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Chapter 1

BEN JONSON AND HIS SOURCES

CLASSICAL LITERARY SOURCES

Decorum

Who soever hath bene diligent to read advisedlie over, Terence, Seneca, Virgil, Horace … he shall easily perceive, what is fitte and decorum in evrie one.¹⁵

DECORUM SETS DOWN that characters in plays must behave according to their age and social position, to be defined in a fixed way by the playwright and remain within these limits.¹⁶ Cicero defined the Latin term decorum, based on a Greek word used by Pythagoras to indicate balance and appropriateness: ‘In an oration, as in life, nothing is harder than to determine what is appropriate. The Greek call it kairos; let us call it decorum.’¹⁷ Aristotle had used a similar concept, to prepon, to denote decorum.

The static identity of decorum may seem anathema to serious characterization and development, what you see in the beginning is what you get in the end. Indeed, such dramatic propriety could appear suffocating, a limitation and fencing in of the creative process, but inside the wall great comedy appeared as the expanding elements fused with a new artistic decorum.

The search for Jonson’s sources begins in his library, but as Vulcan (fire) and Necessity (poverty), as he himself admits, took an unfair share of the grant he had received from Lord Pembroke, many books in the original library collection have disappeared from the records. What remains is still comprehensive and impressive. This rare stage scholar was an omnivorous reader. At the same time, his approach to books and sources made him both selective and dogmatic. His choices reveal distinct preferences and an essential part of the focus lies in the field of classical literature and neo-classical literary theory. Works by Aristophanes, Terence, Aelius Donatus, Erasmus, Julius Caesar Scalinger, Martin de Roa, Juan Luis Vives, Daniel Heinsius and George Puttenham were found on the shelves, as were works by Aristotle, Cicero and Horace.¹⁸

Of particular interest is the annotated fifteenth century manuscript of Horace’s Ars Poetica, a letter, an epistle, a reflection on art and literary propriety. The closest I got inside Jonson’s own library was to hold in my hand this book from his collection. It is an important source to help understand his preoccupation with the ancient masters of Greece and Rome, how they would influence his writing and his humorous characters. ‘At his death in 1637 he was celebrated as the founder and chief representative of an English literary culture to rival that of the ancients.’¹⁹

I was welcomed to the library of St. John’s College, Oxford. The annotated fifteenth century manuscript was carefully placed in front of me at the desk.²⁰ It had Ben Jonson’s own signature. This was a renaissance moment for an enthusiastic student. It was more than circumstantial evidence, not only of ownership, but a book that Jonson had studied in detail. His confident underlinings proved his presence. In the second part of the manuscript there are annotations and monograms both by Sir John Radcliffe and Ben Jonson.²¹ I could detect Jonson’s hand; he had even corrected grammar and spelling. The underlinings, as in this example, indicated critical curiosity, insight and moral purpose: Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons rem tibi Socraticae poterunt ostendere chartae, verbaque provisam rem non invita sequentur. (The source and fount of good writing is wisdom. The Socratic pages can show you the matter and when it is in hand words will not be loath to follow.)

Jonson highlights the qualities the playwright must establish to maintain the illusion and the attention of the audience:

Non satis est pulchra esse poemata; dulcia sunto

Et quocumque volent animum auditoris agunto.

Ut ridentibus arrident, ita flentibus adsunt

Humani vultus: si vis me flere, dolendum est

Primūm ipsī tibi; tūnc tua me īnfortunia laedent.

(It is not enough for poems to have beauty; they must have charm and lead the hearer’s soul where they will. As men’s faces smile on those who smile, so they respond to those who weep. If you would have me weep, you must first feel grief yourself.)

Then follows the fundamental Horatian comment on decorum in art, expressing the proper relation between speech and situation and the distinct differences between a god and a hero, an old man and a young man, a housewife and a nurse, a merchant and a farmer, and between men from different places and countries:

Si dicentis erūnt fortunis absona dicta:

Romani tollent equites peditesque cachinnūm.

Intererit multūm divusne loquatur an heros:

Maturusne senex an adhuc florente iuvēnta

Fervidus: & matrona potens an sedula nutrix:

Mercatorne vagus cultorne virentis agelli.

Colchus an Assyrius, Thebis nutritus an Argis.

(If the speaker’s words sound discordant with his fortunes, the Romans, in boxes and pit alike, will raise a loud guffaw. It will make a vast difference, whether a god be speaking or a hero, a ripe old man or one still in the flower and fervour of youth, a dame of rank or a bustling nurse, a roaming trader or the tiller of a verdant field, a Colchian or an Assyrian, one bred at Thebes or at Argos.)

Another aspect of the principle of appropriateness, decorum of genre, is given attention. This is indeed a rule that Jonson strictly obeyed as critic and dramatist. The comic and the tragic should not be mixed; the genre must remain within its appropriate frame:

Versibus exponi tragicis res comica non volt:

Indignatur itēm privatis ac prope socco

Dignis carminibusi narrari cena Thyestae:

Singula quaeque locūm teneānt sortita decentem.

(A theme for comedy refuses to be set forth in verses of tragedy; likewise the feast of Thyestes scorns to be told in strains of daily life that well nigh befits the comic sock. Let each style keep the becoming place allotted it.)

But Horace adds that sometimes the tragic and the comic laguage may overlap to convey the right feelings, ‘at times even comedy raises her voice’. Jonson had also marked the section on tradition and originality in art, which gives preference to conventional models in artistic imitation:

Si quid inexpertum scenae committis et audes

Personam formare novam, servetur ad imum:

Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet.

(If it is an untried theme you entrust to the stage, and if you boldly fashion a fresh character, have it kept to the end as it came forth at the first, and have it self-consistent.)

The remarks on convention in imitation is part of the whole concept of decorum in character and links up perfectly with the next annotation which expands the section on decorum of age to express the psychological features appropriate to the four ages of Man – childhood, youth, maturity and old age:

Multa ferunt anni venientes commoda secum,

Multa recedentes adimunt. Ne forte seniles

Mandentur iuveni partes pueroque viriles:

Semper in adiunctis aevoque morabimur aptis.

(Many blessings do the advancing years bring with them; many as they retire, they take away. So, lest haply we assign a youth the part of age, or a boy that of manhood, we shall ever linger over traits that are joined and fitted to the age.)

Added to the psychological appropriateness of age the manuscript outlines the correct behaviour for the child, the unbearded youth, the grown man and the old man.

The section on the principle of dramatic unity, the unity of beginning, middle and end, is clearly annotated with stress on the line Primo ne medium, medio ne discrepet imum (the middle is not discordant with the beginning, nor the end with the middle). Further, the parallels between creative writing and painting are noted, ut pictura, pöesis (a poem is like a picture), and the way art pleases, Haec placuit semel, haec deciens repetita placebit (this pleased but once; that, though ten times called for, will always please). The warning against the average and minor poet and publication of inferior works, Nescit vox missa reverti (the word once sent forth can never come back) is also underlined.

Jonson’s translation of the Ars Poetica and the frequent references to Horace and his works both in the conversations with Drummond and in the Discoveries defines Horace as the classical inspirator who had been selected to play a main part. The Horatian rules, decorum of speech, age (and the relevant psychology and behaviour for each age), occupation, social position, nationality and genre were not challenged. To Jonson, Horace was the master of virtue and wisdom:

Either follow tradition or invent what is self-consistent. If haply, when you write, you bring back to the stage the honouring of Achilles, let him be impatient, passionate, ruthless, fierce; let him claim that laws are not made for him, let him ever make appeal to the sword. Let Medea be fierce and unyielding, Ino tearful, Ixion forsworn, Io a wanderer, Orestes sorrowful. If it is an untried theme you entrust to the stage, and if you boldly fashion a fresh character, have it kept to the end even as it came forth at the first, and have it self-consistent.²²

But Horace was not the only guide among the ancients. Horatian theories reached back to similar concepts in the Aristotelian writing. Jonson had strong views on ancestry and the importance of mentors and masters. Few men, he insisted, were wise by their own counsel or learned by their own teaching. Jonson’s signature and even his motto are found in some of the copies of Aristotle’s works in his library without annotations and underlining, but the importance of Aristotelian critical theory was made perfectly clear by Jonson:

Aristotle was the first accurate Criticke, and truest Judge; nay, the greatest Philosopher, the world ever had: for, hee noted the vices of all knowledges, in all creatures, and out of many men’s perfections in a Science, has formed still one Art. So hee taught us two Offices together, how we ought to judge rightly of others, and what wee ought to imitate specially in our selves.²³

Again, the focus is on judgment and imitation according to a set of rules. The Aristotelian comment on decorum of age, sex and nationality comes very close to the later Horatian ideal. The same standard is apparent in the four Aristotelian qualities of the dramatic character. The first point is that the character must be good. Natural goodness can be found in any type of person, independent of birth, rank and position. Thus, a slave may be portrayed as good. It is only in the ‘dramatic picture of the Ridiculous’ that the bad, unworthy or ugly characters appear. The second quality is appropriateness that outlines the differences between the sexes and, for example, rules out cleverness in a woman, but Jonson portrayed the intelligent woman (cf Sempronia in Catiline). The third requirement is to identify character with reality, the obedience to an accepted pattern of man in society. The final point is consistency in characterization. It rules out any change or development of character away from the original conception: ‘Even if inconsistency be part of the man before one for imitation as presenting that form of character, he should still be consistently inconsistent.’²⁴

Hippocrates’²⁵ essay on decorum has reference to the medical science and sets out to instruct physicians in correct manners and behaviour. The didactic aim in the treatise is moral as well as practical and the author identifies wisdom with the qualities of medicine:

Between wisdom and medicine there is no gulf fixed; in fact medicine possesses all the qualities that make for wisdom. It has disinterestedness, shamefastness, modesty, reserve, sound opinion, judgment, quiet, pugnacity, purity, sententious speech, knowledge of the things good and necessary for life…²⁶

The members of the medical profession should behave in a way proper to the religious and cultural beliefs of their society. The physician was no rebel against the religion of his day, but had ‘given place to the gods’. Hippocrates also highlights the importance of good manners and conduct by the phycisian in his relationship with the patient. The essay is not limited to the rules of conduct for the medical profession, but favours a behaviour which ‘make for good reputation and decorum … in the arts generally’.²⁷

He issues a warning against the misuse of wisdom and the love of unseemliness, vulgarity and hypocrisy. He portrays the hypocrites in this way:

You should mark them by their dress, and by the rest of their attire; for even if magnificiently adorned, they should much more be shunned and hated by those who behold them.²⁸

In contrast, he highlights the ideal of a Stoic balance and modesty of behaviour. This ideal reflects the idea of the Golden Mean and points forward to the Renaissance concept of the perfectly balanced man in whom the elements and humours are equally mixed.

The gang of four mainly responsible for the introduction and elaboration of the term decorum, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Cicero and Horace, did not make a distinction between a general and social, and a particular and aesthetic use of the term. The Ciceronian account of decorum is closely related to the ideas set down by Aristotle, but Erasmus, as Terentian commentator, pointed to two types of decorum of character. On the one hand was social decorum, the established rules and mirror of custom and on the other the aesthetic or artistic decorum which gave the writer the freedom of judgement to distinguish between characters, to present characters of the same general type differently, he might present two old men, of the same rank, but of opposite temperament and disposition. This difference between a social and an aesthetic approach was formulated by Erasmus in De Ratione Studii (1511). The comic writer created a vast variety of characters and situations and Erasmus illustrates this with particular reference to Terence (Andria and The Brothers). The playwright must use his own judgment:

In comedy, first of all decorum must be preserved, and the imitation of common life; the emotions milder, pleasant rather than sharp. Not only must a general decorum be regarded, namely that young people fall in love, panders swear falsely, the courtesan flatter, the old man chide, the servant cheat, the soldier brag, but also that other particular kind of decorum which the poet uses at his own judgment to distinguish a certain character from others. Just so, in the Andria he introduces two old men of wildly different natures…in The Brothers, Michio is mild in the face of chiding, and merry; Demea spiteful even towards flattery. ²⁹

Social decorum dictates a perfect balance in manners, moral behaviour and habits and fixes rank, status, and place in society. In the ‘Prologue’ to the comedy Damon and Pithias (first acted 1565) Richard Edwardes confirms the general and social meaning of decorum even for comedy:

In Commedies, the greatest Skyll is this, rightly to touché all thynges to the quicke: and eke to frame eche person so, that by his common talke, you may his nature rightly knowe: A Royster ought not preache, that were to strange to heare, but as from vertue he doth swerve, so ought his wordes appeare: The olde man is sober, the young man rashe, the lover triumphing in ioyes, the Matron grave, the Harlot wilde and full of wanton toyes.³⁰

The stage character was given a ‘signifying badge’ by the playwright. Edwardes included the Italian pastoral poet Guarini in the list of writers who violated the doctrine: ‘Guarini in his Pastor Fido kept not decorum in making shepherds speak as well as himself could.’³¹

Social decorum may seem an unfortunate turn towards stock attitudes and stereotype in drama, leading to limitations in characterization. The influence of this critical standard is not an error or accidence isolated from the wider intellectual climate of the day but very much a part of it. Jonson had confidently criticized even an adherent observer of classical standards like Sidney for the lack of social decorum and he did not only expect decorum of class and speech from his contemporaries but was insistent and dogmatic enough even to correct the Ancients, for example, Lucian, if the standard was not observed. Lovewit, the master of the London house in Jonson’s The Alchemist, apologizes for his breach of decorum (‘if I have outstript an old man’s gravity, or strict canon’) and Face in the same scene admits that his part ‘a little fell in this last scene, yet ‘twas decorum’.³²

The demand for social decorum was strongest in tragedy, for consistency in the characterization of historical characters, but because comedy portrayed fictional characters as they appeared in real life in society it encouraged different and more flexible rules. The two kinds of decorum of characterization, social and artistic, were easily confused, mixed and ignored among commentators and playwrights alike. Shakespeare’s Falstaff violates the rules of social decorum but he is fresh and consistent within an adopted aesthetic decorum.

The comedies of Plautus and Terence

Latin and Latin plays by Plautus and Terence were part of the curriculum of classical education that Jonson received at Westminster School. This was to be a fundamental inspiration for his creative development, tanquam explorator (as an explorer)³³ of Greek and Latin ancestry.

Twenty (of more than fifty) plays by Plautus have survived. Pyrgopolynices in The Braggart Soldier (Miles Gloriosus) continues as Thraso in Terence’s The Eunuch and finds a successor as Captain Bobadill in Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour. Shakespeare’s Falstaff is perhaps the most memorable braggadocio of them all.

Jonson’s The Case is Altered is modelled on two comedies by Plautus, Captivi (The Captives) and Aulularia (The Pot of Gold). In this play he came closer to Shakespearean comedy like The Merchant of Venice and Much Ado about Nothing.

Jonson had obtained a fifteenth century manuscript which contained the six known plays by Terence, Andria (The Girl from Andros), Hecyra (The Mother-in-Law), Heauton Timorumenos (The Self-Tormentor), Phormio, Eunuchus (The Eunuch) and Adelphoe (The Brothers), now in the possession of St. John’s College Library, Oxford. Each play is preceded by a prologue.³⁴

The influence of Terence is clearly discernible in Epicoene and The Magnetic Lady. Jonson quotes, in Epicone, the fundamental idea expressed in the Prologue to Andria that comedy must please, ‘content the people’ and again in The Magnetic Lady, he repeats populo ut placerent.

Jonson adopted the thesis introduced by Aelius Donatus that the comedies of Terence divided into four parts and movements: prologue, protasis, epitasis and catastrophe. The Magnetic Lady, Epicoene and Volpone follow this structure. The plays begin with the prologue, the introductory explanation or apology from the playwright. The protasis is the introduction of the characters and the beginning of the action. The catastasis is the continuation of the conflict. The catastrophe creates resolution and restoration.³⁵

Jonson adapted the common types of characters in Terentian comedy: young man, senex (old man), servant, parasite, soldier and courtesan, into his own plays. Carlo Buffone in Every Man Out of His Humour is a Terentian parasite.

The conflicts between the generations in Every Man in His Humour reveal a strong Terentian influence but Jonson is more generous both in the treatment of the young and the old than Terence. The father is strict, but not a tyrant, and his son is intelligent and witty, but not immoral. While the love story is central in a Terentian comedy Jonson plays down this aspect and gives more space to the clever servant and the braggart soldier. It is only in The New Inn that the love story takes centre stage.

The ‘old comedy’ of Aristophanes focused on social and political themes while the ‘new comedy’ of Menander, Plautus and Terence was directed more towards home and family and the father and son relationship. Scaliger helped to restore Aristophanes to his rightful position as mentor for comic drama³⁶ and Jonson included Aristophanes in his circle of influences.

Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto,³⁷ wrote Terence. Jonson exposed society in that spirit. His knowledge of Latin saved his life after he killed Gabriel Spencer in a duel. As a literate in court he could read from the Bible in Latin and this saved him from the gallows but he was branded with the letter M on his right thumb. In other words, Latin will not help you if you do this again.

The Ridiculous ³⁸

It is one thing to call someone ridiculous, or insist that you are ridiculous yourself,³⁹ but what did the Elizabethans understand by the term? The search for the source of laughter would seem to the Renaissance, as it is to us, as elusive as Livingston’s search for the origin of the Nile.

Cicero introduces Julius Caesar as one of the speakers in De Oratore and he concludes, after studying the Greek masters, that anyone who tried to extract a theory of laughter could appear laughable. But Cicero lets Caesar make a suggestion that was to remain a core definition, namely that the seat of the laughable (ridiculum) ‘lies in a certain ugliness and deformity’.

When the definition by Aristotle became available in Latin (1536) it appears, not surprisingly, that Cicero’s inspiration had come from Aristotle:

As for Comedy, it is (as has been observed) an imitation of men worse than the average; worse, however, not as regards any and every sort of fault, but only as regards one particular kind, the Ridiculous, which is a species of the Ugly. The Ridiculous may be defined as a mistake or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others…⁴⁰

Plato, speaking for Socrates, considered the ridiculous a revelation of ignorance and lack of self-knowledge.

The principle of decorum, together with a recognition of the classical concept of the ridiculous, fundamentally make Jonson a pupil of Horace, Cicero and Aristotle. Jonson’s exposure of the ‘thoroughly ridiculous’ and his sport with human follies had solid support from the Ancients. He knew that the source of laughter was hidden in deception and surprise, but true to Aristotle he did not seek it in excess and vulgarity. He vied laughter as catharsis, to show an image, and imitate his time, with distilled laughter.

Renaissance commentators on the Ancients linked concepts like admiratio (astonishment, wonder) and nova (unexpected) to the original Aristotelian turpitude. Together, these elements point forward to the suspense and the absurd turn, the incongruous behaviour that is the source of laughter in Jonson:

In a feareles humor, I have anatomized the humors of mankinde, to the mouth of the honest man, it hath a most delicate and sweet taste, but to the wicked, it is bitter as gall or wormwood.⁴¹

This is revealing at two levels. The first is the immediate link to medicine, the anatomizing of the humours. The second is the recognition that the humours can be bitter and sweet, thus embracing the idea of laughter as a bitter and salty fluid later expanded by Bergson.

Jonson’s grasp of the ridiculous as the essence of comedy was defended more than a hundred years after the first appearance of Volpone:

Comedy instructs and pleases most powerfully by the Ridicule, because that is the Quality which distinguishes it from every other Poem. The Subject therefore of every Comedy ought to be ridiculous by its Constitution; the Ridicule ought to be of the very Nature and Essence of it. Where there is none of that, there can be no Comedy. It ought to reign both in the Incidents and in the Characters, and especially in the principal Characters, which ought to be ridiculous in themselves or so contriv’d, as to shew and expose the Ridicule of others. In all the Masterpieces of Ben Jonson, the principal Character has the Ridicule in himself, as Morose in The Silent Woman, Volpone in The Fox, and Subtle and Face in The Alchemist. And the very Ground and Foundation of all these Comedies is ridiculous.⁴²

It is this confidence of authority, which makes Henry Fielding declare, in Joseph Andrews, that ‘the ridiculous only…falls within my province in the present work’ and he observed with great assurance that Ben Jonson ‘of all men understood the Ridiculous the best’.⁴³

MEDIEVAL SOURCES: MYSTERY, MORALITY AND INTERLUDE

The first mystery plays were seen in England at the beginning of the twelfth century. Liturgical texts, sermons and devotional writing, the homiletic art, formed the basis for dialogue in Latin and rudimentary dramatic acting emerged. When Pope Innocent III, in 1250, restricted clergy to act on a public stage the organization of the mystery plays was taken over by the town guilds. The Pope’s intervention enhanced the freedom of the stage. Vernacular texts replaced Latin, actors replaced the priests and comic scenes began to appear (as in Secunda Pastorum, preserved in the Wakefield collection, one of four English anthologies). Scenes from English life, comedy and farce, were introduced. Soon these performances would move outside the church to the marketplace and the village green to reach a larger audience. Travelling companies caught and expanded the popularity. A play was often performed on a decorated cart (pageant), which was moved among different parts of town to meet public demand.

The morality play originated in the folk plays, tropes, liturgical plays, miracle and mystery plays of the Middle Ages. The Castle of Perseverance⁴⁴ is the earliest full-length, English, morality play (written in the first quarter of the fifteenth century) and the manuscript contains a circular stage diagram with the castle in the middle surrounded by a moat and five scaffolds. The main character Humanum Genus (Mankind) is led astray by Malus Angelus (the Bad Angel) to serve World and his companions, Lust and Folly. Mankind is dressed up in fine clothes, led to the scaffold of Covetousness and accepts the seven deadly sins. Shrift and Penance intervenes and Mankind is sent to the castle of Perseverance for repentance and protection. The castle is stormed by World, Flesh and the Devil but the Seven Moral Virtues fight them back. As Mankind is about to accept an offer of wealth from Coveteousness, Death throws a dart and kills him. God accepts the intervention from Mercy and Peace, pardons Mankind and saves him from Hell. The play has a Faustian quality and the appearance of Lust, Folly, Pride, Anger, Envy, Flesh, Gluttony, Lechery, Sloth and Avarice on the stage points forward to the Jonsonian humours.

The morality play, a dramatized moral allegory, was a natural progression from the mysteries but now dealing with personified abstractions of virtues and vices and not with biblical stories. The focus was on the seven deadly sins of which the early sixteenth century allegorical play Everyman (from a Dutch play Elckerlijc) is the best known. Hugo von Hofmannsthal created a similar play Jedermann. Das Spiel vom Sterben des reichen Mannes (1911) and Philip Roth, took the title for his 2006 novel. Man moved from innocence to temptation and fall, to repentance and salvation. We meet personified abstractions of virtues and vices in a battle for the soul, the psychomachia. The plays aimed to enlighten, instruct and discipline in encompassing titles like Everyman, Mankind, Wisdom and Ship of Fools⁴⁵ but the moralities gradually developed more independent writing and the vices begin to enter the stage as real villains often in rude colours of comedy.⁴⁶

The interlude, the play between, developed from the moralities in the early sixteenth century. We see the beginning of comedy or at least of scabrous farce on the stage. These plays were set in private houses, in town halls and at banquets. The Vice (as opposed to vices) now appeared as a central rogue and jester, the predecessor to the Elizabetan clown and gallant. John Heywood created interludes that were close to themes in Chaucer and to the French short narratives, the fabliaux.

The combination of character and type with an abstract folly and vice was already present in the moralities and the playwright could then begin to move out of abstraction into comic reality:

The characters in the moralities, though called by abstract names, are often from life, and each character has a motive of action to distinguish it from the rest … by the greater nearness to actual life, by the concreteness and individualization that the abstractions take on. It is this side of medieval literature that influenced Jonson most strongly in his conception of comedy and of the types appropriate to it.⁴⁷

The seven deady sins of the sermons, devotional and moral writing, the allegorical way of thinking, provoked a static and clear-cut picture of man and his behaviour and he could become indecorous or humorous if he committed one of the seven deadly sins. Pride, envy, avarice and ire emerged from a choleric humour, the indolence and inactivity of sloth corresponded to a phlegmatic humour, intemperance suggested a sanguine temper and lust, surprisingly, was nearest to a melancholy humour.

THE GREAT CHAIN AND MAN AS MICROCOSM

The hand-coloured map Planisphaerium by Andreas Cellarius Palatinus (1661), showing the structure of the entire world according to Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), with globus terra in the centre, illustrates a fixed Renaissance order compared to the open-ended celestial charts of the galaxies and universe(s) today.⁴⁸ Cosmologists now grapple with dark energy in an expanding universe and dark matter may continue in an infinite number of universes, not ending in a gigantic circle, but in an eternal inflation and flat expansion without a final edge. Darkness is upon the face of the deep, then and now.

The Chain

Man’s position in the Universe in the Elizabethan age was an integral part of the Great Chain of Being, the world picture inherited from the Middle Ages (derived from Plato and the Old Testament), then adapted in a simplified version by the Renaissance (and not yet overturned by Copernicus), ‘only the earth doth stand for ever still’.⁴⁹ It is a divinely ordered, theocentric and geocentric Universe, the earth is set in the middle of heaven.

God had created the elements and one element ‘is fastned in that other in such manner one susteyned the other’.⁵⁰ The elements in the great chain were bound by a strict hierarchy, starting with the cold and dry earth, then the cold and moist water (the sea), the hot and moist air and finally the hot and dry fire (the stars). The elements formed ‘a circle with joined hands, continually kept in motion by their mutual attraction’.⁵¹ Everything was included and connected ‘in degree, priority and place’.⁵² Man was placed next to the angels in a system of gradation, a hierarchy of four progressive classes. The inanimate class was at the bottom of this vertical bond, but there existed, even among inanimate objects, a marked difference in virtue and position. Thus water was of a nobler substance than earth, and gold ranked higher than lead. Indeed, gold was the King of Metals in a perfect balance of the elements. It was suggested that an artery ran down the ring finger of the left hand and a gold ring would carry the positive influence of the metal to the heart.⁵³

The quest of the alchemists was to discover, through successive processes of refinement, the elexir that would turn base metals to gold, while simultaneously restoring the possessor’s health and beauty, and in the full-blown version of the dream, conferring eternal life.⁵⁴

Thomas More was influenced by the satires of Lucian. When the Anemolian ambassadors arrive in Amaurot, the capital of Utopia, in ‘splendid adornment’ it sets the scene for a reflection on the worth of gold, used in Utopia to make chamber pots:

I never saw a more remarkable instance of the opposite impressions which different manners make on people, than I observed in the Anemolian ambassadors, who came to Amaurot when I was there. Coming to treat of affairs of great consequence, the deputies from several cities met to await their coming. The ambassadors of countries lying near Utopia, knowing their manners – that fine clothes are in no esteem with them, that silk is despised, and gold a badge of infamy – came very modestly clothed. But the Anemolians, who lie at a greater distance, having had little intercourse with them, understanding they were coarsely clothed and all in one dress, took it for granted that they had none of that finery among them, of which they made no use. Being also themselves a vain-glorious rather than a wise people, they resolved on this occasion to assume their grandest appearance, and astonish the poor Utopians with their splendour.

Thus three ambassadors made their entry with 100 attendants, all clad in garments of different colours, and the greater part in silk. The ambassadors themselves, who were of the nobility of their country, were in clothes of gold, adorned with massy chains and rings of gold. Their caps were covered with bracelets, thickly set with pearls and other gems. In a word, they were decorated in those very things, which, among the Utopians, are either badges of slavery, marks of infamy, or play-things for children.

It was pleasant to behold, on one side, how big they looked in comparing their rich habits with the plain clothes of the Utopians, who came out in great numbers to see them make their entry; and on the other, how much they were mistaken in the impression which they expected this pomp would have made. The sight appeared so ridiculous to those who had not seen the customs of other countries, that, though they respected such as were meanly clad (as if they had been the ambassadors), when they saw the ambassadors themselves, covered with gold and chains, they looked upon them as slaves, and shewed them no respect. You might have heard children, who had thrown away their jewels, cry to their mothers, see that great fool, wearing pearls and gems as if he was yet a child; and the mothers as innocently replying, ‘peace, this must be one of the ambassador’s fools’.⁵⁵

In a scene of artistic freedom and dramatic indecorum Shakespeare lets Bassanio challenge the ‘outward shows’, the deception, vice and falshood, the entrapment and ‘guilded shore to a most dangerous sea’ represented by gold and choose the casket of the ‘meagre lead’⁵⁶ instead.

The next class in the ladder, the vegetative, contained the qualities of life and growth. Again, the subtle ranking of the objects made each position clear, the oak ranked higher than any other tree. The Lion was the King of Animals and ‘naturally a man is hardy as the Lion’.⁵⁷

The sensitive class with the higher faculties of feeling and memory led to the rank of Man and the gift of learning and understanding. ‘Man is above all a political animal.’⁵⁸ Man summed up the universe in himself. ‘Man is called a little world not because he is composed of the four elements … but because he possesses all the faculties of the universe … he possesses the godlike faculty of reason.’⁵⁹

The spiritual class, represented by the angels, was linked to Man, but had no other links with the classes below. The Great Chain of Being and the elements, hot, cold, dry and moist, interacted and embraced everything:

In this order hot things are in harmony with cold, dry with moist, heavy with light, great with little, high with low. In this order angel is set over angel, rank upon rank in the kingdom of heaven; man is set over man, beast over beast, bird over bird, and fish over fish, on the earth in the air and in the sea … nor from man down to the meanest worm is there any creature which is not in some respect superior to one creature and inferior to another. So that there is nothing which the bond of order does not embrace.⁶⁰

Design, cosmology and ontology came together.

Microcosm

The Great Chain was a vertical order with complicated rules, indeed a hierarchical class system, but it was accompanied by a horizontal net of correspondences, the concept of Man as Microcosm, which emphasized the analogy and harmony between Man and Cosmos:

Man is called the lesser world, in regard of the perfect analogie and similitude, betwixt him and this greater world, wherein there is nothing whose likenesse and resemblance may not be seene in man; and this you may call the Analogicall world.⁶¹

Parallels were created between different levels in microcosm and between man, the state and the universe, between cosmic and political order.⁶² ‘Rain of tears’ and ‘eyes as stars’ were popular correspondences. ‘This little World, this wondrous Ile of Man.’⁶³ The head of man is ‘the Castle and tower of the Soule’ the sun is ‘the heart of the world, and the heart the Sunne of man’s bodie’.⁶⁴ Because man, like cosmos, was a mixture of the four elements a web of correspondences and parallels appeared between microcosm, the soul and body of man, and macrocosm, (‘wilt thou see in this Microcosme or little world, the wandering planets’),⁶⁵ between body politic (the state or the king) and macrocosm. As the King was the head of the State and the heart was the most vital part of Man, the King would be referred to as the Heart of the State. Each of the four humours was linked to a planet; the sanguine humour to Jupiter (‘in man’s body Jupiter helpeth to fairnesse and honestie’),⁶⁶ the phlegmatic humour to the Moon, the choleric humour to Mars and the melancholy humour to Saturn (the saturnine humour). The position of each planet was seen as its house (home), ‘Jupiter’s house is good in all things, namely to peace, love, and accord’.⁶⁷ The planets would influence the four elements and complexions in Man differently:

In each men and women, raigneth the Planets, and every signe of the Zodiacke, and every Prime qualitie, and every Element, and every Complexion, but not in every one alike: for in some men raigneth one more, and in some raigneth another: and therefore men be of divers manners, as shall be made apparent.⁶⁸

The use of manners is here identified with the original meaning of humours and not with the fashionable all inclusive cant term.

The movements of the elements were seen as a dance in the universe, ‘framed by a kind of harmony of sounds’,⁶⁹ an orchestra in the heavens inviting the elements to dance:

Dauncing, bright lady, then began to be,

When the first seedes whereof the world did spring,

The Fire, Aire, Earth and Water, did agree

By Love’s persuation, Nature’s mighty King,

To leave their first disordered combating,

And in a dance such measure to observe,

As all the world their motion should preserve.⁷⁰

Jonson in his plays observes and respects the ‘bond of order’ to the extent that his characters remain unchanged throughout the play. The Great Chain, fundamentally, supported his obedience to decorum. Jonson surveyed the vertical ladder of order and degree, the horizontal comparisons and the universal dance, as the collective habit of mind and incorporated the Elizabethan world picture as a fundamental poetic reference in his creative writing. Queen Elizabeth was a keen observer of astrology and astral influences. Jonson turned his interest to Galileo’s telescope (1609) and the new astronomical discoveries but allowed a light ridicule of the excesses of astrology in Volpone and Bartholomew Fair.

ANCIENT MEDICAL THEORY AND RENAISSANCE PSYCHOLOGY

And much adoe, and many words are spent in finding out the path that humours went.⁷¹

The theory of humours has its roots in early Greek medicine and natural philosophy and springs from a fundamental search for the primal material, substance or element in the Universe.

Thales (636–546), the astronomer and mathematician from Milet, introduced Water as the first principle and original substance. Anaximander suggested Air, Heraclitus Fire and Empedocles, the physician and philosopher, added Earth but accepted all four as equals.

Heraclitus recognized the eternal change of fire into different and separate forms, ‘the transformations of Fire are, first, sea; of sea half is earth and half fiery storm-cloud’. He reasoned that everything in the world is subject to perpetual change and decay caused by inevitable clash of opposites. He unwrapped the two basic ideas of the historian’s trade, change over time and causation.⁷² His favourite aphorism was, ‘you cannot step into the same river twice’. He also studied human nature, dreams and emotions. ‘I went in search of myself … you will not find out the limits of the soul by travelling, even if you travel over every pole.’⁷³ The word ‘psychology’ springs to mind.

Hippocrates (460–357) separated medicine from religion and magic.⁷⁴ The four elements continued in a new medical system as the four humours in the body. The humours were conceived in exact analogy with the cosmic elements and a perfect harmony in body and soul depended on a balanced and evenly proportioned distribution. The balance of health could be disturbed by a deficiency or excess of elements and by isolation of one element from the rest of the group. The constituents would vary with the four seasons, ‘as the year goes round they become now greater and less, each in turn and according to its nature’.⁷⁵ Phlegm contained the primary quality of Cold in analogy with its parental element Water and was associated with the coldest time of the year. In the same way Blood and the Sanguine humour would increase during the spring because its corresponding element Air contained the qualities of Moisture and Heat which were the qualities of the seasonable weather. With the hot weather in the summer, yellow bile or Choler developed its natural disposition to Heat, the primary quality of the corresponding element Fire: ‘And in summer blood is still strong, and (yellow) bile rises in the body and extends until autumn.’⁷⁶ Finally, the dry weather in the autumn exhausted the quality of Moisture contained in the blood and black bile or Melancholy would then dominate the constitution of man. Black bile gained its distinction of dryness from the primary quality of the corresponding element Earth. ‘In autumn blood becomes least in man, for autumn is dry and begins from this point to chill him. It is black bile which in autumn is the greatest and strongest.’⁷⁷

The humoral theory, introduced and explored by the Hippocratic medical school, became the central aspect of medicine for more than two thousand years. The theory spread within the Hellenistic world and continued in Roman, Byzantine, Arabic and Chinese medicine. It finally obtained a new wave of popularity in European medicine with the Renaissance rediscoveries of ancient medical sources. The theory was not always accepted without discussion and opposition among the ancients. The Greek physician, Erasistratus, whose medical skill became known in Alexandria in the middle of the third century B.C., is the first on record to refute the humoral theory completely. The very prominent Greek medical scholar, Asclepiades, who introduced Greek medicine to the Romans at the beginning of the first century B.C., was also hostile to the doctrine.

The second century (A.D.) scientist and logician, Claudius Galenus deserves the credit for preserving the theory of humours.⁷⁸ His explanations became the accepted authority for successive students of medicine until William Harvey’s circulation theory. Galen’s findings were introduced into Arabian medicine and made the basis for further elaborations in the eleventh century. These extensions were translated back into Latin from Arabic. Thus the medieval European humoral tradition was linked to Galenic (and Hippocratic) theories often sifted through an Arabian temperament and scholarship. Galen’s own interpretations and explanations of the humoral theory started from a recognition of ancestry:

Of all those known to us who have been both physicians and philosophers Hippocrates was the first who took in hand to demonstrate that there are, in all, four mutually interacting qualities … Hippocrates was also the first to recognize that all these qualities undergo an intimate mingling with one another.⁷⁹

According to Galen moderate heat would produce blood and a sanguine complexion. Excessive heat developed yellow bile and a choleric complexion. Phlegm occured in the lungs when the quality of heat was weak and accordingly produced a phlegmatic complexion. Black bile in the spleen would abound in the autumn and promote a melancholic complexion. Galen used dissections regularly in his research. He quoted Aristotle and Plato and members of the Hippocratic school, Diocles, Philistion and Praxagoras, among authorities on humours. He points out that Praxagoras listed as many as eleven humours, but explains that this was only a refining and elaboration of the Hippocratic quartet. This kind of minutiae of the humoral theory is just a forewarning of the many Renaissance deviations into elemental obscurity.⁸⁰ In ‘The Prologue’ to The Canterbury Tales a doctor appears and links medicine to astronomy: ‘The cause of every malady you’d got he knew, and whether dry, cold, moist or hot; he knew their seat, their humour and condition.’ With the discoveries of the original Galenic manuscripts in the mid-fifteenth century first-hand material became the point of departure for investigation and research in the field of humoral medicine. Galen’s genius and judgment was praised by Erasmus and mentioned by Rabelais and studied intently by Harvey as a prelude to his discovery.

Thomas Linacre’s translation of Galen into Latin, in particular De Temperamentis (1517) and De Naturalibus Facultatibus (1523), introduced the humoral theory to a larger reading public in England.⁸¹ Linacre sums up the diverse field of learning which helped to shape the intellectual climate of the English Renaissance. He was a Greek scholar, physician and theologian. By combining three vast subjects Linacre epitomizes the intellectual mood of his time, the enthusiasm to add fresh and exciting detail to the theological universe. The Greek New Testament was as important to Linacre as Galen’s Hippocratic theories.

The recognition of the proper relation between religion and medicine is illustrated in Simon Kellwaye’s medical treatise, A Defensative against the plague (1593). The author quotes from Ecclesiasticus on the title page, ‘God hath created meddesens of the earth, and he that is wise will not contemne them.’ A similar association between religion and medicine is found in John Jones’s work The Bathe of Bathes Ayde (1572) and The Arte & Science of preserving Bodie and Soule in Healthe, Wisdome, and Catholike Religion (1579). The works are dedicated to Queen Elizabeth because the ruler is seen as the divinely inspired protector of medicine through her rank in the universal chain.

Sir Thomas Elyot’s Regimen Sanitatis Salerni (1541) was made for ‘the most noble and victorious kyng of England, and of France’. Elyot was not a physician by profession, but his reading of Galen and other ancient medical writers and his early association with Linacre inspired a medical essay ‘The Castel of Helth’ (1534). The elaboration of the humoral theory takes a marked step forward in his work, but the link with the original ancestry remains unbroken. Elyot explores the elemental Hippocratic system, the qualities of the four elements, the purifying role of Fire and introduces a new word Complexion to describe the dual composition of each element:

Combination of two dyuers qualities of the foure elements in one bodye, as hotte and drye of the Fyre: hotte and moyste of the Ayre, colde and moyste of the Water, colde and dry of the Earth.⁸²

In this way, all four elements with their assigned qualities would be present in any person, but would be defined either as Sanguine, Fleumatike, Cholerike or Melancolyke depending on the signifying qualities. Each complexion was given a list of medical as well as emotional characteristics. This suggests a new and more conscious psychological approach to the old theory. The sanguine complexion would develop from the hot and moist element Air. Among the idiosyncrasies of the sanguine person were ‘flesshynesse, plenty and redde hair, the visage white and ruddy’ and he was likely to experience ‘dreames of blouddy thynges, or thinges pleasdant’ and he would be ‘angry shortly’. The phlegmatic complexion would arise from the cold and moist element Water and a man dominated by this complexion would show signs of ‘fatnesse, slownesse, dulnesse in learning’ and ‘slownesse of courage’. The choleric complexion came from the hot and dry element Fire and this mix would create ‘leannesse of body, blacke or darke aburne curled hair’, the person would get ‘lytell sleape’ and would dream of ‘fyre, fyghtynge, or anger’ but he would be ‘hardy and fyghtynge’ and display a ‘sharpe and quycke wit’. The ‘melancolyke’ complexion had its origin in the cold and dry element Earth and combined ‘leannesse with hardnesse of skynne’ and he appears with a white or ‘duskish’ colour of skin, his dreams would be ‘fearfull’ and he would give a ‘tymerous’ impression. He would rarely be seen ‘lawghynge’ and his angry mood would be ‘longe and frettinge’.

Elyot introduces the term Humours into his work much in the sense later coined by John Jones as ‘the sonnes of Elements’, existing in the body as a kind of elemental hormones. The health of a person would depend on a fair balance of the four humours and any distortion of their distribution would upset the harmony of the body. Elyot goes on to introduce a distinction between natural and unnatural humours as when a specific humour get mixed up and is contaminated by one or more of the others. The sanguine humour escapes the distortion of the other humours and ranks as the natural captain in Elyot’s team of four. After all, Blood is ‘the treasure of life’.

‘Ages be foure’ in Elyot’s system links up with the principle of decorum of age in the Horatian theory. Horace had outlined the decorous behaviour of the four stages of man and Elyot adds the prevailing elemental qualities of the different ages. Together the two approaches promote an understanding of the psychological changes of age: ‘The man, whiche is sanguine, the more that he draweth into age wherby naturell moisture decayeth, the more is he colerike.’ Even the otherwise favourable sanguine humour does not escape unnatural distortion in old age. The four humours also related to the four seasons and Elyot explored this relationship in great detail for each humour, even with exact dates for their abundance and decline.

Anatomy and medical science associated with Renaissance cosmography and the word anatomy was used to demonstrate any physical or abstract quality. Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy is an example of this use. A similar application is apparent in Simion Grahame’s The Anatomie of Humours and John Donne’s eulogy, ‘An Anatomy of the World’. The contemporary language was ‘anatomiz’d’ and the characteristics of, for example, folly, vanity, absurdity, wit, fortune, baseness and abuse were expressed in terms of anatomy. Henry Hutton’s, Follies Anatomie, T. Garzoni’s The Hospitall of Incurable Fools, Richard Braithwaite’s Times Curtaine Drawne, or the Anatomie of Vanitie, Thomas Nashe’s The Anatomie of Absurditie, John Lyly’s The Anatomie of Wit, Robert Greene’s The Anatomie of Fortune, John Andrewes’, The Anatomie of Basenesse and Philip Stubbe’s The Anatomie of Abuses are examples of the popular application of the term.

‘De corpore politico’ like Man’s body needed a diagnosis before a cure could be suggested. John Taylor’s peace pamphlet, ‘The Causes of the Diseases and Distempers of this Kingdom’, illustrates the application of medical terms to the state. We also find contemporary medical satires like ‘A Cure for the State’ which set out to find medical prescriptions for political disturbances. The word body is used as a collective term for the art of warfare in R. Elton’s The Compleat Body of the Art Military. The Church was included as body theologie and John Taylor’s Rare Physick for the Church sick of an Ague demonstrates neatly the extension of medical analogies. There are still stirrings of the old analogies in terms like governing body, in the Prime Minister’s image of himself as the family doctor and in a recent book title, The Elements of Eloquence.⁸³

When Shakespeare and Jonson began to write they had at hand a humoral theory that looked like this:

The elements were found in the universe as Earth, Water, Air and Fire, each element possessed two of the four primary qualities Cold, Moisture, Dryness and Heat. The four humours or complexions were the children of the elements. The melancholic humour was cold and dry like earth, formed by the gall bladder and a constituent of black bile; the phlegmatic humour was cold and moist like water, formed in the lungs and a constituent of phlegm; the choleric humour was like fire, hot and dry, formed in the spleen and a constituent of yellow bile; the sanguine humour was like air, hot and moist, formed in the liver and a constituent of blood. Each ‘roving humour’ was mingled and carried with the blood in the body. Each humour would cause distinct physical characteristics, change during the seven ages of man and be affected by food and drink. Women were seen as phlegmatic, but the playwrights made memorable exceptions. The Germans were viewed as very choleric, and the Frenchmen were seen as phlegmatic, slow and weak.⁸⁴ The climate of the northern nations was moist and cold but the qualities of the people were ‘ample, strong, courageous, martiall, bold’.⁸⁵ There is a slight paradox here as they were given choleric elements in spite of the phlegmatic climate. Fortinbras (in Hamlet) enters the stage as a very resolute and choleric Norwegian character.

The Elizabethans thought that the right blend of the humours would establish the supreme character, just as the alchemist believed that a perfect metallic blend would give gold. The state of a perfect balance and harmony of the elements or humours was very rarely found in Man but the ideal established a contrast to the living reality of the four humours. The perfect, well-balanced temperament was very rare. Brutus in Julius Caesar and Mercury in Jonson’s Cynthia’s Revels fits the elusive perfection:

A creature of a most perfect and divine temper. One, in whom the humours and elements are peacably met, without emulation of precedencie: he is neither to phantastickely melancholy, too slowly phlegmaticke, too lightly sanguine, or too rashly cholericke, but in all so composde & order’d, as it is cleare, Nature went about some ful worke, she did more then make a man, when she made him.⁸⁶

The two most extrovert humours and characters were the sanguine and the choleric while the melancholic and the phlegmatic clearly listed towards introversion. The sanguines were generous, brave, merry and amourous (‘his red lips, after fights, are fit for Ladies’).⁸⁷ This humour was close to the feeling and thinking heart. As the sun was the heart of the world, the heart was the sun of the body, the seat and fountain of life, of joy, grief, anger and love. The cholerics were bold, ambitious, rash, arrogant and lecherous (‘crosse not my humor, with an ill plac’d worde, for if thou doest, behold my fatall sworde’).⁸⁸ The phlegmatics were slow, lazy, cowardly and witless, but also amiable and good-tempered. The melancholics were the ‘fullest of varietie of passion’⁸⁹ and appeared unsociable, suspicious, jealous, revengeful and amorous.

The psychological effects of the four humours, the ‘phisiognomie of the body humaine’ was neatly summed up in 1592:

The blood maketh men moderate, merry, pleasant, fayre, and of a ruddy colour, which he (i.e. Arcandam) called sanguine men. The fleame maketh men sloathfull, sluggish, negligent …and soone to have grave hayres. The choler maketh them angry, prompt of wit, nimble, inconstant, leane and of quick digestion. The melancholic humor which as it were the substance, the bottome, and lees of the blood maketh men rude, churlish, careful, sad, avaritious, deceivers, traytors, envious, fearful, weake hearted and dreamning, and imagining evill things, vexed with the trouble of the minde, as though they were haunted with a malignant spirite. These humours then may be referred unto the Phisiognomie: for by them a manne may know the naturall inclination of men.⁹⁰

A hot, dry, moist and cold temperament and a sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic and melancholy humour were synonymic. An Elizabethan could speak of an earthly temperament and a melancholy humour, a melancholy element and a dry humour and have essentially the same image. Robert Burton later confirmed that ‘these four humours have some analogy with the four elements, and to the four ages in man’.⁹¹

The terms decorum and humour applied to two distinct spheres of human thought; decorum was a central idea in ethics and aesthetics and the humour proper was a well-defined descriptive term in medicine (and psychology). The antique interchange between science, philosophy, theology and art gave quality to the union of decorum and humour and it also distinguishes the relationship between the two theories in the Renaissance. Hippocrates explored and defined the humoral theory but he also produced a treatise on decorum with special reference to the character and conduct of the phycisian. Aristotle had laid down the principle of decorum in De Poetica and Rhetorica and he compiled a medical treatise that observed the humoral theory. His friend Theophrastus obeyed the moral and medical theories in creating the social types of his character sketches, incorporating decorum and humour in fictional characters. Medicine, philosophy and creative writing worked hand in hand to the extent that the phycisian became a commentator on social behaviour and ultimately on aesthetics, the philosopher explored the humoral theory and expressed his theories on moral issues in harmony with medical knowledge and the writer applied these theories and combined them in his portrayal of character. The humours were growing up fast and often indecorously, with all sorts of demands and manners.⁹² The purity of the humours was challenged by a rich language that demanded freedom and flexibility of expression. In doing so it added to the richness and freedom of speech and preserved the variety and complexity of the four complexions. The four humours made a link between science and the humanities and gave the creative writer a new and deep pool of ideas.

The ship of elements arrived, entered under London Bridge, sailed past the playhouses on both sides of the Thames, docked near Jonson’s library, entered the stage and society and began to expand as psychological humours. In his Oxford Notebooks Oscar Wilde reminded us of the wide conceptions and imagination of the classical Greek masters and how they had ‘mystic anticipations of nearly all great modern scientific truths’.⁹³ Ancient learning was reintroduced and it meant a revaluation of the great Roman and Greek literary figures and of ancient science, in particular medical science (‘How profitable Anatomy is to Philosophers’),⁹⁴ but the new ideas did not break drastically with medieval thought. The Renaissance was ‘an intensification of medieval traditions of humanistic learning and reverence for classical antiquity’.⁹⁵ The elements formed a circle with joined hands, continually kept in motion and always changing.

THE CHARACTER SKETCH

Theophrastus was Plato’s pupil and Aristotle’s friend. His portrayal of thirty moral types in The Characters (319 B.C.) ‘can be seen as the founding text of analytical psychology’.⁹⁶ Twenty-eight of the sketches were translated into Latin by Casaubon in 1592. Among the types Theophrastus selected for scrutiny we find the flatterer, the arrogant man, the ambitious man and the avaricious man, all popular humorous characters in Jonson:

The Avaricious man is one who, when he entertains, will not set enough bread upon the table….When he sells wine, he will sell it watered down …. If a friend, or a friend’s daughter, is to be married, he will go abroad a little while before, in order to avoid giving a wedding present.

The Characters acted as a reminder and wake up call, renewing a long-standing native tradition of character writing in education and literature (in Ancrene Riwle, Piers Plowman and The Canterbury Tales). It was taught in the grammar schools and character sketches appeared in sermons, in miracle and morality plays, in the interludes, in imitations of classical satirists and in the rogue pamphlets. Thomas Harman first used the word rogue in A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursetors Vulgarly Called Vagabonds (1566). Joseph Hall, Sir Thomas Overbury and John Earle imitated and refined the tradition and Hall’s Characters of Vertues and Vices (1608) was particularly popular. George Eliot later mocked the genre in Impressions of Theophrastus Such.

The conventional habit of writing character sketches influenced the portrayal of character in Elizabethan drama. A playwright like Webster was a great writer of the conventional sketch. This interest in ‘character’ gave rise to a stream of books on the subject. Sir Thomas Elyot recommended that this type of character study should form part of the general education. The convention of hypotyposis, of vivid description of characteristic behaviour, provided stock material for the playwright. New and original characters appeared, but there are accepted rules of conduct laid down for each type; decorum is observed: ‘Words are the pensils, whereby drawne we finde the picture of the inward man, the minde, such thoughts, such words; such words, such is the man.’⁹⁷

The braggadocio, the argumentative boaster, coleric and cowardly, was a popular type both in character sketches and in Elizabethan plays:

Athraso or Braggadotia, is a boisterous fellow in a Buffe-Coat, swelling like Eolus, in windy words, whose tongue is still applauding himselfe, and detracting from others; and by grim lookes and sterne language idolizeth his owne ignominious actions. One that makes all his frayes with his unctious Tongue, and then is forc’d sometimes (unwittingly) to maintaine and defend them by his timorous hands … for hold but his fained Choller up to its feeble height, and begin but where hee ends, and hee’ll quake like an Aspen leafe, or grow so flegmaticke and coole, that he will take your wickes for courtesies … hee’ll strike none but those he knows will not resist.⁹⁸

The neo-classical input enhanced the taste acquired from popular preaching and humorous sermons. The new humanism charged with the deadly explosive of laughter, that laughter which – to borrow a significant phrase of M. Bergson – in its very beginnings ‘indicates a slight revolt on the surface of human life’… the humorous sermon-tale is … clearly an important antecedent of the humourous episodes in our Renaissance drama.⁹⁹

The popularity of character writing was sustained and developed, not only by a long ancestry before the Theophrastan intrusion but by the new focus on decorum and humours in the ‘comicall satyres’ of Ben Jonson. The characters are both in and out of humours. The Moralities described abstract vices or virtues, for example Gluttony and Jealousy, the way a preacher might describe these vices in a sermon, but the character sketch did not create allegorical abstractions. The art was to formulate types, giving a clear picture of a gluttonous man or a jealous man. The characters were portrayed in the light of their innate mental characteristics and as formed by their position and status in society.

The Elizabethan woman was drawn in black and white. She was either virtuous or of a very easy virtue. A virgin was praised as a most divine creature:

Her studie is Holinesse, her exercise Goodnesse, her grace Humility, and her love is Charity: her countenance is Modesty; her speech is Truth, her wealth Grace, and her fame Constancy … She is of creatures the Rarest, of Women the Chiefest, of nature the Purest, and of Wisdome the Choysest … She is the daughter of Glory, the mother of Grace, the sister of Love, and the beloved of Life.¹⁰⁰

The perfect wife was both an efficient house-manager and a perfect ‘chamber comfort’ and it was thought to be right and virtuous not to remarry. A widow should live for her children and not supplant her husband, but keep his memory alive comes close to the sketch of the Worthy Wife.

When we move from such high peaks of virtue in the virgin and the ideal wife (as Sophia in Massinger’s The Picture)¹⁰¹ to the wanton woman and the whore we come to the witch and the devil who will betray and deceive. The whore would bring disaster to any man: ‘A hie way to the Divell, hee that lookes upon her with desire, begins his voyage: he that staies to talke with her, mends his pace, and who enioies her is at his iourneies end.’¹⁰²

The modern idea that a wanton woman also have good qualities was not pervasive in this age, but the concept of the honest whore and golden-hearted tart was not entirely ruled out in the game of humours.

The idea that the good wife should be seen and not heard had Royal approval, but in Ben Jonson’s plays Epicoene: or, the Silent Woman and in Volpone the women have a voice. Morose is a gentleman ‘that loves no noise’, whose servant is called Mute, but Epicoene, the supposedly silent woman, challenges him:

Why, did you think you had married a statue, or a motion only? One of the French puppets, with the eyes turn’d with a wire? Or some innocent out of the hospital, that would stand with her hands thus, and a plaise mouth, and look upon you? I confess it doth bate somewhat of the modesty I had, when I writ simply maid: but I hope I shall make it a stock still competent to the estate and dignity of your wife.¹⁰³

The character writers frequently ridiculed the appearance of the melancholiacs, their pale faces and morbid expressions:

A Melancholic man is one … that nature made sociable, because she made him a man, and a crazed disposition hath altered. Impleasing to all, as all to him, stragling thoughts are his content, they make him dreame waking, there’s his pleasure….He carries a cloud in his face, never faire weather; his outside is framed to his inside, in that he keepes a Decorum, both unseemely …. He hewes and fashions his thoughts, as if he meant them to some purpose, but they prove unprofitable; as a piece of wrought timber to no use. His Spirits and the Sunne are enemies, the Sunne bright and warme, his humour blacke and colde.¹⁰⁴

The melancholy man had a strong visionary faculty and ghosts and spirits frequently haunted him:

His head is haunted, like a house, with evil spirits and apparitions, that terrify and fright him out of himself till he stands empty and forsaken. His sleeps and his wakings are so much the same that he knows not how to distingusish them, and many times when he dreams he believes he is broad awake and sees visions … His soul lives in his body like a mole in the earth, that labours in the dark, and casts up doubts and scruples of his own imaginations to make that rugged and uneasy what was plain and open before …The temper of his brain being earthly, cold and dry, is apt to breed worms, that sink so deep into it, no medicine in art or nature is able to reach them.¹⁰⁵

The increasing curiosity about the melancholy state of mind was part of a new interest in mental and psychological studies based on the theory of humours. No detailed study of melancholy existed in England before 1500 but many characters, among them Hamlet, entered the stage before Burton’s work.

The scholar was a man of great knowledge and learning, but rather unrefined and awkward in manners and behaviour. He was too much occupied with his studies to have time for the more pleasant sports of the courtier. He lived too long in the limited world of his College and long studies in a dark room made him unfit to face the sharp light of the world outside. He appeared shy and silly and was frequently ridiculed, but the innate qualities of the character and his intellect were qualities that weighed heavier than the outward signs. Frederick in Shirley’s The Lady of Pleasure is an appropriate representation of the scholar in comedy.

The appearance of Sordido in Jonson’s Every Man out of his Humour, fits the character sketch of the ‘Almanack-maker’, referred to as an annual author.¹⁰⁶

The conventional sketch and the stage character have much in common. Barabas and Shylock come close to the sketch of the Usurer. Antonio displays some of the characteristics of A Worthy Merchant. The sketches of the Virgin, the Wanton Woman, the Whore, the Wife, the Widow, the Melancholy Man, the Prince, the Scholar, the King and the Hypocrite help to define the types of characters in conflict in a play like Hamlet. The interplay of Ophelia, Hamlet, Gertrude and Claudius is, at one level, a clash between qualities found in the character sketch. Ophelia is ‘of nature the Purest’ who still may appear a ‘feare of destruction’ to Hamlet. Gertrude has remarried as a widow and thus shattered the picture of ‘the purest gold’ expressed in the sketch. To Hamlet she is has become the Wanton Woman and is not the Worthy Wife. Claudius is a Hypocrite, a Usurper and an Unworthy King. Hamlet is the Melancholy Man, the Scholar and the Good Prince. Othello is the General, the Lover, the Jealous Man, and the Honest Man and Iago is the Machiavellian villain, the Soldier and the Hypocrite. Between them is the Honest Wife who appears wanton and unfaithful to the hero. The sketch of the ideal soldier creates a contrast to stage characters like Iago, Falstaff and Bobadill. Iago is sinning against the virtues of Truth and Honesty ascribed to the soldier type and Bobadill as well as Falstaff lack the courage of the ideal military man.

EARLY HUMOUR PLAYS

A closer look at two key humorous comedies shows that the playwrights fitted the four humours and their advancing variety of meanings into the very action and spirit of the plays. The four complexions were used to hilarious effect, but the comic exuberance implied a warning as it unmasked the hypocrisy and vanity of man.

George Chapman

A new play by George Chapman was first performed at the Globe on 11 May 1597 and the title page of the text, printed by Valentino Synis two years later, reads: ‘A pleasant Comedy entituled An Humorous dayes Myrth as it hath beene sundrie times publikely acted by the right honourable the Earle of Nottingham Lord high Admirall his seruants.’ Although set in France it is the humours, manners and vanities of contemporary London that Chapman unmasks.

The title links the words humorous and mirth. The display of humours during the day creates mirth and a pleasant comedy. The words humour and humorous are applied about twenty times thus giving examples of the scientific and psychological as well as of the popular cant use of the term. The play is divided into thirteen scenes and connects the life of four families during one day.

Count Labervele, his wife Forilla and Dowsecer, the melancholy son from his first marriage, is the first family in the play. The second family is Justice Foyes and his beautiful daughter Martia who resists being married off to the rich and stupid gull, Labesha. The third unit is Count Moren married to a much older Countess who suffers from a jealous disposition. The fourth family is the King and Queen of France. The King has his eyes on Martia.

Into this mix Lemot arrives, a young gentleman, gallant and trickster who plays games with all, beginning with Labervele and Florilla. A handful of gallants echo the action.