generally speaking, powerful portrayals of actual life.

2. Jonson's purpose, however, was never unworthy; rather, it was distinctly
to uphold morality. His frankest plays, as we have indicated, are attacks
on vice and folly, and sometimes, it is said, had important reformatory
influence on contemporary manners. He held, indeed, that in the drama, even
in comedy, the function of teaching was as important as that of giving
pleasure. His attitude toward his audiences was that of a learned
schoolmaster, whose ideas they should accept with deferential respect; and
when they did not approve his plays he was outspoken in indignant contempt.

3. Jonson's self-satisfaction and his critical sense of intellectual
superiority to the generality of mankind produce also a marked and
disagreeable lack of sympathy in his portrayal of both life and character.
The world of his dramas is mostly made up of knaves, scoundrels,
hypocrites, fools, and dupes; and it includes among its really important
characters very few excellent men and not a single really good woman.
Jonson viewed his fellow-men, in the mass, with complete scorn, which it
was one of his moral and artistic principles not to disguise. His
characteristic comedies all belong, further, to the particular type which
he himself originated, namely, the 'Comedy of Humors.' [Footnote: The
meaning of this, term can be understood only by some explanation of the
history of the word 'Humor.' In the first place this was the Latin name for
'liquid.' According to medieval physiology there were four chief liquids in
the human body, namely blood, phlegm, bile, and black bile, and an excess
of any of them produced an undue predominance of the corresponding quality;
thus, an excess of phlegm made a person phlegmatic, or dull; or an excess
of black bile, melancholy. In the Elizabethan idiom, therefore, 'humor'
came to mean a mood, and then any exaggerated quality or marked peculiarity
in a person.]