Every Man Out of His Humour

Jonson’s Every Man Out of His Humour is a comical satire about envy and aspiration amongst the ambitious middle classes, who think happiness is to be found in fame and material fortune. Cynical depictions of urban greed, aggression, violence, misogyny, sexuality, education, conflicts of family, class and gender, commercial and personal risk-taking, all have dynamic places in the play’s whirl of activity, through which Jonson exposes the importance of seeing and judging the world as it is and not being duped by its pretences. Jonson helped form English satirical drama with this play in 1599, and its popularity spearheaded a whole new movement in the writing of comedy as social critique.Despite its popularity when it first appeared in print in 1600, Every Man out of His Humour has never appeared as a single modern critical edition until now. The volume’s introduction and annotations convey early modern obsessions with wealth and self-display by providing historical contexts and pointing out the continuity of those obsessions into modern life. The play is of interest because of its influence on the course of city comedy and its wealth of information about social relationships and colloquial language at the end of Elizabeth’s reign. Jonson’s experiments in generating theatrical meaning continued throughout his career, but Every Man out of His Humour - with its youthful vigour and extraordinary visualizations of the urban capacity for self-deceit - is a text that enriches the understanding of all the plays that come after it.