SOURCE: McCabe, Richard. “Ben Jonson, Theophrastus, and the Comedy of Humours.” Hermathena, no. 146 (summer 1989): 25-37.

In the following essay, McCabe argues that the Greek writer Theophrastus was the dominant influence on Jonson's theory of humors as displayed in Every Man in His Humour.

I

The Characters of Theophrastus were tolerably well known throughout the sixteenth century, but their popularity was greatly enhanced in 1592 by the publication at Lyons of Isaac Casaubon's scholarly edition, Characteres Ethici, sive Descriptiones Morum, in which the Greek text was complemented by a Latin translation of notable concision and eloquence.¹ Reissued in 1599 in a slightly enlarged form and with the translation running parallel to the original, Casaubon's edition was destined to supplant its predecessors as the most authoritative and accessible text available. It inspired the first formal English character-book, Joseph Hall's Characters of Virtues and Vices (1608), and served as the basis for the first...