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Comedy of Humours

The comedy of humours is a dramatic genre that focuses on characters defined by dominant personality traits. It originated in ancient Greece but was popularized in late 16th century England by playwrights like Ben Jonson and George Chapman. Jonson's comedies in particular featured principal characters overcome by a single humor, like the boastful Bobadil or harsh judge Asper, allowing for satire through their exaggerated traits and behaviors. This comic technique combines character-driven drama with social commentary.

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2K views

Comedy of Humours

The comedy of humours is a dramatic genre that focuses on characters defined by dominant personality traits. It originated in ancient Greece but was popularized in late 16th century England by playwrights like Ben Jonson and George Chapman. Jonson's comedies in particular featured principal characters overcome by a single humor, like the boastful Bobadil or harsh judge Asper, allowing for satire through their exaggerated traits and behaviors. This comic technique combines character-driven drama with social commentary.

Uploaded by

R. Nandini
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The comedy of humor is a genre of dramatic comedy that focuses on a character or range of characters,

each of whom exhibits two or more overriding traits or 'humour' that dominates their personality,
desires, and conduct. This comic technique may be found in Aristophanes, but the English playwrights
Ben Jonson and George Chapman popularised the genre in the closing years of the sixteenth century. In
the later half of the seventeenth century, it was combined with the comedy of manners in Restoration
comedy.

Comedy of humours is a dramatic genre most closely associated with the English playwright Ben Jonson
from the late 16th century. The term derives from the Latin humor (more properly umor), meaning
“liquid,” and its use in the medieval and Renaissance medical theory that the human body held a
balance of four liquids, or humours:

blood (linked with a sanguine, or optimistic, temperament)

phlegm (linked with a quiet, or easygoing, temperament),

black bile (linked with a melancholic, or reserved temperament),

and yellow bile (linked with a choleric, or irritable, temperament).

A normal man has these four humours in a balanced proportion. But the excess of any one of these
humours makes him abnormal and develops some kind of oddity in his temperament and behavior and
thus becomes an object of fun and ridicule.

Ben Jonson’s comedies are called Comedies of Humour because the principal characters in all his
comedies are victims of one humour or the other. BOBADIL, for example, is characterized by his
decorous manners, uttering improbable boasts. ASPER in EVERYMAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR is a harsh
and pitiless judge. DELIRO is an idolizing husband consistently rebuffed by his wife. There is a stream of
satire in all of Ben Jonson’s principal characters.

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