Scene from Ben Jonson's 'Every Man in His Humour' (Act II, Scene 1)

This 1847 scene from Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour demonstrates Maclise's range extending beyond Shakespeare to encompass the broader Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic tradition. Every Man in His Humour, Jonson's comedy of social pretension and comic deception, was popular in Victorian revival performances — Charles Dickens himself performed in a celebrated amateur production in 1845. Maclise's choice of a Jonson subject rather than a Shakespeare one in 1847 may reflect his awareness of Dickens's theatrical production, connecting his literary painting to his broader social circle. The Victorian rediscovery of Jacobean theater alongside Shakespeare expanded the repertoire available to painters of literary subjects.

The Jonsonian characters are rendered with the incisive portrait-like specificity that made Maclise's literary paintings so compelling, each figure distinguished by distinctive physiognomy and expressive body language.