II.

EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR.

THE first play to be considered in our discussion of "The War of the Theatres" is Ben Jonson's comedy, Every Man in his Humour, a play which, although it contains no mention of Marston, was yet closely connected with the “War,” on account of the violent attack on Daniel which it contains. The play shows plainly the arrogance of Ben Jonson's attitude toward his contemporaries; and the satire of Daniel, who was then popular and prominent, aroused opposition against the author of the attack. Why Jonson attacked Daniel, whom so many of his other contemporaries praised, we do not know; but it is altogether probable that Daniel's close connection with the court, shown by the tradition that he succeeded to the position held by Spenser, who was virtually poet laureate, made him the great obstacle in the way of Jonson, who was ambitious for court preferment. It was after this attack on Daniel that we find Jonson attacked by Marston in The Scourge of Villanie, and probably also in Histriomastix.

Every Man in his Humour has come down to us in two very different forms, an earlier, given in the quarto 1601, and a later, given in the folio 1616. The quarto gives the play as it was first performed, and is therefore the text with which we are chiefly concerned in the present discussion. The controversies concerning the date of the first production of the play do not especially concern us in the present connection, and it is enough for us to know that the play had certainly been per

formed in 1598, a fact of which Jonson informs us on the titlepage in the folio of 1616.1

The Prologue to Every Man in his Humour is clearly an attack on methods employed by other playwrights, but all attempts to show that particular plays of Shakespeare, or any other dramatist, were aimed at, lose their force when we consider that criticisms on methods of dramatic construction were very common at the time. We find criticisms precisely similar to those of Jonson's Prologue in Whetstone's Dedication of Promos and Cassandra,2 printed in 1578; in Sidney's Apologie for Poetrie, written probably as early as 1581; also in A Warn

1 Henslowe's Diary contains records of the performance of a play called The Comodey of Umers on eleven dates between May 11 and Oct. 11, 1 597. Henslowe's Diary, ed. J. P. Collier, Shakespeare Society, 1845, pp. 87-91. Some have thought that these entries refer to Jonson's Every Man in his Humour. Mr. Fleay says that The Comodey of Umers was "certainly the same play" as Chapman's A Humorous Day's Mirth. Chronicle of the English Drama, I. 55. Jonson was in the employ of Henslowe in 1597, as several entries in the Diary show. See Henslowe's Diary, pp. 255, 256. For a discussion of the date of first production of Every Man in his Humour, see Dr. Brinsley Nicholson's articles in The Antiquary, July, 1882, pp. 15-19 and September, 1882, pp. 106-110; also Chronicle of the English Drama, Fleay, I. 358. The quarto has the following title-page: Every Man in his Humor | as it hath been sundry times | publickly acted by the right Honorable the Lord Cham | berlaine his servants. | Written by Ben Johnson. Quod non dant proceres, dabit Histrio | Haud tamen invidias vati, quem pulpita pascunt. | Imprinted at London, for Walter Burre, and are to be sould at his shoppe in Paules church-yarde | 1601.

The play in this earlier form differs considerably from the folio text of 1616. The characters in the quarto bear Italian names, of which the list is as follows (with the names as given by the folio, in parentheses): Lorenzo Senior (Knowell), Thorello (Kitely), Prospero (Wellbred), Stephano (Stephen), Doctor Clement (Justice Clement), Bobadilla (Bobadil), Musco (Brainworm), Giulliano (Downright), Lorenzo Junior (Edward Knowell), Biancha (Dame Kitely), Hesperida (Bridget), Peto (Formal), Matheo (Mathew), Pizo (Cash), Cob (Cob), Tib (Tib).

The two texts differ considerably, one of the chief instances being in Act V., in which a long speech of Lorenzo Junior in defence of poetry has been omitted from the lines of Edward Knowell. Gifford gives the omitted passage in his note. 2 Shakespeare's Library, ed. Hazlitt, Pt. II. Vol. II. p. 204.

3 Ed. Arber, p. 64.

ing for Fair Women, 1599.1 Other examples might be mentioned. If we try to explain Jonson's criticisms as referring to Shakespeare, or any other dramatist, we must explain also the allusions in all similar criticisms. As Jonson's Prologue was printed for the first time in the folio in 1616, and as we do not know when it was written, though various guesses have been made, there is nothing, so far as chronology is concerned, to prevent our referring Jonson's strictures to any plays of Shakespeare's to which they may be applicable. The Prologue is

Though need make many poets, and some such
As art and nature have not bettered much;
Yet ours for want hath not so loved the stage,
As he dare serve the ill customs of the age,

Or purchase your delight at such a rate,
As, for it, he himself must justly hate :
To make a child now swaddled, to proceed
Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed,
Past threescore years; or with three rusty swords,
And help of some few foot and half-foot words,
Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars,
And in the tyring house bring wounds to scars.
He rather prays you will be pleased to see
One such today as other plays should be ;
Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas,

Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please :
Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard
The gentlewomen; no rolled bullet heard
To say, it thunders; nor tempestuous drum
Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come;
But deeds, and language, such as men do use,
And persons, such as comedy would choose,
When she would shew an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes,
Except we make them such, by loving still
Our popular errors, when we know they 're ill.

1 The School of Shakspere, Simpson, II. 242, 243.

I mean such errors as you'll all confess
By laughing at them, they deserve no less :

Which, when you heartily do, there's hope left then,
You, that have so graced monsters, may like men.

That some of these criticisms are applicable to plays of Shakespeare is evident; that they are applicable to the plays of other men is equally evident, but is a fact ignored by those who believe that Jonson and Shakespeare quarrelled. The chorus that "wafts you o'er the seas may refer to Henry V. or to Winter's Tale, but it may also refer to the chorus in The Life and Death of Stukeley, 1600, which bids the auditors "Embarked and victualled think him on the sea." 1 "York and Lancaster's long jars" may refer to Henry VI., Parts I., II., and III., or to the several old plays, upon which these plays were modelled. "The creaking throne" was a common device used in many plays, as in Sir Clyomon and Clamydes, 1599, in which Providence is "let down," 2 or in A Looking Glass for London and England, 1594, in which Oseas is let down from the flies.3 Violation of the unity of time is severely ridiculed by Sidney and Whetstone in the passages already referred to, and while it is possible to apply Jonson's line about "a child new swaddled," to Winter's Tale, it is equally applicable to numerous other plays, such as Patient Grissil, by Dekker. "The rolled bullet

to say it thunders" and "the tempestuous drum" may refer to the opening scenes of Macbeth and The Tempest, or to King Lear, or to many other plays by other dramatists, in which storms are represented, as, for example, Faustus, Locrine or Mucedorus. One of the most absurd attempts to prove that Shakespeare was attacked in this Prologue is based on the fact that it was published in the year of Shakespeare's death.1

1 The School of Shakspere, Simpson, I. 248. 2 Peele, ed. Dyce, p. 520.

3 Greene, ed. Grosart, XIV. 14.

4 Ben Jonson und seine Schule. Wolf Graf von Baudissin, I. ix. See also Essay on the Life and Dramatic Writings of Ben Jonson, by Alexander Schmidt, Dantzig, 1847.

Whatever may be the allusions to particular plays there is no doubt as to Jonson's views of the function of dramatic representation as expressed in this Prologue. His play observes the unities, and holds up to view "popular errors." The characters are not merely types of classes, but in many instances undoubtedly represent individuals who were at the time living in London. Various guesses have been made as to the identity of the persons thus represented, and in many instances these guesses have been almost wholly unsupported by evidence.

It is apart from the purpose of the present discussion to mention all of the supposed identifications that have been made of the characters in the plays of which it treats. One or two guesses may be mentioned here, however, as showing the eagerness of some critics to involve Shakespeare in "The War of the Theatres."

Dr. Robert Cartwright stated in his monograph that in Every Man in his Humour Shakespeare was meant by Master Stephen, the country gull, and also by Wellbred.1 The only reason given for the first identification is that Shakespeare spent his boyhood in the country, while the second is supposed to be proved by the fact that Edward Knowell, assumed by Dr. Cartwright to be Jonson, is "almost grown to be the idolater of this young Wellbred."2 If either of these identifications could be proved, we should have an interesting situation, a man acting in a play in which one of the other characters represented himself, for, as we know from the list of actors published in the folio, Shakespeare was one of the Chamberlain's men, who produced this play. We learn from the play a number of facts concerning Master Stephen, and it needs no argument to show that, whoever else Stephen may be, he is certainly not Shakespeare.

1 Shakespeare and Jonson, Dramatic versus Wit Combats, Auxiliary forces, Beaumont and Fletcher, Marston, Dekker, Chapman and Webster, London, 1864, pp. 22, etc.

2 Every Man in his Humour, I. 1.