SOURCE: Snuggs, Henry L. “The Comic Humours: A New Interpretation.” PMLA 42, no. 1, part 1 (March 1947): 114-22.

In the following essay, Snuggs contends that previous critics have misunderstood Jonson's notion of humors in his comedies, and suggests that Jonson used the concept not in a strict scientific manner but in the more popular sense of affectation and eccentricity.

The Induction to Every Man out of his Humour, which contains Jonson's most significant statement about humorous characterization, has been universally interpreted by critics as follows: Jonson rebelled against the “abuse of this word Humour,” which had come to be used popularly to denote whim, affectation, or eccentricity. That spectators and readers of his comedies might understand the basis of his own comic characterization, he carefully defined humour in the strictly psychological sense:

As when some one peculiar quality Doth so possesse a man, that it doth draw All his affects, his...