ABSTRACT
Most characters in Every Man Out of His Humour do not arrive at any sort of self-realization about their comic errors, but are simply disgraced before disappearing from the play. Asper’s hope, however, is that this sort of staged correction can effect a “purge” of his audience’s own folly as it sees a representation of fictional folly. Indeed, Sordido’s realization of his excessive malice typifies farcically what Macilente comprehends seriously at play’s end about his own envy and malice: both have their near-tragic emotional extremes exposed and comically tempered. Epicoene consistently suggests the possibility of catharsis even as it appears to dismiss it, just as it does with indignation. The play’s fools resolutely resist the self-realization that the wits’ hoaxes urge on them, even as the play’s prologues insist that the audience should comprehend the significance of its own emotional response to the play. Jonson links his urbane Blackfriar’s audience to the aimless and unmotivated Truewit and Clerimont by gulling them both about Epicoene’s identity, thereby revealing their lack of indignation as itself a form of folly.
