Every Man in His Humour

“ What a genius! what a vigour! what a bright-eyed intelligence and observation! what a wholesome hatred for meanness and knavery! what a vast sympathy! what a cheerfulness! what a manly relish of life! what a love of human kind! what a poet is here!—watching, meditating, brooding, creating! What multitudes of truths has that man left behind him! What generations he has taught to laugh wisely and fairly! What scholars he has formed and accustomed to the exercise of thoughtful humour and the manly play of wit! ”

“ It is also true that laughter quiets our uneasy scruples and disposes us to simple savagery. Whatever we laugh at, we condone, and the echo of man’s malicious merriment rings pitilessly through the centuries. Humour which has no scorn, wit which has no sting, jests which have no victim, these are not the pleasantries which have provoked mirth, or fed the comic sense of a conventionalized rather than a civilized world. ”

“ Later he sometimes overdid this observation, or rather he failed to bring its results sufficiently into poetic or dramatic form, and, therefore, is too much for an age and too little for all time. But Every Man in his Humour is really charming. ”

“ Nothing Surprizes me more, than to see Men Laugh so freely at a Comedy, and yet account it a silly weakness to Weep at a Tragedy. For is it less natural for a Man's Heart to relent upon a Scene of Pity, than to be transported with Joy upon one of Mirth and Humour? ”

“ Whereas an Humourist is a Person in real Life, obstinately attached to sensible peculiar Oddities of his own genuine Growth, which appear in his Temper and Conduct.
In short, a Man of Humour is one, who can happily exhibit and expose the Oddities and Foibles of an Humourist, or of other Characters. ”

“ 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 ”

“ PIS. Oh, you'll slip your head out of the collar: why, Cob, you mistake me. COB. Nay, I have my rheum, and I be angry as well as another, sir. PIE. Thy rheum? thy humour, man, thou mistakest. COB. Humour? mack, I think it be so indeed: what is this humour? it's some rare thing, I warrant. PIS. Marry, I'll tell thee what it is (as 'tis generally received in these days) : it is a monster bred in a man by self-love and affectation, and fed by folly. COB. How? must it be fed? PIS. Oh ay, humour is nothing if it be not fed, why, didst thou never hear of that? it's a common phrase, "Feed my humour." ”

“ MIT. Ay, marry, sir, this is that, on which my expectation has dwelt all this while; for I must tell you, signior, though I was loth to interrupt the scene, yet I made it a question in mine own private discourse, how he should properly call it "Every Man out of his Humour", when I saw all his actors so strongly pursue, and continue their humours? COR. Why, therein his art appears most full of lustre, and approacheth nearest the life; especially when in the flame and height of their humours, they are laid flat, it fills the eye better, and with more contentment. ”

“ SORD. What curses breathe these men! how have my deeds Made my looks differ from another man's, That they should thus detest and loath my life! Out on my wretched humour! it is that Makes me thus monstrous in true humane eyes. Pardon me, gentle friends, I'll make fair 'mends For my foul errors past, and twenty-fold Restore to all men, what with wrong I robb'd them: My barns and garners shall stand open still To all the poor that come, and my best grain Be made alms-bread, to feed half-famish'd mouths. ”

“ That gives surprise, and this delight, Humour is odd, grotesque, and wild, Only by affectation spoil'd; 'Tis never by invention got, Men have it when they know it not. Our conversation to refine, True humour must with wit combine: From both we learn to rally well, Wherein French writers most excel; [2] Voiture, in various lights, displays That irony which turns to praise: His genius first found out the rule For an obliging ridicule: He flatters with peculiar air The brave, the witty, and the fair: And fools would fancy he intends A satire where he most commends. ”

“ The order of a list of Elizabethan players was generally that of their importance or priority as shareholders in the company and seldom if ever corresponded to the list of characters.
"Every Man in His Humour" was an immediate success, and with it Jonson's reputation as one of the leading dramatists of his time was established once and for all. This could have been by no means Jonson's earliest comedy, and we have just learned that he was already reputed one of "our best in tragedy." ”

“ His utterance of the state of innocence has in it something of the grotesqueness of babies, and enchants the grown man, as they do. Humour exists unconscious of itself, in a kind of awed and open-eyed solemnity. ”

“ To say "I do not see any fun in it," is different from saying "I do not see any fun in him," and a man may be called funny, either in laudation or disparagement.
In the third class we place such words as refer to the mind alone as the source of amusement, and under this head we may place Humour as a general and generic term. ”

“ Humour paralyses the sense for reality and wraps people in a phlegmatic and hysterical dream-world, full of the delicious swirls of the switchback, the drunkenness of the merry-go-round—screaming leaps from idea to idea. ”

“ But to convince these people; I need but [to] tell them, that Humour is the ridiculous extravagance of conversation, wherein one man differs from all others. If then it be common, or communicated to any; how differs it from other men's? or what indeed causes it to be ridiculous, so much as the singularity of it. As for FALSTAFF, he is not properly one Humour; but a Miscellany of Humours or Images drawn from so many several men. That wherein he is singular is his Wit, or those things he says, praeter expectatum, 'unexpected by the audience' ”

“ All his letters to her are artless, kind, affectionate, and not sentimental; as a hundred pages in his writings are beautiful, and full, not of surprising humour merely, but of genuine love and kindness. A perilous trade, indeed, is that of a man who has to bring his tears and laughter, his recollections, his personal griefs and joys, his private thoughts and feelings to market, to write them on paper, and sell them for money. Does he exaggerate his grief, so as to get his reader's pity for a false sensibility—feign indignation, so as to establish a character for virtue? ”

“ Humour is the offspring of man—it comes forth like Minerva fully armed from the brain. Our sense of the ludicrous is produced by our peculiar mental constitution, and not by external objects, in which there is nothing either absurd or serious. ”

“ Humour, of the richer kinds at least, certainly includes something of consideration, of a detection, in the laughable quality or its attachments, of suggestions of what is estimable and lovable.
The disposition to think well of what amuses us may come in the first instance from an impulse of gratitude. So ready are we in general to acknowledge another’s entertainment of us that, even when the pleasure bestowed is known to have been given quite unwittingly, we cannot quite check the impulse to tender thanks. ”

“ Humour is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident; wit is the product of art and fancy. Humour, as it is shewn in books, is an imitation of the natural or acquired absurdities of mankind, or of the ludicrous in accident, situation, and character: wit is the illustrating and heightening the sense of that absurdity by some sudden and unexpected likeness or opposition of one thing to another, which sets off the quality we laugh at or despise in a still more contemptible or striking point of view. ”

“ Humour, by means of the perplexity it produces, often gains the victory over strong emotions. This fact has been practically recognised by orators, who see that when a man is struck by a humorous allusion, powerful feelings which could not otherwise be swayed give way, and even firm resolutions seem for the moment shaken and changed. We are bribed by our desire for pleasure, and a man thus often seems to sympathise with those he really opposes and can even be made to laugh at himself—strong antagonistic sensations and emotions being conquered by complexity. ”

“ Every Man out of his Humour.The fervour and intensity of the verse which expresses his loftier mood of intolerant indignation, the studious and implacable versatility of scorn which animates the expression of his disgust at the viler or crueller examples of social villainy then open to his contemptuous or furious observation, though they certainly cannot suffice to make a play, suffice to make a living and imperishable work of the dramatic satire which passes so rapidly from one phase to another of folly, fraud, or vice. ”

“ Humour.—If it is difficult to draw a hard-and-fast line round other elements of comedy, and detach wit from satire, or satire from farce, it is still harder to attempt to isolate humour and discuss it as a separate and distinct property. Humour is the sympathetic appreciation of the comic, the faculty which enables us to love while we laugh, and to love the better for our laughter. ”

“ The philosopher who had hitherto viewed life through the rosy glasses of unalterable good-humour, who had smiled at luck and ill-luck, laughed at misfortune and at hope, suddenly felt that there was something in life which could not be dismissed light-heartedly, something which really counted, though it was so intangible and so elusive that even now he could not give it a name. ”

“ Observation and our power of imitation provided the means, and men of humour employed themselves in reproducing some ludicrous situations; and thus, instead of things derided being as previously wholly separate from those who derided them, a man could laugh, and yet be the cause [Pg 53] of laughter to others. ”

“ Jean Paul proceeds to say that the more people laugh at our joke, the better we are pleased, and that this does not seem as though the enjoyment came from a feeling of triumph. But what is really laughed at is the humour, and not the humorist, and as [Pg 312] a man wishes the beauty of a poem he has written to be generally acknowledged, so he desires to see the point of his satire appreciated by as many as possible. ”

“ Humour, in the Representation of the Foibles of Persons in real Life, frequently exhibits very generous benevolent Sentiments of Heart; And these, tho' exerted in a particular odd Manner, justly command our Fondness and Love.--Whereas in the Allusions of Wit, Severity, Bitterness, and Satire, are frequently exhibited.--And where these are avoided, E 25 not worthy amiable Sentiments of the Heart, but quick unexpected Efforts of the Fancy, are presented. ”

“ One Man has a Humour of retiring from all Company, when any thing has happened to please him beyond Expectation; he hugs himself alone, and thinks it an Addition to the Pleasure to keep it a Secret, &c."
All which, I apprehend, is no more than saying; That there are different Dispositions in different Persons.
In another Place, he seems to understand by Humour, not only the Disposition, but the Tone of the Nerves, of a Person, thus,
"Suppose Morose to be a Man naturally splenetic, and melancholy ”

“ For wit and judgment ever are at strife,
Though meant, each others, and like man and wife,"
teach us that talent of this kind may be often turned into a fruitful channel. The politician can by humour influence his audience; the man of society can make himself popular, and perhaps without this recommendation would never have had an opportunity of gaining his knowledge of the world. When by some happy turn of thought we are successful in raising a laugh, we seem to receive a kind of ovation, the more valuable because sincere. ”

“ It was his sense of humour which made all feel at home with him, which at the first attracted the most unlikely men, {49} which inspired with confidence the shyest, and made the most frivolous and thoughtless not afraid of him. Yet while he would laugh, and make us laugh, for as long as ever any one wished, through all his unaffected merriment he made men feel the strange earnestness of his life. ”

“ Humour, we have found, is characterised by an inclination to reflect, and to take the large views of things which embrace relations; further, by a mirthful caprice of fancy in choosing for play-ground the confines of issues felt all the time to be serious. It grows distinctly philosophic when, as in Jean Paul or his disciple, Carlyle, the contemplation of things breaks through the limitations of the viewer’s particular world-corner, surmounts “relative” points of view, and regards humanity as a whole, with oneself projected into the spectacle, as nearly as possible as disinterested spectator. ”

“ Good men, and virtuous spirits, that loath their vices, Will cherish my free labours, love my lines, And with the fervour of their shining grace Make my brain fruitful, to bring forth more objects, Worthy their serious and intentive eyes. But why enforce I this? as fainting? no. If any here chance to behold himself, Let him not dare to challenge me of wrong; For, if he shame to have his follies known, First he should shame to act 'em: my strict hand Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe Squeeze out the humour of such spongy souls, As lick up every idle vanity. ”