author identifies wisdom with the qualities of medicine:
Between wisdom and medicine there is no gulf fixed; in fact medicine possesses all the qualities that make for wisdom. It has disinterestedness, shamefastness, modesty, reserve, sound opinion, judgment, quiet, pugnacity, purity, sententious speech, knowledge of the things good and necessary for life…26
The members of the medical profession should behave in a way proper to the religious and cultural beliefs of their society. The physician was no rebel against the religion of his day, but had ‘given place to the gods’. Hippocrates also highlights the importance of good manners and conduct by the phycisian in his relationship with the patient. The essay is not limited to the rules of conduct for the medical profession, but favours a behaviour which ‘make for good reputation and decorum … in the arts generally’.27
He issues a warning against the misuse of wisdom and the love of unseemliness, vulgarity and hypocrisy. He portrays the hypocrites in this way:
You should mark them by their dress, and by the rest of their attire; for even if magnificiently adorned, they should much more be shunned and hated by those who behold them.28
In contrast, he highlights the ideal of a Stoic balance and modesty of behaviour. This ideal reflects the idea of the Golden Mean and points forward to the Renaissance concept of the perfectly balanced man in whom the elements and humours are equally mixed.
The gang of four mainly responsible for the introduction and elaboration of the term decorum, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Cicero and Horace, did not make a distinction between a general and social, and a particular and aesthetic use of the term. The Ciceronian account of decorum is closely related to the ideas set down by Aristotle, but Erasmus, as Terentian commentator, pointed to two types of decorum of character. On the one hand was social decorum, the established rules and mirror of custom and on the other the aesthetic or artistic decorum which gave the writer the freedom of judgement to distinguish between characters, to present characters of the same general type differently, he might present two old men, of the same rank, but of opposite temperament and disposition. This difference between a social and an aesthetic approach was formulated by Erasmus in De Ratione Studii (1511). The comic writer created a vast variety of characters and situations and Erasmus illustrates this with particular reference to Terence (Andria and The Brothers). The playwright must use his own judgment:
In comedy, first of all decorum must be preserved, and the imitation of common life; the emotions milder, pleasant rather than sharp. Not only must a general decorum be regarded, namely that young people fall in love, panders swear falsely, the courtesan flatter, the old man chide, the servant cheat, the soldier brag, but also that other particular kind of decorum which the poet uses at his own judgment to distinguish a certain character from others. Just so, in the Andria he introduces two old men of wildly different natures…in The Brothers, Michio is mild in the face of chiding, and merry; Demea spiteful even towards flattery. 29
Social decorum dictates a perfect balance in manners, moral behaviour and habits and fixes rank, status, and place in society. In the ‘Prologue’ to the comedy Damon and Pithias (first acted 1565) Richard Edwardes confirms the general and social meaning of decorum even for comedy:
In Commedies, the greatest Skyll is this, rightly to touché all thynges to the quicke: and eke to frame eche person so, that by his common talke, you may his nature rightly knowe: A Royster ought not preache, that were to strange to heare, but as from vertue he doth swerve, so ought his wordes appeare: The olde man is sober, the young man rashe, the lover triumphing in ioyes, the Matron grave, the Harlot wilde and full of wanton toyes.30
The stage character was given a ‘signifying badge’ by the playwright. Edwardes included the Italian pastoral poet Guarini in the list of writers who violated the doctrine: ‘Guarini in his Pastor Fido kept not decorum in making shepherds speak as well as himself could.’31
Social decorum may seem an unfortunate turn towards stock attitudes and stereotype in drama, leading to limitations in characterization. The influence of this critical standard is not an error or accidence isolated from the wider intellectual climate of the day but very much a part of it. Jonson had confidently criticized even an adherent observer of classical standards like Sidney for the lack of social decorum and he did not only expect decorum of class and speech from his contemporaries but was insistent and dogmatic enough even to correct the Ancients, for example, Lucian, if the standard was not observed. Lovewit, the master of the London house in Jonson’s The Alchemist, apologizes for his breach of decorum (‘if I have outstript an old man’s gravity, or strict canon’) and Face in the same scene admits that his part ‘a little fell in this last scene, yet ‘twas decorum’.32
The demand for social decorum was strongest in tragedy, for consistency in the characterization of historical characters, but because comedy portrayed fictional characters as they appeared in real life in society it encouraged different and more flexible rules. The two kinds of decorum of characterization, social and artistic, were easily confused, mixed and ignored among commentators and playwrights alike. Shakespeare’s Falstaff violates the rules of social decorum but he is fresh and consistent within an adopted aesthetic decorum.
The comedies of Plautus and Terence
Latin and Latin plays by Plautus and Terence were part of the curriculum of classical education that Jonson received at Westminster School. This was to be a fundamental inspiration for his creative development, tanquam explorator (as an explorer)33 of Greek and Latin ancestry.
Twenty (of more than fifty) plays by Plautus have survived. Pyrgopolynices in The Braggart Soldier (Miles Gloriosus) continues as Thraso in Terence’s The Eunuch and finds a successor as Captain Bobadill in Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour. Shakespeare’s Falstaff is perhaps the most memorable braggadocio of them all.
Jonson’s The Case is Altered is modelled on two comedies by Plautus, Captivi (The Captives) and Aulularia (The Pot of Gold). In this play he came closer to Shakespearean comedy like The Merchant of Venice and Much Ado about Nothing.
Jonson had obtained a fifteenth century manuscript which contained the six known plays by Terence, Andria (The Girl from Andros), Hecyra (The Mother-in-Law), Heauton Timorumenos (The Self-Tormentor), Phormio, Eunuchus (The Eunuch) and Adelphoe (The Brothers), now in the possession of St. John’s College Library, Oxford. Each play is preceded by a prologue.34
The influence of Terence is clearly discernible in Epicoene and The Magnetic Lady. Jonson quotes, in Epicone, the fundamental idea expressed in the Prologue to Andria that comedy must please, ‘content the people’ and again in The Magnetic Lady, he repeats populo ut placerent.
Jonson adopted the thesis introduced by Aelius Donatus that the comedies of Terence divided into four parts and movements: prologue, protasis, epitasis and catastrophe. The Magnetic Lady, Epicoene and Volpone follow this structure. The plays begin with the prologue, the introductory explanation or apology from the playwright. The protasis is the introduction of the characters and the beginning of the action. The catastasis is the continuation of the conflict. The catastrophe creates resolution and restoration.35
Jonson adapted the common types of characters in Terentian comedy: young man, senex (old man), servant, parasite, soldier and courtesan, into his own plays. Carlo Buffone in Every Man Out of His Humour is a Terentian parasite.
The conflicts between the generations in Every Man in His Humour reveal a strong Terentian influence but Jonson
