Ben Jonson's Comedy of Humours

The Word "Humour":

The term "humour" comes from the ancient Greek physicians and, later, from the medieval
system of medicine. This system envisaged four major humours corresponding with the four
elements (fire, air, earth, and water) and possessing the quality respectively of heat, cold,
dryness, and moisture.

The "complexion," "temperament," or constitution of a man depended on the proportionate

alliance of the four humours or subtle juices in his body. The predominance of the moist
humour caused a man to grow sanguine, of the hot to grow choleric, and so on. The prevailing
idea with the physiologist was that in a healthy body there was a natural balance of all the four
humours and that a disturbance of the balance was dangerous and needed to be checked. "In
Elizabethan times", says Ifor Evans in A Short History of English Drama, "this medieval
physiology was not treated with complete seriousness, but its vocabulary became a popular
fashion in sophisticated conversation and this again Jonson exploited."

Elizabethan Interpretation:

"Humour", apart from its currency in the medieval profession, was also a catchword when Ben
Jonson began to write. But his contemporaries used the word for any passing mood, whim,
fancy, or caprice and not, as Ben Jonson did, for a more a less permanent and predominant
peculiarity of disposition. Shakespeare, like the rest, used the word in the sense
of mood or fancy. For instance, in the Richard III we have:

Was ever -woman in this-humour wooed?

Was ever -woman in this humour won?

Again, in The Merchant of Venice, when Shylock is asked why he prefers a pound of the flesh of
Bassanio's heart to the sum of three thousand ducats, he replies:

It is my humour

Jonson's Interpretation:

Ben Jonson dissociated himself from this degenerate meaning of the word "humour", took it
back to its original physiological sense and fitted it into the context of his concept of the nature
and function of comedy. Just as a man has in his physique a dominant humour, similarly he has
in his psyche a dominant passion. Under the influence of this dominant passion a man may
become, as the case may be, greedy, jealous, cowardly, deceptible, foolhardy, and so forth. As
Jonson clarified in the Prologue to Every Man out of His Humour, he was taking the word
"humour" from medicine and was using it as a metaphor for the general disposition of a man
that is, his psychological set-up. He explains that

When some one peculiar quality

Doth so possess a man that it doth draw
All his effects, his spirits, and his powers,
In their confluctions, all to run one way;
This may truly be said to be a humour.

The Purpose of Comedy:

Ben Jonson's comedy is called the comedy of humours as it aimed primarily at the
representation of such characters as were motivated mainly or entirely by their peculiar,
dominant passions or humours. Jonson felt that, in the words of a critic, "the purpose of comedy
is to note those elements in human character which are either naturally and permanently
dominant in each man, or which on occasion, in the hazard of life, overflow and exceed their
limits at the expense of the other contributing elements to represent a number of characters
differently humoured; and in the clash of contrasts to paint with pleasant laughter, the moral of
these disorders. A man whom we call avaricious because avarice to us is his most striking
characteristic and to him his most absorbing humour may either preserve the established
proportion of his dominating quality in all his dealings, or under stress of living in a peculiar set
of circumstances, let it grow at he expense of other qualities. In the first case, he may be said to
be' in his humour' and in the second, to be 'out of his humour.' Both are excellent material for
comic dramatisation and the question is one of degree. The latter is the more tempting to the
playwright not merely because excess gives him more striking stage effects, but because it serves
his ethical purpose better because of the enormity of its magnitude." The comedy of humours
had a highly didactic aim which was sought to be realised through satire levelled at various
humours. Volpone is a satire on cupidity and depravity of human character. The Alchemist on
greed, Bartholomew Fair on hypocritical Puritans, The Silent Woman on jittery melancholiacs
afraid of noise, The Staple of News on irresponsible newsmongering and the uncultured craving
for thrills, and so on. It was not without reason that Ben Jonson characterised more than one of
his comedies as "comical satires."

Is Jonson an Imitator?:

We have not so far referred to Jonson's indebtedness to classical dramatists in arriving at his
concept of the comedy of humours. It was partly his classical instruction andxtaste which led
him to this concept. But it is a popular misrepresentation to assert than Jonson was a
mechanical imitator of the Roman comic dramatists-Plautus and Terence. "There is no doubt
that in Latin comedy," to quote Ifor Evans, "each character belonged to a recognizable type, and
maintained throughout certain well-defined attributes." However, as a critic observes, "it is
really a strange critical error to hold that the Jonsonian conception of the dramatic humour is
only an English copy of Plautine and Terentian types and that his braggarts and gulls and misers
were but Romans in doublet and ruff..." Jonson was no transcriber. He acknowledged "no man"
his "master." His dramatic art came not from the study of literature but the study of life. His
insistence that comedy should be real and English comedy should be English and real was
meant partly to dispel the charge that his comic art was merely literary, far removed from life
and only a scholar's affair. His native vigour and originality save him from being treated as a
mechanical transcriber. He was a redoubtable scholar, but, what is more important, "he was", in
the words of David Daiches in A Critical History of English Literature, "also a rugged
Englishman with a sardonic relish for the varied and colourful London life of his day...he
showed enormous and impressive originality even when most closely following classical models
or applying rules from classical theory or practice." Take an-example. Most of the humours in
his first important comedy Every Man in His Humour have their prototypes in the classical
comedy of Plautus and Terence. But all of them are Londoners, not Romans,.and are drawn not
from books but observation. The jealous husband, the timid father, the corrupt son, the cunning
slave or parasite, the simple gull, and the boasting but cowardly soldier of Plautus and Terence
have suggested Ben Jonson's Kitely the merchant, the elder Knowell, the younger Knowell (he is
not corrupt indeed but it is.supposed by his father to be so), Brainworm, Matthew and Stephen
(the town and the country gull respectively), and Bobadill. All of them are no mere copies but
represent a lively cross-section of London society of the age of Ben Jonson. A critic observes
regarding these characters : "No more genuine sketches of London character are to be found in
the annals of the drama." They are children of Jonson's own observation; and as an observer, he
had, save Shakespeare, few rivals among his contemporaries.

Advantages of the Humour Technique:

There were some obvious advantages Jonson derived from the adoption of the humour
technique. The chief among them are given below:

(i) First, it allowed him to dispense with the traditional clown or jester. The farcical laughter
arising from the grotesque and slapstick farce of clownery could be substituted by the clash of
humours.

(ii) Secondly, it provided a meeting-ground between classical theory and modern life.

(iii) Thirdly, as the introduction of humours put the dramatic emphasis on character at the cost
of incident, it threw out of favour, once and for all, the comedy of mere intrigue.

(iv) Lastly, it rendered it possible for the master of satiric comedy, the doughty champion of
classicism, and the most powerful of Elizabethan realists to be united in the same man. Jonson
threw the massive weight of his dramatic genius against the current of popular taste and
succeeded in pruning the romantic excesses of Elizabethan comedy.

The Disadvantages:

A very grave danger inherent in the envisagement and representation of humours was the
possibility of a falsification of human nature. The characters were apt to grow wooden and
monotonous. Gregory Smith observes in this connexion : "In the first place, the presentation of
certain selected humours throughout a long play involves the playwright, as it does novelists like
Dickens, in one .offfte two risks: either of making the characters too rigid or uniform in habit,
puppet-like after the fashion of the personages in the old Morality, and dramatically unreal or in
the consciousness of this danger, of striving to escape from it by exaggeration...In the second
place...characters thus fixed tend to become too simple. Even when the humour is not plain
study of a single folly, but a complex impression of several with one only slightly overtopping the
rest, it is hard to sustain the combination throughout the action." Jonson does manage, thanks
to his vigour and originality, to negotiate these dangers pretty safely. It cannot be said that his
characters are only wooden figures, representatives of types and embodiments of specific traits
as are the characters of the morality plays of the Middle Ages. He does manage to breathe into
them a life of their own. As T. S. Eliot maintains, rather partially, in The Sacred
Wood, Shakespeare's characters are "no more alive than are the characters of Jonson."

In spite of their realism and vividness Ben Jonson's humours are open to the charge of being
psychologically too simple. It-is'often said that he was not acquainted with man in his fulness
and that he built on the surface and built but a single storey. The complexities of human psyche
find no expression. "There is,"-says a critic, "no light and shade, the cross-play of motives is apt
to be neglected; and above all, he misses the- inconsistency which is so powerful an element in
the nature of us all." "He," says another critic, "chooses a general idea-cunning, folly, severity,
Itlst-and makes a person out of it. He takes an abstract quality, and putting together all the acts
to which it may give rise, trots it out on the stage in a man's dress. Now it is a vice selected from
the catalogue of moral philosophy sensuality thirsting for gold: the perverse double inclination
becomes a personage, Sir Epicure Mammon; before the alchemist, before his friend, before his
mistress, In public or alone, all his words denote a greed of pleasure and of gold, and they
express nothing more. Now it is a piece of madness gathered from the old sophists, a
tremendous horror of noise; this form of mental pathology becomes a personage, Morose." To
have a humour is almost a whole-time profession. It is to some extent, an over-simplification of
human nature amounting to its falsification. Ben Jonson's characters are, to adopt R. M.
Forster's phraseology in his Aspects of the Novel, flat and not round characters. They are all
predictable and are "'not capable of surprising us in a convincing way." They do not have the
unpredictability of life, though they are lively and arresting.

It has been said that Jonsons chief aim in his comedies is the satirical
portraiture of character. This is certainly the truth in EMIAH. The interest lies, for
the most part, in a series of capital situations which permit the chosen victims
Stephen, Matthew, Bobadill and Kitley, to disport themselves, each in his
humour. In a secondary way, it is a comedy of intrigue as well as a comedy of
character.
Into the plot Jonson has woven three well-worn threads. The first is a theme
familiar to a Latin comedy, dealing with the relations of the old father and the
rakish son: the elder knowell, by means of the misdelivered letter, becomes
suspicious of his sons conduct, follows him into the London haunts, and through
the trickery of the roughish servant, Brain-worm, is inveigled into a
compromising situation at Cobs house. The second thread is the insensate
jealousy of Kitley for his wife, his determination to find her out, and his ultimate
awakening to the foolishness of his fears. These two threads are tied together in
the meeting and misunderstanding outside Cobs house. The third is the very
thin love intrigue between Bridget and young Knowell. This is the one
conventionally romantic aspect of the play. But Jonson characteristically makes
little of it. It is introduced in Act IV Sc iii with no preparation; but it is slenderly
elaborated.
Regarded as a comedy of intrigue, the play has its evident weaknesses. The
element of the plot are rather commonplace, and none of them has in itself
sufficient strength to hold our interest. In the first half the action moves forward
but slowly.
The characters in the play naturally range themselves in three fairly distinct
groups: the normal people, those held up to ridicule, the minor characters who
fill in the play who are not satires but some of whom are interesting side-studies.
The first group is the small band of conspirators who carry through the series of
practical jokes, which forms the plot and who are the exploiters of the various
victims of humours.There is little attempt to individualise the pair of friends.
They are alike in ironic wit and in their attitude of easy superiority to their
victims. Brain-worm, the third of the conspirators, is the most magnetic
character in the play but, of course, he is little else. He is the necessary
instrument for setting in motion carrying to a head the various schemes. He is a
lively revival of the trickster servant of Latin comedy, who fooled the father and
sided with the son.
The Humours: Old Knowell is left merely a type, and an old-fashioned type at
that, which Jonson knew well in classical comedy. Kitley, the victim of the second
intrigue, is one of Jonsons most striking humours he must not be placed
beside Shakespeares Othello. Shakespeare is working in the more exacting
realm of tragedy. He presents the complete man, a noble and open nature
suddenly wrought up to a momentary madness. Jonsons intention is satiric
comedy; he eliminates from Kitley all but the one idea of foolish jealousy, which,
after the manner of humour, becomes an obsession, and ridiculously colours all
his thoughts and conduct.
Babadill is Jonsons masterpiece in comic character and is easily the dominant
figure in the play. The braggadacio soldier, whose deeds belie his brave words,
has been a traditional butt of comedy. He is indeed, far more than a mere
humour. There is life in this lean, hungry figure who, despite his arrogant and
condescending airs and all his bravery, can never rise above his cup of small
beer. The two most effective moments in the play are with Babadill. The first is
our introduction to him, when he is surprised in his lodge by Matthew, excuses
his residence on the grounds of privacy, and proceeds to parade himself by
giving his admirer, who has politely accepted the excuses, a fencing lesson with
the landladys broomstick. One can understand from the satire of such a scene
why the Babadills of London showed such a dislike for Jonson. The second is the
grand scene of Babadills discomfiture in Act IV, when, in the midst of his boasts
and fiery threats, he is caught by downright and trounced; struck with a
planet, he protests, and leaves to seek pusillanimous remedy in a summons for
assault. If we compare this portrait of Babadill with that of the genial roistering
Falstaff , we amy again measure the difference in the comis attitudes of the
dramatists Shakespeare with his sympathetic humour; Jonson seeing the fun
but relentlessly pointing the satire.
Justice Clement is the deux ex machina of the comedy, sorting out the knots,
and bringing the humours to a perception of their folly.
In the Preface to his Every Man in His Humour, Ben Jonson finds fault with the
then current tragedies, comedies and historical plays. In the tragedies and
histories, he deplores the neglect of unities time and place. The ludicrous setting
of the plays is also deplored along with the bombast of the writers. In comedy,
he deplores the lack of reality and also the confusion between the purpose of
comedy and that of farce. Jonson felt that comedy, as distinguished from
tragedy, had lost its touch of reality through romantic extravagance. The so-
called ideal of the comic dramatist had blurred the dramatic purpose. Jonsons
constitutional habit of satire had compelled him to turn to realism as the only
medium of comedy. He was helped in this conclusion by the scholars despair
over the romantic comedy. His classical training had encouraged him on the
path. He was an admirer of the Latin comedy for its quickness. When he
borrowed the Latin form, he transformed it to suit contemporary purposes. To
Jonson must belong the credit he has given that he has given to the stage an
accepted doctrine of comedy based on classical stage. He recognizes comedy as
an independent literary from which should not be merely treated in contrast to
tragedy. He found comedy to be based on the method that he himself framed for
the fuller expression of life. In the later Renaissance criticism, comedy is defines
as one whose purpose is to create laughter with the ultimate aim that the follies
of men should be laughed at as ridiculous. Tragedy works out its morality
through the display of pity and horror. Likewise comedy achieves its ethical
objective by mockery of human baseness. it is meant to sport with follies, but
not with crimes. Jonsons theory is based on this definition. But Jonson goes
further to say that the chief aim of comedy is not laughter. Laughter is only a
means to an end, delight being the primary consideration. He, therefore,
deplores the havoc that the comic stage has done with laughter as the chief
instrument. In the second place, in the importance given to laughter, there is
the danger of exaggeration, and laughter is the undoer of comedy.
We may not overstep the modesty of Nature; for, anything overdone is far from
the purpose of the play. It is for this reason that Jonson bases his theory of
comedy on humours. In the olden physiology, the four major humours
corresponding to the four elements are found in proportion in a normal man.
This medical tradition was misapplied in literature during renaissance and it is
this which led Jonson to reform comedy. According to Jonson, the purpose of
comedy is to note these different human elements dominant in each character.
Comedy should embody these elements in a number of characters and must
bring them to a clash of contrast which produces a pleasant laughter and
stresses the moral of the disorders. The difficulties arise when we decide what
are the true humours in a comedy. Jonson forgets that an excess of humour may
be affected or artificial material for a comedy. But Congrave thinks that it is the
excess that qualifies a comed. Jonsons problem , therefore, was to strike a
balance between a reasonable excess and the required reality. Because he
considers excess as reasonable for comedy, he lays stress on real life too. The
more the humours are paraded and the finer the difference between the
characters, the greater is the temptation to be extravagant. Jonson tries to
protect himself from this by denouncing clowning in the English comedy. Jonson,
however, ultimately fails to notice the serious difficulties involved in humour
comedy. In the first place, the presentation of certain humours throughout a long
play involves the playwright in certain dangers. For example, such characters
become rigid; too uniform in habit, so they give the impression of the puppets of
the morality stage. They defeat his dramatic purpose of realism. The second
danger is that in trying to escape from this uniformity of character, the
dramatist is likely to be extravagant. But, as far as possible, Jonson is vigilant
against these dangers and this is why he protests against over-emphasis. He
rejects accidents and tries to have a close attention to life as a corrective
artifice. Characters uniform in habit tend to become too simple. Even when the
humour is not the study of a single folly, it is very hard to sustain unity
throughout the action. The characters are prevented from self-development. In
this connection, the romantic comedy is to be sharply contrasted and these
characters are given ample opportunity to develop. If we ignore these dangers,
some say that Ben Jonson is to be compared with Shakespeare. But the essential
difference between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson is that Jonsons comedies are
superficial; his characters have only the stage significance and there is no
display of the psychological currents. But in suitable expressiveness, he is on a
par with Shakespeare.