Every Man in His Humour Comedy of Humours

Ben Jonson’s plays are the quintessential examples of “comedy of humours,” a type
of drama in which the characters are identified with one or more of the four
humours (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile). Jonson suggested that a
person had a “true” humour as well as an “adopted” humour, an affectation in
mannerism, clothing, speech, etc. Jonson begins Every Man Out of His Humour with an
evocation of this theory: “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 run one way” (see Prologue, Project Gutenberg e-text of play).

The term “humour” comes from the Latin humor or umor, which means liquid. According
to medieval and Renaissance thinking, a person had a healthy mind and body when
their humours were balanced. Blood was associated with a sanguine disposition, such
as being overly optimistic and very social. Yellow bile, choler, was seen to
produce aggression. Black bile produced melancholy and depression. Phlegm was
associated with apathy. If these were imbalanced, then a person would be prone to a
number of issues and perhaps even be considered mentally ill.

An English professor from Goucher College explains, “The ‘comedy of humors’ . . .

depicts emotional states as a psychological drama that might be thought of as a
more sophisticated, materialist way to understand our inner workings than the
spiritual mechanism of the moralities' allegory.” Dallas Baptist University
provides additional analysis, suggesting Jonson’s profound influence on the
theater: “the comedy of humours owes something to earlier vernacular comedy but
more to a desire to imitate the classical comedy of Plautus and Terence and to
combat the vogue of romantic comedy. Its satiric purpose and realistic method are
emphasized and lead later into more serious character studies, as in Jonson’s The
Alchemist. It affected his plays (Leontes in The Winter’s Tale is a good example)—
and most of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes are such because they allow some one trait
of character (such as jealousy or fastidiousness) to be overdeveloped and thus to
upset the balance necessary to a poised, well-rounded personality. The comedy of
humors, closely related to the contemporary COMEDY OF MANNERS, influenced the
comedy of the Restoration period.”

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