Every Man in his Humour: Title Page

It was recorded that Shakespeare himself ensured the performance of this play by his own company, and performed himself in several of Jonson's plays. The title refers to Jonson's use of Elizabethan humour theory which dictated human psychology was determined by the balance of humours in one's body (roughly equivalent to our hormones?). The typical illustrations of temperaments resulting from over-stress on two of the four factors has been preserved in our modern use of the Elizabethan terms: melancholic (cold and moist: Hamlet), phlegmatic (cold and dry: Henry IV), choleric (hot and dry: Hotspur), and sanguine (hot and moist: Falstaff). Shakespeare approxomated to such terms in creating his characters with appropriate imagery: but he was usually less categorical than Jonson.