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ELIZABETHAN HUMOURS 
 
 AND THE 
 
 COMEDY OF BEN JONSON 
 
 being the Book of the Play of 
 
 ^^ Every Man in his Humour'' 
 1598 
 
 as produced by 
 The English Club of Stanford University 
 
 I 905 
 
 ''^ Bare Ben 31ottjson" 
 
 If 
 
 PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS, SAN FRANCISCO 
 
Copyright, 1905 
 
 by Paul Elder and Company 
 
 San Francisco 
 
 The Tomoyfi Press 
 
Conlients. 
 
 Introduction : : : : : 
 
 Elizabethan Humours : : : 
 
 Jonson's Learned Sock : : ; 
 
 Waller's Verses on Jonson : : 
 
 Jonson's Prologue : : : : 
 
 Dorset's Epilogue : : : 
 
 Dickens in Every Man in his Humour 
 Satire on a Paul's Man : ' : 
 
 A Satire on Humours : : 
 
 Herrick's Ode to Jonson : : 
 
 Page 
 
 I 
 
 6 
 
 •5 
 
 21 
 
 23 
 25 
 
 27 
 
 31 
 
 34 
 
 37 
 
 Illustrations. 
 
 The Stage : : 
 
 Globe Theatre : : 
 
 Bobadil : : 
 
 Cob : : : 
 
 Ben Jonson : : 
 
 Title page of first edition 
 Shakspere : : 
 
 Burbage : : : 
 
 Garrick : : 
 
 Dickens : : : 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 ^acing page 2 
 
 <c 
 
 ' 6 
 
 6t 
 
 ' 12 
 
 tt 
 
 ' 16 
 
 6t 
 
 ' 22 
 
 lowing 
 
 " 30 
 
 it 
 
 ' 30 
 
 ft 
 
 " 30 
 
 if 
 
 " 30 
 
 [iii] 
 
Never again did [Jonson's] genius, 
 his industry, his conscience and his 
 taste unite in the triumphant presen- 
 tation of a work so faultless, so satis- 
 factory, so absolute in achievement, 
 and so free from blemish or defect. 
 
 Moliere himself has no character 
 more exquisitely and spontaneously 
 successful than the immortal and 
 inimitable Bobadil: and even Bobadil 
 is not unworthily surrounded and sup- 
 ported by the other graver or lighter 
 characters of this magnificent and 
 
 perfect comedy. 
 
 Swinburne. 
 
 [V] 
 
Introduction. 
 
 THE Stanford English Club issues this little book in 
 connection with, and in commemoration of, the pres- 
 entation of Jonson's Every Man in his Humour at 
 Stanford University in March, 1905. 
 This is one of a series of presentations of old English 
 plays in the Elizabethan manner, the first of which was the 
 revival of Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning 
 Pestle, m March, 1903. The enthusiastic reception accorded 
 this effort encouraged the English Club to preserve the 
 Elizabethan stage built for the play, so that it might be per- 
 manently available for such presentations, and to invite Mr. 
 Ben Greet and his company of English players to come to 
 Stanford in the fall semesters of both 1903 and 1904. The 
 Greet company produced, besides the old Morality play of 
 Everytn an, t'NO Shaksperean comedies, Twelfth Night and Much 
 Ado About Nothing, and, last of all, Hamlet, — the second time 
 in America that Shakspere's greatest work has been produced 
 in full and in the Elizabethan manner. 
 
 All these dramatic performances, including the present 
 one of Every Man in his Humour, have been based on the 
 belief that not only is there an antiquarian and scholarly 
 interest in plays performed as they were in Shakspere's time 
 (without elaborate scenery or other accessories of the modern 
 theatre), but that there is an artistic value in this simple 
 manner of presentation which more than compensates for the 
 loss in superficial brilliancy. Many a lover of the drama 
 said, in effect, after seeing the play of The Knight of the 
 
 [•] 
 
Burning Pestle: "Hitherto I have always felt some pity for 
 the Elizabethans as having to see Shakspere's plays presented 
 with the crudeness of the early theatre, the changes of scenery 
 being left largely to the imagination ; but I now feel that they 
 were more fortunate than modern play-goers." That Is to say, 
 the imagination may be trusted. As Dr. Johnson put it, in 
 his defense of Shakspere's plays: "It is false that any fiction 
 is mistaken for reality. . . . He that can take the stage at one 
 time for the palace of the Ptolemies, may take it in half an 
 hour for the promontory of Actium." One may go fur- 
 ther, and observe that the constant changes of locality in the 
 Elizabethan drama were devices fitted to the stage conditions 
 of the time, and seem much less strange and venturesome 
 when scene-unity is maintained than when the stage-manager 
 tries to keep up with them with the aid of all modern mechan- 
 ical ingenuity. 
 
 The stage built for the English Club plays is modeled 
 in part on that of the Swan Theatre as represented in the 
 drawing handed down from 1596, which was reproduced in 
 the book of The Knight of the Burning Pestle. The description 
 which accompanied the sketch in that book may well be in 
 part repeated here. The stage structure is shown up to the 
 very eaves of the roof, which must be conceived of as sloping 
 away into the open sky. The stage itself should be thought 
 of as extending into the pit of the theatre, so that the 
 "groundlings" (who paid only for standing room) can look 
 over the sides of it as well as the front. The rear portion 
 is covered by a roof supported at the front by two carved pil- 
 lars, and between these pillars a curtain (called a " traverse") 
 
S X 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 ca 
 w 
 
 2 H 
 
 o 
 
can be drawn when occasion requires, thus dividing the main 
 stage into two parts — the inner and outer. A third stage is 
 formed by the balcony at the rear, which is also used as a 
 sort of players' gallery when not required for action. Nor- 
 mally the background represents the exterior of a house, with 
 two entrance doors ; but in the action one of these doors may 
 represent a scene widely separated from that indicated by the 
 other. There are also supplementary entrances and exits 
 through the arras hangings at either side. Behind the stage 
 are the "tiring-house" and property-room. At the edge of 
 the stage, on either side, we have a glimpse of the boxes used 
 by the musicians and those rented by aristocrats, called the 
 "lords' rooms." Not content with these fairly conspicuous 
 seats, the young gallants of the period occupy portions of the 
 stage itself; for an extra sixpence they are admitted through 
 the tiring-house, and the theatre-boys will then rent them 
 stools for sitting in full view of the audience. Finally, over 
 the tiring-house is the elevated lodge or tower, visible also 
 from outside the theatre, where the flag flies to indicate that 
 a play is on the boards, and in the window of which appears 
 the trumpeter who announces the time for its beginning. If 
 the spectator will shut out from his mind's eye the more 
 modern surroundings of the stage, imagining instead of them 
 the gallery boxes continued around the whole circle of the 
 hall, and the pit filled with a good-natured, jostling crowd of 
 London citizens, he will be prepared in spirit to see the old 
 play as given in 1598. 
 
 The play of Every Man in his Humour was chosen for 
 reproduction partly because it is the work of the only Eliza- 
 
 [3] 
 
bethan dramatist of the first rank who has not yet been 
 represented on the Stanford stage, partly because of the 
 interest of the play as picturing the life of its period, and 
 partly for its historic interest in the progress of the drama. 
 It was the earliest of Jonson's comedies, and represents his 
 deliberate choice of the realistic in preference to the ro- 
 mantic drama. As Professor Herford observes in this con- 
 nection: "No other play in tlie whole development of the 
 Elizabethan drama marks so distinctly an epoch as the great 
 comedy with which Jonson opened his career. . . . None of 
 his fellows made their dibut with so much of the air of de- 
 liberate innovation. . . . Shakspere, though a great, a far. 
 greater, artist, is not primarily a theorist in art ; he does not 
 readily, or often, or very energetically, take sides upon ques- 
 tions of art. His probable first piece. Love's Labour's Lost, 
 is a criticism of contemporary life, but ... it is not a criticism 
 of the contemporary drama. The Every Man in his Humour 
 is both. . . . No English dramatist had yet attempted comedy 
 on the basis of so severe an interpretation of its scope, as a 
 picture of follies and foibles. . . . No more genuine sketches 
 of London character are to be found in the drama. They 
 are drawn, not from books but from observation, and as an 
 observer Jonson had no equal among his contemporaries save 
 Shakspere." 
 
 This comedy was first produced in 1598, by the Lord 
 Chamberlain's Servants (Shakspere's company), and was pub- 
 lished in 1 60 1. Some eight years later Jonson revised and 
 altered the play, and it is the altered form (as published in the 
 Folio of 1616 ) that has always been used for modern presenta- 
 
 [4] 
 
tions. Few plays have more interesting associations in connec- 
 tion with the actors who have produced them or the occasions 
 on which they have been revived. In the first presentation the 
 cast included not only "Will. Shakspere" himself, but Rich- 
 ard Burbage, the leading actor of the time, and Heming and 
 Condell, editors of the Shakspere Folio. In 1675 Every 
 Man in his Humour was revived for Restoration audiences by 
 the Duke of York's company, the Earl of Dorset writing an 
 Epilogue, which is reprinted elsewhere in this volume. In 
 the eighteenth century Garrick produced the play at Drury 
 Lane, winning new laurels in the part of Kitely. In the 
 earlier nineteenth century Edmund Kean and other notable 
 actors were concerned in still other revivals. And in 1845 it 
 was the first of the plays produced by Charles Dickens and 
 his friends ; Forster's account of the performance is quoted 
 on a succeeding page. In brilliancy of rendering the present 
 reproduction cannot hope to rival the work of these great 
 artists of the past, but it is perhaps not too self-indulgent to 
 say that the play has never been reproduced with more serious 
 historic interest or sincerer artistic purpose. 
 
 [5j 
 
Elizabethan Humours. 
 
 THE TITLE does not mean Elizabethan humour, 
 Elizabethan jokes, or Elizabethan comedies, but 
 something quite distinct from all of these. Let us 
 go to Ben Jonson himself for a definition. In his 
 second comedy, Every Man Out of his Humour, he refers to 
 the old theory that the fluids or "humours" of the body were 
 four in number, and that in the normal man these were pres- 
 ent in just the right proportions. 
 
 "In every human body 
 The tholer, melancholy, phlegm, and blood 
 By reason that they flow continually 
 In some one part, and are not continent. 
 Receive the name of humours.^' 
 
 He then goes on to tell how from this circumstance the word 
 gets a different meaning, and 
 
 •' when 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. 
 This may be truly said to be a Humour J" ^ 
 
 A character was humorous, then, when distinguished by some 
 exaggerated trait of this sort; and a picture or play which 
 presented such a character naturally came to be called humor- 
 ous, too. Such characters were amusing through their abnor- 
 mality, and aroused laughter, though of a somewhat different 
 sort from that awakened by wit. So it came to pass, by one 
 of those curious series of natural changes which appear every- 
 
 [6] 
 
BOBADIL. 
 
where in the history of words, that a word meaning originally 
 something fluid came to mean something amusing. The " hu- 
 mour" of Ben Jonson's titles stands half way between the 
 early meaning and the late. 
 
 The humours of the Elizabethan age, then, were the 
 characteristic foibles or follies of the men of the time, which 
 made them at once caricatures of themselves and fit subjects 
 for caricature by satirist or dramatist. It was an age of hu- 
 mours, because a time of such spontaneity and versatility, 
 when Englishmen felt the fullness of human life, wished to 
 taste all of it for themselves, and did not seek to make them- 
 selves monotonously like other men. The lusty exuberance of 
 the closing days of the sixteenth century, — their independ- 
 ence, intensity, and indefatigable curiosity, are vital sources of 
 the splendid mass of literature which they produced. But, a 
 there was another side: tending to exaggerate themselves,-\ ' \ 
 these same qualities were the spurces also of both folly and \ \ 
 vice. 'i I '' ' 
 
 Jonson believed firmly that it was the business of comedy I 
 to caricature and make ridiculbus the foolish aspects of these'' ' 
 humours, and it is interesting to find one of his contempo- 
 raries, Nicholas Breton, referring to his work in this direction 
 as closely allied with that of the satirist: 
 
 " ' Tis strange to see the humors of these daies : 
 How first the Satyre bites at imperfections : 
 The Epigrammist in his quips displaies 
 A wicked 'course in shadowes of corrections : 
 The Humorist hee strictly makes collections 
 
 Of loth'd behaviours both in youthe and age : 
 And makes them plaie their parts upon a stage." 
 
 [7] 
 
The young gentleman of the age was the leading figure 
 in Its gaiety, and therefore in the satiric representation of its 
 folly. In Every Man in his Humour Jonson includes five 
 types of this sort, similar but quite distinct. In general 
 the ambition of the Elizabethan gentleman was to make as 
 brilliant a show of himself as possible, — an ambition which 
 in modern society has come to be more generally attributed 
 to the other sex. He was eager for the latest fashions in 
 ruffs, doublets, hose, garters, boots, and hair -dressing, espe- 
 cially If they were continental rather than English. Marston 
 describes such a young gentleman who, 
 
 "after two years' fast and earnest prayer 
 The fashion change not, lest he should despair 
 Of ever hoarding up more fair gay clothes," 
 
 shows himself in all his glory In the London streets. His 
 ruff "hath more doubles far than Ajax's shield"; his hat a 
 "small crown and huge great brim," with feathers filling all 
 the band; his clothes are "crossed and recrossed with lace"; 
 
 "His clothes perfumed, his fusty mouth is aired, 
 His chin new swept, his very cheeks are glaired," — 
 
 that is, made shiny with the white of an egg. Joseph Hall 
 pictures the same type at just the same time, as wearing 
 curled periwigs, always "poring on their pocket-glass"; 
 
 "Tyr'd with pinn'd ruifs, and fans, and partlet strips. 
 And busks and verdingales about their hips ; 
 And tread on corked stilts a prisoner's pace. 
 And make their napkin for their spitting place. 
 And gripe their waist within a narrow span." 
 
 [8] 
 
The young gallant is also represented as eager for litera- 
 ture. He watches the book -stalls about St. Paul's church- 
 yard for the latest books of sonnets, is sometimes represented 
 as reading Italian or Spanish works upside-down, and zeal- 
 ously practices the art of writing verses for himself. He is 
 no less a warrior, too, and is prepared to hold the wall, as he 
 walks through town, against any clumsy countryman who 
 proposes to walk where he will. He studies eagerly the latest 
 turns and terms in the art of fencing, as they sift in from 
 Spain, and puts them to practice on those less skilled than 
 he. He is devoted to tobacco ("drinking," not smoking, it, 
 in Elizabethan parlance), not because he is a slave to nicotine 
 so much as because the pleasures of this weed are new, strange, 
 and fashionable. In like manner he seeks after and acquires 
 all new and strange oaths. He believes that life is given to 
 enjoy, and though perhaps without the wherewithal to buy a 
 dinner, he will in some way manage to include good-fellow- 
 ship, the theatre, and the tavern in his day. Such a day, in 
 the life of one of the more lazy and prosperous sort, is thus 
 described by John Davies of Hereford : 
 
 " First, he doth rise at ten ; and at eleven 
 He goes to ' Gyls,' where he doth eat till one ; 
 Then sees a play till six, and sups at seven ; 
 And after supper straight to bed is gone ; 
 And there till ten next day he doth remain. 
 And then he dines and sees a comedy. 
 And then he sups and goes to bed again." 
 
 But if not so lazy and more given to society, he has perhaps 
 found the entree to some merchant's house in the city, and 
 
 [9j 
 
solaces dull days by a flirtation with the citizen's wife or 
 daughter — not always with undisturbed outcome. He has 
 many good points, this gay young subject of the Virgin 
 Queen, but simplicity and downrightness are not among 
 them, as he would freely confess. Said Sir John Harington, 
 speaking for the gentlemen of his time: 
 
 "Wee goe brave in apparell that wee may be taken for better men than 
 wee bee ; wee use much bumbastings and quiltings to seeme better formed, bet- 
 ter showldered, smaller wasted, and fuller thyght, than wee are ; wee barbe and 
 shave ofte, to seeme yownger than wee are ; we use perfumes both inward and 
 outward, to seeme sweeter than wee be ; corkt shooes to seeme taller than wee 
 be ; we use cowrtuows salutations to seem kinder than wee bee ; lowly obay- 
 sances to seeme humbler than we bee ; and somtyme grave and godly commu- 
 nication, to seem wyser or devowter than wee be." * 
 
 We must think of Jonson's Every Man in bis Humour, 
 then, as a sort of group of Gibson pictures of this contem- 
 porary society; only the dramatist does not at all confine 
 himself to any one circle or stratum, but gives us a cross- 
 sectioivof life of many kinds, as shown in a single day's do- 
 ings. Every character in the play is. not only an individual, 
 but a type, — a humour personified. 'In many cases his name 
 gives us a clue to his trait, and suggests at once that we are 
 moving in the field of caricature, though among caricatures 
 so lifelike that the descriptive realism of the picture is quite 
 unimpaired./ The dramatist says to us, in effect: "Here is a 
 company of my fellow-Englishmen, and to-day every man is 
 to show his humour to his heart's content." What they do 
 
 * For some further account of the humours of these gallants, see the two satires reprinted 
 at the end of this book, one of which was originally published in the year of Every Man in bis 
 Humour^ and the other a year earlier. 
 
 [lo] 
 
proves to be by no means uninteresting; but, while the plot 
 of the comedy is perfect in its way, it is never allowed to 
 draw our attention from the individual characters for whom 
 it exists. 
 
 Five young gentlemen, as has already been suggested, 
 form the central group. Two of these are without salient 
 qualities of a ridiculous sort, and are not treated in the method 
 of caricature. Ned Knowell is a university man, lately out 
 of college, and has the qualities of the typical college man of 
 any age: a lover of good poetry, good women, and good fun. 
 His friend Wellbred is distinguished from him only subtly ; 
 he is an urbane young gentleman, with a vein of the malicious 
 concealed by his good manners, and fond of a practical joke — 
 especially when aimed against his elderly brother-in-law. The 
 three others of the group of friends are of the caricatured 
 types. Matthew, called the "town gull," is the would-be 
 lover of literature, with a zeal not according to knowledge, 
 who unerringly selects the worst in contemporary poetry for 
 admiration, and then — not being able to compose for him- 
 self — rehashes it as his own. Stephen, called the "country 
 gull," is the young gentleman whose opportunities for keep- 
 ing up with the fashions have been limited, and who is there- 
 fore, while in London, greatly concerned to learn the latest 
 oaths and to share all the dissipations of his more favored 
 friends. And Captain Bobadil, who is called a "Paul's man" 
 (that is, one who frequents the lounging-aisle of St. Paul's 
 in q.uest of those from whom he can extort a dinner), is the 
 master of the sword and of the laws of the duello, — so long as 
 he is not required to put them into practice; together with 
 
Shakspere's FalstafF and Beaumont's Bessus, he helps to make 
 the great trio of the coward captains of the English stage. 
 
 Opposed to this group of five young men is one of five 
 older men, who are to some degree suspicious or critical of 
 the younger. Here again we have some who are presented 
 quite naturally, without the method of caricature, and whose 
 humours are such as may be found in humanity at any time, 
 rather than distinctively Elizabethan. Knowell Senior appears 
 as the elderly gentleman who claims the wisdom of age, but 
 is not wise enough to understand or keep up with the hu- 
 mours of youth; this is the dramatic irony which gives rise 
 to the whole plot. Master Kitely is the elderly husband of 
 a youthful wife, hitherto a staid man of business, but now 
 quite unable to restrain his jealous suspicions, and so driven 
 about by every wind that blows. Downright, his brother-in- 
 law, is a typical country squire, robust and dogmatic, with all 
 the impatience of his class for city manners and follies. Cob, 
 the water-carrier (who traces his lineage to the first red herring 
 that ever was broiled, — "cob" being the familiar Elizabethan 
 term for herring), is an oddity of low life, querulous of the 
 times, and especially a despiser of tobacco; he appears to be 
 introduced to give us a view of the humours of a social class 
 that otherwise we might not meet. And Justice Clement, 
 whose genial figure dominates the closing scenes of the play, 
 is the whimsical Minos whose humour it is to judge not by 
 the law and the testimony, but by his own sweet will. 
 
 These are the ten characters every man of whom is 
 presented in his humour, and who together form a cross- 
 section of London life in 1600. There are others in the 
 
 [12J 
 
writiniawiiiBiww^wow 
 
 JVH*iywfcl>,D 
 
 COB. 
 
play, contributing their share to its purposes, such as Cash 
 and Formal, the typical clerks, and the three women. Cob's 
 wife. Dame Kitely and her sister, who — it must be admitted 
 — make but trifling contributions to the picture. One cannot 
 but reflect regretfully on the pretty story which a dramatist 
 of the romantic school — Shakspere, Beaumont, or Fletcher — 
 would have woven about the person of Mistress Bridget, 
 whom Jonson so sternly leaves in the background, though he 
 sketches her in skilful outHne and gives her a part in the 
 action. On the other hand, there is yet another character, 
 in the portrayal of which the full genius of the dramatist is 
 engaged. This is Brainworm, the servant, who stands apart 
 from the groups already described, but wields most of them 
 as he will, and slyly conducts the great part of the action of 
 the play. Brainworm is perhaps less an Elizabethan than a 
 clever cousin of the slaves of Latin comedy ; yet he is very 
 much at home in London. It is his humour to take any 
 shape he chooses, needful for the accomplishment of his pur- 
 poses, and in this way he dominates the situation like a 
 Prospero who is also his own Ariel. His name, whatever 
 its precise meaning, certainly suggests the cleverly sinuous 
 manner in which he works. 
 
 In a comedy of this character, which sets out to portray 
 satirically the fashions and foibles of a certain age, dealing 
 only (in Jonson's own words) with 
 
 "deeds and language such as men do use. 
 And persons such as comedy would choose. 
 When she would shew an image of the times," 
 
 it would be idle to expect the same sort of charm which the 
 
 [13] 
 
romantic dramatists give us, surrounding their characters — 
 who hail indifferently from Spain, Italy, or the Forest of 
 Arden — with the passions and beauties which are of no age 
 or place, but "for all time." We must not look for this. 
 In Every Man in his Humour our interest is to be primarily 
 in acquainting ourselves with some of our ancestors in the 
 spacious days of Queen Elizabeth. We shall not find them 
 at their best or wisest, but frankly on their "humorous" side. 
 Yet there are elements in this comedy, too, which give it 
 other attractions than those of merely satiric realism. The 
 humours of mankind are not altogether different in the twen- 
 tieth and the sixteenth centuries, and we have found therefore 
 certain studies of human nature in aspects which are never 
 obsolete. Nor does the satiric method of treatment leave 
 one with a bad taste in the mouth. Jonson has had the 
 reputation of being rather trenchant than kindly in dealing 
 with human faults; yet it cannot be for nothing that he 
 entrusts the disentangling of the threads of his story, and the 
 awarding of judgment, to Justice Clement. When the court 
 speaks, it is on the whole to this effect: The humours 
 charged in the complaint are absurd enough, no doubt, and 
 when they are the expression of plagiarism or poltroonery they 
 must be punished — yet even then with nothing worse than 
 the loss of a supper; but on the whole the men behind them 
 seem to be excellent fellows, and the judgment of the court is 
 that they forgive one another and "put off all discontent." 
 Let us therefore acknowledge this good-nature in the 
 words of Ned Knowell : " We are the more bound to your 
 humanity, sir." Raymond M. Alden. 
 
 [H] 
 
Jonson's Learned Sock. 
 
 SUBJECT as we all are to the "sovereign sway and 
 masterdom" of Shakspere, we are prone to do some- 
 thing less than justice to the master of a wholly dif- 
 ferent school, — in some sense a rival school of literary 
 art and dramatic craftsmanship. Since Lessing and Goethe 
 all stars of first magnitude in poetry, in romance, in criticism, 
 look to Shakspere as the focus of their system. Such an en- 
 thusiasm for Ben Jonson as that shown by GifFord a century 
 ago, reactionary then, seems now impossible. In contrast 
 with the energizing radiance of our great luminary, the world 
 of Ben Jonson appears lunar, shadowy, and cold. Yet a 
 world it is, — the centre too of another system than ours; 
 and failing to take account of its presence and influence, we 
 miscalculate the forces at play in the brightest heaven of 
 invention. 
 
 Naturally, perhaps inevitably, we examine Ben Jonson 
 in the contrasting light of Shakspere. In life they were fel- 
 low-townsmen, fellow-craftsmen, and, indeed, fellows in a 
 close personal sense. Even had Jonson's temper been one 
 of less acerbity, it would have been but natural in him, the 
 equipped and accredited schoolman, to look at first upon his 
 elder rival as something of an adventurer. The modest 
 Shakspere, like others, doubtless looked up to Jonson as to 
 a man of superior training; and Jonson probably accepted 
 the homage with an easy sense of superiority. This view is 
 borne out by the tone of the remarks upon Shakspere in 
 Jonson's Timber: "He was, indeed, honest, and of an open 
 
and free nature; had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and 
 gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that, 
 sometimes it was necessary heshouJd be ?'jffPped£VXti*'^ 
 
 To accuse Jonson of suparaliousnessini™ airy han- 
 dling of the first poet of the race is little to the purpose. It 
 is the business of the critic to perceive and point out the fact 
 that the author of — let us say — Romeo and Juliet, in the early 
 form represented by the first Quarto, needed nothing so much 
 as just that tuition which Ben Jonson of all men was best 
 qualified to give. That a spirit at once so shrewd and so 
 sensitive as Shakspere's could come into intimate contact with 
 such an intellect as Jonson's without being profoundly influ- 
 enced, seems unlikely. One fancies Shakspere sitting down, 
 after a pulpiting from Ben at the Mermaid upon the text of 
 that Holy Trinity of his, the Unities, to indite the chorus in 
 Henry V. which "wafts you o'er the seas." Is it not "some- 
 thing more than fantasy" to believe that Ben's tuition counts 
 for something in the reserve and concentration whith mark 
 such masterpieces as Othello and The Tempest? For such 
 service as that here supposed Ben Jonson would have de- 
 served well of the Republic of Letters, even had he not been 
 himself a great creative spirit. That he came sooner or later 
 to realize the supremacy of Shakspere, appears in the lines 
 "To the memory of my beloved, the Author Mr. William 
 Shakespeare: and what he hath left us," — lines evincing a 
 prescience seldom paralleled in literary criticism. 
 
 " Triumph, my Britaine, thou hast one to showe. 
 To whom all Scenes of Europe homage owe. 
 He was not of an age, but for all time! ^^ 
 
 [i6] 
 
BEN JONSON. 
 
When these lines were penned, their illustrious subject 
 had been for seven years in his grave ; and doubtless Jonson 
 had come to regard him with a more idealizing vision, — that 
 is, in this case at all events, a truer vision. But it was impossi- 
 ble for Jonson to have forgotten that this was the same "Will. 
 Shakespeare " who had played the part of Knowell a quarter 
 of a century before : then chiefly known for his honey-flowing 
 rimes and for the facile eloquence that flowed so free in the 
 speeches of Richard and Berowne. Looking " upon this 
 picture and on this," it is surely legitimate to suppose that 
 Jonson took some credit to himself for the difference. Such 
 an interpretation gives swelling significance to the lines in the 
 Folio. 
 
 The reader of Shakspere who takes up Ben Jonson' is 
 immediately struck by a series of contrasts, one of the chief 
 of which is implied in the foregoing remarks. When he 
 played a leading part in Jonson's first comedy, Shakspere was 
 a relatively undeveloped young man of thirty-four. In his 
 dramas there was seen as yet but 
 
 " The baby figure of the giant mass 
 Of things to come at large." 
 
 What weary courses he had to traverse, what bitter cups to 
 drain, ere he could become the creator of such mighty works 
 as Hamlet and Lear, or could arrive at such serenity of spirit 
 as breathes through The Tempest and The Winter s Tale ! At 
 the time in question, Jonson was the matured veteran of 
 twenty-five : in years a decade the younger man, but as an 
 artist far the elder. He was old and wise with the age and 
 
 ['7] 
 
wisdom of the ancients. Saturated with the theory of Aris- 
 totle, eager to revive the art of Terence, he may be said, 
 in respect to maturity and equipment, to have started in life 
 a quarter of a century in advance of Shakspere, who had to 
 learn his art for the most part under the slow tuition of Ex- 
 perience. Jonson, on the other hand, seems to have had 
 little to learn in that school. Between Every Mem in his 
 Humour and The Staple of News there is a lapse of twenty- 
 seven years; yet the difference in art and style is less marked 
 than that which may be traced between almost any two come- 
 dies of Shakspere that might be named. 
 
 Perhaps the reason for this will become apparent if we 
 push the contrast a little further. It has become a truism to 
 say that Shakspere's art is organic: "the art itself is nature." 
 He lives and loves, grieves and grows, and, as he puts his life 
 into his plays, they come to have the infinite variety of Na- 
 ture herself. Jonson studies and observes, painfully embody- 
 ing the results in sharp outlines. He has the distinctness, 
 the special aim, the concentration of a Hogarth. His pur- 
 pose is satirical and didactic. Witty a nd_amusing as his com- 
 edies undeniably are, they lack atmosphere and suns hine. He 
 is caustic, contemptuous, rough, and his wish to be honest 
 makes him too often disgusting l y coarse . Too long com- 
 merce with him leaves one depressed with a sense of the 
 aridity of the life with which he deals. Volpone, for example, 
 considered as a tour de force in the handling of a simple motif 
 out of which is developed a highly organized, complex plot, 
 is marvellous; and to one who can for the time being divest 
 himself of all human feeling, must be highly diverting. Much 
 
 [i8] 
 
the same thing is true of Epiccene, the fun of which lies in 
 the persecution of an elderly gentleman, who has presumably 
 earned the title to a quiet life, by his graceless nephew and 
 heir. The superb plot of the Alchemist is spoiled for us by 
 no such associations of cruelty, although the satirical portraits 
 of the Puritan Pilgrims are anything but genial. Every Man 
 in his Humour and the merry Bartholomew Fair have an at- 
 mosphere of cheerfulness that is scarcely elsewhere found in 
 the comedies of Jonson. One feels that all these plays are 
 for the stage rather than for the study. 
 
 Why then have they not kept the stage, to which they 
 are so well suited by thei r firm draughtsmanship a nd by their 
 ingenuity of plot ? Partly, no doubt, because they deal with 
 "IBygohe social conditions, and scourge strangely unrecogniz- 
 able types of folly, Jonson's ^.ye, keen as i t was, fa iled to 
 pierc e to the universal, as could the eye of Shakspere7 in 
 whose dramatis person^e we hail our own humanity. We take 
 sides for and against Shylock, just as we do in the case of 
 Cromwell or of Mary Stuart. There is, of course, no room 
 for two opinions about any of Ben Jonson's personages : but 
 what if there were? 
 
 Another reason, perhaps a deeper, for Jonson's obsoles- 
 cence, is to be found in the world's advance in what we call 
 the sentiment of humanity. This writer's .Jack _of human 
 sympathy__limits him even as a moralist, so that/when we 
 compare him with Shakspere, his ethical judgments seem un- 
 generpus or mechanical. 
 
 This negative view of Jonson, as he appears in contrast 
 with Shakspere, should nowise blind us to the solid qualities 
 
 ['9j 
 
which gave him such an ascendancy over some of the best 
 
 spirits of his own age and of the age next following. Kitely, 
 
 Abel Drugger, Sir Epicure Mammon, Corbaccio, Tribulation 
 
 Wholesome, Zeal-of-the-Land Busy live in our memories as 
 
 distinct types. In kee n observation and unrelenting realism 
 
 Jonson is unsurp as^ed^^ FTis immortaTCaptaTirBobadTl'm^"^ 
 
 tafce-the"^wairorParolles, or of any ruffler of the Elizabethan 
 
 stage, save FalstafF alone. As a master of the ec onomy of 
 
 plot, Jonson is preeminent: in the ri gtfer of plot, "perhaps no" 
 
 dl'anratfgt'is more seif-depen3enE"™nFIereSliaEspere may be 
 
 well content to "EaKe "secSTTd ' place. Moreover, Jonson is of 
 
 course a poet of distinction and refinement, whose sweet songs 
 
 have a singularly haunting quality. Clearly, he was in his day 
 
 a heroic figure in the eyes of the younger spirits of choice. 
 
 It is still stimulating to come into contact with an intellect so 
 
 str ong , hon esty uncomprom ising. If we cannot love him, we 
 
 cannotButrespect him; and the better he is known, the more 
 
 appropriate to him alone appears the pregnant epitaph "O 
 
 rare Ben Tonson!" * at da 
 
 •" Melville B. Anderson. 
 
 [20] 
 
Upon Ben Jonson, 
 
 the Most Excellent of Comic Poets. 
 1638. 
 
 MIRROR of Poets! mirror of our age ! 
 Which, her whole face beholding on thy stage, 
 Pleas'd and displeas'd with her own faults, endures 
 A remedy, like those whom music cures. 
 Thou not alone those various incHnations, 
 Which nature gives to ages, sexes, nations. 
 Hast traced with thy all-resembling pen. 
 But all that custom hath impos'd on men, 
 Or ill-got habits, which distort them so 
 That scarce the brother can the brother know. 
 Is represented to the wondering eyes 
 Of all that see or read thy Comedies. 
 Whoever in those glasses looks, may find 
 The spots return'd, or graces, of his mind; 
 And, by the help of so divine an art. 
 At leisure view and dress his nobler part. 
 Narcissus, cozen'd by that flattering well 
 Which nothing could but of his beauty tell. 
 Had here, discovering the deform'd estate 
 Of his proud mind, preserv'd himself with hate. 
 But virtue too, as well as vice, is clad 
 In flesh and blood so well that Plato had 
 Beheld what his high fancy once embrac'd, — 
 Virtue with colours, speech, and motion grac'd. 
 
 [21] 
 
The sundry postures of thy copious Muse, 
 
 Who would express, a thousand tongues must use , 
 
 Whose fate 's no less peculiar than thy art. 
 
 For, as thou couldst all characters impart. 
 
 So none can render thine, which still escapes, 
 
 Like Proteus in variety of shapes, 
 
 Who was nor this nor that, but all we find 
 
 And all we can imagine in mankind. 
 
 Edmund Waller. 
 
 [22] 
 
EVERY MAN IN 
 
 his Humor. 
 
 As it hath bee nc fundry times 
 publicJ^ly oEled by the right 
 
 Honorable thr Lord Qham- 
 btrUmc ill fimtiits. 
 
 Written by Bin. Iouhioh. 
 
 ^odnm Ja>itprteira,dJ>it Hifirit. 
 HjuJtMun iimUui vati,qiiem f»lfiuf^ciiat. 
 
 Iroprintcdat London for WdlnrBmrt, and ire to 
 
 befmUahisjhtfftii'Fimltt Clmrth-jtrde. 
 
 itfoi , 
 
 TITLE PAGE OF BEN JONSON'S 
 "EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR," 1601 
 
Prologue 
 
 to Every Man in his Humour. 
 
 THOUGH need make many poets, and some such 
 As art and nature have not better'd much; 
 Yet ours, for want, hath not so loved the stage 
 As he dare serve th' ill customs of the age, 
 Or purchase your delight at such a rate, 
 As for it he himself must justly hate; — 
 To make a child, now swaddled, to proceed 
 Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed, 
 Past threescore years : or, with three rusty swords. 
 And help of some few foot-and-half-foot words. 
 Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars. 
 And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars. 
 He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see 
 One such to-day, as other plays should be; 
 Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas ; 
 Nor creaking throne comes down, the boys to please ; 
 Nor nimble squib is seen, to make afeard 
 The gentlewomen ; nor roll'd bullet heard 
 To say it thunders; nor tempestuous drum 
 Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come; 
 But deeds and language such as men do use. 
 And persons such as comedy would choose. 
 When she would show an image of the times. 
 And sport with human follies, not with crimes — 
 Except we make 'em such, by loving still 
 
 [^3 J ' 
 
Our popular errors, when we know they're ill. 
 I mean such errors as you'll all confess 
 By laughing at them, — they deserve no less ; 
 Which when you heartily do, there's hope left then. 
 You that have so grac'd monsters may like men. 
 
 Ben Jonson. 
 
 [H] 
 
Epilogue 
 
 Written for the revival of Every Man in his Humour 
 in 1675, by Charles, Earl of Dorset. 
 
 ENTREATY shall not serve, nor violence, 
 To make me speak in such a play's defence ; 
 A play where wit and humour do agree 
 To break all practis'd laws of Comedy. 
 The scene (what more absurd!) in England lies; 
 No gods descend, nor dancing devils rise ; 
 No captive prince from unknown country brought; 
 No battle, — nay, there's scarce a duel fought. 
 And something yet more sharply might be said. 
 But I consider the poor author's dead: 
 Let that be his excuse. Now for our own : 
 Why, faith, — in my opinion, we need none. 
 The parts were fitted well ; but some will say, 
 " Pox on them, rogues ! what made them choose this play ? " 
 I do not doubt but you will credit me. 
 It was not choice, but mere necessity. 
 To all our writing friends in town we sent, 
 But not a wit durst venture out in Lent: 
 Have patience but till Easter-term, and then 
 You shall have jig and hobby-horse again. . . . 
 For diverse weighty reasons 'twas thought fit 
 Unruly sense should still to rhyme submit: 
 This, the most wholesome law we ever made. 
 
So strictly in this epilogue obeyed. 
 
 Sure no man here will ever dare to break 
 
 [Enter Ghost of Jonson, interrupting:] 
 
 Hold, and give way! for I myself will speak. 
 
 Can you encourage so much insolence, 
 
 And add new faults still to the great offence 
 
 Your ancestors so rashly did commit. 
 
 Against the mighty powers of art and wit? 
 
 When they condemned those noble works of mine, 
 
 Sejanus, and my best-loved Catiline. 
 
 Repent, or on your guilty heads shall fall 
 
 The curse of many a rhyming pastoral. 
 
 All the dull follies of the former age 
 
 Shall find applause on this corrupted stage; 
 
 But if you pay the great arrears of praise 
 
 So long since due to my much injured plays. 
 
 From all past crimes I first will set you free, 
 
 And then inspire some one to write like me. 
 
 [26] 
 
Dickens and his Friends 
 
 in Every Man in his Humour. 
 1845. 
 
 " X ^ TE HAD chosen Every Man in his Humour, with 
 \/\/ special regard to the singleness and individuality 
 » ▼ of the 'humours' portrayed in it. . . Maclise 
 took earnest part with us, and was to have acted, 
 but fell away on the eve of the rehearsals ; and Stanfield, who 
 went so far as to rehearse Downright twice, then took fright 
 and also ran away : but Jerrold, who played Master Stephen, 
 brought with him Lemon, who took Brainworm; Leech, to 
 whom Master Matthew was given; A'Beckett, who had con- 
 descended to the small part of William ; and Mr. Leigh, who 
 had Oliver Cob. I played Kitely, and Bobadil fell to Dick- 
 ens, who took upon him the redoubtable Captain long before 
 he stood in his dress at the footlights; humouring the com- 
 pleteness of his assumption by talking and writing Bobadil, 
 till the dullest of our party were touched and stirred to some- 
 thing of his own heartiness of enjoyment. One or two hints 
 of these have been given, and I will only add to them his 
 refusal of my wish that he should go and see some special 
 performance of the Gamester. 'Man of the House. Game- 
 ster! By the foot of Pharaoh, I will not see the Gamester. 
 Man shall not force, nor horses drag, this poor gentleman- 
 like carcass into the presence of the Gamester. I have said 
 it. . .Thine as thou meritist. Bobadil (Captain). Unto 
 Master Kitely. These.' 
 
 [^7] 
 
"The play was played on the 2ist of September with a 
 success that out-ran the wildest expectation ; and turned our 
 little enterprise into one of the small sensations of the day. 
 The applause of the theatre found so loud an echo in the 
 press, that for the time nothing else was talked about in pri- 
 vate circles; and after a week or two we had to yield (we did 
 not find it difficult) to a pressure of demand for more public 
 performance in a larger theatre, by which a useful charity re- 
 ceived important help. , . I may not farther indicate the en- 
 joyments that attended the success, and gave always to the 
 first of our series of performances a preeminently pleasant 
 place in memory. 
 
 "Of the thing itself, however, it is necessary to be said 
 that a modicum of merit goes a long way in all such matters, 
 and it would not be safe now to assume that ours was much 
 above the average of amateur attempts in general. Lemon 
 certainly had most of the stuff, conventional as well as other- 
 wise, of a regular actor in him, but this was not of a high 
 kind; and though Dickens had the title to be called a born 
 comedian, the turn for it being in his very nature, his strength 
 was rather in the vividness and variety of his assumptions, 
 than in the completeness, finish, or ideality he could give to 
 any part of them. . . At the same time this was in itself so 
 thoroughly genuine and enjoyable, and had in it such quick- 
 ness and keenness of insight, that of its kind it was unri- 
 valled; and it enabled him to present in Bobadil, after a 
 richly coloured picture of bombastical extravagance and comic 
 exaltation in the earlier scenes, a contrast in the later of trag- 
 ical humility and abasement, that had a wonderful effect. But 
 
 [28] 
 
greatly as his acting contributed to the success of the night, 
 this was nothing to the service he had rendered as manager. 
 It would be difficult to describe it. He was the life and soul 
 of the entire affair. I never seemed till then to have known 
 his business capabilities. He took everything on himself, 
 and did the whole of it without effort." 
 
 Forster's Life of 'Dickens, Vol. II, Chap. 9. 
 
 [^9] 
 
It has been thought that it would prove interesting to repro- 
 duce the portraits of certain of the distinguished men who have 
 taken part as actors in the production of Every Man in his Humour. 
 Accordingly Shakspere and Burbage have been chosen to represent 
 the sixteenth century, Garrick the eighteenth, and Dickens the 
 nineteenth. 
 
 Peculiar interest attaches to the portrait of Shakspere here 
 presented. It is a reproduction of the painting discovered a ie.^ 
 years since, which now hangs in the Shakspere house at Stratford, 
 and which was doubtless the original of the Droeshout engraving in 
 the First Folio. There is an interesting, though fancifiil, theory 
 that this represents Shakspere in the part of Knowell in Jonson' s 
 comedy, — a part attributed to him because his name stands at the 
 head of the list of actors as that of Knowell stands first among the 
 persons of the play. James Boaden, who seems to have been the 
 author of the theory, said that "it would be difficult to exhibit 
 anything more descriptive than this portrait of the way in which 
 Shakspere looked the staid, sensible, feehng and reflecting father" 
 in the part of Old Knowell. And Elze, in his Life of Shakspere, 
 is disposed to accept the suggestion, adding : "It is quite in keeping 
 with the self-sufficiency of Jonson to find him specially pleased 
 with a portrait of Shakspere representing him as a character from 
 one of his plays, and we have no doubt that Jonson was the happy 
 owner of the picture. He may even have drawn it himself ; . . . 
 the portrait has every appearance of having been drawn during 
 some theatrical performance." Without accepting these interesting 
 guesses, one may at least linger longer over the picture for the 
 supposition. 
 
 [30] 
 
WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. 
 
RICHARD BURBAGE. 
 
DAVID GARRICK. 
 
CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
Satire on a "Paul's Man" 
 
 by Joseph Hall. 
 1597- 
 
 The interior of old St. Paul's Cathedral was a favorite lounging-place 
 and rendezvous, and one part of it, frequented by young gentlemen, was 
 called ** Dulce Humphrey's Walk." This name was due to the mistaken 
 notion that a monument overlooking the walk was that of Humphrey, 
 Duke of Gloucester, who died 1447. **To dine with Duke Humphrey" 
 was Elizabethan slang for haunting this aisle of Paul's in the hope of 
 meeting with some one who might provide a dinner. Young Ruffio, de- 
 scribed in this satire, is clearly a prototype of Jonson's Bobadil. 
 
 SEEST thou how gayly my yong maister goes. 
 Vaunting himselfe upon his rising toes, 
 And pranks his hand upon his dagger's side. 
 And picks his glutted teeth since late noon-tide? 
 'Tis Ruffio: trow'st thou where he din'd to-day? 
 In sooth I saw him sit with Duke Humfray. 
 Many good welcomes, and much gratis cheere, 
 Keepes he for everie straggling cavaliere. 
 An open house, haunted with greate resort, — 
 Long service, mixt with musicall disport. 
 Many faire yonker with a feather'd crest. 
 Chooses much rather be his shot-free guest, 
 To fare so freely with so little cost, 
 Than stake his twelvepence to a meaner host. 
 Hadst thou not told me, I should surely say 
 He touch't no meat of all this live-long day. 
 For sure methought — yet that was but a guesse — 
 His eyes seeme sunk for verie hollownesse. 
 
 [31] 
 
But could he have (as I did it mistake) 
 
 So little in his purse, so much upon his backe ? 
 
 So nothing in his maw? yet seemeth by his belt 
 
 That his gaunt gut no too much stuffing felt. 
 
 Seest thou how side it hangs beneath his hip ? 
 
 Hunger and heavy iron makes girdles slip. 
 
 Yet for all that, how stifly struts he by. 
 
 All trapped in the new-found braverie. 
 
 The nuns of new-won Cales his bonnet lent. 
 
 In lieu of their so kind a conquerment. 
 
 What needed he fetch that from farthest Spaine, 
 
 His grandame could have lent with lesser paine? 
 
 Though he perhaps ne'er pass'd the English shore. 
 
 Yet faine would counted be a conquerour. 
 
 His haire, French-like, stares on his frighted head, 
 
 One lock amazon-like disheveled. 
 
 As if he meant to weare a native cord. 
 
 If chaunce his fates should him that bane aiFord. 
 
 All British bare upon the bristled skin, 
 
 Close notched is his beard, both lip and chin ; 
 
 His linnen collar labyrinthian set. 
 
 Whose thousand double turnings never met; 
 
 His sleeves half hid with elbow pinionings. 
 
 As if he meant to flie with linnen wings. 
 
 But when I looke, and cast mine eyes below. 
 
 What monster meets mine eyes in human shew? 
 
 So slender waist with such an abbot's loyne 
 
 Did never sober nature sure conjoyne. 
 
 Like a strawne scare-crow in the new-sowne field, 
 
 [32] 
 
Rear'd on some sticke, the tender corne to shield ; 
 Or, if that semblance suit not everie deale, 
 Like a broad shake-fork with a slender steel. 
 Despised Nature, suit them once aright, 
 Their bodie to their coate, both now mis-dight; 
 Their bodie to their clothes might shapen be. 
 That nill their clothes shape to their bodie. 
 Meanwhile I wonder at so proud a backe, 
 While th' empty guts loud rumble for long lacke. 
 The belly envieth the back's bright glee. 
 And murmurs at such inequality. 
 The backe appeales unto the partial eyne; 
 The plaintive belly pleads they bribed been ; 
 And he, for want of better advocate, 
 Doth to the ear his injury relate. 
 The back, insulting o'er the belly's need, 
 Says, Thou thyself, I others' eyes, must feed. 
 The maw, the guts, all inward parts complaine 
 The back's great pride, and their own secret paine. 
 Ye witlesse gallants, I beshrew your hearts. 
 That set such discord 'twixt agreeing parts. 
 Which never can be set at onement more. 
 Until the maw's wide mouth be stopt with store, 
 
 — Virgidemiarum, Book III, Satire 7. 
 
 [33] 
 
A Satire on Humours 
 
 by John Marston. 
 1598. 
 
 WHO ever heard spruce skipping Curio 
 E'er prate of aught but of the whirl on toe ? 
 His teeth do caper whilst he eats his meat, 
 His heels do caper whilst he takes his seat, 
 His very soul, his intellectual, 
 Is nothing but a mincing capreal. 
 He dreams of toe-turns ; each gallant he doth meet 
 He fronts him with a traverse in the street. . . . 
 
 Luscus, what's play'd to-day ? Faith, now I know 
 I set thy lips abroach, from whence doth flow 
 Nothing but pure Juliet and Romeo. 
 Say who acts best ? Drusus or Roscio ? 
 Now I have him that ne'er of aught did speak 
 But when of plays or players he did treat — 
 Hath made a commonplace-book out of plays. 
 And speaks in print : at least whate'er he says 
 Is warranted by Curtain plaudttes. 
 If e'er you heard him courting Lesbia's eyes. 
 Say (courteous sir), speaks he not movingly. 
 From out some new pathetic tragedy ? 
 He writes, he rails, he jests, he courts (what not?), 
 And all from out his huge long-scraped stock 
 Of well-penn'd plays. 
 
 Oh, come not within distance ! Martius speaks, 
 
 [34J 
 
Who ne'er discourseth but of fencing feats, 
 
 Oi counter times, finctures, s\y passatas, 
 
 Stramazones, resolute stoccatas. 
 
 Of the quick change with wiping mandritta. 
 
 The carricada, with the embrocata. 
 
 " Oh, by Jesu, sir ! " methinks I hear him cry, 
 
 " The honourable fencing mystery 
 
 Who doth not honour?" Then falls he in again. 
 
 Jading our ears. . . . 
 
 But room for Tuscus, that jest-monging youth 
 Who ne'er did ope his apish gerning mouth 
 But to retail and broke another's wit. 
 Discourse of what you will, he straight can fit 
 Your present talk with, "Sir, I'll tell a jest" 
 (Of some sweet lady, or grand lord at least). 
 Then on he goes, and ne'er his tongue shall lie 
 Till his engrossed jests are all drawn dry. . . . 
 
 O spruce ! How now, Piso, Aurelius' ape. 
 What strange disguise, what new deformed shape. 
 Doth hold thy thoughts in contemplation ? 
 Faith say what fashion art thou thinking on ? 
 A stitch'd taffeta cloak, a pair of slops 
 Of Spanish leather? Oh, who heard his chops 
 E'er chew of aught but of some strange disguise ? 
 This fashion-monger, each morn 'fore he rise, 
 Contemplates suit-shapes, and once from out his bed. 
 He hath them straight full lively protrayed. 
 All fashions, since the first year of this queen, 
 May in his study, fairly drawn, be seen, 
 
 [35] 
 
And all that shall be to his day of doom; 
 
 For not a fashion once dare show his face. 
 
 But from neat Piso first must take his grace : 
 
 The long fool's coat, the huge slop, the lugg'd boot, 
 
 From mimic Piso all do claim their root, 
 
 O that the boundless power of the soul 
 
 Should be coop'd up In fashioning some roll! 
 
 But O, SufFenus! that doth hug, embrace 
 His proper self, admires his own sweet face; 
 Praiseth his own limbs' fair proportion, 
 Kisseth his shade, recounteth all alone 
 His own good parts — who envies him? Not I, 
 For well he may, without all rivalry. 
 
 Fie! whither's fled my spirit's alacrity? 
 How dull I vent this humorous poesy! 
 In faith I am sad, I am possess'd with ruth. 
 To see the vainness of fair Albion's youth ; 
 To see their richest time even wholly spent 
 In that which is but gentry's ornament. . . . 
 Methinks your souls should grudge and inly scorn 
 To be made slaves to humours that are born 
 In slime of filthy sensuality. 
 
 — The Scourge of Villainy, Satire XI. 
 
 [361 
 
Ah Ben ! 
 Say how or when 
 Shall we, thy guests. 
 Meet at those lyric feasts. 
 
 Made at the Sun, 
 The Dog, the Triple Tun ; 
 Where we such clusters had 
 As made us nobly wild, not mad'? 
 And yet each verse of thine 
 Out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine. 
 
 My Ben I 
 Or come again. 
 Or send to us 
 Thy wit's great overplus; 
 
 But teach us yet 
 Wisely to husband it. 
 Lest we that talent spend; 
 And having once brought to an end 
 That precious stock, — the store. 
 Of such a wit the world should have no more. 
 
 — Robert Herrick. 
 [37] 
 
The comedy of Every Man in his Humour is produced, 
 and this book is published, under the direction of the following 
 Committee of the Stanford English Club : 
 
 Edward Kirby Putnam, Chairman 
 Raymond Macdonald Alden 
 Lee Emerson Bassett 
 John Francis Cassell 
 Carolyn Z. Edwards 
 Hugh Anderson Moran 
 Delmar Milton Reynolds 
 William Henry Thomson 
 Katharine Ethel Traphagen 
 
 In illustrating the book the Committee has 
 had the valuable assistance of Miss Jeannette M. 
 Hayward and Mr. Henry R. Johnson. 
 
 [38]