Sir Thomas Overbury – Characters

“A Roaring Boy”

A fake person, full of hot air—and he talks so much because he’s illiterate. He’s spent all his money by “running through great houses”. I’m not sure who the “keeper of the ordinary” is, maybe a police officer? He supervises brothels and is a “more unlawful reformer of vice than prentices on shrove-Tuesday.” He sleeps with a tobacco pipe. He borrows money. He keeps good company. If he does not drink he gets sick, so an alcoholic.

“A Distaster of the Time”

The metaphor of the “winter grasshopper” as someone who looks starved the whole year is connected with another metaphor about venom and poison which comes from his own conceitedness. If any other man advances he considers it a personal offence, but becomes so envious that he becomes wrapped up in the envy and slowly tortured by it like Philarius’ Bull. His blood is yellow (perhaps related to yellow bile in the humours—anger?) Nothing pleases him, war or peace, death or plenty. He commonly rails against religion as a source of his discontent, but this type of person can be of any religion. Ultimately he’s annoying, but relatively harmless.

“A Divellish Usurer”

He thinks he thrives from the curses people throw at him and understands the legal code better than the bible. There’s a pun on “evil angel” as an evil spirit, but also as the gold currency which  will save him. He can have no friends because he has too much “interest” in them. He wishes he could shorten the year so he could love a scholar, because, apparently, scholars borrow a lot of money? He’s a bondsmen, seeming to be the son of the jailor, because his estate is heavy with all the bonds people have paid. His only fear about the day of judgment is that it will come sooner than his payments are due. He considers the court his religion. Even though he has all this money, his own servants die from hunger. He wants everyone else to be frugal but himself. If he dies it’s never of God’s doing, but rather surfeit, pox, or despair.

“An Excellent Actor”

“You will think you see so many lines drawn from the circumference of so many ears, while the Actor is the Center. He doth strive to make nature monstrous, she is often seen in the same scene with him, but neither on stilts nor crutches…” Here, the actor is able to use what seems natural to fix all eyes on him. Even though he’s pretending “personating” the audience feels as though it is real. All men living, a worthy actor can contain. He values the actor for his quality, recognizing some are not as good and you may have to sit through some bad acting, as he would “do gold the ore, I should not mind the dross, but the purity of the metal.”