oddity 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,