The leading force in initiating these changes was apparently Ben Jonson, whose prologue to "Every Man in His Humour" (acted 1598) avowed the principles which that play exemplified, and proclaimed the establishment of a comedy of humors. This change was heralded as the result of a more critical and conscious art, of a desire to free the drama from the absurdities and lawlessness of the past, and to supply it with literary standards and artistic aims. His practice, which during the next ten years was mostly in accord with his preaching, was followed or paralleled in many respects by most of the other dramatists. At the date of "Every Man in His Humour" Shakespeare was proclaiming in the choruses of "Henry V" his sense of the incongruities of the chronicle history play and bidding farewell to a form of drama that he had made preëminently his own; and Chapman and Middleton were forsaking romantic comedy for realistic comedies of London life. Perhaps a little earlier, the satires of Donne, Hall, and Marston had created considerable stir and doubtless had a share in turning literary endeavor from sentiment to satire. This satire and exposure of the follies and evils of society also received encouragement from the moral and social change that was working in England and especially in London. The healthy and aspiring national life that had found expression in the sound morality and the imaginative idealism of the earlier drama was now giving place to the moral corruption, social laxity, and lack of national pride that render the reign of James I notorious. At all events, whatever the causes, the comedy of the next seven or eight years was prevailingly realistic, domestic, or satirical.