ity 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 t