The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 3

by E. K. Chambers

Every Man In his Humour. 1598

S. R. [1600], Aug. 4. ‘Euery man in his humour, a booke ... to be staied’ (Arber, iii. 37). [As You Like It, Henry V, and Much Ado about Nothing are included in the entry, which appears to be an exceptional memorandum. The year 1600 is conjectured from the fact that the entry follows another of May 1600.]

1600, Aug. 14 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called Euery man in his humour.’ Burby and Walter Burre (Arber, iii. 169).

1609, Oct. 16. Transfer of Mrs. Burby’s share to Welby (Arber, iii. 421).

1601. Every Man In his Humor. As it hath beene sundry times publickly acted by the right Honorable the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants. Written by Ben. Iohnson. For Walter Burre.

1616. Euery Man In His Humour. A Comœdie. Acted in the yeere 1598. By the then Lord Chamberlaine his Seruants. The Author B. I. By William Stansby. [Part of F₁. Epistle to William Camden, signed ‘Ben. Ionson’, and Prologue. After text: ‘This Comoedie was first Acted, in the yeere 1598. By the then L. Chamberlayne his Seruants. The principall Comœdians were, Will. Shakespeare, Ric. Burbadge, Aug. Philips, Ioh. Hemings, Hen. Condel, Tho. Pope, Will. Slye, Chr. Beeston, Will. Kempe, Ioh. Duke. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.’]

Editions by W. Scott (1811, M. B. D. iii), H. B. Wheatley (1877), W. M. Dixon (1901, T. D.), H. Maas (1901, Rostock diss.), W. A. Neilson (1911, C. E. D.), C. H. Herford (1913, R. E. C. ii), P. Simpson (1919), H. H. Carter (1921, Yale Studies, lii), and facsimile reprints of Q₁ by C. Grabau (1902, Jahrbuch, xxxviii. 1), W. Bang and W. W. Greg (1905, Materialien, x).—Dissertations: A. Buff, The Quarto Edition of B. J.’s E. M. I. (1877, E. S. i. 181), B. Nicholson, On the Dates of the Two Versions of E. M. I. (1882, Antiquary, vi. 15, 106).

The date assigned by F₁ is confirmed by an allusion (IV. iv. 15) to the ‘fencing Burgullian’ or Burgundian, John Barrose, who challenged all fencers in that year, and was hanged for murder on 10 July (Stowe, Annales, 787). The production must have been shortly before 20 Sept, when Toby Mathew wrote to Dudley Carleton (S. P. D. Eliz. cclxviii. 61; Simpson, ix) of an Almain who lost 300 crowns at ‘a new play called, Euery mans humour’. Two short passages were taken from the play in R. Allot’s England’s Parnassus (1600, ed. Crawford, xxxii. 110, 112, 436) which is earlier than Q₁. The Q₁ text (I. i. 184) contains a hit at Anthony Munday in ‘that he liue in more penurie of wit and inuention, then eyther the Hall-Beadle, or Poet Nuntius’. This has disappeared from F₁, which in other respects represents a complete revision of the Q₁ text. Many passages have been improved from a literary point of view; the scene has been transferred from Italy to London and the names anglicized; the oaths have all been expunged or softened. Fleay, i. 358, finding references to a ‘queen’ in F₁ for the ‘duke’ of Q₁ and an apparent dating of St. Mark’s Day on a Friday, assigned the revision to 1601, and conjectured that it was done by Jonson for the Chapel, that the Chamberlain’s published the Q in revenge, and that Jonson tried to stay it. Here he is followed by Castelain. But Q₁ is a good edition and there is no sign whatever that it had not Jonson’s authority, and as the entry in S. R. covers other Chamberlain’s plays, it is pretty clear that the company caused the ‘staying’. St. Mark’s Day did not, as Fleay thought, fall on a Friday in 1601, and if it had, the dating is unchanged from Q₁ and the references to a queen may, as Simpson suggests, be due to Jonson’s conscientious desire to preserve consistency with the original date of 1598. Nor is the play likely to have passed to the Chapel, since the King’s men played it before James on 2 Feb. 1605 (cf. App. B). This revival would be the natural time for a revision, and in fact seems to me on the whole the most likely date, in spite of two trifling bits of evidence which would fit in rather better a year later. These are references to the siege of Strigonium or Graan (1595) as ten years since (III. i. 103), and to a present by the Turkey company to the Grand Signior (I. ii. 78), which was perhaps the gift worth £5,000 sent about Christmas 1605 (S. P. D. Jac. I, xv. 3; xvii. 35; xx. 27). No doubt also the revision of oaths in Jacobean plays is usually taken as due to the Act against Abuses of Players (1606), although it is conceivable that the personal taste of James may have required a similar revision of plays selected for Court performance at an earlier date. Or this particular bit of revision, which was done for other plays before F₁, may be of later date than the rest. Simpson is in favour, largely on literary grounds, for a revision in 1612, in preparation for F₁. The Prologue, which is not in Q, probably belongs to the revision, or at any rate to a revival later than 1598, since it criticizes not only ‘Yorke, and Lancasters long jarres’, but also plays in which ‘Chorus wafts you ore the seas’, as in Henry V (1599). These allusions would not come so well in 1612; on the other hand, Simpson’s date would enable us to suppose that the play in which the public ‘grac’d monsters’ was the Tempest (cf. the similar jibe in Bartholomew Fair). The character Matheo or Mathew represents a young gull of literary tendencies, and is made to spout passages from, or imitations of, Daniel’s verses. Perhaps this implies some indirect criticism of Daniel, but it can hardly be regarded as a personal attack upon him.

Every Man Out of his Humour. 1599

S. R. 1600, April 8 (Harsnett). ‘A Comicall Satyre of euery man out of his humour.’ William Holme (Arber, iii. 159).