Every Man in His Humour and the Fathers of Ben

Abstract

In Every Man in His Humour, Edward Kno'well fils clashes with Edward Kno'well père, who wants his son to occupy himself with something other than poetry. In the father-son pair's vexed relationship with each other and with literature, Every Man In figures Jonson as an author who knows himself to be a developed, powerful literary adult, but who won't accept that identity. His role as a literary child of the Romans, imitative and grateful, has propelled him into it. Every Man In's two versions, a 1598 Quarto set in Italy and a 1616 Folio version set in England, also indicate mixed feelings about textual inheritance. The play's transformation from neoclassical Q to homegrown F appears an evasion of forebears much like Edward's evasions of his father. But the deference to predecessors in F's plot, its prologue, and its dedication “save” the play from literary autonomy. Jonson downplays his Roman antecedents in F's minimized classical references, just as the New Comedy plot stages the triumph of the younger generation. However, both Kno'wells are eventually subsumed into the world of the paternal Justice Clement, and F as a whole declines the predecessor's authoritative mantle. As David Riggs notes, in excluding a late English comedy from the 1616 Folio Works and putting a Roman tragedy last, Jonson presents a classicizing narrative. But that narrative doesn't reflect Jonson's career: in the six years before 1616, Jonson's investment in the Europe outside England had actually decreased. Every Man In's transition from Q to F further complicates that plot arc.