The earliest known version of the expression “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” appears in James Howell’s Proverbs in English, Italian, French and Spanish (1659). The expression is also a famous horror reference from The Shining, in which Jack Torrance repeatedly types the sentence into his manuscript, but Stephen King’s 1977 novel does not feature the repeated manuscript pages in the same way. Stanley Kubrick introduced that visual device for the 1980 film. The sentence becomes disturbing because Jack has produced no meaningful work—only the same sentence, ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,’ repeated obsessively.
A related use of the expression appears in Halt and Catch Fire, Season 1, Episode 7, “Giant” (2014), when Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis) uses the phrase “All work and no play makes Joe a dull boy” in reference to Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace), teasing him about his relentless focus on work and encouraging him to spend time with her.