foolish affectation is, though excessive in his behavior, able to be the only humours character (so far as I know) to appear as the hero of a Restoration comedy. The main difference be tween these three and Jonson*s humours characters lies, of course, in Wycherley's failing to tell, or at least to im ply, why they act as they do. One must infer that they have a significant psychological imbalance from their consistency of behavior. Certainly in the case of Manly, because of his central role, and possibly in the case of Don Diego, because he so much affects the main action of the play, one would feel impelled to make the inference. CHAPTER VII CONGREVE , VANBRUGH, AND FARQUHAR In his Letter to John Dennis, Congreve argues the necessity of humours characters in comedy. I dont say but that very entertaining and useful Characters, and proper for Comedy, may be drawn from Affectations and those other Qualities which I have endeavoured to distinguish from Humour; but I would not have such imposed on the World for Humour, nor es teem'd of Equal value with it. It were perhaps the Work of a long Life to make one Comedy true in all its Parts, and to give every Character in it a True and Distinct Humour. Therefore every Poet must be behold ing to other helps to make out his Number of ridiculous Characters. But I think such a One deserves to be Broke, who makes all false Musters; who does not shew one true Humour in a Comedy, but entertains his Audi ence to the end of the Play with every thing out of Nature. ^ The first of his comedies, The Old Batchelor (1693), was initially performed slightly more than two years before the Letter to Dennis, and within those two years both The Double-Dealer and Love for Love were also brought to the ^pingarn, III, 251. 191 192 stage. Somewhere in these three plays, then, one may ex pect to find the kind of "true Humour" Congreve has in 2 mind. Although he is sometimes nominated for the posi- 3 tion, Heartwell, the old bachelor of the title of Con greve's first play, is apparently not a character Congreve 4 would consider to be a humour. Congreve describes him as ^As John Hodges points out, Dennis was interested in and asked for Congreve's valuation of his own work: "While Congreve was at the height of his popularity as a writer of comedy, the critic John Dennis drew Congreve and Walter Moyle, two of his fellow wits at Will's Coffeehouse, into a correspondence . . . that led to Congreve's most important critical utterance" (William Congreve, Letters and Docu ments . collected and edited by John C. Hodges [New York, 1964], p. 155). In a letter dated by Hodges (June, 1695?), Dennis had said: "You who, after Mr. Wicherlv. are incom parably the best writer of [comedy] living; ought to be allowed to be the best Judge, too" (Letters and Documents, p. 176); Congreve's famous Letter was in answer to this. 3For instance, by Lynch, The Social Mode of Restoration Comedv. pp. 188-189. 4Elizabeth Mignon feels that Heartwell is not a humours character, in the Elizabethan definition of the term, but is in Congreve's. She misreads, I think, both definitions. She says, in the first case, "[Heartwell cannot] be dis missed as merely an Elizabethan humour, because this would force him into the category of derivative characters, af fording inadequate attention to his individuality" (see my chs. I and II, passim). She says in the second case: "Heartwell is less a reversion to Elizabethan conventions than the product of Congreve's own theory of the deeper con ception of human nature. . . . The emphasis is on the in dividual clearly distinguished from other individuals" (Crabbed Age and Youth: The Old Men and Women of the Res toration Comedv of Manners [Durham, N. C., 1947], pp. 99- 193 being "A surly old Batchelor, pretending to slight Women; secretly in Love with Sylvia." "Pretending" is the key word. If a part of his character "shews what [he] would be under a Voluntary Disguise" then he would by Congreve's definition be a character of affectation rather than of 5 humour. Additional, though somewhat oblique, support for this interpretation of Congreve's intention can be found in the characterization of Belinda, an "affected Lady, in Love with Bellmour," the hero of the play. Belinda's affectation is much the same as Heartwell's: she pretends not to be in love with Bellmour. And it could not have been Congreve's intention to make her a humours character, for, as he says in the Letter, I have never made any observation of what I apprehend to be true Humour in Women. . . . If ever any thing does appear Comical or Ridiculous in a Woman, I think it is little more than an aquir'd Folly or Affectation.6 Though Congreve's intention itself would not insure Heart- well' s not fitting his definition of a humours character, 100) . She does not sufficiently take into account that when Heartwell is involved in comic situations it is because of his affectation (see below). 5See Congreve's statements quoted on pp. 139-141. 6Spingarn, III, 250. 194 Congreve's citing his intention after the fact probably does insure it. Nor, I think, is Heartwell a humours character in the Jonsonian tradition. Unlike Manly, with whom he has 7 been compared, Heartwell does not love a vicious woman merely because of a blind spot in his character. Heartwell does know what Sylvia is, and in spite of his knowledge is drawn to her. Heart. Why whither in the Devil's name am I going now? Hum— Let me think— Is not this Silvia's House, the Cave of that Enchantress, and which consequently I ought to shun, as I would Infection? To enter here, is to put on the envenom'd Shirt, to run into the Embraces of a Fever, and in some raving fit, be led to plunge my self into that more Consuming Fire, a Womans Arms. Ha*, well recollected, I will recover my reason and be gone. . . .Well, why do you not move? Feet do your Office— Not one Inch; no, Foregod I'me caught— There stands my North, and thiether my Needle points— Now could I curse my self, yet cannot repent. O thou Delicious, Damn'd, Dear, destructive Woman! S'death, how the young Fellows will hoot me! I shall be the Jest of the Town; Nay, in two Days, I expect to be chronicled in Ditty, and sung in woful Ballad, and upon the third, I shall be hang'd in Effigie, pasted up for the exemplary Ornament of necessary Houses and Coblers Stalls— Death, I can't 7See; Henry Ten Eyck Perry (The Comic Spirit in Res toration Drama [New Haven & London, 1925], p. 57); Montague Summers (ed.) (The Complete Works of William Congreve [Lon don, 1923], I, 18). Palmer, however, says: "Even as we recognize the debt, we feel how differently Wycherly would have used— or misused— the opportunities of Heartwell's misogamy" (p. 174). 195 think on't— I'le run into the danger to loose the ap prehension. 8 His character is not drawn so much one way (toward a Manly- like skepticism) that he cannot be diverted knowingly into the opposite direction, and he is willing to assume an af fectation to make his character seem consistent. He has, in brief, contradictory characteristics, which prevent (or should prevent) his being considered a humours character even in the loosest sense of the term. Fondlewife, on the other hand, has two distinct char acteristics which could be caused by the same humour. He is simply an echo of Kitely, torn between jealousy and greed. Congreve, however, does not suggest any single cause for Fondlewife's behavior. Inferences about a cause would have to be drawn not from what Congreve says about his char acter but from what Jonson says about Kitely7 such inferen ces, of course, would be impossible to support. Fondlewife is different from a type such as Pinchwife because he has a character with more than one side. Congreve, however, does not tell why his character has at least two sides (but seems Bill.i(p, 188). Page numbers cure to Summers" edition of Congreve's plays. The Old Batchelor is in Vol. I; The Double-Dealer and I*ave for love are in Vol. II; The Wav of the World is in Vol. III. 196 to introduce his greed just to explain how he can be lured away from his wife for a while); therefore, there is no in dependent interest in it. Fondlewife, then, is a type char acter with an extra dimension, which makes him more inter esting than some types, but not a humours character. Sir Joseph Wittol and Captain Bluffe are the well-born fop and the miles gloriosus. clearly types rather than hu mours. They are complementary characters; although Captain Bluffe takes advantage of Sir Joseph (the only person in the play whom he frightens), their actions are almost always in unison. Sir Joseph says that Bluffe is "a Friend . . . whom I call my Back; he sticks as close to me, and follows me through all dangers— he is indeed Back, Breast and Headpiece as it were to me" (I[p. 179]). In this respect they are very much like Sir Joslin Jolly and Sir Oliver Cockwood of She Wou'd if She Cou'dt "Harp and Violin, Nature has so tun'd 'em as if she intended they should always play the Fool in Consort" (see p. 170). And like Etherege's fools, such parts of their characters as cure exposed, cure exposed not for their own sakes, but to advance the action of the play. The remaining important characters in the play are a pair of conventional Restoration lovers (Belinda and Bell mour would be conventional but for Belinda's affectation), 197 and Sharper, a foil to the fools, none of whom could be considered humours. Congreve's next play, The Double-Dealer, was produced about six months after The Old Batchelor, in the autumn of 1693. Critics remark the play chiefly for what Allardyce 9 Nicoll calls its "evil note," because of the machinations of Maskwell, who attempts to disrupt the affairs of the beau monde lovers Mellefont and Cynthia. Maskwell to some extent anticipates Fainall of The Wav of the World, and, in Congreve's definition of the term, is the nearest thing to a humours character in the play. For Congreve a character could have a "Splenetick and Peevish Humour" (see p. 126), and conceivably a humour is what impels Maskwell so single- mindedly to be greedy and vicious. This, however, can be no more than conjecture. In the Dedication to the play, Congreve discusses the character of Maskwell, but only to say that a villain may dupe an honest man who is no fool. He does not explain what causes Maskwell*s character, and there is too little internal evidence to support inferences about Congreve's intentions. There are in The Double-Dealer several fools who have 9A History of English Drama. 1660-1900. I, 242. 198 striking affectations, and therefore might be liable to be called humours characters. They are: Lord Froth. A Solemn Coxcomb. Brisk. A Pert Coxcomb. Sir Paul Plyantr An Uxorious, Foolish, old Knight. Lady Froth. A great Coquet; pretender to Poetry, Wit, and Learning. Lady Plvant. Insolent to her Husband, and easie to any Pretender. In addition to the characteristics suggested in this list ing, Lady Plyant is afflicted with a penchant for foolish talk. In this respect she is not always clearly distin guishable from Lady Froth, though generally Lady Froth merely misuses words and Lady Plyant garbles syntax or mis pronounces what she is trying to say. Lady Froth's preten tions to "Poetry, Wit, and Learning," for instance, lead her to tell Cynthia: "I'm . . . amazed to find you a Woman of Letters and not Write 1 Bless mei how can Mellefont believe you love him?" (Il[p. 28]). Also, in slight anticipation of Mrs. Malaprop, she calls her husband "the very Phosphor ous of the Hemisphere" (II[p. 28]). Lady Plyant, on the other hand, often talks like this: 199 Mr. Careless. If a person that is wholly illiterate might be supposed to be capable of being qualified to make a suitable return to those Obligations, which you are pleased to confer upon one that is wholly incapable of being qualified in all those Circumstances, I'm sure I should rather attempt it than anything in the World, . . . for I'm sure there's nothing in the World that I would rather. (Ill[p. 43]) Congreve seems not to have been especially interested in maintaining this distinction, though, and in one scene Lady Plyant says: "I'm in such a fright; the strangest Quagmire and Premunire! I'm all over in a Universal Agitation; I dare swear every Circumstance of me trembles" (IV[p. 57]). Congreve's apparent indifference to distinguishing consis tently between the two is understandable; in neither case is singularity of character significant. Of the male fools, Lord Froth and Brisk are generally (and correctly, I think) dismissed as being conventional fops,10 though Wilcox (redundantly) claims that Sir Paul Plyant has a "'humor' for uxoriousness and blinded judgment about his wife" (p. 158). Uxoriousness by itself, however, is no humour, as has been pointed out in the cases of Pinch- wife (pp. 182-185) and Fondlewife (pp. 195-196). He is, as Miss Mignon notes, "a Restoration type with some roots in ^■°See, e.g., Palmer, p. 185; Fujimura, p. 175. 200 the Elizabethan period."11 In any case, none of these fools is a humours character. They all are part of what Bonamy Dobree calls the "social tomfoolery" (p. 129) which occupies much of the first three and a half acts of The Double- Dealer . and which disappears for the most part when the complications of Maskwell's plots dominate the latter part of the play. The first production of Love for Love antedates Con greve's Letter to Dennis by some three months. In it one finds two characters who fit Congreve's definition of "hab it," one who fits his definition of "affectation," and one who perhaps fits his definition of "humour." They are: Scandal. . . . a Free Speaker. Tattle. A half-witted Beau, vain of his Amours, yet valuing himself for Secresie. Benr . . . half home-bred, and half sea-bred. Foresight. An illiterate Old Fellow, peevish and positive, superstitious, and pretending to under stand Astrology, Palmistry, Phisiognomy, Omens, Dreams, &c. The last two are "Habits contracted by Custom." Congreve ^Page 110. She is here indebted to Miss Lynch ( The Social Mode in Restoration Comedy. pp. 190-191), who sees antecedents of Sir Paul both in Jonson and in Brome. 201 says of the category: Under this Head may be ranged all Country-Clowns, Sail ers, Tradesmen, Jockeys, Gamesters, and such like, who make use of Cants or peculiar Dialects in their several Arts and Vocations. One may almost give a Receipt for the Composition of such a Character: For the Poet has nothing to do but to collect a few proper Phrases and terms of Art, and to make the Person apply them by ridi culous Metaphors in his Conversation with Characters of different Natures. (Spingarn, III, 248) As a sailor, Ben fits here, though in the play Mrs. Frail (a greedy and loose, but not especially foolish character) says of him: "I like his Humour mightily, it's plain and honest, I should like such a Humour in a Husband extreamly" (III[p. 132]). We must assume that, in Congreve's eyes at least, she misuses the term, for the language of Ben's reply betrays his true character. Ben. Say'n you so Forsooth? Marry and I shou'd like such a Hansom Gentlewoman for a Bed-fellow hugely; how say you, Mistress, would you like going to Sea? Mes, you're a tight Vessel, and well Rigg'd, an you were but as well Mann'd. Frail. I should not doubt that, if you were Master of me. Ben. But I'll tell you one thing, an you come to Sea in a high Wind or that Lady— You mayn't carry so much Sail o' your Head— Top and Top-gallant, by the Mess. Frail. No, why so? Ben. Why, an you do, you may run the risk to be over-set, and then you'll carry your Keels above Water, he, he, he. • (IIl[p. 132]) 202 This certainly is the "Cant or peculiar Dialect" to which Congreve refers. Foresight also uses such distinctive language. He says of himself: "It is impossible that any thing should be as I wou'd have it? for I was born . . . when the Crab was as cending, and all of my Affairs go backward" (II[p. 113]). Later in the same scene when Angelica, the heroine of the play, abuses him, the following exchange takes place. Fore. I will have Patience, since it is the Will of the Stars I should be . . . tormented--This is the Effect of the malicious Conjunctions and Oppositions in the Third House of my Nativity? there the Curse of Kindred was foretold--But I will have my Doors lock’d up— I’ll punish you, not a Man shall enter my House. Ang. Do, Uncle, lock 'em up quickly before my Aunt come home— You'll have a Letter for Alimony to morrow Morning — But let me be gone first, and then let no Mankind come near the House, but Converse with Spirits and the Celes tial Signs, the Bull, and the Heim, and the Goat. Bless me! there are a great many Horn'd Beasts among the Twelve Signs, Uncle. But Cuckolds go to Heav'n. (p. 115) Throughout the play the "ridiculous Metaphors" are used not only by Foresight, but also by any who would bait him. Scandal, who seems to be Congreve's notion of a humour, has as a foil Tattle, who is an affected fop. The play's hero, Valentine, suggests Scandal's character in warning him: "Scandal learn to spare your Friends, and do not 203 provoke your Enemies; this Liberty of your Tongue, will one Day bring a Confinement on your Body, my Friend" (I[p. 103]). Later in the same act Tattle is introduced much in the man ner of those affected characters taken to be "humours" by the "Sons of Ben." Val. [To Scandal]: Tattle and you should never be asunder; you are Light and Shaddow, and shew one another; he is perfectly thy reverse both in humour and under standing; and as you set up for Defamation, he is a mender of Reputations. Scan. A mender of Reputations i ay, just as he is a Keeper of Secrets, another Vertue that he sets up in the same manner. For the Rogue will speak aloud in the pos ture of a Whisper; and deny a Woman's Name, while he gives you the marks of her Person. ... In short, he is a publick Professor of Secresie, and makes Proclama tion that he holds private Intelligence. (p. 106) Here are contrasted a character who industriously pretends and one who apparently cannot pretend. And as Scandal points out to Valentine, Tattle is not Scandal's reverse "both in humour and understanding"; Tattle does not in fact exhibit a humour, but merely an affectation for one, shown by his doing the opposite of what he professes to do. This anticipates Congreve1 s statement in the Letter, when he tells of the difficulty of and the necessity for making a distinction between "humour" and "affectation" (see p. 140). Though Scandal's humour is not necessary to the advancement 204 of the plot, neither does it hinder the plot because Con greve does not take time to examine the humour for its own sake. That is, Congreve seems to have included Scandal's humour more to avoid "deserv[ing] to be broke" than to meet any dramatic necessity but unlike, say, Shadwell, he does not let a study of a "humour" disrupt the smooth progress of the play. In view of Congreve's statement that he had never ob served a humour in women, it is unlikely that he considered Lady Wishfort of The Way of the World (1700) a humours character. Congreve included what might be called type- characters in his category of "habits" when he talked of "Country-Clowns, Sailers, Tradesmen, Jockeys, Gamesters, and such like"; and, whether or not he so intended, it is in this category that Lady Wishfort belongs. As has been shown (pp. 163-182 passim), there was a tradition of the lascivious-old-lady-type in Restoration comedy. I think Miss Mignon's appraisal is accurate; she says: "Heading the long line of ridiculous old ladies, [Lady Wishfort] is more subtly molded than they; her folly is displayed with more precision" (p. 121). One of the ways in which she is "more subtly molded" is that "she is conscious at intervals of her own physical decay, even of a falling off in charm" 205 (p. 126). Fujimura suspects that "Congreve himself did not regard her too highly, because she is not sufficiently natural, and the ingredients of her character are too ap parent" (p. 194). Though Miss Mignon and Fujimura might disagree on the complexity of Lady Wishfort's character, they both suggest that she is obviously a type; she cannot, therefore, reasonably be considered a humour. When "humour" does appear in the play, it is mostly through satire. The term is mentioned twelve times in Con greve ' s first three comedies, but is mentioned no fewer than seventeen times (including one variant: "humourist") in The Wav of the World. Nine of these times it is used by Petu- 12 lant, who seems to have taken it as a kind of catch-word. There is a parallel here between Petulant's inability to distinguish between true and false humour and Witwou'd's inability to distinguish between true and false wit, at least in view of Congreve's definition of "humour." For instance, after Millamant asks Witwou'd if he and Petulant have resolved their quarrel, Witwou'd replies: Raillery, Raillery, Madam; we have no Animosity— We hit off a little Wit now and then, but no Animosity— The ^Witwou'd also misuses it twice, once in conversation with Petulant (see below). 206 Falling-out of Wits is like the Falling-out of Lovers— We agree in the main, like Treble and Base. Ha, Petu lant? Pet. Ay, in the main— But when I have a Humour to con- tradict— Wit. Ay, when he has a Humour to contradict, then I contradict too. What, I know my Cue. Then we contra dict one another like two Battle-dores: For Contradic tions beget one another like Jews. Pet. If he says Black's Black— if I have a Humour to say 'tis Blue— Let that pass— All's one for that. If I have a Humour to prove it, it must be granted. (Ill[p. 45]) Other characters (Fainall, Mirabell, Mrs. Fainall, Milla- mant) use the term to mean "natural inclination," as would Congreve himself. As regards true and false wit, Congreve contends that the kinds of distinction that he was attempt ing to draw in The Wav of the World were in large part re sponsible for the play's cold reception when it was first 13 performed. In his dedicatory letter to the Earl of Monta gue, he says that he was moved to design some Characters, which shou'd appear ridiculous 3In Roscius Analicanus (1708), John Downes agrees. He says: "The Wav of the World, a Comedy wrote by Mr. Con greve . twas curiously Acted; Madam Bracegirdle performing her Part so exactly and just, gain'd the Applause of Court and City; but being too Keen a Satyr, had not the Success the Company Expected" (ed. Montague Summers [London, (1928?)], p. 45). 207 not so much thro' a natural Folly (which is incorri gible , and therefore not proper for the Stage) as thro' an affected Wit; a Wit, which at the same time that it is affected, is also false. As there is some Difficulty in the formation of a Character of this Nature, so there is some Hazard which attends the Progress of its Success, upon the Stage: For many come to a Play, so over-charg'd with Criticism, that they very often let fly their Cen sure, when through their Rashness they have mistake their Aim. This I had Occasion lately to observe: For this Play had been acted two or three Days, before some of these hasty Judges cou'd find the leisure to distinguish betwixt the Character of a Witwoud and a Truewit.14 And as Witwou'd affected wit, so Petulant affected humour. If there is a character in the play Congreve would call a true humour it would seem to be Fainall, who, like Mask- well, follows his natural inclination to be destructive and greedy. Congreve's intentions toward Fainall's character, however, are no clearer than his intentions toward Mask- well's. Thus, although Congreve treats the humours liter ally in his Letter to Dennis (see p. 141) and satirizes the misuse of the term "humour" through Petulant, he includes in his four comedies only one character, Scandal, who seems certainly to fit his definition of "humour." And, so far as I know, Scandal is the last humours character, in a literal ^4Page 9. Wilcox takes this to suggest that "[Con greve] had [since the Letter] changed his mind and decided that true 'humours' were not amusing" (p. 163). But Wilcox is wrong. Congreve always had distinguished between folly and humour. See Spingarn, III, 244-245. sense of the term, to appear in Restoration comedy. As for Wycherley's characters, however, for Scandal one must infer a physiological imbalance from his consistency of behavior; unlike Jonson neither Wycherley nor Congreve tells, or even implies, which particular imbalance of humour is responsible for a character's acting as he does. Of the eleven comedies and farces Sir John Vanbrugh 15 completed during his lifetime, only two were original pieces, neither adaptations nor translations. The first of these, The Relapse (1696), was written as a sequel to Cibber's T/woVg Last Shift, first mounted earlier the same year. Vanbrugh took three characters from Cibber's play; Loveless, the straying husband; Amanda, the virtuous wife; and Lord Foppington, who was rather changed (including an elevation to the peerage) from Cibber's Sir Novelty Fash- 16 ion. The play has two scarcely connected plots. One is concerned with Amanda's rectitude and Loveless's weakness 15 One comedy, A Journey to London, was completed by Colly Cibber and called The Provoked Husband. It was pro duced in 1728, two years after Vanbrugh's death. ^Vanbrugh's fool is generally considered the superior creation. George Nettleton, for instance, says that "Cib ber's character amuses for the moment; Vanbrugh's has perma nent vitality" (English Drama of the Restoration and Eight eenth Century [New York, 1914], p. 134). 209 when each is tempted to infidelity. In this plot there is no character who even remotely suggests a humours character. The other plot is concerned with the schemes of a poor but clever younger brother to secure money from his older broth er , Lord Foppington, one of the two great fools in the play. Neither Lord Foppington nor Sir Tunbelly Clumsey, the other 17 great fool, is a humours character; both are merely exam ples of two of the most common types in Restoration comedy. This is quite what one might expect since Vanbrugh was but little interested (if interested at all) in distinguishing humours from other kinds of characters (see p. 146). Van brugh seemed to take the term "humour" to mean "nature" or perhaps "mood," and this is the way the term is used each of ^Nicoll is mistaken, I think, in the following de scription: "Lord Foppington, 'a man whom Nature has made no Fool1 but 'who is very industrious to pass for an Ass' — a definition which reminds us strongly of the critical pre cepts of Shadwell, presented several decades previously" (I, 244). Nicoll implies that Vanbrugh is talking of a character the way Shadwell did in the Dramatis Personae or critical statements he appended to his plays. However, in Act II (p. 35), it is not Vanbrugh but Amanda who thus de scribes a kind of character' she has heard of, not Lord Foppington (whom she has never met). Lord Foppington has just been briefly described to her, and she thinks that this is what he must be like. (Page references are to The Com plete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh. ed. Bonamy Dobree and Geoffrey Webb. Both The Relapse and The Provok'd Wife are in Vol. I.) 210 the half-dozen times it is mentioned by a character in the play. In The Provok'd Wife (1697) there is no noticeable difference in the use of the term, though one character, Lady Brute, does provide a brief definition of "humour" in the sense of "mood." She says that at the theater "[she takes] Occasion to shew [her] Face in all Humours, Brisk, Pleas'd, Serious, Melancholy, Languishing" (III.iii[p. 148]). Lady Brute, the provoked wife of the title, is no fool, and there is no reason to suspect that Vanbrugh had any satiric intentions (except directed at women and fash ions in general) when he had her speak thus. Though Vanbrugh seems not to have been interested in any theory of "humours" as it would affect characterization, one character in The Provok'd Wife is much in the manner of a character Shadwell apparently considered to be a humour. Lady Fancywell is much like Crazy of The Humorists. with a variation that is perhaps due to her sex. Whereas Crazy is "in love with most Women, and thinks most Women in love with him" (see pp. 159-162), Lady Fancyfull thinks all men are in love with her, but, as she says, "I don't know how to receive as a Favor, what I take so infinitely to be my due" (IX.ii[p. 134]). She thus affects despising all men to 211 prevent anyone from refuting her claim that all men love her. She is not clever enough, however, and in the course of the play her affectation is exposed. Unlike Shadwell in his treatment of Crazy, Vanbrugh has given no indication that he thinks Lady Fancyfull's behavior has anything to do with humour. Nor does he seem concerned with the psychological impulses of Sir John, Lady Brute's husband, who provokes her toward adultery by his cruel be havior. In the opening speech of the play Sir John says: What a cloying Meat is Love— when Matrimony's the Sauce to it! Two Years Marriage has debaucht my five Senses. Every thing I see, every thing I hear, every thing I feel, every thing I smell, and everything I taste— methinks has Wife in't. No Boy was ever so weary of his Tutor; no Girl of her Bib; no Nun of doing Penance nor Old Maid of being Chast, as I am of being Married. (p. 115) Vanbrugh's purpose here is not to show anomalies in charac ter or society; it is, as he says in the Prologue, to "hold to every Man a Faithful Glass,/ And shew him of what species he's an Ass" (p. 113). This is very much like Etherege's statement in the Prologue to The Man of Mode (see p. 173). And, as in Etherege's plays, in Vanbrugh's two original comedies the various seventeenth century theories of humours have no direct relevance. George Farquhar is a writer whose plays reflect a 212 change, both in style and subject matter, from those of other Restoration playwrights. Palmer, for instance, says: The comedy of manners, reaching perfection in Congreve, perceptibly droops in Vanbrugh, and in Farquhar is ex tinguished. It was no accident of history that Farquhar had no successor. Farquhar killed the comedy to which he contributed the last brilliant examples. (p. 242) And Nicoll says of Farquhar's play, Love and a Bottle: Its plot is but poor and artificial with manifest ten dencies towards the degeneration of the pure manners style by the introduction of a species of spurious sen timentalism. Already in his first comedy he showed exactly where he stood, the heir of Congreve breathing the spirit of the changing age. (I, 245-246) Coincidental with the change in approach to the style and subject matter of comedy, Farquhar reflects a change of interest in characterization. As in the comedies and criti cal observations of Vanbrugh, in those of Farquhar there is not clearly to be found any kind of a theory of humour as an agent for the development of character. As I have sug gested (pp. 146-148), in his "A Discourse upon Comedy" Far quhar uses the term "humour" merely to help distinguish be tween kinds of characters, without considering "psychologi cal" reasons for characters being different from one anoth er. In his first play, tow* and a Bottle (1698), he does 213 not: include a single character who could be considered a humour even in the loosest sense of the term. In addition to the usual two pairs of intermittently confused lovers and the usual servants, there are a conventional fop, Mockmode, 18 and four characters who simply represent their trades. Also there are Trudge, a whore, and Bullfinch, a landlady. None of these characters has personal eccentricities; they are all types. As Charles Stonehill, the editor of The Complete Works of George Farcmhar. says: " Tlove. and a Bottle is ] constructed only of the most conventional mater ials, replete with the standardized sentiments of the Res toration Drama. All his stage tools are well-worn" (I, xv) . Roebuck, one of the lovers, as Palmer points out, "is Far quhar 's attempt to realise and consistently to deal with a figure which he had mechanically accepted from the theatre of his predecessors" (p. 258) . If humours characters were to appear in Farquhar's work, they would not, except by accident, be in i* * * * * * and a Bottle, which is scarcely more than a patchwork of standard Restoration characters. 18They are: Lyrick, a poet; Pamphlet, a bookseller; Ringadoon, a dancing-master; and Nimblewrist, a fencing- master . 19 The Constant Couple (1699) was very well received, impelling Farquhar to write a sequel, Sir Harrv Wildair (1701), which, however, was not well received (see Stone- hill, I, 159). For the sake of economy I shall consider both plays at the same time since both have virtually the same characters. As in Love and a Bottle there are several Restoration types in The Constant Couple and Sir Harrv Wild air . The brothers Clincher are the common affected fop and country bumpkin. In addition The Constant Couple has Viz ard ("Outwardly pious, other wise a great Debauchee and villanous") and his uncle Smuggler, an old merchant with the same characteristics as his nephew. These two are sat irized for their hypocrisy the way Snarl is in The Virtuosor but, unlike Shadwell, Farquhar does not suggest that they are anything more complicated than simple representatives of pious fraud. For instance, when Smuggler is talking to the character Lurewell, he says: I'm a Religious Man, Madam, I have been very instrumental in the Reformation of Manners.... Lure. You instrumental in the Reformation! how? IQ ^Stonehill says "the play was performed fifty-three times in London and twenty-three nights in Dublin its first season" (I, 81). 215 Smug. 1 whipt all the Whores Cut and Long-Tail, out of the Parish— : Ah', that leering Eye! Then I voted for pulling down the Playhouse— ; Ah that Ogle, that Ogle*. — Then mv own pious Example— Ah that Lip, that Lip.20 In Sir Harrv Wildair Vizard and Smuggler do not appear, although two other types do: Fireball, the conventional 21 (by this time) outspoken sea-captain, and Monsieur Mar quis, "a sharping Refugee," distinguishable from numerous other Restoration sharpers only by his accent and by his foppishness. Sir Harry Wildair, the hero of both plays, is said by Farquhar, in the Dramatis Personae of The Constant Couple. to be "An airy Gentleman affecting humorous Gaiety and Freedom in his Behaviour," and in both plays a great deal is made of Sir Harry's "humour." It is not until the second play, however, that there is any indication other than Farquhar' s description just mentioned that Sir Harry' s humour is an affectation, if this is to be distinguished 20n .iv(p. 111). Page references are to Stonehill's edition of Farquhar' s plays. Love and a Bottle. The Con stant Couple. Sir Harrv Wildair. and The Twin Rivals are in Vol. I; The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux Stratagem sure in Vol. II. 21H. F. Watson (The Sailor in English Fiction and Dra ma r 1550-1800 [New York, 1931]) shows how after Manly the plain dealing sea-captain became rather common (pp. 139ff.). He sees Captain Fireball, along with Ben of Love for Love. as another "plain dealer" (pp. 143, 147). 216 from a genuine bent of character. Sir Harry is more attrac tive in the first play than in the second; also, in The Constant Couple the term "humour" is used much more consis tently to describe him. He is characterized early in the play when Standard ("a disbanded Colonel, brave and gener ous") says that in Flanders "he behav'd himself very brave ly." To this Vizard, villainous but not stupid, replies: Why not? Do1st think Bravery and Gaiety are incon sistent? He's a Gentleman of most happy Circumstances, born to a plentiful estate, has had a genteel and easy Education, free from the rigidness of Teachers, and Pedantry of Schools. His florid Constitution being never ruffled by misfortune, nor stinted in its Pleasures, has render'd him entertaining to others, and easy to himself— Turning all Passion into Gaiety of Humour, by which he chuses rather to rejoice his Friends, than be hated by any. (I. i [p. 96 )) Later in the play, the language of an interview between Standard and Sir Harry suggests further implications of Sir Harry's "humour." Stand. You're a happy man, Sir Harryr who are never out of humour: Can nothing move your Gall, Sir Harrv? WiId. Nothing but impossibilities, which are the same as nothing. Stand. What Impossibilities? Wild. The Resurrection of my Father to disinherit me, or an Act of Parliament against Wenching. A man of eight thousand Pound per Annum to be vextl No, no, Anger and Spleen are Companions for younger Brothers. (II.iii[p. 108]) The term "humour" is used some eleven times in the play; in nine instances it is applied to Sir Harry (in the other two instances it is used by Sir Harry when he is contrasting Standard's temperament with his own), and seems always to mean "good mood" or "gay temperament." Both Standard and Lurewell ("a Lady of a jilting Temper proceeding from a resentment of her Wrongs from Men") try to force Sir Harry out of his temper. At one point Standard says: "Own your Spleen, out with it" (II.iii[p. 109]), and at another point Lurewell says that if she cannot arrange for circumstances to "teize him out of his good humour, [she will] never plot again" (II.iv[p. 114]). They are never entirely successful, however, and much of the comedy of the play is the result of Sir Harry's keeping his perpetually sanguine outlook. In Sir Harrv Wildair Lurewell comes closer to putting him out of his "humour," but though she is nearly successful, neither she nor any of the other characters in the play know it. All of this business helps to confuse our under standing of Farquhar's definition of "humour," if he had a 22 specific definition in mind. Sir Harry seems by natural op This inconvenient confusion of "humour" is implied in Farquhar' s description of Sir Harry when he is said to be "An airy Gentleman affecting humorous Gaiety and Freedom in I 218 inclination, as well as by industry and habit, to have a sanguine approach to life. What Farquhar implies is that his natural inclination is not so strong as it might be. Unlike, say, Candido of The Honest Whore, who cannot avoid being "patient" (see pp. 85-88), Sir Harry Wildair perhaps can but will not be put out of his "humour" because he is too witty for those who attempt to vex him. Either they cannot succeed or are not able to find out that they have succeeded. Distinctions disappear and we are left to con clude that for Farquhar "humour" could and did mean "char acter," but did not suggest reasons for differences between characters. There are no characters in The Twin Rivals (1702) who are even remotely like humours. The characters are, in fact, rather different from those in any other Restoration comedy that has been considered in this study. Explaining The Twin Rivals' cool reception, Farquhar says in the Pre face: his Behaviour." "Airy," judging from its position in the description, should be the term that describes Sir Harry's true character (as opposed to his affectation). "Airy," however, suggests the same thing as "humorous Gaiety and Freedom in his Behaviour." He thus "affects" to be what he already is. 219 A Play without a Beau, Cully, Cuckold, or Coquet, is as Poor and Entertainment to some Pallats, as their Sundays Dinner wou'd be without Beef and Pudding. And this I take to be one Reason that the Galleries were so thin during the Run of this Play. (p. 286) As this passage suggests, not only are there no humours characters in the play, but there are virutally no type characters (as they have been discussed in this study) either. Farquahr says that he wrote the play in a new mode because the only way to disapoint [Jeremy Collier's] Designs, is to improve upon his invectives, and to make the Stage flourish by vertue of that Satyr, by which he thought to suppress it. (Preface, p. 286) The characters in the play are to be laughed at not for their own follies or because they represent types not likely to be found in the playhouses, but because they caricature the follies of contemporary society in an effort to improve that society. The satire differs from earlier satire be cause *'afquhar~~:Lncludes with it models of "correct" behav ior, not in the sense of "manners," but in the sense of moral rectitude. That is to say, the play deteriorates into Sentimental Comedy. John Palmer's comment is generally agreed with, though not always so strongly stated. He says of The Twin Rivals; 220 Nemesis has definitely overtaken him. Farquhar is here revealed in a deliberate attempt to reconcile the theatre of Congreve with the preaching of Jeremy Collier. The general result is a wavering of his comedy between two irreconcilable conventions, and in the end a pitiful 23 descent into scenes where the feeling is utterly false. There is no room for a humours character in such a comedy. A humours character, by definition, must be an anomaly, and Farquhar wants characters who are representative. In The Recruiting Officer (1706) Farquhar turned away from the kind of moralizing that pervaded The Twin Rivals and introduced "a new field of legitimate comedy" (Strauss, p. xlvii). Dobree sees this comedy as being "a return to the Elizabethans" (p. 166), Nicoll talks of its "greater realism ... in marked contradistinction to the element of artificiality traceable in the best plays of the preceding half-century" (II, 149), and Palmer says that Farquhar "sets off his comedy with the humours of country life and manners" (P. 266). Palmer's use of "humour" is appropriate; it is much the same as Farquhar's. In his dedication of the play, Farquhar says: "Some little Turns of Humour that I met with 23See also: Louis A. Strauss (ed.), (A Discourse upon Comedyr The Recruiting Officer, and The Beaux Stratagem [Boston, 1914], p. xl); Willard Connely (Young George Farou-i har [London, 1949], p. 195). 221 24 almost: within the Shade of that famous Hill, gave the rise to this Comedy" (p. 41). "Humour" meaning "character" is consistent with the definition of the term that is implied in "A Discourse on Comedy" (see pp. 146-148, 211-213). In The Recruiting Officer there are no characters that would be called "humours," either in the Jonsonian sense or even in the very much looser sense of the "Sons of Ben" and those who came after them. The Beaux Stratagem, first performed in 1707, shortly before Farquhar's death, is commonly acknowledged to be his 25 best play; certainly it has been his most popular. It has no clearly distinguishable humours characters, though Strauss has claimed that in Lady Bountiful "Farquhar has exalted a humour into a character" (p. 1). Dobree, however, apparently using the term in the same sense, says that "he scarcely touches on the humours of Jonson, his Boniface and his Mrs. Mandrake [a midwife and bawd in The Twin Rivals 1 ^The play is dedicated to "All Friends round the Wre- kin." Strauss offers the following gloss: "The Wrekin, an isolated peak, is the nearest of the Caradoc Hills to the city of Shrewsbury, where Farquhar had been recruiting shortly before the writing of this play" (p. 186). ^Sees Palmer, p. 266; Strauss, pp. 1-lvi; Nettleton, p. 140; Stonehill, II, 119; Nicoll, II, 149. 4 222 have too much diversity of character" (p. 166). Apparently Dobree does not consider Lady Bountiful as even likely to be called a humour. Miss Mignon, I think, suggests Lady Boun tiful 's character best. She says that in the period from Etherege to Farquhar, "Lady Bountiful is the first good old woman yet encountered" (p. 175). Lady Bountiful is, then, in terms of Restoration comedy, a kind of anti-type. She is, though, the first of a series of new types to appear in 26 the sentimental comedy of the eighteenth century. As Palmer suggests, Boniface is not a character whose actions are inclined all in one direction; Count Bellair and Foigard are French and Irish "types"; Sullen is no more than a slightly elevated "country blockhead"; and none of the other characters at all resembles a humours character. In the light of his earlier statement that the English nation had "the most unaccountable Medley of Humour ... of any nation upon Earth" (see p. 147), it is curious to note that ^Miss Mignon points out: "The aged figures of Cibber and Steele are unrelated to those of Wycherly and Congreve. The social mode of comedy was revolutionized to a degree which made the Wishforts and the Oldfoxes a vanished race. It is not dramatic evolution which is to be found in passing from the comedy of manners to sentimental comedy, but sharp antithesis. . . . The sentimental handling of old age is as extreme in one direction as that of the comedy of manners was in another" (p. 176). 223 in The Beaux Stratagem Farquhar included both a Frenchman and an Irishman. But by 1707 he seems no longer to be con cerned with even the very loose "humour" he associated with Sir Harry Wildair. As in early eighteenth century critical writings, in the last plays of Farquhar the Jonsonian hu mours become lost entirely. CHAPTER VIII CONCLUSION In -the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the four humours were part of a generally acknowledged but vaguely defined system of classifying kinds of human behav ior . Although it is a mistake not to realize that theories of humours did affect the ways characters were created for the drama, it is also a mistake to ignore the variety of theories of humours and to accept one, or even several, as the explanation of any character's behavior. In the first place, humours were only one aspect of a complicated system of analyzing and predicting behavior, though, to be sure, they were the most important aspect. Characters were also drawn according to rules other than "psychological" ones (and sometimes, apparently, drawn according to no rules at all). Humours characters, for instance, had little if any relation to the type characters, from which they can be distinguished in two ways: (1) type characters fit into a 224 225 definable category; humours characters do not— they need only follow any number of the characteristics of their spe cific humour, and may be as different as Jacques, Hamlet, and Kitely, all of whom apparently suffered an excess of black bile; (2) there is an implied interest in the motiva tion of the humours character but not in that of the type. Of the playwrights of the late sixteenth century, Ben Jonson was the one most concerned (and perhaps the only one genuinely concerned) with a literal interpretation of hu mours. In Every,. Man In flig-flumgilE and Every Man Out of His Humour. that is, he distinguished between genuine humours characters and, say, type characters. On the other hand, for George Chapman and Henry Porter in 1597 "humour" meant "whim" or temporary "disposition," definitions that had very little to do with those of the Elizabethan psychologists. Shakespeare at about the same time used "humour" in any number of ways, sometimes literally (in the psychological sense), sometimes in the manner of Chapman and Porter, and sometimes in satire of Jonson. Apparently because of his unique treatment of humours and because of his early insis tence on their literal significance, Jonson was for a while referred to by his contemporaries as the humourist. The flurry of interest in humours in 1597-98, with Jonson at the center, subsided but did not die out for a number of years. However, its focus of interest inevitably shifted after Jonson stopped insisting upon literal humours characters, as he had done in the Humour plays. Except for a play such as Every Woman in Her Humour, which was obvious ly intended to cash in on the popularity of Jonson's come dies, most of the plays in which "humour" has a significant part are by such of Jonson *s contemporaries as Dekker, Fletcher, and Day, and by the "Sons of Ben." In some of the earlier plays "humour" might be taken either somewhat literally (as in the case of Claudio of The Honest Whore) or without even a nod toward consistency, literal or figurative (as in the case of the Lieutenant of The Humorous Lieuten ant) . In the plays of such "Sons of Ben" as Field, Brome, Randolph, and Marmion, and in the plays of the contemporar ies of the "Sons," such as Shirley and Jordan, even vaguely literal interpretations of humours were entirely ignored or abandoned. Curiously Jonson himself abandoned his early literal treatment of the humours, as is indicated not only by the changes he made in Every Man In when he revised it for the Folio of 1616, but also by the way he used the term "humour" in the late play, The Magnetir» T^Hy Jonson seems to have 227 felt that his rather pedantic devotion to explaining the literal humours got in the way of more literary and drama tic considerations, such as imagery and plot. However, it was not merely the exposing of literal humours that inter fered with plot; the exposing of any character, literal humour or other, tends to get in the way of the advancing of the action of the play, as witness the largely anecdotal pieces of many of the "Sons of Ben" when they thought they were following the methods of the master. These playwrights never had a very clear idea of what Jonson's early notions concerning humour amounted to, and they attached the term to characters who were no more than caricatures or types. Perhaps because the "Sons'" plays were so numerous or perhaps because Jonson was himself inconsistent in his use of the term "humour," the nature of the characters in his early Humour plays has been almost universally misinterpret ed. In Every Man In six characters are afflicted with ex cess of one of the four humours. Cob and Giulliano have an excess of yellow bile, Clement of blood, Thorello of black bile, and Matheo and Stephano of phlegm. In the Induction to Every Man Out Jonson complained that "humour" had been widely misused, and then went on to satirize those who had misused it. Ironically, the satirically intended characters 228 of Every Man Out were taken later to be examples of the kinds of characters Jonson considered to be true humours. Whether this substantially affected the creation of "humours characters" by the "Sons of Ben" is impossible to determine; they may have created precisely the same characters after the model of "humours" in Jonson*s later plays and those in the plays of his contemporaries. Thus, Ben Jonson, who has usually been considered to have started the tradition of humours characters, did probably give that name to them, but in his first and most famous "humours" play, Every Man In His Humour. he certainly did not establish the way they were always to be interpreted. After 1660 playwrights no longer contented themselves with mere attempts to imitate "Jonsonian" characters, as they might have done thirty years earlier. Instead, they also explained what they were doing, and, furthermore, com mented on the practices of their contemporaries. Elaborate discussions of humours were no longer the province of "med ical" men, but, rather, the province of literary men. In their discussions of humour most literary men were more interested in distinguishing between humour and wit than in analyzing the nature of humour. With the notable exception of Congreve, who entertained an almost literal interpreta- 229 tion of the term, most writers agreed with John Dennis that humour was an essential part of the character because it was "a sort of a Passion." Wit, on the other hand, was a function of reason. Those who thought that comedy depended less on wit than on humour gradually identified humour with "character." For them it became no longer merely a cause or even a description of eccentricity but rather a general term to denote the general characteristics of even an entire nation. As humour came to be considered not only a bias of the mind, but also the result of climatic or racial conditions, it was applied by English writers most commonly to the Eng lish nation. Thus by 1702 Farquhar was insisting that be cause of English "humour" English comedy must be topical and national. Since "humour" was "character" and even "national character," it became useless as an agent for distinguishing between characters, and as such an agent was virtually aban doned . The practice of Restoration playwrights, with one ex ception, paralleled changes in Restoration theory. The ex ception, of course, was Shadwell, who took it upon himself to model his characters on those of Jonson. As did the "Sons of Ben," however, Shadwell either misinterpreted or 230 ignored Jonson's early notions about the use of literal hu mours to explain the behavior of comic characters. Shadwell was interested in creating "original humours," that is, characters whose outrageous eccentricities were new to the London theater. As Shadwell's somewhat antiquarian inter ests in the humours distinguished him from his colleagues, so did his theories of humours, which were, in fact, no more than apologies for his dramatic creations. Dryden's treatment of humours is much more typical. After trying his hand at Jonsonian, or, more accurately, neo-Jonsonian, methods of characterization in his first comedy, Dryden for practical purposes gave them up. Except in the potboiler Mr. Limberham, we do not see them after The Wild Gallant of 1663. In the plays of Etherege we find no humours characters at all, either in the Jonsonian or neo-Jonsonian sense. Etherege was interested only in the ways people fit or did not fit the beau-monde of the Restor ation, and cared little, if at all, about analyzing their characters to find out what caused their biehavior. In Wycherley's plays, on the other hand, there were three characters whose consistency of eccentric behavior suggests that they suffered from a significant imbalance of humour. One is led, that is, to assume that they were 231 humours characters because they had genuine eccentricities rather than affectations. Wycherley, however, does not tell, or even imply, why these characters acted as they did, and this is the main difference between his humours and those of the early Jonson. An additional difference lies in the ways two of the three characters were treated. Don Diego of The Gentleman Dancing-Master had a genuine bent of character, which, however, was masked by an affectation• , therefore, he is not usually distinguished from characters who were merely types or Shadwellian eccentrics called "hu mours ." The Widdow Blackacre of The Plain Dealer had a genuine bent of character that Wycherley treated as though it had been an affectation, thus helping to confuse a con venient distinction. Manly, of the same play, was not as sociated with a foolish affectation and was the only humours character to be the hero of a Restoration comedy, a point which John Dennis made as early as 1702.^ When Manly's character was presented, however, the action of the play was sometimes stopped, the fault commonly caused by the presentation of any humours character, "genuine" or not. ^■"A Large Account of the Taste in Poetry," Works. I, 283. Congreve's definition of "humour" was more like Jon- son's early literal definition than was that of any other Restoration playwright or critic, and Congreve argued that there should be at least one such humour in each comedy. Nevertheless, only Scandal of for Love seems certainly to fit his definition of a humour, though, like Wycherley, Congreve did not even imply which particular imbalance of humour it was that was responsible for Scandal's behavior. In his last comedy, The Wav of the World. Congreve satirized the common misuse of the term "humour," but did not give a clear example of the way he thought the word should be used. Scandal of the 1695 play was Congreve's last patent humours character; moreover, he was, so far as I know, the last hu mours character, in a literal sense of the term, to appear in Restoration comedy. Vanbrugh seems not to have been much interested in the concept of humours characters, and one does not find any in either of his two original comedies, The Relapse and The Provok'd Wife. One character in the latter play, Lady Fancywell, has an affectation similar to that of Shadwell's Crazy (The Humourists). Unlike Shadwell, however, Vanbrugh gives no indication that he thinks she is a humour, and since the only reasons to consider Crazy as a humour are 233 Shadwell's statements of intention, Lady Fancywell must stand as simply another comic character with an affectation. As in Etherege’s plays, in Vanbrugh's original comedies the various seventeenth-century theories of humours have no di rect relevance. In the plays of Farquhar, which cure generally consid ered to mark the end of Restoration comedy, the notion of "humour" as a distinctive cause of behavior becomes lost entirely. Although the term "humour" is used often in The Constant Couple and Sir Harrv Wildair. it seems always to mean no more than "good mood" or "gay temperament." As it is applied to Sir Harry's almost constantly sanguine out look, it implies modern, as distinguished from seventeenth century, connotations: "jocularity" or "pleasant fancy." In his later plays Farquhar abandoned even this notion, and by The Beaux Stratagem of 1707 humours, Jonsonian or other wise, had disappeared. With the advent of sentimental come dy, characters who might have been ridiculed either as a "humours" or as types were replaced by one kind of charac ter: the "admirable" type, such as Lady Bountiful. Theory no longer suggested that humour was responsible for particu lar eccentricities of behavior, and ridicule of eccentrici ties had fallen out of fashion. BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY Allen, Don Cameron. The Star-Crossed Renaissance. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1941. Allen, N. B. 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Asset Metadata

Creator Riddell, James Allen (author)

Core Title The Evolution Of The Humours Character In Seventeenth-Century English Comedy

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Literature, General,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Lecky, Eleazer (committee chair), Arnold, Aerol (committee member), Stahl, Herbert M. (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-207300

Unique identifier UC11359938

Identifier 6608796.pdf (filename),usctheses-c18-207300 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 6608796.pdf

Dmrecord 207300

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Riddell, James Allen

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA