did not consciously place their comedy in a realm of convention, but
generally considered themselves, and sometimes were, realists. The
fashion of label-names, if we may call them so, came down from the
Elizabethans, who, again, borrowed it from the Mediaeval Moralities.[1]
Shakespeare himself gave us Master Slender and Justice Shallow; but it
was in the Jonsonian comedy of types that the practice of advertising a
"humour" or "passion" in a name (English or Italian) established itself
most firmly. Hence such strange appellatives as Sir Epicure Mammon, Sir
Amorous La Foole, Morose, Wellbred, Downright, Fastidius Brisk, Volpone,
Corbaccio, Sordido, and Fallace. After the Restoration, Jonson, Beaumont
and Fletcher, and Massinger were, for a time, more popular than
Shakespeare; so that the label-names seemed to have the sanction of the
giants that were before the Flood. Even when comedy began to deal with
individuals rather than mere incarnations of a single "humour," the
practice of giving them obvious pseudonyms held its ground. Probably it
was reinforced by the analogous practice which obtained in journalism,
in which real persons were constantly alluded to (and libelled) under
fictitious designations, more or less transparent to the initiated. Thus
a label-name did not carry with it a sense of unreality, but rather,
perhaps, a vague suggestion of covert reference to a real person. I must
not here attempt to trace the stages by which the fashion went out. It
could doubtless be shown that the process of change ran parallel to the
shrinkage of the "apron" and the transformation of the platform-stage
into the picture-stage. That transformation was completed about the
middle of the nineteenth century; and it was about that time that
label-names made their latest appearances in works of any artistic
pretension--witness the Lady Gay Spanker of _London Assurance_, and the
Captain Dudley (or "Deadly") Smooth of _Money_. Faint traces of the
practice survive in T.W. Robertson, as in his master, Thackeray. But it
was in his earliest play of any note that he called a journalist Stylus.