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Welsh, Scotch, and Irish of "Henry V.," and Malvolio
especially later; though Shakespeare never employed the method of
humours for an important personage. It was not Jonson's fault that
many of his successors did precisely the thing that he had reprobated,
that is, degrade "the humour: into an oddity of speech, an eccentricity
of manner, of dress, or cut of beard. There was an anonymous play
called "Every Woman in Her Humour." Chapman wrote "A
Humourous Day's Mirth," Day, "Humour Out of Breath," Fletcher later,
"The Humourous Lieutenant," and Jonson, besides "Every Man Out of
His Humour," returned to the title in closing the cycle of his comedies
in "The Magnetic Lady or Humours Reconciled."
With the performance of "Every Man Out of His Humour" in 1599, by
Shakespeare's company once more at the Globe, we turn a new page in
Jonson's career. Despite his many real virtues, if there is one feature
more than any other that distinguishes Jonson, it is his arrogance; and
to this may be added his self-righteousness, especially under criticism
or satire. "Every Man Out of His Humour" is the first of three "comical
satires" which Jonson contributed to what Dekker called the
poetomachia or war of the theatres as recent critics have named it. This
play as a fabric of plot is a very slight affair; but as a satirical picture of
the manners of the time, proceeding by means of vivid caricature,
couched in witty and brilliant dialogue and sustained by that righteous
indignation which must lie at the heart of all true satire--as a realisation,
in short, of the classical ideal of comedy--there had been nothing like
Jonson's comedy since the days of Aristophanes. "Every Man in His
Humour," like the two plays that follow it, contains two kinds of attack,
the critical or generally satiric, levelled at abuses and corruptions in the
abstract; and the personal, in which specific application is made of all
this in the lampooning of poets and others, Jonson's contemporaries.
The method of personal attack by actual caricature of a person on the
stage is almost as old as the drama. Aristophanes so lampooned
Euripides in "The Acharnians" and Socrates in "The Clouds," to
mention no other examples; and in English drama this kind of thing is

alluded to again and again. What Jonson really did, was to raise the
dramatic lampoon to an art, and make out of a casual burlesque and bit
of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary pretensions and permanency.
With the arrogant attitude mentioned above and his uncommon
eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no wonder that
Jonson soon involved himself in literary and even personal quarrels
with his fellow-authors. The circumstances of the origin of this
'poetomachia' are far from clear, and those who have written on the
topic, except of late, have not helped to make them clearer. The origin
of the "war" has been referred to satirical references, apparently to
Jonson, contained in "The Scourge of Villainy," a satire in regular form
after the manner of the ancients by John Marston, a fellow playwright,
subsequent friend and collaborator of Jonson's. On the other hand,
epigrams of Jonson have been discovered (49, 68, and 100) variously
charging "playwright" (reasonably identified with Marston) with
scurrility, cowardice, and plagiarism; though the dates of the epigrams
cannot be ascertained with certainty. Jonson's own statement of the
matter to Drummond runs: "He had many quarrels with Marston, beat
him, and took his pistol from him, wrote his "Poetaster" on him; the
beginning[s] of them were that Marston represented him on the stage."*
[footnote] *The best account of this whole subject is to be found in the
edition of "Poetaster" and "Satiromastrix" by J. H. Penniman in "Belles
Lettres Series" shortly to appear. See also his earlier work, "The War of
the Theatres," 1892, and the excellent contributions to the subject by H.
C. Hart in "Notes and Queries," and in his edition of Jonson, 1906.
Here at least we are on certain ground; and the principals of the quarrel
are known. "Histriomastix," a play revised by Marston in 1598, has
been regarded as the one in which Jonson was thus "represented on the
stage"; although the personage in question, Chrisogonus, a poet, satirist,
and translator, poor but proud, and contemptuous of the common herd,
seems rather a complimentary portrait of Jonson than a caricature. As
to the personages actually ridiculed in "Every Man Out of His
Humour," Carlo Buffone was formerly thought certainly to be Marston,
as he was described as "a public, scurrilous, and profane jester," and
elsewhere as the grand scourge or second untruss [that is, satirist], of
the time" (Joseph Hall being by his own boast the first, and Marston's
work being entitled "The Scourge of Villainy"). Apparently we must

now