Disability, Authenticity, and Masculinity in Ben Jonson’s Humours Comedies

• In Event: Styling Early Modern Disability

Abstract

Humours comedies are well known for satirizing male affectation but less attention has been paid to the role of figurations of physical and psychological impairment in that satire. Such attention, I argue, impels us to revise our understanding of these plays as well as early modern masculinity. Critics have read Ben Jonson’s humours comedies as shoring up distinctions between authentic forms of masculinity (gallants and tricksters) and their inauthentic others (gulls, fops, braggart soldiers). However, I will argue that Jonson draws on the complex and contradictory relationship of disability and authenticity to expose those distinctions as arbitrary and damaging to urban sociability. By considering affectations or “humours” in terms of disability, I seek to move beyond the debate about whether such “humours” are embodied or figural in this genre and instead explore the queer social and sexual alternatives attendant upon these plays’ depictions of inauthentic masculinity.

Author

• James M. Bromley, Miami University