An Humorous Day's Mirth

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An Humorous Day's Mirth is an Elizabethan era stage play, a comedy by George Chapman, first acted in 1597 and published in 1599.

The play was performed by the Admiral's Men at the Rose Theatre; it has been identified with the "Humours" play that the company acted on May 1, 1597.^[1] The 1599 quarto was printed by Valentine Simmes, who is generally recognized as one of the best London printers of his generation; Simmes printed nine Shakespeare quartos in the 1597–1604 period. The quality of Simmes's work is evident in the Chapman volume: "A shop proofreader was especially careful in correcting the first quarto edition...."^[2]

Chapman's play was the first Elizabethan humors comedy, drawing its material from the traditional theory of human physiology and psychology. The sub-genre would gain its greatest prominence in the works of Ben Jonson—most notably in Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Every Man Out of His Humour (1599), but through his later works too. Other dramatists of the era also worked in the humors vein, like John Fletcher in The Humorous Lieutenant (ca. 1619) and James Shirley in The Humorous Courtier (1631).

In the prevailing theory, the physically and emotionally healthy human being has his or her "humors" in a general balance; Chapman's comic characters illustrate various extremes of imbalance of humors. Dowsecer is melancholic and misanthropic; Dariotto is a fashion-obsessed courtier; Florilla is a Puritan wife whose Puritanism quickly fails the test; Cornelius is an upstart gentleman jealous of his wife. These and other characters show their vulnerability to folly by the end of the play. Chapman's protagonist Lemot acts as something like a circus ringmaster, presiding over the fun.

Algernon Charles Swinburne called Chapman's play one of the finest comedies in English. "The plot is intricate and ingenious and shows that Chapman had been taking lessons of Jonson's masters, Plautus and Terence."^[3]

[edit] References

1. ^ E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923; Vol. 3, p. 251.
2. ^ Logan, Terence P. Logan and Denzell S. Smith, eds., The New Intellectuals: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama, Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1977; p. 149.
3. ^ Mina Kerr, The Influence of Ben Jonson on English Comedy, 1598–1642, New York, D. Appleton, 1912; p. 22.