Every Man In His Humour

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This was a Royal Shakespeare Company revival of Ben Jonson’s rarely performed comedy, staged at the newly opened Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, opening on 15 May 1986. The production played in repertoire for the rest of the year and transferred to the Mermaid Theatre in London, opening on 13 April 1987 and playing in repertoire until 1st September.  Every Man in His Humour played for a total of 134 performances.

The text was a conflation by the director of Jonson’s two very different versions of 1598 and 1616 and was published as a Methuen Paperback in partnership with the RSC. For a detailed description of this adaptation, please refer to the introduction in the published text.

Read the Director's Notes taken from the programme below the cast list.

Director's Note; 'An Image of the Times'

Written for the Programme.

...deeds and language, such as men do use,
And persons such as Comedy would choose,
When she would show an Image of the Times...

Ben Johnson makes it very clear in the prologue to the folio edition of 1616 what he wants Every Man in His Humour to be, to his reader and to his audience. How odd then that 18 years earlier in 1598 when the play was first performed (quarto version) he had bowed to the convention of the times and set it in Florence with a cast of Italian characters. It is not known precisely when he rewrote the play but the later folio version is the work of a much more mature and confident playwright who, having the courage of his convictions, has made all the characters unmistakably English and has set the play firmly where it belongs, in London.

Apart from the obvious rightness of the English setting, the late folio is superior to the earlier quarto in nearly every respect. The poetry is richer, the rhythm of the writing more assured and the characters more sharply defined. I have, however, pillaged the quarto for some significant changes. In 1606 an act was passed in Parliament 'For the preventing and avoyding of the greate Abuse of the Holy Name of God in Stageplayes...' threatening that if 'any person on persons doe or shall in any Stage play... jestingly or profanely speake or use the Holy Name of God or of Jesus Christ, or of the Holy Ghoste or of the Trinitie... (such person or persones) shall forfeit for everie such Offence by hym or them committed Tenne Pounds...'

At ten pounds an oath, a production of the quarto version of Every Man in His Humour would have bankrupted Johnson overnight! His attempts to deblasphemise his earlier play produced some inspired results, particularly in the dialogue of Captain Bobadill. We are thus indebted to the censor for some of the most inventive oaths in the English language. Elsewhere, however, the text suffers from the coy alternatives to profanity typical of this period, and where I have felt that the original oaths take us nearer to Johnson's real, earthy and observed intention, they have been retained. At times the folio text is incomprehensible to modern ears, either through topical reference or linguistic obscurity, and where a cut would be inappropriate, I have returned to the quarto for clarity's sake.

The only major departure from the folio is in the last scene, where I have conflated the two texts to a considerable degree. The end of the play in the folio version is wrapped up all too neatly, and with too many unanswered questions. I have retained from the quarto Edward Kno'well's wonderful speech on the nature of true poetry, without which his character, his father's and their relationship to each other would remain sadly unresolved. For the same reason I have included the fraternal reconciliation of Wellbred and Downright, and the matrimonial one of Kitely and his wife.

I have cut Kitely's unsatisfactory and conventional poem about horns, and replaced it with Johnson's own remarkable poem 'Against Iealousie', first published as part of his Underwoods in 1640.

Much of the detailed editing work and most of the cutting has been done in rehearsal, and I am greatly indebted to my cast of actors for their considerable editorial skills.

John Caird
Stratford, April 1986