Every Man in His Humour
Every Man in His Humour arrived on the London stage in 1598, and it announced Ben Jonson as a playwright with a philosophy. The play was performed by the Lord Chamberlain's Men at the Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch, and among the original cast was William Shakespeare. That single fact has tantalised theatre historians ever since. What role did Shakespeare play? Did he help save the play from rejection? And how did this one Elizabethan comedy go on to shape what we expect comedy to look like? The answers run through jealous husbands, meddling fathers, and one famously short walk from London to Norwich.
A merchant named Kitely is the beating heart of the play's subplot, and he is consumed by a single idea: his wife is being unfaithful. Kitely is the character who most clearly embodies the play's central device, the "humour" - a singular obsession that overwhelms every other part of a person's character. Around Kitely, the play crowds a gallery of similar types: the irascible soldier, the country gull, the pretentious pot-poets, the surly water-bearer, and the avuncular judge. Each is ruled by one defining trait.
Nineteenth-century critics liked to credit Jonson with importing this concept into English comedy. The truth is messier. George Chapman's An Humorous Day's Mirth actually preceded Jonson's play by a year or more. Jonson himself, as scholars later recognised, was not especially devoted to the humours idea. Only Kitely fully fits his own strict definition of a humour character, as he laid it out in his follow-up work Every Man Out of His Humour. The more likely explanation is that Jonson spotted a fashion Chapman had sparked, and used it to attract an audience to a play built on different foundations.
Jonson wrote a prologue for the 1616 folio version of the play, and its lines are among the most quoted statements of comic theory in English literary history. He promised to show "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." That phrase - sport with human follies, not with crimes - is a quiet manifesto for a realist approach to comedy.
The play's structure backs that claim. The main plot follows Kno'well, an old gentleman who grows anxious about his son's moral life in the city. He hires a servant, Brainworm, to spy on the son. Brainworm then systematically undermines his own employer. Jonson's models for these characters came directly from ancient Greek New Comedy: the senex (the worried old man), the son (the city gallant), and the slave (the scheming servant). The play holds strictly to the Aristotelian unities of time, place, and action, and it builds to a single scene before Justice Clement, who hears every character's complaint and exposes each one as rooted in humour, misperception, or outright deceit.
The 1616 folio edition of Jonson's works included a cast list for the original 1598 production. Shakespeare's name appears on it, along with Richard Burbage, Augustine Phillips, John Heminges, Henry Condell, Thomas Pope, William Sly, Christopher Beeston, William Kempe, and John Duke. Shakespeare is listed ahead of Burbage, which is notable given Burbage's stature as the company's leading actor.
A theatre legend first set down by Nicholas Rowe in 1709 holds that the company had been ready to reject the play, and that Shakespeare personally advocated for it. The story cannot be verified. What can be checked is that Shakespeare continued acting in the company at least until 1603, when he appeared in Jonson's Sejanus.
Which role did Shakespeare play? The older tradition held that he took the part of Kno'well, the aged father, on the grounds that he was known to favour older characters. Adam in As You Like It is often cited as an example. In 2024, however, a different theory entered the conversation. Scholar Dr Darren Freebury-Jones applied textual analysis to the problem and concluded that Shakespeare more likely played Thorello, later renamed Kitely - the jealous husband. Freebury-Jones pointed to shared phrasings between that role and later plays including Othello, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night, all written after Every Man in His Humour premiered. The folio cast list also carries one small footnote about William Kempe: he left the company the following year, setting off on his celebrated morris dance from London to Norwich.
The play entered the Register of the Stationers' Company on the 4th of August 1600, grouped with three Shakespearean plays - As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and Henry V - in an entry marked "to be stayed." Scholars read that phrase as an attempt to block publication. It failed. The three Shakespeare plays appeared in print soon after the stay was entered. Every Man in His Humour was re-registered ten days later, on the 14th of August 1600, by booksellers Cuthbert Burby and Walter Burre. The first quarto appeared in 1601.
That 1601 text set the play in Florence. When Jonson revised it for the 1616 folio, he moved the action to London. The shift was less dramatic than it sounds. Even the Florence version used English background details throughout; Jonson simply formalised what was already true by giving all the characters English names and replacing vague Italianate references with specific London addresses. The 1616 folio placed Every Man in His Humour first among all the plays in the collection, a deliberate act of self-positioning by Jonson. In 1599, he had also written a sequel, Every Man out of His Humour, but it proved far less popular than the original.
The play was revived at the King's Company in 1675 and again at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1725, but neither production secured its long-term place in the repertory. Real currency returned in 1751, when David Garrick brought it back with substantial alterations. He trimmed lines from the secondary plots and wrote an entirely new scene in which Kitely attempts to squeeze information from a character named Cob while concealing his jealousy. Arthur Murphy and other critics singled out that scene for praise. Kitely became one of Garrick's defining roles, and the play stayed in his repertory consistently.
George Frederick Cooke revived it at Covent Garden after Garrick's era, and critic Elizabeth Inchbald judged Cooke's Kitely the equal of Garrick's. The production had uneven results, failing in Edinburgh in 1808. After 1803, Cooke may have shared the title role with Kemble in later Covent Garden productions. Critics toward the end of the eighteenth century began to notice a problem: the play's popularity had become inseparable from Garrick's personality. When he was no longer there to fill Kitely, audiences drifted away, and Every Man in His Humour faded from regular use along with the rest of Jonson's comedies.
Perhaps the most unexpected production in the play's long history took place in 1845. Charles Dickens and a circle of friends staged a benefit production, with Macready assisting. Dickens took the role of Bobadill, the blustering soldier Jonson described as a "Paul's man." George Cruikshank played Cob, and John Forster played Kitely. The production went well enough that it was repeated three or four times over the following two years.
An 1847 production drew a particularly distinguished audience. Bulwer-Lytton wrote a verse prologue for it; among those who attended were Robert Browning and Alfred Lord Tennyson, as well as the scholar John Payne Collier. Browning had already seen William Charles Macready essay the Kitely role at the Haymarket Theatre in 1838 and approved of that performance, though the play had not figured prominently in Macready's regular schedule. Edmund Kean had played Kitely in an unsuccessful 1816 production; William Hazlitt praised that performance regardless.
Ben Iden Payne produced the play in Manchester in 1909, and returned to it in Stratford in 1937 for the Jonson tercentenary. The Stratford production earned far more favourable notices than the Manchester run. John Caird directed it during the inaugural season of the Swan Theatre in 1986, bringing Jonson's first major hit to the stage that would become one of England's most celebrated homes for non-Shakespearean Renaissance drama.
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Common questions
When was Every Man in His Humour first performed?
Every Man in His Humour was first performed in 1598 by the Lord Chamberlain's Men at the Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch, London. The play was also performed at Court on the 2nd of February 1605.
Did Shakespeare act in Every Man in His Humour?
Yes, Shakespeare appears on the cast list printed in Ben Jonson's 1616 folio edition, confirming he was in the original 1598 production. A legend recorded by Nicholas Rowe in 1709 also claims Shakespeare personally advocated for the play when the company considered rejecting it.
What role did Shakespeare play in Every Man in His Humour?
The traditional view holds that Shakespeare played Kno'well, the aged father, based on his reputation for playing older characters. In 2024, scholar Dr Darren Freebury-Jones proposed an alternative: textual analysis suggested Shakespeare played Thorello, or Kitely, the jealous husband, citing shared phrases in later plays including Othello, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night.
What is the plot of Every Man in His Humour?
The main plot follows Kno'well, an old gentleman who employs the servant Brainworm to spy on his city-dwelling son, only to have Brainworm subvert the whole scheme. A subplot involves the merchant Kitely, who is consumed by jealousy over his wife. All the characters eventually appear before Justice Clement, who exposes each grievance as rooted in obsession, misperception, or deceit.
How did David Garrick change Every Man in His Humour in 1751?
Garrick trimmed lines from the secondary plots and added a new scene in which Kitely tries to conceal his jealousy while questioning a character named Cob. The role of Kitely became one of Garrick's signature parts, praised by critics including Arthur Murphy. The play's renewed popularity was closely tied to Garrick personally, and it declined after his era.
What is the humours comedy genre and how does Every Man in His Humour use it?
Humours comedy is a subgenre in which each major character is dominated by a single overriding obsession. In Every Man in His Humour, the merchant Kitely is the clearest example, consumed by jealousy, while surrounding characters embody types such as the irascible soldier and the country gull. Scholars now recognise that George Chapman's An Humorous Day's Mirth introduced the trend a year or more before Jonson's play.
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1 references cited across the entry
- 1newsShakespeare acted in a 1598 Ben Jonson play, scholar's analysis findsDalya Alberge — 2024-04-07